Can I push back on the idea that the US is the most important country to have a socialist revolution in? I'd argue it's more important to have socialist revolutions where the global proletariat are. Where is that; Where do you find slave and semi-slavery conditions forced up hundreds of millions of women and children? Places that you don't hear about in the news (e.g. large parts of Africa, parts of Asia, etc). These are the workers that run the global economy and generate the profits.

By comparison, many white Westerners are highly overpaid compared to the work they contribute. This is why capital can so easily import foreign workers at a fraction of the cost. The US is already busy changing. It's got a cultural war between one faction that wants to rebuild the white settler nation (e.g. by limiting access to birth control, importing white "refugees", creating "trad"-wives, etc) and another that wants to reduce the privileged white sub-nation and build an alternative "privileged" class (special males, in specially male-gendered industries that pay well but contribute little to society -- cars, weapons, computers) and that can police a new underclass (women and children, worldwide, working in low pay situations in socially-vital but very under-payed jobs designated for them). The capitalist class is happy to let these two sides duke it out, but either way, I think the US and its allies are busy, occupied with trends that will eventually make them more fertile ground for revolution.

I also think it's worth considering that if you want to organize and build alliances you'll have to show up for friends and their causes (by this I mean good causes, and I'll assume you're weighed the benefits vs risks) -- being an accelerationist is going to often position you against these allies. I'd worry that being an accelerationist combined with the strategy you've proposed is going to look very much like being a regular capitalist (at least until the very last moment). I'm reminded of "effective-altruism", which I don't believe has a good track record of successes.

This is good advice.

My worry is that this hydroponics setup probably costs a lot and requires continual upkeep and volunteer labor. Thinking about it, I guess when I say "remains communist" I mean that there exists a community body that is responsible for it, plans for its upkeep (& replacement cost & expansion, etc) and calls forth the volunteer labor to run it. I fear without that ethic the project could devolve into a plain old business.

I don't want to be an individual who goes around soliciting funds and volunteers for a social project, only to have it end up as a rug-pull-transition to becoming a private business.

As I read the first part of this chapter (about gold and formation of money) I was thinking in my head about how fiat currency is basically not different than debased gold. The later part of the chapter talked about how money becomes a credit system (which leads to potential boom and bust systems). Anyway, I'm feeling that after reading capital, you can probably just toss Modern Monetary theory into the garbage (I noticed others said similar things reading chapter 2).

I found the idea that things that don't have "value" (because they're not produced by labour -- like titles, or land) can acquire prices to be very intriguing (and unexpected). The history of "money names" (e.g. pound sterling [silver]) becoming totally divorced from their modern quantities due to debasement.

I had to reread what he said about money serving too roles -- measure of price and standard of value. Read that over half a dozen times, but it makes sense to me now. I paid attention when Marx said that the "use-value" of gold (as money) becomes equal to it's exchange value (gold can of course, be used for other things, but one thing it is used for, is exchange). This is a dialectical unity.

Just a whole lot in this chapter that was interesting. For example, that the quantity of gold in circulation would be tied to the speed of transactions and the amount of commodities

and not the reverse (e.g. gold being added won't increase the amount of commodities nor speed up transactions).

It's helpful reading others notes, as it helps me focus in on things I may have missed.

I found chapter 2 harder than chapter 1 (even though it's much shorter) because the focus seems more diffuse. It starts by looking at commodity owners, before going into the money commodity.

I found the part about commodity owners especially interesting. The presence of commodities shapes human behavior:

• Humans with commodities view other humans as commodities. (So my take: a commodity owner doesn't see charity cases, doesn't see immorality; They just see somebody to trade with. That at least is what the exchange process encourages and is different from more direct collaboration or trade where you probably care much more about such details).
• When you have commodity owners, they effectively "vouch" for each others ownership in the trade; Regardless of what the law says. So the idea of commodity ownership is more fundamental than human laws and is "enforced" by mutual recognition between commodity owners.
• Commodities want to be exchanged; This is an anthropomorphism, but the idea is if someone is calling something a commodity, it's because they don't want it. So, in a way, commodity owners become chaperones for their commodities.

Marx also mentioned a "rebound effect" where external commodities (for example a nation trading for gas) creates an internal commodities market as people become used to the idea of the externally provided commodity being part of their local economy. I imagine it's true, but wonder if it's as consistent as some of his other statements. A planned economy can probably avoid this -- and small economies probably can avoid this behavior also.

Got through with the Reitter translation... let me give a general overview so people can let me know if this translation is wildly different or has missed something vital.

Marx goes through a series of equations representing trade. In Reitter it's linen and coats. 1 coat = 20 yards linen (for example). Later, this generalizes to more commodities 1 coat = 20 yards linen or 1 coat = 40 loaves bread or 1 coat = xyz. One for each commodity. Finally it generalizes to a form 1 coat = {20 yards linen, 40 loaves bread, ...}. These equations are meant to represent the historical development of the commodity. The first represents a simple sort of barter, the second a more commodity based society, and the third the introduction of a money commodity.

