#ECON

[dipperdesperado]

Notes Toward Finding Community, Or, How to Find Community When You Feel Isolated

Neoliberalism sucks for a ton of reasons. From the enclosure of every common, to the commodification of every creation, it feels like a muzzle on humanity that gets tighter and tighter. One of the most underexplored aspects of neoliberalism is the way in which it creates and reinforces isolation. People don’t really have communities outside of consumption or compulsion. This is problematic for a ton of reasons, namely that it prevents us from fulfilling our basic needs. Humans are social creatures. People need to have connections with folks. People may not all need the same levels or intensity of connections, but connections are important nonetheless. To lack in the ability to socialize meaningfully is to ensure worse health outcomes, mentally, emotionally, and physically. But, I don’t mean to freak you out. I think that there are steps we can take to star building community, bridging gaps with the people around us.

Think About What You Want

When folks feel very isolated, it can be easy to accept anything. If we’re in a vulnerable state, that could leave us open for ending up in precarious situations. One way to fight against this is to start from the position of imagining what community looks like. Is the type of space we want to occupy based around interests (fandom, hobbies)? Religions, spiritualities, social issues? If we are able to list the things that excite us, we have a good idea of what to look for, and can focus our efforts towards finding those spaces.

Find the Watering Holes

With the spaces we’re interested in on hand, youcan find where folks gather. Every community has virtual and/or in-person spaces. For example, if you’re a film fan, you can look for indie cinemas, folks putting on screenings, or look into film societies where you live. For activism, I’ve written a whole guide on how to get started. Looking for those spaces will allow you to start getting integrated in the space. Really think about how you can occupy the same physical and digital spaces of people who are into what you’re into.

Go Meet Folks

Now, this may be difficult, depending on your disposition. The quickest way to meet folks is to put yourself out there. It’s always vulnerable to put yourself on the line in this way, but it’s super necessary. When you’re in spaces with similar folks, you have talking points built in! You don’t have to worry if the folks around you will like movies at film club. If you are enjoyable to be around, through being nice, interesting, and/or being an active listener, you’ll be making connections in no time. If you’re not willing to talk to folks, it’ll be hard to make connections. Being open is an asset towards the end of getting connected. At the very least, consistently go to events and spaces in your interest area(s). Maybe you’ll bump into an extroverted person that can show you the ropes.

Be the Change You Want to See

As you get out there, think about how you can start catalyzing community. Maybe you host a dinner for neighbors. Maybe you start a book club. Or even a neighborhood garden, or cleanup event. In this way, you’re flipping the issue on its head. You’re creating the space to meet folks yourself. It’s like being a magnet, drawing others to you.

We need community. It’s a necessary thing, you know? So, hopefully, keeping these things in mind helps in that regard.

[brightgoat]

JJBA x my addisons, because it's simply too obvious

Link and Interlinked Co belong to @/PUKESEVEN

[artthoufruity]

Hate it when people say “it’s not that simple” in regards to politics, capitalism etc like it could be though? We make it complicated

[nenelonomh]

Do you think that a major in economy is worth doing nowadays?

hey love,

assuming that you're talking about economics - majoring in this (like everything) has ups and downs.

personally, i've considered leaving physics for economics (as a subject) since economics is easier to achieve a high ib score in than physics.

but it depends mostly on you. your strengths, your interests, and what you are interested in for the future

here are some benefits of an economics degree:

develops your locical and analytical thinking abilities

it is an interesting blend of mathematics and social theory

many employers seek economics graduates

career economists often end up in well-paying positions

here are the negatives:

requires substantial mathematical concepts

the field can be competitive.

it's not up to me to make big life decisions for you. so, here is some further reading (my sources for the pros and cons):

Economics Degrees: Worth it or Useless for Getting a Job? (helpfulprofessor.com)

Is an economics degree worth It? Find out why. - Degreechoices.com

Majoring in Economics: Pros and Cons? | CollegeVine

What You Need to Know About Becoming an Economics Major (usnews.com)

Careers with an Economics degree (thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk)

Top 15 Highest Paying Jobs For Economics Majors 2024 (Inc Salaries) | Nexford University

i hope this was helpful! ❤️ nene

instagram | pinterest | blog site

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

If I were less lazy I would be really curious what the market monetarists think about the covid shock and resulting inflation

[weil-weil-lautre]

The waiter or waitress who serves the food, the grocer who sells the articles, the bus driver who is in charge of transport, the whole civilization takes tempo and method from the basic economic structure and the relations it brings with it. And finally the whole of social arrangement of life bears the stamp of this mechanization.

