Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain’t dead. Remember, don’t downvote for disagreements.
There can be too much political correctness at times.
Related: I believe it’s ok, given certain contexts, to speak broadly and crassly to people who expect that. It’s ultimately ineffective and therefore bad to come off as an pretenscious arrogant know-it-all, correcting everyone’s grammar and word choices and any ignorance they have. I see some students in the labor movement and wonder if they’re capable of expressing their knowledge to typical joe worker, without injecting French, German or Russian, or losing their temper at some unintentionally offensive ignorance. We’re speaking broadly to regular people, don’t alienate them with your academic knowledge.
That doesn’t mean never correct crappy things people say, you can and should, but pick your battles. A climate scientist once told me, being correct isn’t enough.
being correct isn’t enough
A very valuable lesson, and it’s very fitting who said it
I do feel like arguing semantics at almost all times steals some energy from the movement overall
I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don’t know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
When you’re coming from a position of extreme privilege and you’re either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with “lesser people” (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you’re being discriminated against.
I think you’re missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I’m inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we’re getting at. It’s also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority – which while relatable to me, doesn’t help make leftism look appealing.
(By “majority” I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let’s get “I agree – but that has bad optics so let’s focus on something else first” into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we’ll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it’s outside the scope of this post.
The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I’m not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don’t have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
100% agree. I honestly think that in ~2015, the left’s failure to appeal to young white men caused them to turn to the alt right. I think we scared them off with things like “check your privilege” etc., and should have focused more on getting them amped about class warfare.
Agreed 100%. I’m glad we’re collectively starting to realize this. It’s a bit late, but hopefully it’ll still do good.
Well, I posted about this in this topic because I think it’s not a perspective that’s gained traction. Please help spread the good word…!
I’ve been thinking of starting some sort of group to help with that goal-- would you be interested? I’m not sure what we could do, but I want to do something, you know? I figure the best impact I can have is to convince other people that I mostly agree with to adopt this approach, which is what I envision the group could help with.
I’m curious
DM me. :)
Late is better than never
I’m a straight white male that leans left, and ya, I’ve had friends (who, it’s sad to say, are hard to talk to now) who were center go right because they were welcomed with open arms by the right and shat on by the left. Before Elon went on a rant about the dude trying to rescue those trapped kids, before Joe Rogan started leaning into the propaganda for ratings, and when Bernie had a chance, we were on the same page… But since trump got involved, Bernie got shut out, and (it’s obvious now) the rich started weaponising the media against us, we have very little media that we consume that’s the same.
I left reddit, rogan and switched to Lemmy and breaking points, and they have leaned in harder to Rogan and we’re drawn down the rabbit hole of tim pool. Everytime I’ve tried to reason with them I get “what about isms”, “the left is more violent”, “the left hates everyone”, and borderline conspiracy theory non-sense. Even my own mom was pretty center left when I was growing up and now she’s bought into the non-sense because that’s the media she sees.
The right tells good tales, and a lot of people on the left are gate keeping, so… Just by fact of barrier to entry the right is going to be easier to drift towards. I hope we get our shit together.
I think the most insidious part is that the far right feeds on men’s anger and negative emotions and just keeps telling them that if they go farther right, if they become more dominant alpha male, it’ll make all their negative emotions go away. And then when it doesn’t, they just keep pushing right.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70’s/80’s) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you’d have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You’d also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be ‘happy’ (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that’s what would need to be done. You’d have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you’d have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won’t be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can’t be exploited, to try and “raise all boats” in society. And you’d have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they’re now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you’d have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., “Free Will is a Pain in the Ass”.
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists “coming for the” communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn’t effecting their status quo.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves.
That’s not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a “floating tide raises all boats” kind of thing.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”? See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them.
You’ll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you’re just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”?
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many “systems” that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
You aren’t exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. “The Left” commonly answers the second with an idea called ‘eternal revolution’. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
I’ll take a look.
Are you active in any socialist parties?
I would like to be, but I just can’t figure out how to get involved in my area.
I was going to follow up with a sick zinger but instead I’ll just be normal, ha.
It is important to grow the left, to turn it from like 100-1000 people in a given city into 5-10%. I can agree with that motivation, as can the vast majority of socialists. Our aim is revolution, that doesn’t happen from just a few reading groups, it has to become more.
The entire country already caters to the demo you mentioned. Everything is ready-made for them. Many orgs are dominated by them, such as the DSA. You should not write off straight white cis guys but they are consistently the hardest to reach because they are dismissive of others’ experiences with oppression and have been more shielded from capitalism’s worst in their country, but tend to feel very entitled to an opinion about it.
