"I see a mismatch between what most people in Canada are worried about and the challenges that we face. Politics reflects this. Democracy is alive and well by focusing on the concerns of the majority. Media, similarly, is very democratic — shining a spotlight where people want to look."
What do you mean by "politics reflect this" and "media is very democratic"? My understanding is that what is available in terms of our choices in mainstream capital P politics (party, policy, and platform diversity) in the West as well as our choices of media and other consumables are controlled by the suppliers. Capitalist economists claim that demand informs supply but thats not the case at all in practice. Suppliers (capitalists) and their captured politicians determine the range of what is available for us to consume at every turn. Thats why voting with your wallet doesn't work very well to change systems, and why voting for the range of available political platforms and candidates doesnt work very well to change systems and thats why mainstream capitalist economists and politicians tell us that those things do work. I don't think thst socialist economic theorists claim that consumers determine what is produced by capitalists. What do you think?
On the topics that I watch most closely, there is a great supply of fantastic information provided for free, easily accessible, with the core of it's knowledge base funded by governments/universities.
So on the supply side, we have so so much on offer. I recently took a university course for free online that was created by indigenous scholars to weave indigenous worldview and rights into the story of culture and climate change.
The quantity and quality of information available today is insane. And when you peek over someone's shoulder on the ferry -- it's tictok garbage or candycrush (sorry/not sorry if that's anyone's thing). Or if you go to *mainstream news* page, it's largely clickbait.
The 'trending' section of most news sites is fascinating to watch... even when much of this polycrisis stuff is even available on a given news source, (eg CBC: "Climate tipping points are difficult to predict. In Canada and beyond, they might have already arrived"), the 'trending' sidebar is fully of sensational clickbait -- those are the things people choose, despite bigger fish swimming past. And a news agency couldn't exist without providing that.
I'm open to all manner of theories to explain why people seem to choose the media or edcuational oportunities they do... but it seems to me that there is a feedback loop and people are a big part of that loop. And maybe we're just pointing to different parts of that loop. I want to point at the part that people have the most agency over.
People don't like more expensive groceries, they want to read news that the cause is greedy individual CEOs (or wokeness or carbon taxes), so that's the news they get. Then politicians focus there when they're doing their politician thing. And if people's concern and attention were elsewhere, then those mechanisms would go there too... at least eventually.
And for sure there's a lot going on in all of that. Culture -- the unspoken expectations and norms -- determines where people go, what they attend to, how the attend.
My hope is that we can, together, one-by-one turn our attention to the big stuff, coming at us fast and maybe it can turn the titanic in time... with whatever agency we have. I think we have more than we tend to think.
Maybe voting with dollars works very well, we just keep being defeated at the polls.
I encourage you to read leftist analyses of supply and demand. Your explanation of why the market provides the choices it does is not in line with what socialist economic scholars say. A good primer is "a people's guide to capitalism" by Hadas Thier. I don't know how far you're going to get towards solutions by using capitalist economic theory to explain the market. Your personal observations are great, but your perspective is limited. I think its important to look to scholars who study these things across systems.
it's available in audiobook form (works best for me).
I recommend libro.fm for your audiobooks -- they give a good chunk of purchases to local bookstores. Use my referral code to undermine capitalism or whatever. :)
will read and get back to you. in our current capitalist system, it's probably at the library. Or at least easily accessible somehow... :)
and one other person has read your comment and ordered the book. fyi. they told me.
Sharing ideas and encouragement to change the framing and priorities of people in a culture may work to undermine the systems that are harming the world we love.
I can get that book and put some time into understanding our situation, help others find it or its ideas -- and thereby maybe (just maybe) we can change the situation or the structures or the culture.
i think this exploration is a bit like pondering free-will.
It is disorienting to ponder that we might not have free will, while we still can/do/must make choices, and they have consequences, and our minds can/do change based on experience and ideas.
Capitalism can impinge on our decisions, and we can choose differently despite it because it is only one force in the universe.
This is like root-cause problem solving. I think the roots are really a web-like network. Think cedar tree, not carrot.
What I'm hearing you exploring are your personal theories around how societies undergo substantial changes. There are lots of folks that have spent their lives studying capitalist societies and how they have been changed, and I think for those of us who are organizing for change are responsible to be familiar with the available research on the topic. Do you have a favorite theorist who describes proven methodologies for organizing people to change systems like ours?
