I’m not convinced of this. One could argue that profit is waste. It’s an overhead of wealth delivered for value provided. If co-ops are less incentives towards profit, e.g. by not having a tradeable stock to manage, then the pursuit of profit is a lesser priority. This means the overhead is less, which could mean lower prices.

To put it bluntly, if you don’t need to pay dividends to shareholders who deliver no value or huge bonuses to executives at the top, maybe the operating costs could be lower. Yes, the cooperative members would take some of that money as profit sharing among the members, but the working class tends to be less sociopathically greedy than those in power.

Definitely open to feedback. This kind of thinking is newer to me

Got it. That makes much more sense. Thank you for the clarification! And very clear explanation

That all makes sense except the class distinctions part. If whole cooperatives share the capital of the organization, how is there a class divide?

Everything you’re saying about competition and private interest makes sense, with my limited understanding. I just don’t get the class point you made. Help me understand?

I’ll start by saying I’m not a doctor. This is my layman’s understanding.

Historically, vaccines have been samples of either weakened or dead viruses. Through trial and error, we’ve been able to determine how to weaken or kill these viruses, then inject them into ourselves in the hopes that our immune system can learn to recognize and kill the virus. This has worked really well for a long time, but it’s costly and can be difficult to scale. For example, horses have very strong immune systems. It’s quite common to inject a virus that hurts humans into a horse, then harvest the horse’s blood to acquire the material needed to produce a vaccine. The horse’s immune system learns how to kill the virus, and we can use the to teach our immune systems.

mRNA vaccines take a whole different approach. They kind of co-opt the mechanism that viruses use to replicate.

First, let’s tall about what RNA is. You might know that DNA is used to produce proteins, and proteins are the tools that life uses to do… stuff. Almost everything, really. Thing is, DNA is stored safely inside cells’ nuclei, but protein production happens outside the nuclei, in ribosomes. So if DNA is needed to produce proteins, but DNA can’t be moved to the protein production center, how do? Our cells can produce another molecule called RNA. It’s basically half of DNA. Since you can derive one half of DNA from the other, it essentially carries the same information. Inside the nuclei, RNA is produced based on your DNA. That RNA is then moved to the protein production center to be used as the blueprint for protein production. Voila! Your cells have proteins now and can do stuff.

What did that have to do with viruses? But first, how do viruses work? Funny thing: at their core, viruses are kind of like protein missiles with an RNA payload. (This is why people argue that viruses aren’t really alive.) Viruses pierce your cells and inject their RNA into your cells. That RNA provides the blueprints to produce more RNA and the protein module, effectively, a copy of the virus. The viruses uses your cells’ infrastructure to reproduce.

With me so far? Here’s where it gets cool.

What if we could capture a virus’ RNA? What if we could then isolate just enough of the RNA blueprint to get some part of the protein missile, without the payload? And then what if we could get so specific that we could make sure that part of the protein missile is something your immune system could learn to recognize and kill? Lastly, what if we could package this harmless but recognizable part of the virus in a manner that your cells could mass manufacture it?

This is mRNA, the “m” standing for “messenger.” mRNA vaccines basically give your cells the blueprint to produce a recognizable part of a virus that won’t hurt you. Your cells then produce that virus part, and your immune system learns how to recognize and kill the virus based on that part.

The best part? We can do this fast. No need for trial and error on how to weaken viruses. No need to manage livestock like horses specifically to harvest their immune system material. The COVID vaccine was an mRNA vaccine. I haven’t actually checked the numbers, but I’m very confident that the COVID vaccine R&D was the fastest humanity has ever had for any vaccine. We’d been researching and experimenting with mRNA vaccines already, but they weren’t yet approved for medical use. For good reason, medicines go through a huge amount of testing before we start injecting ourselves with magic feel-good juice. Given the emergency that COVID was, most countries fast-tracked their approval process for the COVID mRNA vaccine. In the long run, this may actually have been a benefit, as we’ve learned a lot about how to produce these types of vaccines rapidly, at scale and even update them for new variants of a virus.

So yeah, mRNA vaccines are super fucking cool. They’re also a remarkably clever innovation, copying an idea from viruses and adapting it to a way to kill viruses. Theoretically, future vaccines should be produced faster, be better targeted, and have fewer side effects.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk? 😅

But that’s an arbitrary distinction. You could also argue, “what’s the difference between a vaccine and medicine?” Or “what’s the difference between medicine and physical medical treatment?” mRNA vaccines involve more innovation and impact than bloodletting via leeches.

But I won’t respond to that line of thought anymore because you didn’t answer my question.

You can choose to answer my question or just not reply. Do you know what the differences are between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines?

Are you familiar with the differences between traditional vaccines and mRNA vaccines in terms of production?