Centrism is the only described characteristic that is a chosen identity and it is a political tendency, if you can call it that. It’s a person with no political development whatsoever, they just vaguely cobble together an incoherent mishmash of common liberal and reactionary ideas that they can’t really defend but they call themselves an outsider as if that means something regarding someone whose political life can be summed up as, “sometimes votes”.
So what would it mean to try to boost efforts to recruit straight white cis dude centrists? Because the first things that would come to mind for me are usually called tailism by socialists and has a long track record of failure in the US in particular, where the US had a gargantuan labor movement that was entirely scuttled by liberal cooption and playing straight white cis dudes off of marginalized groups. There were entire unions that were segregated or disallowed black membership, for example. Those were the easiest to coopt into the red scare and, once they were used to out and isolate socialists, were then easily undermined and shrunk when their anticommunist government came for labor a couple decades later, having no radical core remsining and no material leverage.
I feel like one obvious answer is “stop being so eager to alienate cis straight white men”
I think this advice is not very actionable as is, and needs more digesting into more specific strategies.
Like, for instance: let’s avoid making people feel rejected by the left for having privilege, and instead focus on guiding privileged people so that they can use their privilege to help the cause.
I agree. I’m glad you made this post and are actually interacting in the comments to be constructive.
There’s a book I was introduced to last year called “good strategy bad strategy” that is worth a read, most of it’s somewhat obvious and a little dated as far as examples, but the framing of how to think about strategy is pretty solid. Its an easy read, and like most non fiction books, you get most of the meat in the first half.
I think a lot of conversation is “men go to therapy” but therapy alone isn’t enough? We kind of cast men off of having all the privilege in the world without recognizing that patriarchy hurts them too, and in lots of facets of their lives in a way that just going to a therapist once a week does not help.
Yeah, therapy is not a viable solution for broad societal issues
IMO the biggest problem is media. They report through a center-right lens and focus on sensationalism. So all people see of the left is the “check your privilege cis white boy” and “anarchists have burned down the entire city” BS lines instead of the vast aid efforts and daily work.
For years I’ve been hearing “the media has a left bias” though. I guess that’s left=democrat party, not left=leftist.
The fox news viewer see CNN as “leftist” and anything further as “The Commies”. CNN/MSNBC/whatever "liberal” orgs see themselves as the leading charge of the liberal movement and anything more progressive or actually leftist as “The Commies”.
Ehh, can’t expect anything short of that sort of bias from corporate media.
It depends on the material conditions. Also there is a reason “centrists” even exist as they are now and appear to you as some kind of constant monolith. Or as Marx did put it “Ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas”
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can’t be made.
Where in the definition of leftism is it said that leftism is unpopular?
it’s manifested in our reality; only the liberal branch of leftism is permitted (particularly in the united states) while the other branches are openly denigrated by moderates and rightists alike and persecuted by our governments and militias.
That’s hardly definitional.
Leftism is unpopular by definition
This really depends how you define “leftism”.
If you mean ‘whichever side of politics is left of the population’s center’ then sure, it can’t be a majority.
If you mean ‘whichever side of politics is left of the political center’ then that doesn’t imply it’s unpopular, and there’s direct electoral evidence of ‘left’ parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren’t unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
That Trump is neither conservative (in any way) nor cares at all about any traditional Republican values
Trump and MAGA are regressive. They are hell-bent on taking this country back to the first half of the 20th century, in all the worst possible ways.
Most of them don’t even know what they want. They’re told what to think and simply can’t process anything on their own. Argue with one and you’ll be hard pressed to find an original thought, just regurgitations of what they’ve been told by fox news.
Perhaps it would be useful to build up from basics, asking them what issues actually affect their own life, and hopefully avoid all the hyperreality* culture wars of the media.
* https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png
I’ve noticed this in that they can’t think of their own problems. They say “they’re teaching kids to be trans in school” but don’t talk to their actual kids about what they’re actually learning. They say “the inflation makes it impossible to buy groceries!” And they show the groceries with 3 cases of Mt dew because they don’t want to think about budgeting. They say “immigrants are taking our jobs” and live in rural Missouri where there’s 1 Latino in town. They aren’t thinking of problems that actually effect them, they think of the problems fox news tells them to think about.
Huh. Mid 20th century? But that’s when America transitioned to relatively high and progressive income taxes instead of relying on tariffs. It’s also when massive state spending on education lead to a large chunk of Americans being able to care about something other than themselves, a precursor to progressivism in America and the civil rights movement.
If anything, I think Americans appear to want to go back to the Gilded Age, known for its massive inequality, corruption, and excessive-wealth-flaunting.