The latest has been Margaret Klein Salamon, . Maybe she's not a theorist in a strict sense, not sure how one gets that certificate. She refers to the HIV/AIDS movement, civil rights, WW2, #metoo, BLM for examples of how change has happened -- advocates for 'emergency mode' and the use of emotion and truth of the severity of the situation to catalyze sufficient numbers of people and sufficient energy/pressure.
Recently finished a course Connecting for Climate Change Action, and main take away: it matters what people believe and do, and we can make change by seeing ourselves in a movement and mobilizing our skills and resources, indigenous values are a good guide and indigenous folks should get landback and protect the land by all rights.
Also, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Kathryn Heyhoe, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Sapolsky, Dan Ariely, George Lakoff, Daniel Kahneman, Peter Kalmus, Bernie Sanders -- they variously guide people on how to make change, where to put energy, what priorities fit into our timelines. Many of these place the roots of our challenges in cultural narrative, thinking difficulties. The climate-based thinkers would probably say that we're on the titanic: we don't have time to build a new ship, we need to steer this one as a first step, that alone will be a big enough challenge -- remaking all the systems and institutions is a bit like rebuilding the ship... hard to do in a hurry, out at sea, on a near-term collision course.
Happy to branch out in areas of your suggesting.
I'm a bit confused though -- you seem to not agree that people have agency and can organize to change things because capitalists control supply. Is it the agency of the masses that you're arguing against?
But you're also saying that I have agency and can change my ideas by choosing my inputs (when suggested by others) with the aim of being more effective at organizing for change. Is that right?
I think this is all I'm saying -- more folks spending more time figuring this out together and on their own, then taking action together, would help... So far the only theory I think I've shared is that it'll be people who do the changing, and organizing is part of that. And understanding our situation will help/be necessary for that. Is this a point of agreement or disagreement?
Or maybe it's the democracy part, i did say democracy is working (just not in the way we might hope)...
I guess I'm not clear on where we diverge and what I should be looking for in the socialist economics world.
I haven't finished your book recommendation... Maybe I'll do that first and keep an eye out for a theory of change.
"I see a mismatch between what most people in Canada are worried about and the challenges that we face. Politics reflects this. Democracy is alive and well by focusing on the concerns of the majority. Media, similarly, is very democratic — shining a spotlight where people want to look."
What do you mean by "politics reflect this" and "media is very democratic"? My understanding is that what is available in terms of our choices in mainstream capital P politics (party, policy, and platform diversity) in the West as well as our choices of media and other consumables are controlled by the suppliers. Capitalist economists claim that demand informs supply but thats not the case at all in practice. Suppliers (capitalists) and their captured politicians determine the range of what is available for us to consume at every turn. Thats why voting with your wallet doesn't work very well to change systems, and why voting for the range of available political platforms and candidates doesnt work very well to change systems and thats why mainstream capitalist economists and politicians tell us that those things do work. I don't think thst socialist economic theorists claim that consumers determine what is produced by capitalists. What do you think?
Good stuff.
On the topics that I watch most closely, there is a great supply of fantastic information provided for free, easily accessible, with the core of it's knowledge base funded by governments/universities.
So on the supply side, we have so so much on offer. I recently took a university course for free online that was created by indigenous scholars to weave indigenous worldview and rights into the story of culture and climate change.
The quantity and quality of information available today is insane. And when you peek over someone's shoulder on the ferry -- it's tictok garbage or candycrush (sorry/not sorry if that's anyone's thing). Or if you go to *mainstream news* page, it's largely clickbait.
The 'trending' section of most news sites is fascinating to watch... even when much of this polycrisis stuff is even available on a given news source, (eg CBC: "Climate tipping points are difficult to predict. In Canada and beyond, they might have already arrived"), the 'trending' sidebar is fully of sensational clickbait -- those are the things people choose, despite bigger fish swimming past. And a news agency couldn't exist without providing that.
I'm open to all manner of theories to explain why people seem to choose the media or edcuational oportunities they do... but it seems to me that there is a feedback loop and people are a big part of that loop. And maybe we're just pointing to different parts of that loop. I want to point at the part that people have the most agency over.
People don't like more expensive groceries, they want to read news that the cause is greedy individual CEOs (or wokeness or carbon taxes), so that's the news they get. Then politicians focus there when they're doing their politician thing. And if people's concern and attention were elsewhere, then those mechanisms would go there too... at least eventually.
