@mgorny@social.treehouse.systems2025-10-02 17:42:42
"""
Traditional politics of assistance and the repression of unemployment were now called into question. The need for reform became urgent.
Poverty was gradually separated from the old moral confusions. Economic crises had shown that unemployment could not be confused with indolence, as indigence and enforced idleness spread throughout the countryside, to precisely the places that had previously been considered home to the purest and most immediate forms of moral life. This demonstrated that poverty did not solely fall under the order of the fault: ‘Begging is the fruit of poverty, which in turn is the consequence of accidents in the production of the earth or in the output of factories, of a rise in the price of basic foodstuffs, or of growth of the population, etc.’ Indigence became a matter of economics.
But it was not contingent, nor was it destined to be suppressed forever. There would always be a certain quantity of poverty that could never be effaced, a sort of fatal indigence that would accompany all forms of society until the end of time, even in places where all the idle were employed: ‘The only paupers in a well governed state must be those born in indigence, or those who fall into it by accident.’ This backdrop of poverty was somehow inalienable: whether by birth or accident, it formed an inevitable part of society. The state of lack was so firmly entrenched in the destiny of man and the structure of society that for a long time the idea of a state without paupers remained inconceivable: in the thought of philosophers, property, work and indigence were terms linked right up until the nineteenth century.
This portion of poverty was necessary because it could not be suppressed; but it was equally necessary in that it made wealth possible. Because they worked but consumed little, a class of people in need allowed a nation to become rich, to release the value of its fields, colonies and mines, making products that could be sold throughout the world. An impoverished people, in short, was a people that had no poor. Indigence became an indispensable element in the state. It hid the secret but most real life of society. The poor were the seat and the glory of nations. And their noble misery, for which there was no cure, was to be exalted:
«My intention is solely to invite the authorities to turn part of their vigilant attention to considering the portion of the People who suffer … the assistance that we owe them is linked to the honour and prosperity of the Empire, of which the Poor are the firmest bulwark, for no sovereign can maintain and extend his domain without favouring the population, and cultivating the Land, Commerce and the Arts; and the Poor are the necessary agents for the great powers that reveal the true force of a People.»
What we see here is a moral rehabilitation of the figure of the Pauper, bringing about the fundamental economic and social reintegration of his person. Paupers had no place in a mercantilist economy, as they were neither producers nor consumers, and they were idle, vagabond or unemployed, deserving nothing better than confinement, a measure that extracted and exiled them from society. But with the arrival of the industrial economy and its thirst for manpower, paupers were once again a part of the body of the nation.
"""
(Michel Foucault, History of Madness)
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-10-30 10:05:59
The fracturing of the Dutch far-right, after Wilder's reminded everyone that bigots are bad at compromise, is definitely a relief. Dutch folks I've talked to definitely see D66 as progressive, <strike>so there's no question this is a hard turn to the left (even if it's not a total flip to the far-left)</strike> a lot of folks don't agree. I'm going to let the comments speak rather than editorialize myself..
While this is a useful example of how a democracy can be far more resilient to fascism than the US, that is, perhaps, not the most interesting thing about Dutch politics. The most interesting thing is something Dutch folks take for granted and never think of as such: there are two "governments."
The election was for the Tweede Kamer. This is a house of representatives. The Dutch use proportional representation, so people can (more or less) vote for the parties they actually want. Parties <strike>rarely</strike> never actually get a ruling majority, so they have to form coalition governments. This forces compromise, which is something Wilders was extremely bad at. He was actually responsible for collapsing the coalition his party put together, which triggered this election... and a massive loss of seats for his party.
Dutch folks do still vote strategically, since a larger party has an easier time building the governing coalition and the PM tends to come from the largest party. This will likely be D66, which is really good for the EU. D66 has a pretty radical plan to solve the housing crisis, and it will be really interesting to see if they can pull it off. But that's not the government I want to talk about right now.
In the Netherlands, failure to control water can destroy entire towns. A good chunk of the country is below sea level. Both floods and land reclamation have been critical parts of Dutch history. So in the 1200's or so, the Dutch realized that some things are too important to mix with normal politics.