CLR James, American Civilization, 116

[73647e]

investments, savings, consumption, exports, imports, tariffs, STOP! PRINT MORE MONEY AND TAKE A NAP!!!

[processes]

that Hobbes tucked tail and returned to England, making his submission to the Council of State, as he was to do again when the royalists finally returned. When this prudential behavior is placed alongside the heroic dimensions of this theory, instead of being puzzled by the discrepancy, we may instead be startled by the complementarity. The society of Leviathan is the antihero’s utopia: a society of formal equality, where all subjects have been humbled and made dependent upon the sovereign for the security of their lives, goods, rights, and status.

It is a utopia for those who wish to be rid of the anxieties produced by political instability so that they may concentrate upon "industry" and "culture of the earth" and all of the other goods of "commodious living,” which "natural philosophy" and mathematics make possible.

The political epic of the antihero proves, in the end, to be an attempted epitaph to politics, another denial of the ancient hope of a public setting where men may act nobly in the furtherance of the common good, another way of absolving men of complicity and guilt for their common predicaments.

— Fugitive Democracy, Sheldon Wolin (2016)

[di--es---can-ic-ul-ar--es]

Bribg me ratfic grinch NOW

[latte-studies-sometimes]

21/08/2024

Finished some economics notes today night.

Our facility holds a mandatory study session which is actually burning me out, because I'm more used to studying alone than with a lot of students in one room. The lights, noise, and people are overwhelming.

But today I decided I would study in our pantry from now on. The pantry is where everyone comes to eat, and a few people study there during the study sessions too. I'm also going to bring some fruit to eat there as I get hungry and I haven't been eating very healthily lately.

I'm trying to put in as many hours as I can to study without compromising on my sleep. I started studying an extra hour at night and I'm trying to study an extra hour in the afternoon.

A good thing today was that my math teacher was absent, so there were no math classes today morning and there won't be for the next few days. So I can get extra time to study if I wake up early :D

[olden-towne]

It annoys me that one of the main reasons people are thinking about voting for Trump is the economy when they can't offer an analysis deeper than "correlation = causation"

[dipperdesperado]

Get Organized!

I recently made a post about how to get started in doing radical stuff. Said otherwise, that post was meant to answer the question, “Where do I go, when I know the world is fucked?” This post covers similar ground, but is more interested in the theoretical side of things. Not to say it won’t be practical. It’s just saying that if you’re not the kind of person that can read a little bit and feel confident to act, or you like having a little bit more scaffolding, that you also deserve a resource. I’m hoping to contribute to that today. As the title says, we’re going to be focusing on organizing. This is one of those things that is said a lot, but is actually defined much less often. Tangentially, you should be aware and ready for this for literally everything relating to politics. Any word that you hear used, you should always ask for a definition. Many a movement would have gone differently if folks spent more time trying to find semantic alignment. Anyway.

When I say organizing, I mean catalyzing the energy of folks, acting from a specific theory of change. A theory of change is a thought process or method to create some kind of social impact in a particular context. When the world sucks in some particular way, and you want it to stop sucking, the answer is to organize, in the way defined above. By organizing, we lean on the idea of collective power to create changes that are currently only afforded to those with authoritarian power. It’s a game of evening the odds.

I will also note that this assumes that you are going to be framing your work around broad-based movements, that have (mostly) aboveground (as in “legal”) tactics. This is not necessarily a statement of what is correct; small groups that are in concert with larger movements are also able to be successful, even when doing more confrontational tactics.

So, to organize, I’d say it would be useful to be involved in movements already. You can look at my radicalism 100 post to see how that could look. Either way you have to know what your where your niche(s) lie. In other words, what sits in the middle of the intersection between what you like to do, what you are good (or can become good/have a willingness to become good) at, and what is needed in your context. I tend to center the local level, because that is the area where influence is more tangible, and fits into how I see a resilient world coming to fruition. So, you have to ask yourself, “What can I do, that I would enjoy doing, in my community?” Then, you should find some other people who are in that same vibe. Depending on your approach, this may take no time at all, or a lot of time. I listed some ideas for finding folks in radicalism 100, but to reiterate: look for social medias and IRL presences of people who are into the same topics, and connect with them. See where you can plug in, and see where the contours of organizing in your local contexts are. Ideally you can see places where gaps can be filled.

