Solely from the parts of the lemmyverse I frequent, yes definitely. People would think you’re quite silly if you talked like a redditor, even if they were too polite to openly mock you for it.

Moved to an English-speaking country where I lived for some years as a child.

Most significant digits first.

That would only make sense if the US wrote the year first, but they don’t. They just seem to slap the date together in a random order

ime as a subreddit mod that was nearly exclusively used for harassment, usually transphobic harassment. In the one or two cases where there was a report for someone who had suicidal or self-harm ideation, there’s still zilch I could have done; I would just approve the post so the user could get support and speak to others (the subreddit was a support group for a sensitive subject, so it wouldn’t be out of place for a post to say that the stress of certain things was making them suicidal).

When you have hundreds of millions of people in your country, it’s not as black and white as that, even just logistically speaking…

Come on, it’s clearly a simple description of a mode of doing things that is not “make line go up”. If you need me to dumb it down for you.

I don’t understand the idea that any of his criticisms were oriented at neoclassical economics, or could’ve possibly taken it into account.

Many things happened after Marx’s death and his critique still applies to. There may well be reactionary theories formulated in the future that my current politics would take account of anyway. Neoclassical economics is a continuation of bourgeois political economy that Marx wrote against. Not to mention that Marxists who have continued Marx’s project after his death, have very much written against modern economists.

a neighborhood of people that has like a local nonprofit grocery store that is managed by the people who live there specifically so that people can have food and for no other reason. but maybe like a handful of people notice some problems with the way the grocery store is being run, but are having trouble actually getting people to listen to them so they decide to just show everyone what they mean by starting their own grocery store in the neighborhood too under the same exact community managed model

That sort of thing you describe is a common conception of what life ought to look like by a lot of anarchists, which is opposed by communists precisely because it preserves exchange, implies a division between town and country, and implies the preservation of many things which communism abolishes. It’s also worth noting that when we talk about communism as a mode of production we are talking about society as a whole; for instance, a kid deciding to start a lemonade stand in a communist society wouldn’t recreate class society as the kid is doing exchange.

A lot of communists stray away from “positive” concepts of communist society because it’s much easier to derive what communism doesn’t have than what it does have. We can, of course, look at humanity before class society, but a lot of things have changed since then, and it is unlikely that the abolition of class would lead to the primitive pre-class societies that used to exist. I’m disclaiming that not as a cop-out but because I think it would be facetious if I tried to give you an outline of what communist society would look like when really I don’t think anyone can know for sure. But, most certainly I can say that what you outline does not sound like something which would exist on a large scale in a communist society. Most communists believe that central planning is a necessary part of a communist mode of production, myself included. Deciding that you don’t like a “grocery store” and deciding to start your own sounds rather like capitalism, and suggests an individualistic economy rather than one where society as a whole collaborates. In a communist mode of production there is no economic distinction between individuals, between “grocery stores” as you call them, or between the individual and society. Like I said above, one person deciding to start a “grocery store” wouldn’t cause the rebirth of class, but if that’s happening on a large scale that doesn’t sound like you’ve achieved a communist mode of production.

“well in capitalism ‘stores’ are places where people spend money so there’s literally no way anything remotely resembling this could happen in communism, not even if the food was free”

Things being “free” doesn’t necessarily make it not a store or not capitalist, but a lack of exchange (among other things) does suggest communism, and I don’t think the concept of a “store” makes sense without exchange. The abolition of property abolishes exchange. For instance, a food bank is not communist despite being a site where items are distributed for free; its existence relies on the alienation of the means of subsistence from a group of people, ie the existence of property. (that is also ignoring the fact that most food banks rely on a voucher system, which again is exchange, but if we were to pretend that food banks just give away food to anyone who comes and asks)

Well, since you still haven’t told me what you think the word means in like a formal, well-defined, academic sense, I can’t really tell what your objection to it is.

Ok, to put more clearly, I have no definition of “utility” and therefore no objection to it. I am objecting to what is implied by the term “maximise utility”; in a communist mode of production, nothing is “maximised”. The implication in that phrasing suggests to me that it refers to an intention to maximise some measurable productivity, which is not communist.

I certainly am not using it in a colloquial sense and in fact, I have been using it in the Marxist one the entire time which is why I described a market economy where literally all of the firms are compulsively required to reinvest the very surplus revenue you describe back into the firm itself. So again I’m asking you: in that situation, where is the exploitation?

Investing surplus-value into the firm itself is exploitation… The workers still extract surplus-value from themselves. What’s not to get?

And then the next important thing is to simply realize that such an economy, whatever you wanna call it (because for some reason you seem like you don’t wanna call it a market and I don’t understand why, but fine) is completely consistent with what is called a “market” in neoclassical economics

I never said that such an economy is not a market. It is a market, which is why I am opposed to it.

The verb “maximising” suggests a measurable “utility” which can be “maximised”, rather than needs which are either met or not.

The important thing to understand is that even if you hate capitalism, neoclassical economics provide provides a pretty useful framework for analyzing and understanding it

It really doesn’t—which was Marx’s whole project as a critique of political economy, not “communist economics”, not “Marxist political economy”, etc.