You see, if there's an incompetent government that isn't able to actually *do* anything (see Dick Schoof and the PVV/VVD/NSC/BBB coalition) you don't want your dikes to collapse and poulders to flood. So the Dutch created a parallel "government" that exists only to manage water: waterschap or heemraadschap (roughly "Water Board" in English). These are regional bureaucracies that exist only to manage water. They exist completely outside the thing we usually talk about as a "government" but they have some of the same properties as a government. They can, for example, levy taxes. The central government contributes funds to them, but lacks authority over them. Water boards are democratically elected and can operate more-or-less independent of the central government.
Controlling water is a common problem, so water boards were created to fulfill the role of commons management. Meanwhile, so many other things in politics run into the very same "Tragedy of the Commons" problems. The right wing solution to commons management is to let corporations ruin everything. The left-state solution is to move everything into the government so it can be undermined and destroyed by the right. The Dutch solution to this specific problem has been to move commons management out of the domain of the central government into something else.
And when I say "government" here, I'm speaking more to the liberal definition of the term than to an anarchist definition. A democratically controlled authority that facilitates resource management lacks the capacity for coercive violence that anarchists define as "government." (Though I assume they might leverage police or something if folks refuse to pay their taxes, but I can't imagine anyone choosing not to.)
As the US federal government destroys the social fabric of the US, as Trump guts programs critical to people's survival, it might be worth thinking about this model. These authorities weren't created by any central authority, they evolved from the people. Nothing stops Americans from building similar institutions that are both democratic and outside of the authority of a government that could choose to defund and abolish them... nothing but the realization that yes, you actually can.
#USPol #NLPol
@cdarwin@c.im2025-12-02 16:37:19
Why donate to SEEC PAC?
The Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition Political Action Committee
exists to support SEEC members in Congress and candidates who fight for clean energy, climate change solutions, environmental justice, and protection of our nation’s clean air, water, wildlife, and natural environment.
https://seecpac.org/<…
@marcel@waldvogel.family2025-12-02 19:55:17
"Block VPN users from Wisconsin" means blocking all VPNs, becuase … VPN.
"Websites subject to this proposed law are left with this choice: either cease operation in Wisconsin, or block all #VPN users, everywhere, just to avoid legal liability in the state. One state's terrible law is attempting to break VPN access for the entire internet, and the unintended consequences of …
@inthehands@hachyderm.io2025-12-02 19:51:29
I strongly endorse the first part of what @tarheel said here: make plastic more expensive. Bake its human and environmental costs into the price of the products that use it.
I’m not optimistic about that happening under anything like current political conditions, but still important to note what a good idea that would be if we did it.
https://mstdn.io/@tarheel/115651260261673168
@arXiv_mathCO_bot@mastoxiv.page2025-10-02 10:22:31
On partitions associated with elementary symmetric polynomials
Cristina Ballantine, Shaheen Nazir, Bridget Eileen Tenner, Karlee Westrem, Chenchen Zhao
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.01100
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-01 20:16:01
A federal judge in Washington permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms,
a change dictated in an executive order Donald Trump signed in March.
The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission,
an independent body,
to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures
at a time when the president has also called for requiring voter identification …
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-01 20:16:00
A federal judge in Washington permanently barred the Trump administration on Friday from requiring proof of citizenship on federal voter registration forms,
a change dictated in an executive order Donald Trump signed in March.
The ruling definitively halted the effort to compel the Elections Assistance Commission,
an independent body,
to adopt nationwide changes to voting procedures
at a time when the president has also called for requiring voter identification …
@cdarwin@c.im2025-11-02 11:21:13
After a lifetime of scandal,
Trump expresses doubt that he will be admitted to paradise.
But he appears increasingly intent on finding other paths to eternity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/us/poli
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-31 01:51:55
In early 2023, Paul Newby, the Republican chief justice of North Carolina’s Supreme Court,
gave the state and the nation a demonstration of the stunning and overlooked power of his office.
The previous year, the court — then majority Democrat — had outlawed partisan gerrymandering in the swing state.
Over Newby’s vehement dissent, it had ordered independent outsiders to redraw electoral maps that the GOP-controlled legislature had crafted to conservatives’ advantage.
