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Joined 7 years ago
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Cake day: April 17th, 2019

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  • Was summoned once, and ended up on the jury. It was a really sad case where the cops were trying to put an 80-something year old former convict back in prison, because his son in law had a gun in the house (that they searched because of something the son in law did, but no charges were brought against him), and that was a violation of the 80-year-old’s release conditions from like 40 years ago.

    I really wanted to end up on the jury in order to keep this guy out of prison, which luckily we did. The defense was very smart in making his case sympathetic, even though legally the guy had no leg to stand on. There were a few jurors that wanted to imprison him, but we finally got them to go with the majority to ignore the law and keep him out of prison.

    The easy rule of thumb if you do/don’t want to be on the jury: the less you talk, the more likely you are to end up on the jury. The more annoying you are, especially talking about how busy you are, or asking a lot of pointless questions: the less likely you are to end up on the jury.






  • College / university in many countries.

    In the US at least, its become such a parasitic industry, with tuition fees rising exponentially and far exceeding wage rates and job availability, that it accounts for a large portion of most people’s personal debt.

    With so many applicants for so few jobs, a college degree is the new highschool diploma / “minimum requirement” for nearly every job now. 1 / 4 US adults have student loan debt, with an average of 40k in student loans.. Nothing is putting the brakes on degree inflation, tuition, or the student loan industry.

    The US federal government also makes a killing off of student loan interest fees, most of which is going to the MIC and Israel.

    They’ve made the product they’re selling you (a degree), both required, and extremely expensive; the ultimate goal of any parasitic industry. Its a dream for state and private colleges, the US government and its military, and a nightmare for people either without a job, or chained to their desks for fear of losing their job and getting further behind on loan payments.












  • As @Cowbee@lemmy.ml mentioned, PSL (and a few other socialist parties), are the only real opposition, since they’re a working-class party that’s consistently anti-war and anti-capitalism.

    From crash course socialism:


    Socialists view democracy under capitalism to be impossible. Most current-day systems are better labeled as Bourgeois Democracy, or democracy for the rich only, which socialists contrast with proletarian democracy. Under capitalism, political parties, representatives, infrastructure, and the media are controlled by capitalists, who place restrictions on the choices given to workers, limit their representative options to vetted capitalist puppets, and limit the scope of public debate to pro-capitalist views.

    Bourgeois democracies are in reality Capitalist Dictatorships, resulting in legislation favorable to the wealthy, regardless of the population’s actual preferences. The Princeton Study, conducted in the US in 2014, found that the preferences of the average US citizen exert a near-zero influence on legislation, making the US system of elections and campaigning little more than political theater. Multi-party, Parliamentary / representative democracy has proven to be the safest shell for capitalist rule, regardless of voting methods or differing political structures, for countries as diverse as Australia, Japan, Sweden, the UK, the US, South Korea, or Brazil.

    Ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle more accurately defined Democracy as rule by the poor, and they considered states based on elections to be anti-democratic Aristocracies, since only the wealthy and ruling families have the resources to finance elections. They contrasted this with random selection / sortition, and citizen’s assemblies, as being the defining features of democracy, both of which are nonexistent in the countries listed above. Today, liberal / parliamentary “democracies” are dominated by wealthy candidates, and entrenched political families, with Capitalists standing above political power.

    This system of sham elections acts as a distracting theater piece, giving the illusion of democracy, whilst in reality it serves to platform capitalist views, make them appear more popular than they are, and manufacture consent for the system itself.

    Examples of restrictions include a media and news monopoly, 2, gerrymandering, long term limits with no way to recall unpopular representatives, restrictions crafted to disenfranchise poor and minority voters, bills directly crafted by lobbyists and bourgeois lawmakers, voter suppression, electoral fraud, unverifiable closed source electronic voting systems, capitalist campaign financing, low voter to representative ratios, inconvenient voting locations and times, and most importantantly, candidate stacking. Most elections are performed before we ever get to the polling booth. In short, political democracy can’t exist without economic democracy, and true democracy is only possible when workers control production.

    The impossibility of Capitalist democracy to make a transition to working-class democracy is best shown by the phrase: Capitalists will not allow you to vote away their wealth. Pacifism, and elections have never been an effective means of disenfranchising the ruling class.

    Communists propose building alternatives alongside of bourgeois democracy, with the goal of to replacing it with Proletarian democracy. Measures might include:

    • Replacement of bourgeois parliamentary bodies with broadly inclusive workers organizations, such as unions, councils, or syndicates.
    • Seizing land, productive facilities, and housing and putting them under democratic control.
    • Elimination of all debts, suppression of all private banks and stock markets.
    • Direct democracy in as many decisions as possible, often called cyber communism.
    • A democratically planned economy for human needs, with open participation.
    • Low-level workplace democracy.
    • Elimination of the standing army, and the substitution for it of armed workers.
    • An emphasis on universal education, health-care, child-care, care for the elderly, and human welfare, paid for socially.
    • Increase in productive technology.
    • Low levels of wealth and income inequality, often driven by a system of labor vouchers for compensation.
    • Experts (if any) elected by the working class through universal suffrage.
    • All representatives and officials (including police) are revocable at any time.
    • Public officials are paid worker’s wages.