It makes me so happy that people are offering advice to help. It gives me hope despite all the madness going on in the world. “Look for the helpers,” right?

But yeah, OP. Get some regular exercise, even if it’s not intense. Eat well, avoid processed snacks and soda and such. Drink more water. Spend time on yourself to relax and have fun, even if only a little time. Call an old friend, if you’re lucky enough to have one. Sleep on a regular schedule with at least 7 hours, ideally 8. This stuff should help, at least a little

Most importantly, know that we’re rooting for you <3

I might have laughed out loud on a silent bus. But worth it

Not necessarily. You don’t know why they’re making that claim.

I live in Korea, where the letter of the labor laws are quite strong. However, they’re not enforced. Workers don’t sue companies because they’re either afraid to rock the boat due to cultural norms or afraid they will develop a reputation and become unhirable.

Korea and China are very distinct cultures, but there are key facets that are common between them. Confucian (or at least neo-Confucian in Korea) values prioritize maintaining the peace and deferring to authority. This is one of several factors that causes Koreans to endure intense working hours, and I’m more willing to believe Chinese folks overwork a lot due to the few shared values.

I run a group that does free software programming education in Seoul. There’s a similar group in LA. When I came to Korea, I just set up a meetup account, paid the fee, rented some space, and started teaching people stuff and studying together. Great way to make friends. Been running it for 7 years now. I’ve had about a dozen or so people come say the group has helped them change their career to IT for the better. A dozen sounds like a small number, but it’s a huge impact on those people

So be the change you want to see. If you have a skill that can help people improve their lives, whether it’s career or life stuff, share it! Learning a new skill is hard, and having a community to support you in learning, goes a long way

Very cool! Tough jobs. I have a new SQA engineer starting tomorrow. I’m really hoping I can support her well. Wish me luck

I hope all your bugs are easy but interesting and that the customers are kind

Ahahaha this is so obtuse. I love it. Bit of a brain teaser to parse that.

Let me see if I’m understanding correctly. Are you software QA or machine learning validation? Or am I totally off?

I work with machines to create lessons for other machines to learn how to figure out you’re sick before you feel sick.

Yeah… that sounds like bullshit haha

100/100 for 22,000 KRW/month (about $16.50 USD).

Other options with my provider:

• 500/500 for 35,750 KRW ($26.85)
• 1000/1000 for 41,250 KRW ($31)
• 2500/2500 for 44,000 KRW ($33)
• 5000/5000 for 55,000 KRW ($41.31)
• 10000/10000 for 82,500 KRW ($62)

And that 100/100 is effective. Shit downloads fast

One of many, many reasons I’m not fond of going back to the US. Maybe Europe next, we’ll see. For now, Korea is pretty sweet

Their arguments assume businesses operate in good faith. We fundamentally know that it’s not true, from overseas child labor by fast fashion to coal mining to IT security. This economist of theirs can fuck off

It makes me sad the site seems to be pushing crypto. Or maybe it’s that crypto bros keep referencing the event? Chicken and egg? I dunno

I was going to post something like this. Thank you for your service

This community is on lemmy.ml, which explicitly leans hard left. Maybe a memes community on another instance would be less like this

Saved

Thank you for taking the education angle. I’d like to add another perspective for folks’ benefit. I’m not 100% sure it’s correct, so please correct me if I’m wrong.

Your labor has some value. Ideally, you should be paid a corresponding amount of wealth to the amount of value you generate through your labor. So you do $20 worth of work and get $20 worth of money. This is the ideal.

But how much labor is worth $20? Capitalism takes advantage of this ambiguity. The capitalist, e.g. a business owner or investor or similarly positioned person, pays you $19 for that $20 labor and pockets the remaining amount as profit. Sure, the capitalist likely provides some amount of leadership and direction, which is labor with value, but their compensation vastly exceeds the value they generate. This is why you see CEOs getting >300x the pay of their employees. The labor of these CEOs is not worth that much. One person’s labor literally cannot be worth that of 300 people. (Engineers may pipe in on that point, but please realize you’re in the same boat.)

If you see capitalism from this perspective, it makes sense why you would be angry. You’re literally getting short-changed for your effort. Not cool

So what’s the alternative? Well, there’s a bunch. Personally, I like the idea of employee-owned companies. This way, you get the advantage of pooling people’s resources, and any profit can be invested back into the company to generate more wealth for its employees or be held onto in case of a downturn. Both are better than a CEO’s pocket.

One issue is capital investment. Starting a company is expensive, and many companies take a long time to become profitable. If every company had to bootstrap, we’d see much fewer successes and much slower progress. I’m not exactly sure how to solve this, yet. Would love to hear folks’ ideas