And for sure there's a lot going on in all of that. Culture -- the unspoken expectations and norms -- determines where people go, what they attend to, how the attend.
My hope is that we can, together, one-by-one turn our attention to the big stuff, coming at us fast and maybe it can turn the titanic in time... with whatever agency we have. I think we have more than we tend to think.
Maybe voting with dollars works very well, we just keep being defeated at the polls.
I encourage you to read leftist analyses of supply and demand. Your explanation of why the market provides the choices it does is not in line with what socialist economic scholars say. A good primer is "a people's guide to capitalism" by Hadas Thier. I don't know how far you're going to get towards solutions by using capitalist economic theory to explain the market. Your personal observations are great, but your perspective is limited. I think its important to look to scholars who study these things across systems.
it's available in audiobook form (works best for me).
I recommend libro.fm for your audiobooks -- they give a good chunk of purchases to local bookstores. Use my referral code to undermine capitalism or whatever. :)
https://libro.fm/referral?rf_code=lfm330958
will read and get back to you. in our current capitalist system, it's probably at the library. Or at least easily accessible somehow... :)
and one other person has read your comment and ordered the book. fyi. they told me.
Sharing ideas and encouragement to change the framing and priorities of people in a culture may work to undermine the systems that are harming the world we love.
I can get that book and put some time into understanding our situation, help others find it or its ideas -- and thereby maybe (just maybe) we can change the situation or the structures or the culture.
i think this exploration is a bit like pondering free-will.
It is disorienting to ponder that we might not have free will, while we still can/do/must make choices, and they have consequences, and our minds can/do change based on experience and ideas.
Capitalism can impinge on our decisions, and we can choose differently despite it because it is only one force in the universe.
This is like root-cause problem solving. I think the roots are really a web-like network. Think cedar tree, not carrot.
What I'm hearing you exploring are your personal theories around how societies undergo substantial changes. There are lots of folks that have spent their lives studying capitalist societies and how they have been changed, and I think for those of us who are organizing for change are responsible to be familiar with the available research on the topic. Do you have a favorite theorist who describes proven methodologies for organizing people to change systems like ours?
The latest has been Margaret Klein Salamon, . Maybe she's not a theorist in a strict sense, not sure how one gets that certificate. She refers to the HIV/AIDS movement, civil rights, WW2, #metoo, BLM for examples of how change has happened -- advocates for 'emergency mode' and the use of emotion and truth of the severity of the situation to catalyze sufficient numbers of people and sufficient energy/pressure.
Recently finished a course Connecting for Climate Change Action, and main take away: it matters what people believe and do, and we can make change by seeing ourselves in a movement and mobilizing our skills and resources, indigenous values are a good guide and indigenous folks should get landback and protect the land by all rights.
Also, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Kathryn Heyhoe, Rebecca Solnit, Robert Sapolsky, Dan Ariely, George Lakoff, Daniel Kahneman, Peter Kalmus, Bernie Sanders -- they variously guide people on how to make change, where to put energy, what priorities fit into our timelines. Many of these place the roots of our challenges in cultural narrative, thinking difficulties. The climate-based thinkers would probably say that we're on the titanic: we don't have time to build a new ship, we need to steer this one as a first step, that alone will be a big enough challenge -- remaking all the systems and institutions is a bit like rebuilding the ship... hard to do in a hurry, out at sea, on a near-term collision course.
Happy to branch out in areas of your suggesting.
I'm a bit confused though -- you seem to not agree that people have agency and can organize to change things because capitalists control supply. Is it the agency of the masses that you're arguing against?
But you're also saying that I have agency and can change my ideas by choosing my inputs (when suggested by others) with the aim of being more effective at organizing for change. Is that right?
I think this is all I'm saying -- more folks spending more time figuring this out together and on their own, then taking action together, would help... So far the only theory I think I've shared is that it'll be people who do the changing, and organizing is part of that. And understanding our situation will help/be necessary for that. Is this a point of agreement or disagreement?
Or maybe it's the democracy part, i did say democracy is working (just not in the way we might hope)...
I guess I'm not clear on where we diverge and what I should be looking for in the socialist economics world.
I haven't finished your book recommendation... Maybe I'll do that first and keep an eye out for a theory of change.
:)