[–] 2 points 2 days ago

I've been a Prospect member for well over a decade, this framing as being somehow less suitable at representing software professionals, or being more "employer friendly", than Unite or CWU is absolute nonsense.

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  • [–] 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

    It's complicated, but first things first you need to differentiate between the philosophy and the EA "movement", led by Giving What We Can and others. The latter is shill bullshit and rich people power plays.

    The former, set out mostly by Will MacAskill, is an application of future conscious utilitarianism within a capitalist system.

    Or in a less wanky way, given you as a poor schmuck can only afford to give a few quid to charities each month, how can you "help the most".

    At the simplest level, giving £5/m to a local soup kitchen ran by volunteers who spend all of that money on food is probably more effective than giving the same amount to a major charity with hundreds of employees.

    I hope that example also suggests how it itself is not actually straight forward. The local charity with volunteers may just objectively be shit at what they are trying to do, and all the money is wasted.

    Point being, you, nor EA, know that unless you do the work to find out. While the principal of harm reduction is absolutely valid, it does not replace advocating for changes to the underlying system.

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    What Jenrick did not say, perhaps because it was so obvious, is that there is a community in this country that appears simply disinterested in integrating: they want to surround themselves with people who look just like them, they exist in social and cultural bubbles meaning they are in this country but not part of it, and while for a long time they were considered eccentric but harmless, recent events have shown that we underestimate the threat they represent to all we revere about our society.

    I am referring, of course, to racist white people.

     

    There is a stark contrast between the Hangman redemption arc and WWE’s most recent feel-good saga, in which Cody Rhodes — who, when not wrestling, appears suited and booted and has a tattoo of the American flag on his neck — finished his story by winning WWE’s version of the world title. The whole idea underpinning this seemed to be that because his father, blue-collar wrestling icon Dusty Rhodes, was a champion (albeit not in WWE or the WWF, as it was then known), he should be one too.

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