Once you find an issue that you think has potential, and you have a couple of people to do some organizing with, you have what I think of as a catalyst group. This group is meant to start (or assist) in a certain kind of reaction, but not lead it. Trying to control movements is both futile and antithetical to liberation. So, to ground us, we have two very important ingredients: a topic/issue/area of focus to organize around, and a group of folks to work with. Once this is in place, you can co-create a strategy with your organizing team. I’d recommend employing an encircling strategy as your long-term or meta strategy, where multiple sub-strategies and campaigns happen within this frame. Essentially, this allows you to employ campaigns across a matrix of tactics. Within the encircling frame, you can create a campaign (what I consider a “short-term” strategy). Campaigns are a series of actions over time. Strategies are a series of campaigns over time.

A useful way to think of strategic planning is by separating the process into stages, grouped by movement size.

Small: Organize small actions/protests, figuring out ways to build movement visibility and interest

Medium: Focus on scaling up the participation, through mobilizing efforts. Promote your actions, get people involved, and encourage meaningful action.

Large: Create a movement. The kind of thing people hear about.

To organize on the smallest level, the easiest thing might be to just do plan actions that are well within your team’s capacity, organize those actions, and execute. If you can swing it, I’d really recommend to not lean too much into symbolic actions. There are risks with every action, no matter what legal frameworks your locality has. If you’re going to do something, you have to be very intentional with:

what you hope to accomplish through the action

a high likelihood of success for the action

doomsday planning in case something goes wrong

If you’re able to do this, then you will be leagues ahead of a lot of other folks. This is not to make it a race or a competition, but it is moreso to say you can symbolically represent and catalyze action without becoming a martyr.

As you’re doing actions, you should be refining your idea of who’s impacted by the issues more and more. As that picture gets clearer, you should spend more and more time understanding and listening to those folks. Ideally, you get to a point of co-creation, where you are enabling people to fight for themselves and build their autonomy. That is the kind of thing that prevents movements from dying. Organizers should be trying to put themselves out of business, in a sense. Catalysts should be able to come from anywhere.

To scale up, I’d recommend a focus on meeting folks. Take the ideas of deep canvassing, where you empathetically have conversations with whoever is impacted by the issue you’re responding to, through the lens of giving power to those people. Rather than asking them to feed into some established system of power, encourage them to take action into their own hands, as a collective.

I’d also recommend that as capacity grows, build a “positive” or “constructive” power. This can look like a lot of things. Whether it is a block club, neighborhood pod, community council, or community assembly, dedicate energy into creating spaces where people can start building their democratic and consensus muscles. These can simultaneously act as the training ground and alternative governance structure that allows folks to start making decisions for themselves in a very specific way.

This will ideally allow the movement to really start to be intersectional. It should be intersection minded from the outset, but that can be difficult to meaningfully actualize in the early stages of the movement. since single-issue movements are inherently brittle (if your movement revolves around getting something on a ballot, winning or losing just ends the movement)—there are throughlines that connect all movements, and those lines should be made visible and traveled. Environmentalists should fight for housing rights, LandBack, Reparations, and a host of other things. The more developed our networks, the stronger our movements will be.

[er-cryptid]

Introduction to Economics Vocabulary

Economics -- study of how people satisfy their needs and wants -- people must make choices

Scarcity -- there are limited amounts of goods and services -- people have unlimited wants

Factors of Production -- abbreviated FOPs -- resources used to make goods and services -- includes capital, labor, and land

Capital -- manmade resources -- used to produce goods and services

Physical Capital -- manmade objects

Human Capital -- knowledge and skill of a worker

[decaf-nosebleed]

im econ ive been assigned a project where i have to write about an article relating to economic policy. i already have the topics in mind, but im struggling to choose. help pleas

feel free to send any articles you recommend about those specific topics my way :)

[omnifuneral]

Passive investing seems like the sensible choice for the average American. Active investors are crucial to keeping the market efficient. Index funds are quickly ascending and show no signs of slowing down. I now believe all of these things. What I don’t know is whether they can all continue to be true together.

[caprice-nisei-enjoyer]

The difference between nominal and real money is really interesting and useful! Which makes it all the more disappointing when people complain about inflation affecting, like, fast food. Food is so damn cheap! The rent is the thing that's too damn high!