In explaining this, Marx makes it clear that the equating of commodities is really the equating of abstract labor. And an interesting duality: the "exchange value" of something is expressed in terms of the "use value" of something else! I don't believe Marx said that exchange and use values are dialectically opposed.

So far so good anyway. Felt pretty comfortable in Reitter translation -- I avoided all the historic footnotes which just confused me :-/

I assume from your phrasing you mean to say that "some industrialists will prefer human labour over cheaper machines". (But you could instead have meant to say that "in society, there will always be a role for human labour").

I think this proposition is false (in the long run) due to the the profit-maximization logic of capitalism. Even if some industrialists prefer human labour, in the long run they'd eventually be out-competed by those that didn't. But yes, machines cost a lot upfront which could delay the switchover (possibly even beyond the sunset of the industry!).

I think the "Rate of profit falls" theory doesn't matter. Assume it's true: machines lower the rate of profit. But, capitalists can't (as a group) decide not to use machines. Without control of private assets (e.g. capital) the capitalists cease to be, and become a purely rentier class again. It would no longer be capitalism but feudalism. I don't believe capitalists have the power (or desire) to cause such a transition.

I remember once getting a book of Murray Bookchin's collected works (or something from the library). I had assumed that his social ecology would fit well with my environmental interests (it was environmentalism that led me to anti-capitalism which led me to communism). Anyway long story short I couldn't understand a word of what he was saying. It was english words, but it's like it wasn't english sentences. To some extent it's similar in ML circles -- we use certain words in ways that are different. But it honestly just seemed like drivel. If anyone can summarize it for me or link an article that explains it I would appreciate it, as I've heard that Murray Bookchin's writings have also been adopted by some middle east factions (but I don't recall any details, so don't quiz me please).

pigginz has a valid viewpoint. Most people I've given this advice to respond in similar ways. I think it comes down to two fundamental conflicts, the first is about "Being true to yourself" vs doing otherwise.

Did you see the Barbie movie? There is this great quote:

"You're not your girlfriend. You're not your house, you're not your mink. [Ken] Beach? [Barbie] Nope. You're not even beach. Maybe all the things that you thought made you you aren't really you"

The idea is that "you are you", and it's more fundamental than superficial things like your clothes, body, job, conversational skills, etc. But if this is true, the idea cuts both ways: if "you" are not any of these things then you may change any of these things and still be true to yourself (because these things are not you!). Sort of absurd. "You" in some sense includes your capabilities, relationships (with people and property), your job, fashion sense, your family, your history, etc. But in a more immediate sense, I think "you" must certainly include your actions. Ken in that movie was an asshole because he acted like one.

So "being true to yourself" vs not is a factor whenever you change your actions. You choose to go to the gym. You choose to talk to strangers . You choose to leave the house. Perhaps you feel that making these choices will have violated your integrity, but I feel that's hard to sustain which will become clearer when we look at the second fundamental conflict: Is it immoral to choose to act this way?

I would posit that you choose to do these things because you desire a certain outcome. That in itself isn't immoral, because that's why we're all communists. We act certain ways (e.g. by reading books, posting, organizing) because we hope to achieve a certain outcome (a better society). But some actions are certainly immoral: but it depends on both the action and the motivation behind it. For example if you become a life guard because you want to save people, that's moral. If you become a life guard because you intend to let a select few hated enemies drown, that's immoral.

It's immoral to lie and/or pretend to be something you are not, but it's moral to present yourself as well you can, as far and wide as you can, because you want to attract a partner. But morality requires you to act with honesty, consideration and care towards others.

It's not a meme. It works. Especially for men in their 20's and 30's.

It's kind of like low cost insurance. People have a natural tendency to eat a similar calorie amount everyday. Society talks about mesomorphs, endomorphs, ectomorphs, but as far as I can tell there is no science backing this (instead these differences arise from the different daily calorie amounts). So GOMAD basically ensures a beginning weight trainer is getting enough healthy calories for muscle growth. It combats the "hard-gainer" phenomenon.

As oscardejarjayes has said, the $10 isn't for computer resources, it's mostly to pay the customer facing domain registrars and disincentivize squatting domains. Each subdomain (.com, .ca, .uk, etc) is controlled by some entity and for national domains part of the fee is a tax set by and collected for that nation.

In terms of the "compute" required for the DNS -- that's actually your internet service provider. ISPs synchronize and serve up DNS locally in order to give you faster internet (so users pay for DNS indirectly). You might have switched your domain to 8.8.8.8 (Google's DNS servers) which Google provides for free in order to try to speed up peoples internet access.

I don't think blockchain is a suitable for DNS (or for anything actually).

To "run a blockchain" requires a lot of infrastructure. At a minimum I think you need communication between all the participants (otherwise how would one tell the others it has successfully produced the next block?) and you need some kind of pool of waiting registrations that they can all access (otherwise what would they build a block from?).

