TechGoblin

Many freelancers in the United States rely on ACA marketplace plans for their health insurance. In an industry that has already been working overtime to turn gamedevs into gig workers, freelance and contract devs are about to get even more squeezed. This is unacceptable.

Democratic Public Finance: A Radical Vision for Mamdani’s New York City Summary This document elaborates an emerging economic paradigm that is already latent in Zohran Mamdani’s plans and practices. The paradigm, which we call Democratic Public Finance (DPF), reframes …

The end of this article was super interesting! It reminds me of @moneyontheleft.bsky.social's article about democratic public finance.

It's been interesting seeing the layers of the global economy peel back to show how it has always been intertwined with politics

moneyontheleft.org/2025/10/10/d...

Deciding if something is a want or a need is another can of worms though.

Yeah it's this kind of stuff that's so tough because labor hours are highly variable based on the work performed, whether the thing produced by the work is in high demand, and how needed the thing is

One of the main issues with capitalism is treating desires the same as needs in terms of valuation.

Thanks for sharing, I'll be reading some more.

Maybe I'm more of a Marxist than I previously thought.

From what I understand people have gotten close to a solution for this with cybernetics.

It's pretty interesting stuff but it gets into the weeds of unpredictability of the economy and the difficulty/impossibility? of controlling them centrally.

Central planning shouldn't be built upon the idea of objective economic values for that reason.

I'm talking about economic value which isn't necessarily price but if someone values something more than the currency that it costs then they will be willing to buy it.

The value to price/cost ratio for the consumer is subjective and varies greatly depending on the product, consumer, and situation.

I always try to learn as much as I can but saying that I can't have an opinion if I don't know everything about a topic is nonsense.

Despite that many Marxist economics rely on the objective labor theory of value and entire centralized planning systems have been developed based on it.

Building on top of something that isn't true is not a good idea which was my point.

I agree with Marx on many other things from what I've read.

I admit I haven't read everything Marx has ever written and maybe I should but saying I know nothing about the subject isn't accurate.

Marx utilized Adam Smith's labor theory value against him and rightly so but the whole theory has been shown to be inaccurate because no economic value is objective

Also I was wrong, I agree with Marx that labor is always necessary for production but the value of labor does dwindle with further automation which Marx also acknowledges.

I could've worded my disagreement better.

I disagree with his economic calculation, that economic value is objective (can be calculated concretely with a formula rather than being subjective/a matter of preference).

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That's true, Marx himself never advocated for it. The closest he got to it was advocating for a "dictatorship of the proletariat."

I always took that to mean that society should be run by the workers though rather than advocating for a democratic centralism or a vanguard party.

In terms of workers being entitled to the fruits of their labor and having a hand in managing production to reduce alienation, because none of it would be possible without them, I fully agree with Marx on that.

Yes on that I mostly agree with him but there are other inputs that create value and value is subjective so it cannot be calculated in precise terms from inputs the way he proposed.

The objective theory of value actually came from Adam Smith and was the dominant idea at the time.

Plus historical materialism is a very useful tool and we'd be lost without it, same with a lot of other things Marx came up with.

I think the libertarian socialist/anarchist ideas of no hierarchy without accountability and complex systems analysis applied to social structures are good for Marxists to learn about for that reason.

I think it's good to look at all the socialist traditions without being too dogmatic.

2: Democratic centralism tending towards unity of thought because that isn't democratic at all and not holding leaders accountable to bad ideas is foolish.

Democracy and decentralization aren't perfect but I tend towards them because once power is centralized it is rarely given up.

Basically I agree in principle with Marx on the labor theory of value but disagree on the specific economic calculation.

Post Keynesian economics is much less dogmatic on that front but still has Marxist roots and provides a more accurate view of the political economy in my opinion.

I know you didn't ask but I disagree with a few things in Marxism but there's a lot to learn from it.

I have two main disagreements.

1: Objective economic value from the labor theory of value because despite labor being the most necessary input, they aren't the only input that creates value.

Leaders/natural aristocrats are good because they have knowledge and experience to lead others but oligarchy is not, a system by and for natural aristocrats will inevitably give way to artificial aristocracy/oligarchy and eventually fascism or a return to feudalism.

That is why the founding fathers that address these concerns systemically like Thomas Paine are worth reading.

Systems that address wealth inequality and the downfalls of capitalism while maintaining rights and democracy like democratic socialism are a natural progression of American ideals.

The issue is that capitalists of his time like Adam Smith and himself were too idealistic and didn't foresee that the wealth created by these aristocrats is corrupting and would lead to an eroding of civil society and democracy in favor of systems that benefit the aristocracy more given enough time.

Founders Online: Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 October 1813 Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 October 1813

No we have an oligarchy when the founding fathers only intended for the US to be an aristocracy where the hardest working Americans rise to the top.

Thomas Jefferson talks about his fears of an artificial aristocracy (oligarchy) in a letter to John Adams.

founders.archives.gov/documents/Je...

I think Zohran has leftist beliefs, the biggest thing that needs to be done is mobilization of people to make opposition to his positions politically untenable for those in power to stop him.

We should focus on pushing people like Hochul left for instance, otherwise Zohran won't be as big of a win.

Like we know how crony capitalism from excessive wealth and economic power influencing the political system is always the end result of deregulation and yet America refuses to learn the lesson.

We know how endless growth is unsustainable and profit seeking harms people but we keep getting duped.

When the system idolizes cheap cash grabs and greed over innovation and benevolence this is what you get.

Open source and the right to repair movement are the only pro consumer things left in the mainstream tech industry.

Capitalism is unfortunately the problem, I wish we had democratic socialism.

Radical social democracy that limits the economic power of capital owners is what is needed now and it's called Democratic Socialism.

We know social democracy works very well but it still has conflicts of interests with the very wealthy vs the needs of society and that needs to be addressed.