He recently said something about the 20s and 30s. That’s when he considered America great, apparently.
That progressive people should prioritize economic equality ahead of social issues.
They go hand-in-hand, though, and moreover “true economic equality” isn’t possible when humans vary wildly in needs and abilities, hence Marx’s whole attack on the so-called “equalitarians.”
They do not, as evidence by the last two decades of “progressive” politics here in the US.
The US has not had either, truly.
you can’t learn much about leftism from the USA
The left has become so focused on illegal immigrants and identity politics that they have abandoned working class economic issues and rural white voters and it has cost them elections.
Yup.
If the left you’re talking about is the dems, no the fuck they aren’t. Dems aren’t the ones constantly putting forth bills about Trans people. The most any dem has done is post some milqtoast “trans rights” sticker or something.
But I agree I think the dems shouldn’t have justified the fear mongering about immigrants when the right started screeching about it. But that’s also on news orgs justifying it.
Yeah it seems it’s conservatives who are the ones who like to obsess and make it the topic of discussion to make their followers think it is the left’s primary platform of focus.
And then they also fixate on entertainment like games or movies to further play up how everything is woke as though it’s the left politicians making all that.
And it’s because that’s really the only compelling thing they have to play up to their followers who too make it their entire identity of conflict, since their other policies aren’t working class friendly.
since their other policies aren’t working class friendly.
It can not be stressed enough that every single other policy they have is damaging to the working class. I think that’s why they push on transphobia so hard, because it’s the only one that doesn’t.
I’d argue nearly every single social issue is an economic one. Abortion? Anti-abortion laws are intended to force people to have kids they can’t afford, making them desperate for work to keep their kids fed and clothed. Racial equality? I mean, do I need to say more than the fact that most minorities are statistically poorer? The only one that can be argued is purely social is Trans people, and I simply can’t fathom letting people die for being who they are, or ignoring the blatant attacks on them from the right.
Can’t care about your neigbors when you still have to worry about your own mouth to feed.
And you’re not going to miss a days pay to protest or vote when you know neither candidate gives a shit about your health and well-being.
When you look at revolutions the tipping point was always the threat of going hungry and losing your home. That makes everyone desperate.
the anti-work movement has been a blight on communism
I feel like it has the wrong name. But it is a baby step for many toward anticapitalist ideals.
Work is good, and can be beneficial. Working a job you hate because if you don’t you’d starve is awful and should be done away with.
Do you see it as a waste of time or a distraction? I see it as a gateway drug.
As someone who was in a supportive relationship with a transgender person for 3 years and who personally struggles associating with my own gender (masculinity was never my thing lol), I never really got into the stating my gender pronouns.
I get why it’s done for the times it matters and can do so in a sensitive space, but I get the sense it’s usually done as public compliance (like a cis neolib as an email sig), which can lead to shallow support or worse, resentment. What we ultimately need is more genuine contact with people different from ourselves because that helps reduce “othering” a group.
Oh, but I do tend to default to “they” out of old internet habits. Always disliked the assumption all gamers are men.
It makes me uncomfortable to state my personal pronouns. Years of growing up as a woman on the internet makes me not want to reveal my gender, even when it’s obvious (like in person).
Sounds like my sister and a good friend of mine, the latter who prefers playing games as a male character to avoid the attention. I totally get where you’re coming from on that.
because that helps reduce “othering” a group
Which is, ironically, what the pronoun-stating thing was supposed to avoid. Personally I agree that it’s not really necessary, and that it actually is a form of compelled speech.
I do think stating pronouns at the beginning of conversations is a bit clunky, but in almost every internet interactions (including email),having a reference to someone’s pronouns helps both when they’re trans and when it’s faceless. Like if someone’s has a gender neutral name, it can save confusion between a group message or email chain to be able to refer to them with the right pronouns.
I’ve heard that use case before, and it’s fairly reasonable in a faceless contract. Funny enough, my father is a perfect case study, his name is rather unique and one letter off from a common feminine name so he gets misgendered quite frequently as a cis man (plus, to make matters worse, hes very insecure about his masculinity and is sensitive about being called a sissy because his father abused him).
Thinking on his use case, it might help him to have pronouns at work, but according to him people pick up on his pronouns almost immediately because they hear it from a co-worker in reference to him, there is almost never a completely blind email despite it being a rather large city hall. In other words, only people who misgender him are spam. While pronouns wouldn’t have stopped the abuse and bullying growing up, the culture of acceptance behind the trend probably would have.
Ironically, he won’t do the pronouns because he’s a bit conservative leaning. And his alcoholic, homophobic ass certainly didn’t do me any favors when I dated a transgender person.