The block chain is just a ledger, and a ledger is a terrible format for DNS data because it requires scanning every ledger record to find a match (so it scales linearly with the number of times anyone modifies a DNS entry). To solve this any real DNS will need to covert the ledger into an internal database. I would think all this complexity would raise costs, not lower them.

The existent DNS (a simple distributed hierarchical database) is replaced by a voluminous distributed ledger system. This change by itself doesn't resolve any of the problems you mentioned.

You've said a few other things that don't make technical sense:

• "hosting fees will decrease": A .com or .org DNS domain name is about $10 a year and is independent of the amount of traffic you have. Different DNS subdomains also charge different amounts, so it's mostly a nominal fee.
• "A domain must keep a minimum amount of traffic": There is no accurate tracking of traffic to a domain name because it's often cached (this is why you're advised to wait multiple hours after making DNS changes to see the effects).

I think you are conflating hosting with DNS. The DNS is just the resolution of a human readable string to a bunch of keywords (e.g. www server addresses, mail addresses, metadata tags, etc). Hosting is providing the necessary servers and bandwidth to deliver the services (like email, websites, torrents, etc).

Hi long time lurker, first time caller. Wow this is a great question.

First a database is just data at rest; you need to do something with the data therein. Others have mentioned Linear Algebra and "Towards a New Socialism" (the Harmony Algorithm) and I want to speak to those first.

Lets start with linear algebra: good, bad, and ugly. In a (basic) linear algebra approach you'd pose problems like so:

Ax + b = y

Where A is a matrix of input-output relations: a massive matrix with each row representing a recipe for something you'd want to produce and each column being some type of input. For example perhaps 1 unit of leather takes 1 hour of labor and consumes 1 cow, you'd put a 1 in the leather column and negative 1's in both the labor and cows column. The vector b kind of represents things you'd get automatically (And we'll assume it's all zeros and toss it). And that leaves y as the goal vector (e.g. how many iphones you want to produce, how many cars, etc). Linear algebra, and the above formulation, allows you to work backwards and solve for x. This tells you how much metal you need, power, labor hours, cows, etc.

The good is it's fast, reliable and well defined if you're using it right. The bad is it's quite limited: Take energy production for example -- there are several ways to do this: wind, solar, gas, nuclear. Linear algebra isn't going to handle this well. And what happens if some outputs are both end-products but also inputs to other products? Things get messy.

But the ugly is that the linear algebra approach is literally just a system of equations that represent a mapping between two different high dimensional spaces. Every column and every row should be measuring a totally unique thing. This is not an ideal situation for planning, here outputs of one industry are inputs to another.

This limitation can be creatively addressed by subdividing the problem and combining the answers. Perhaps splitting by region, or looking at each industrial sector in isolation. Which brings us to a good time to mention the Harmony algorithm which is one approach to subdividing the problem and recombining the answers.

But before we go on from here, it's worth mentioning that there is no guarantee that solutions built from solutions to subproblems will be optimal. But they might be: it depends on the problem domain.

However there are more sophisticated models, such as the linear programming model. In this model you recast your planning problem into a description like so:

    Maximize happiness
    Where happiness is 1.5 * number of iphones, + -.5 * level of pollution + ...
      AND acres of land used < 1000
      AND number of labor hours used is < 50000
      AND number of iphones = labor hours * .01
      AND level of pollution = labor hours *.001
      AND ...

This model is much nicer: we have an objective to maximize (the happiness equation) and we can accommodate multiple production processes as constraints on the solution. We can also accommodate that making leather also produces beef, and that raising cows one way produces fertilizer but raising them another way produces pollution shit pools. So that solves the energy problem (we can also encode all of the different ways energy can be produced). We can also set hard limits on negative things (e.g. the max CO2 we want to emit).

But this model is much, much slower. I believe the largest solvers on the largest supercomputers can handle ~8 billion variables. But each production process you add could require dozens to hundreds of variables in the final model. So you're back to divide and conquer approaches.

And we've barely begun! We haven't looked at how you decide what to produce. We haven't even looked at future planning (deciding what capital goods to invest in) nor geography (Where do you build or produce these things? Where do you run rail lines? Where is the labor that needs the jobs or has the skills?).

And what about your solution quality? Do you need the best possible plan or will any reasonably good plan do (e.g. top 10% of plans)? And what about the variety of possible solutions? Maybe one good plan is based on railway lines and collective agriculture while a different really good plan achieves the same with densification and high tech industries. How do you decide what's best, but more importantly: Did your planning approach inform you that you had these very different options?

Nor have we looked at things like Cybersyn -- how do you monitor your industries and identify weird-shit-happening-now in the production process (e.g. delays in shipping, sudden bursts of productivity, rising worker unhappiness, etc) and route around it?

I don't think there is a planning "solution" but there are planning "tools". All these approaches and more should be used by a dedicated planning department that can plan and correct for many timescales and contingencies. This department would also need to communicate the plans to appropriate stake-holders.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this, I certainly enjoyed writing it :-)