That’s the moon. Tech bros just invented the moon.

Yeah, I agree. All the power to the workers. My idea of a planned economy is probably not too far off from what you describe in that last paragraph. But I’m no economist, so please don’t ask me to put forward a coherent policy proposal. xD

The big corporations already command a wide variety of industries. And different kinds of industries coordinate with each other, even if they are different corporation. Think just-in-time delivery of raw materials to manufacture a final product.

We also do have access to virtually unlimited amounts of data. Sure, some of it is not exactly useful, but much of it is. And we also have the technology to harness it.

A planned economy also wouldn’t have to be more efficient in the same way. The point wouldn’t be to achieve infinite growth, but to reach societal goals. Build X amount of housing. Make sure that enough food is available everywhere. Coordinate relevant industries in the fight against cancer. For most things, you wouldn’t need to coordinate the entirety of the economy, at least not directly. Just the relevant parts in the relevant region. And if conditions change, you adapt the plan. A good plan is flexible.

A free market is not really different from a plan, in that sense. The two problems I see with free markets are that the aim is always, to some degree, growth and profit, and the competition. Having a choice, at least for consumer goods, is great. Not everyone likes the same apples or clothes. And the USSR had some bad experience with entirely removing branding, and therewith accountability, from things like bread. But with the need to outcompete each other, the alternatives waste so many resources on branding and marketing rather than making their products better. Those resources could be employed much more productively.

Well, as long as it’s just a hungry pack of wolves and not a pack of hungry wolves.

A dedicated communist gym? Billion dollar idea right there! Wait…

Come out ye Black and Tans (particularly the cover by Colm R. McGuinness)

Depending on how you choose workout songs, the Song of The United Front could work too. To me, pretty much any left song, from certain Dropkick Murphys ones to The Internationale, will do the trick. xD

Edit: Forgot about the Chemical Workers’ Song. How could I.

Are those (adapted) lines from a song? It sounds familiar, but I’m a music noob sometimes.

Kinda like biology: knock out a gene (package) and see what happens.

You gotta pump those numbers up, those are rookie numbers.

This is why I love the internet.

What the fuck are you smoking?

Why not both? Get reforms done now to get some immediate alleviation and garner more popular support, and prepare for a revolution asap.

Oh, yes, I was wondering if there was a feat, but I don’t have the book at hand rn. thx

I’ll look into that, thank you!

I’d like to stick with the PBH, since I don’t have the extensions’ books. I was think, maybe we could use the Bard. Bardic Inspiration, but with food sounds like fun. And Gordon Ramsay quotes for Vicious Mockery.

The double proficiency thing definitely sounds like a good idea, thx!

You could still have different prices, albeit lower ones. Renting then becomes part of a resources allocation game. If you want a bigger/more luxurious home, you pay more and have less for other things. If a fancy house isn’t so important to you, you can get a cheaper one and have more money left for vacations, fine dining, cinema, etc.

As for the efficiency, that government department could take lessons from big property owners and organize like them, only with state subsidies and without profit goals. That way, the middle class, by virtue of having more money, could still afford better housing. Also, I don’t want the middle class to live like the working class, I want the working class to live like the middle class. Also also, there’s no “middle class”, only parts of the working class that got lucky. But they’re fundamentally still beholden to their employers’ whims.

Incremental change withing the current system is good and important, but we nonetheless have to discuss the big break that has to occur at some point, and what comes after. Incremental change can only take us so far.

I’m not completely against the concept of renting. But imo the property should be owned either by the inhabitant of it, or the state. And then the state employs a custodian in charge of repairs and administration (you know, the only useful aspects of a landlord), while renting it out for a low price. And in order to keep prices a s low as possible, maintenance is supplemented by a tax.

The problem with private landlords of one or two extra properties, while they’re often not morally bankrupt, is that they tend to be wholly inept at the custodian part. Plus, if properties are all owned in small numbers rather than organized on the large scale, that’s just very inefficient.

Okay, but why do we need the landlord then? We’d just need a custodian.

That’s an odd spelling of “capitalist”.

You can’t be a good anything and be a landlord. At least if we use the moral meaning of “good”.