Too many br*nds at the grocery store, I can't decide, why do we need 14 br*nds of laundry detergent? Destroying br*nds is essential for the revolution.
There will be one br*nd of soup. One br*nd of soap. One br*nd of orange juice.
Lenin's Own Orange Juice. A man we can trust.
staring at the thousand and one brands of ass wipe tissue on the endless wall of disposable paper products, questioning the need for five different package size options per brand, with near infinite variations of extra-soft multi-ply double-count percentage-extra-free limited-seasonal-edition...
:xi-plz:
As a not artistic person, there should be a way to contract out. Like if I want a nice shirt with a dinosaur on it but I can't draw dinosaurs, there will be some system (whether informal or not) where I get somebody else to do that, possibly in exchange for something else but not coercive.
David Graebaer describes pre-monetary societies as relying on intersecting systems of interpersonal small debt (w/ no concept of interest or dividends) and communalism. Exchange and debt are perfectly natural forms of human interaction, even within a potential communist society. It is the profit motive and inherent coercion within a capitalist system that turns debt and exchange unjust.
I read first Graeber with Debt: The First 5000 Years but you might not want to read all 600+ pages. He has one chapter (which may have been converted from an article) about the Adam Smith and the Myth of Barter that is essentially self contained.
The rule was you always gave back in gifts/services slightly more than you got in the first place. That way the debt and obligation was always there between people. To pay back in full was essentially saying "I dont want to see you or have you in my life anymore." You probably practice this in your daily life with your friends or significant others even if you dont realize it. Its the default social relation and the one we "grew up" in so to speak as a species.
For a problem like this, I thought an ELO system would do wonderfully. People pursuing some kind of art degree could take random orders from customers and get rated for their performance based on their ability to use the skills they've been taught, how well they satisfy the customer, and their own creative flair. Artists who excel get to be in museums, attend functions, earn the degree, and get a bunch of cosmetic/prestige perks that they can flaunt. They don't need to get paid because there's an audience for ELO systems surely as there's an audience for League of Legends. Maybe a perk of working full time as an engineer is priority on artistic orders.
Things like this that are predicated on somebody who does nothing being guaranteed a roof over their head, food in their belly, and a doctor to look at their illnesses are what I envision. Then you get a dignified entrance into the labor pool filled with quality of life upgrades for doing the bare fucking minimum and cosmetic/prestige perks for going above and beyond.
Buy a washlet seat for your toilet and set yourself free comrade.
plus your bum will be so clean. I hate using paper now. Feels so unhygienic.
feels so unhygienic
cause it is.
imagine just wiping your hands off on a towel with no water let alone soap after squeezing a bunch of shit through your fingers and thinking "all clean!"
one of the benefits of social distancing is I poop right next to my shower.
I should install the washlet I bought. I can't find my crescent wrenches though. hm.
workplace pooping stations really need more bidet options
edit: but then greg from accounting in there like "why did they install a drinking fountain here? well i am thirsty..." :cat-confused:
but becky from hr keeps using it as a urinal, and im pretty sure steve said something about "the diarrhea bowl" being convenient after tacobell tuesday :sadness: i dont want that on my butt
update: greg died of cholera and now the breakroom is closed. no more banana nut muffins :deeper-sadness:
Nationalizing Amazon and using their infrastructure to have a giant "order shit" superstore online is the dream. Imagine just being able to request toilet paper or shampoo or basically any non-perishable and you just press a button and the government just delivers it to you, free. Just do some sort of check system to stop people from buying a million rolls all at once, and you're good.
Amazon proves that Central Planning works extremely well and is very cool. Thanks Jeff, we'll take it from here
There would have to be a coming to God moment where the public consciousness metabolizes that there's 100,000 private labels all ordering the same cheap plastic shit from 4 or 5 Chinese mega-factories and how profoundly those laborers are exploited.
As some with autism, I find supermarkets so over stimulating. I don't need every peice of packaging screaming for my attention.
Sometimes I get anxiety as I stare at all the options trying to figure out how the 24 different kinds of toothpastes are different and which one is worth the money. Not to mention the fact im in the same aisle for like 10 minutes comparing active ingredients
i had to make an international call to my mother once cos i got stuck for an hour trying to understand what shampoo was the one i usually used or was close enough to the one at home
Yep I feel this. I've gotten into a decent routine with grocery shopping because I just buy the same food every time and only have to freak out and figure shit out occasionally when I need a non-food item.
As long as there are still different "types" (e.g. unscented, allergy free, etc. for laundry soap) I'm game. It would make shopping a lot easier, and would have helped immensely with the whole lockdown thing. Instead of ordering "I need two packs of land o lakes butter, a gallon of deans 2% milk, six cans of Progresso clam chowder...etc etc" it would just be I need 2 lbs of butter, a gallon of 2% milk, and 6 cans of clam chowder. Hell, that shit could be damn near automated at that point. Everyone gets essentials with a list of options for things that need choice (flavors, scents, allergens).
That's why I'm a seinfeld/leninist, I just don't get what the deal is with all these brands providing the illusion of freedom in my society. Who are these people?
Alternatively I like 150 different brands of locally produced cheeses.
Shouldn't production be as descentralized as possible/efficient ?
I feel like artisanal products are different. When I want cheese, beer or a liquor or something the options are nice. But I have no clue what kind of toilet paper is at my house right now. I have a ton of different cleaners at my house and I know one is good for tile but I don't know the brand or really care.
brawnd! the thirst brutalizer
introducing brawnd-o! with one thousand percent more oxidants, itll mutilate your genome into never being thirsty again! science!
It absolutely is a form of rent, in a lot of cases anyway. Capitalists refer to this as an "intangible" on balance sheets.
Turns out my mom was a revolutionary when I grew up with her saying, "The shirt costs double because of the logo"
I thought you were looking for more of a cultural analysis, my bad. You can post over in c/theory or whatever it's called asking for something on the topic and get some suggestions.
the best thing about communism is that they will take my toothbrush away from me and that plays into my toothbrush denial kink
Are you a Germany, Austria, Australia, Belgium, China, Denmark, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, or United Kingdom burger?
In this hypothetical thought experiment I am not, however in truth I am commissar of the luxembourg posters union
just put the shampoo in oil drums so i can fill up the bottle i already have instead of THROWING IT AWAY
We do this at my job. We have a big rack of 55 gallon drums with taps. Way oil, Simple Green, DuSqueeze, CIP-100, etc. No reason why we couldn't do this with orange juice or milk or laundry detergent.
Some poor sucker would have to clean spoiled milk out of a 55 gallon drum :deeper-sadness:
Reminds me of that doofus who made the video about Cuba where he was trying to dunk on them for how evil commulism caused a lack of brand variety, and he's showing these fully stocked shelves (what happened to communism no food, fuckers?), but OH NO its the same handful of brands for everything!
Once I walked into a grocery store and they had glass bottles of Leninade
