This is kind of how I try to describe cooperatives to some people. It works if you think of freedom and autonomy as conservative ideas which cooperatives bring without central planning socialism, while still being socialist. Also been pleading my leftist circles for years to try to appeal to a wider audience in a similar way. If only we recognize that we’ve all been lied to and propagandized to believe in capitalism, speaking in a way the “right” can get on board with would only help them start listening to reasonable solutions.

I advocate for a cooperative economy. The best example of it working at scale in the modern world is the mondragon corporation in spain.

I think people are more than that. The point being that nothing is inherently wrong with making individualistic self serving choices except when there is disregard for others. But people can also be compassionate, alturistic, giving, and cooperative, so how about a system that rewards the better parts of human nature?

Capitalist markets are built off of the idea that people are inherently self serving and the ensuing competition will benefit people with lower prices, better products, etc to meet their own selfish needs. Capitalism uses capital to gain more capital, and is exploitative by design. When a company acts in a way to maximize profits, and appease shareholders, they’re doing it selfishly, with total disregard for others or the environment, in a system that rewards their actions. This is quite like psychotic, or sociopathic, behavior.

I just think trying to control this is a losing battle, and what we really need are foundational changes to values, motives, and what gets rewarded and how.

There’s an idea on the left about building horizontally, or from the ground up, for there to be something to fall back on after the inevitable collapse of capitalism. These are things like community food systems, mutual aid, cooperatives, land trusts, etc. The left is active in local politics, supporting unions, organizing, and so on. Not all of us that worry this system may be beyond saving are actually just waiting to die, but doing what we can where we can with limited resources.

We’re all messed up because we’ve built a society that isolates and exploits us while rewarding psychotic behavior via corporations or people acting selfishly without regard for others

Now if only I could afford the van, I too could be homeless. Just like I’ve always wanted.

Food feels great when shared communally. Pretty sure it’s hard for a lot of people to eat because we’ve sort of lost that as a society.

I imagine if they were properly communist, the US would have never allowed them to rise. There’d have been assassinations, coups, and purposeful destabilizations like we saw in south america.

Who paid for this floor?

I worked part time through college. Summers I had two part time jobs, and a couple summers three that worked with my schedule. Started school with about 10k in savings and finished about 12k in debt.

Edit: I’m also super frugal. Found cheap food, cheap/free furnishings/clothes, cheap housing, pirated textbooks, and rode a bicycle and took the bus to get around.

Wish I could have afforded the time for some unpayed opportunities. Really struggling to find a decent job at the moment. (Studied math at a top university with fairly significant cs experience and decent gpa).

Wouldn’t not recommend college, but man not feeling too good about it at the moment in terms of job opportunities (certainly wouldn’t trade the experience and what I’ve learned for anything though)

They’re like parallel processes. Rice takes about 20 min. Start that first and you can have the stir Fry done before the rice finishes with plenty of time to clean up. A sandwich leaves just a knife and cutting board. Just rinse that off. And if I was making pizza I’d make the dough the night before and the rest is simple, clean up when the pizzas in the oven.

Personally love leftovers. Make extra rice, use the leftovers in a burrito or something. Make extra pizza dough and put some in the freezer, etc