But my point is that what people call a “market” in neoclassical economics is literally just any situation where you have a bunch of relatively autonomous groups of people all trying to accomplish various goals all interacting with each other

Communism abolishes the individual as economic subject, and the conflicts of interests found in a “market”. Communism abolishes exchange, and abolishes economies. So, no, there is no “market” in a communist mode of production, even by your definition.

what you think utility is

“Utility” is not a concept I subscribe to per se, unless you just mean use-values in the same sense Marx uses them. I am responding to the concepts you are using. In a communist mode of production, production is, in the famous quote, “according to need”; in a capitalist mode of production, production is divorced from need, and we find production for the sake of production.

who do you think is being exploited in economic institution that literally has to internalize all of the external cost

Marxists use the word “exploitation” differently to its colloquial use. “Exploitation”, in Marx’s critique of political economy, refers to the extraction of surplus-value. I’m not sure if you know what that means or not. I can explain it if you want but you can also look it up; it’s a pretty basic part of Marx’s critique.

Also believe it or not I didn’t actually express any political beliefs here so I would appreciate it if you didn’t just assume that because I’m challenging you on your conception of things, it means that I disagree with your politics

I’m assuming you’re not a communist because you don’t seem to be familiar with communist views, and seem to be advocating for/in defence of a mode of production that is not communist. I don’t know how exactly you label yourself politically but it seems based on this short conversation that we can exclude communism from the list of possibilities, meaning we disagree.

I am opposed to “maximising utility” because I am a communist. Production should serve needs, not production for the sake of production.

compulsively reinvest all their excesses and internalize all of their external cost

Ok, still exploitation.

I can see that those are your political beliefs. You are welcome to have those political beliefs. OP is asking about communists, and communists do not want this, so this is rather orthogonal to the question.

Do you think that it’s not possible to interact with each other outside of a market, outside of capitalism?

Because they are subjected to market forces. I’m not referring to the decisions an individual worker in a coop might make—an individual may well decide to give away all their money and become homeless, that doesn’t mean it’s in people’s interests to. In a market, you must compete with other businesses, otherwise you will be out-competed and not survive. The “profits” obtained by a coop are still surplus-value; all the laws of capital outlined by Marx are still at play. Marx’s critique of political economy did not really hinge upon the specific boss/employee relationship; it’s about impersonal domination of the market over people who live in a capitalist mode of production. In Capital Marx spends quite a bit of time talking about how even capitalists are subjected to and dominated by capital; the domination is impersonal, and the domination of (hu)man by (hu)man is only secondary to that impersonal domination.

The hell of capitalism is the firm itself, not the fact that the firm has a boss.

The forces of the market and of capital do not go away just because the workers own the company. In worker-owned cooperatives, the workers exploit themselves, because the business still needs to grow. They simply carry out the logic of the capitalist themselves on themselves, using their surplus value to expand the business’s capital, and paying for their own labour-power reproduction. i.e., the workers all simply become petit-bourgeois.

There are extant organisations (some political parties, some NGOs) that push for more workers’ cooperatives, and none of them are communist nor call themselves communist. If you believe in a cooperative-based economy, you are not a communist. I don’t mean that as an insult, it’s just a fact, the same as if you want, for instance, the current US economic system, you are not a communist. You can advocate for coops but you would fare much better in that political project if you didn’t try to put it under the banner of something it’s not, and something far more controversial than just “worker coops are good” anyway.

I’m subscribed to their tech, gaming, and news communities. They’re fine, I don’t care to make an account on their instance but nothing wrong with the Hexbear communities I subscribe to.

Listen to music or watch a video, if you don’t want to read?

It’d be unambiguous in the context of a hospital.

In the event of legal action, your side can request disclosure from the other side. It’s standard to request disclosure of evidence the other side holds that will help your case, and in this case something like a meeting in which something said is important evidence, I’m sure that both your company’s lawyers and if not then a judge will get the company to hand over the recording.

A lawyer could point you in the right direction. Not all legal action is necessarily “damages” (also, the lack of a promotion is damages—if your boss says to you “You’re my most skilled employee, but I don’t want to give you a promotion because you’re a woman”, that’s unlawful discrimination in any place that prohibits sexism. Of course in the vast majority of cases it is much harder to prove since the boss won’t actually explicitly say that, but you get the principle of the law); legal action can be to correct a wrong, in this case changing company policy to ensure that employees are not discriminated against on the basis of not using this app. You can just explain the situation over email to a law firm that deals with labour law, and if perhaps you’d be better served by a different law firm for instance, they will be able to point you in that direction.

People graduate from Bachelor’s wayy older than you. I was meant to go to uni when I was 18 then had a medical emergency, then a combo of surgeries and incarceration stopped me from going for several years after that, and I’m currently just working but may try to go to uni once I have more money. There are plenty of students who start an undergrad degree when they’re your age or older. People who start when they are 18 have various personal emergencies that mean they have to delay their education. You will be entirely fine.