The Democratic Party's Slide Into Irrelevance

*million

(I ain't too good with complicated things like numbers.)

Amazon as currently constructed is probably as close to having the logistics footprint as anything else in place. The people running that operation are already dealing with all of the stress and details and it's working quite well. Well enough that brick and mortar stores are going out of business because Amazon's logistics are much more cost effective.

I think the people doing the job in the future are going to be in it because they enjoy serving humanity and they are going to be extremely important people in society who are in the thick of running the world.

There's not a lot better for a person's ego than to be doing important and prestigious work. The feeling of providing a valuable service and being widely recognized is tremendous for the ego ..... a feeling which is priceless, not to mention all of the community that comes with such high level jobs.

I'm sure a person who is responsible for managing millions of employees is going to have servants like the POTUS does who take care of any tedious administration. That person will have great clout and be in position to do favors for his close friends and associates. It's the kind of job that people with massive egos and great leadership ability will naturally want.

I remember when the Democrats thought he was pure evil which he was

I remember when nuance existed.

I remember when 4.5 million Iraqis and Afghans existed. I'm sure they were happy to die for nuance.

She made a classy post, good for her.

Could be the case.

But it would behoove to first solve the issues like bills and expenses before you persuade folks into working jobs purely for the prestige. Or do the important jobs just not pay?

...but how are we removing the burden of expenses so we can work simply for the thrill of it?

I think the definition of "pay" needs to be explored in greater nuance.

If we give people everything they need (food, clothing, shelter, medical and dental care, education, transportation, etc) for nothing, then there is no need for pay because there would be no expenses.

A person would work because it's beneficial to the community that they belong to and it reinforces their desire to have a useful identity and stature within their community. I wouldn't characterize that as a "thrill". I would call it ego gratification.

Now ... let's say that there is a type of job where the skills to perform it are rare or require a large sacrifice (many years studying to become a doctor) or the job is not so desirable (like cleaning toilets). In that case, the community can decide to offer some perks to the persons doing those jobs.

I would allow for situations where people are capable of contributing and refuse to do by providing the community the right to withhold necessities and allowing those who refuse to work to seek out membership in other communities which are amenable to taking care of slackers. I suspect that those latter options would be few.

This is a hell of a post.

For starters, even if we give everyone everything they need for free, which we can't do, you still have a lot of jobs, other than just cleaning toilets, that will need lots of people doing that are hard as hell. The millions of these "less desirable" jobs...roofers, farmers, nurses, construction workers, and about 500 other job titles are just going to be given perks by the community if they so decide? Like a free hand job or something? Or money? And how are we giving the hand job and who is giving the money?

Again, telling a worker that it's "beneficial to the community that they belong to" is straight slave talk.

You seem to be unable to acknowledge that we humans and our hominid ancestors lived for 3 million years without money which has been with us for about 5,000 years or 0.2% of those 3 million years.

The Amish seem to be doing just fine in case you haven't noticed. Indigenous Americans who existed here for 15,000 years before Europeans came did just fine.

I would challenge your hypothesis that we can't give everyone everything they need for free. Which need are you suggesting couldn't be fulfilled ?

On a side note, I'm encouraged by the election of Mamdani. I'm sure that the oligarchy will do what it can to sabotage his effectiveness as mayor. But I'm encouraged by the citizens of NY choosing him.

The elections remind me of that Monty Python sketch. "we're not dead yet "

The Amish use money.

I wouldn't want to live as humans did 5000 years ago. Would you?

Prison inmates get free food, housing and healthcare, but it doesn't matter one iota in terms of happiness and freedom when you can't live a life according to each of their own. And even if we wanted to imprison the entire country to give them those things, we still wouldn't be able to accomplish this idiotic idea. But people have attempted and failed at this. And now you want to give it another try.

I'm also not so sure that the indigenous people had it as good as you say considering that they had a life expectancy of about 30 with constant warfare and about every other challenge that you can imagine but I am not going to discredit anything about them because I find that time period fascinating and they were an incredibly adaptive people for what they had to work with. They also didn't have SNAP or UBI. I'm pretty sure I'd survive longer and happier in that environment than you would, but both of us would prefer what we have today.

There's a big difference between what I WANT and what WE NEED.

I don't think living without money sends us back to the conditions of 5,000 years ago when our life expectancy was half of what it is today. We can keep many of the wonderful inventions like electricity and Haber-Bosch synthesis of ammonia for the industrial agriculture necessary to feed billions.

But we need to get rid of polluting luxuries like single use plastics and the freedom to add unlimited amounts of greenhouse gases to a globally shared atmosphere.

A market economy which caters to what we want while ignoring what we need is a fatal flaw. Power should be in the hands of people who place our collective survival at the pinnacle of human policy. Today, power resides in the hands of people who are collecting commas. The commas which inform us the size of a person's balance sheet equity. I'm not going to deny that such a system served us well for thousands of years. It was immensely beneficial. The group has benefitted historically as a result of individual motivation and it will continue to do so. But that system has grown malignant when people like Zuckerberg can build AI data centers that deplete the ground water from the communities where they are installed and no one can stop it because he has more commas at his disposal.

Historically tells us that currencies rise and then disappear along with the civilizations that issued them. Those commas will become dust.

The fundamental which remains is human relationship with the Earth and its biosphere. We are the guests and the Earth is the host. If we treat the host poorly, we will get kicked out without ceremony and are well are on our way to doing so.

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I'm encouraged too - and I'm a hard-core Republican...

I agree with some of your policies, particularly the ban on single use plastics (I actively avoid buying those, and the times I do are extremely rare.

However, I see no benefit to anyone of the collective survival of humanity. I encourage everyone to come around to acceptance of the idea that humans will become extinct within the near future and to spurn policy proposals which attempt to twist the arms of the childless to increase the studying of humanity.

The quality of life and lifespan of our hominid ancestors is a pretty low bar. But I guess communist governments have been able to beat it, so that's a chessmate to all you evil capitalists.

I can't say that you're wrong.

But our ancestors weren't confronted with the challenge of having the power to destroy themselves and failing to respect it.

In the end, I suppose extinction is inevitable for all species. Just seems so ironic that we would do ourselves in.

Progressive House Democrat Ro Khanna called for Chuck Schumer to resign, citing his inability to control his caucus and abandon the health insurance issue in agreeing to reopen the government.

I think the people who are vetting new Dem Senate candidates like Fetterman who deceived the voters in their campaigns should all be blackballed.

Didn't Fetterman run as a party conservative candidate?

No ... he campaigned as a progressive.

And he won in WV, which generally votes Republican for everything?

You may be correct, but if so that's pretty shocking. Regardless, this current vote certainly wasn't surprising to me. I've seen several intererviews with him where he presented himself as being very conservative (for a Democrat).

Fetterman was elected in Pennsylvania.

Manchin is the right wing Democrat from WV.