I am very very very left wing, BUT I can get really annoyed with a lot of those “on my side” advocating for the most idealist of all idealism, as if it’s a contest. Feels like a competition of “who’s the bestest and mostest leftist of all”. You scare people away and - not justifying it - but I get why some people get upset with “the left” because of this…
I am very very very left wing, but
Everytime I see someone say this I know without a shadow of a doubt that they’re a centrist liberal.
Lmao this thread is full of “very/hard far left” who then present very cold for a far left takes or are straight out libs.
wrong, I support the green party (multi-party system, you should try it)
So, Social Democrat. I wouldn’t call that “left wing,” in that it isn’t a Socialist platform. It would be “left” in comparison to the status quo, but not enough to be “very very very left wing.”
It would be if you’d compare their program to that of the other left parties here
As I said, left of the status quo, but not on the left.
Lol, thanks for proving my point
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
no, we have another party for that in Belgium (Vooruit). Groen has a leftist program
Groen are center left liberals.
With a program that’s more leftist than the actual left party, yes
Oh? Tell me more about their program to overthrow the liberal state and wrestle control of the means of production away from the owning class.
Y’all don’t need to keep adding things to lgbtq or lgbt+. The q or + takes care of everything
I think this is a better argument that “queer” is the best catch-all phrase. Honestly, come to think of it, if we can phase out LGBT in favour of “queer” entirely, then that gives republicans a harder time to separate the T.
I’m working on transitioning to using They/Them pronouns for everyone since they’re completely neutral and fit every context. If your preference is Xe/Xem, I respect that—but unfortunately, my brain just doesn’t have the bandwidth to keep track of multiple pronouns consistently. You get They/Them.
I agree with the mental bandwidth. I’m fine with he/him, she/her, they/them. I’ll also tend to default to appearance, though I will try and correct if asked to do so.
I’ve yet to find anyone who wasn’t also an arsehole who has an issue with this. That includes places where seeing an obvious male in a dress could equally be someone taking their first steps away from norm, or just a guy that likes wearing dresses. Also, neither was seen as unusual at the event.
I believe that the stance against nuclear power (specifically, nuclear fission, as opposed to radioisotope power used by spacecraft) by greens undermines the fight to stop global warming, and that many of the purported issues with nuclear power have been solved or were never really issues in the first place.
For instance: the nuclear waste produced by old-gen reactors can be used by newer generations.
I fully agree that nuclear SHOULD have been part of the solution. I disagree that it should now be part of it. We have lost too much knowledge regarding nuclear power to lack of investment. We no longer have time to rebuild that to get it online. Hopefully it can become part of the solution eventually, but 10-20 years is now far too long to wait.
I’m mostly an anarchist. But.
I think that there needs to be some degree of authoritarian, arbitrary power. Mostly because I’ve been in anarchist groups in the past, and when everyone has input into a decision, shit gets bogged down really fast. Not everyone understands a given issue and will be able to make an informed choice, and letting opinionated-and-ignorant people make choices that affect the whole group is… Not good.
The problem is, I don’t know how to balance these competing interests, or exactly where authoritarian power should stop. It’s easy to say, well, I should get to make choices about myself, but what about when those individual choices end up impacting other people? For instance, I eat meat, and yet I’m also aware that the cattle industry is a significant source of CO2; my choice, in that case, contributes to climate change, which affects everyone. …And once you start going down that path, it’s really easy to arrive at totalitarianism as the solution.
I also don’t know how to handle the issue of trade and commerce, and at what point it crosses the line into capitalism.
You might be interested in the essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness, which goes over the same concept you speak of with requiring some degree of formalization of structure in order to prevent unaccountable structure from forming. I’m not an Anarchist, though.
I’ll give it a read.
I help with a social group. We jokingly refer to it as anarchism under a lazy iron fist.
Day to day decisions are made in a fairly ad-hoc manner, by those involved. If there is a disagreement that can’t be resolved, or if it will have large repercussions (e.g. changing the fabric of the building) it gets raised to the committee and chairman.
The chairman is the sort who is only there because no one better wanted the role. He has no interest in micromanaging, but will resolve issues to get them to go away.
It’s a remarkably effective system. Unfortunately it’s a bit unstable in large groups. Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power. No one has yet solved the issue however. How the f@#£ do you keep the troublemakers out, when they are also the ones most willing to work towards getting the role?
The other problem with anarchism is that the natural self policing systems break down by the Dunbar limit. Parasitical or cancerous behaviours tend to become crippling, forcing people to adopt other unofficial power structures.
I def. agree with the issues in re: Dunbar’s number. Anarchism can, and does, work pretty well in small groups and communes. But scaling it to the size of a country… Well, that’s the hard part. But if you don’t, then authoritarian countries will eat you alive.
Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power.
That unfortunately seems to be the case with most cops as well; the ones that want to do it out of a sense of civic responsibility seem to get pushed out pretty quickly by the ones that should never have been cops in the first place. And–looping back around to anarchism–cops are a necessary evil because otherwise you quickly end up with vigilante groups that enforce a capricious set of morality and ethics.
My main argument in favour of totalitarianism is the tragedy of the commons. Particularly in these areas: environmentalism, violence, and existential risks (whatever you think those are).
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a self-identifying “totalitarian,” plus the “tragedy of the commons” isn’t really a thing.
Can you explain what you mean about tragedy of the commons not being a thing? It seems inherently obvious. Like do you think it’s not applicable politically, or even in thought experiments like cows in a meadow it still doesn’t apply? In my mind, tragedy of the commons perfectly explains why large corporations pollute instead of respect the environment.
More often than not it’s a thought-terminating cliché. Large corporations polluting isn’t a “tragedy of the commons” issue either, the tragedy of the commons refers to everyone having unmanaged and unfettered access to a resource or tool. That’s a private corporation taking the shortest path to profit.
“Totalitarianism” is not and never will be necessary. Authority is, as revolution, for example, is an authoritarian act against the bourgeoisie. However, the theory of “Totalitarianism” from Arendt is mostly liberal bogus.
Okay fine fine. I’m more of a self-described authoritarian really.
That’s a private corporation taking the shortest path to profit.
Well for instance, if there was only one singular mega-corporation with no competition, I don’t think it would destroy the environment, at least not in a way that would reduce its future profits. My observation is that corporations tend to be more forward-thinking about their own profits than I tend to expect from the way they’re structured. But you can get an advantage over other corporations in the short-term if throw environmentalism to the wayside. In other words, the shortest path to profit and the tragedy of the commons are exactly linked.
I don’t know what a “self-described authoritarian” is, either. That isn’t a political stance.
If there was one singular megacorp, governing all of industry, there would be no competition as you said, and therefore Capitalism would die. The death of Capitalism is inevitable, but reaching such a point would see revolution immediately.
It sounds like you’re basically saying competition is the problem. But competition has benefits and downsides; one of the downsides is tragedy of the commons, which I think is bad enough it warrants eliminating capitalism all by itself. You haven’t really provided a good argument that tragedy of the commons isn’t a real concern.
I don’t believe the death of capitalism is inevitable – that’s why we need to work hard to end it. (Edit: I guess we essentially agree, the difference is fatalism?)
I’m really appreciating how much restraint y’all guys are showing with the downvotes. Thanks everyone.
I’m a pro-downvote extremist and you’ve just made an enemy for life
Mental health focused communities exascerbate their members’ issues
Only when there’s no professional playing a role. A self-help group with professional oversight is great.
I think if we eliminated money, we would just invent it again and call it something else.
Well yah. The alternative is barter and farmers only need so many cell phones and software developers.
The alternative is barter
No. Never has been.
Depends on what you consider “money” and what Mode of Production you have.
Anything you exchange as a representation or substitute for something else of value. I think communism would reinvent what I consider money but wouldn’t use it as it’s used under capitalism.
Some Communist theoreticians consider Labor Vouchers to be distinct from money, as they would be destroyed upon first use and serve more as a “credit” for labor, and would eliminate the concept of accumulation of money from labor exploitation and exchange.
I am aware of this. It’s functionally no different than a dollar bill. The fact that I intend to melt down an axe after I use it to chop a tree down doesn’t make it not an axehead. If I used that same axe to hack my neighbor to death, well, that’s a completely different use. In the case of communist ‘money’, I think we would cease using money to kill our neighbor.
I don’t understand how the issues of money persist if you can only earn LVs through labor, and can’t be accumulated through Capital ownership. Why would you kill your neighbor?
I wouldn’t kill my neighbor? Was that too complicated an example? I think that money, like an axe, is a tool that can be used differently in different contexts. ‘Money’ isn’t the issue. How it’s used is the issue, which is why I think we would invent it. You don’t solve the ‘issues’ of an axe. You don’t solve the ‘issues’ of money. Capitalism uses stand-ins for value to harm people, but I am not convinced it’s an inherent trait of value stand-ins. I think LV’s are money, so I think you think that is true also.
I’m asking what’s wrong with money that carries over to LVs. Why is money an issue?
I don’t like racism against white people or sexism against men. Do I think they’re less urgent or worrying than bigotry directed at other groups? Sure. There’s less hate against men and whites compared to other groups, and bigotry against them doesn’t have the same social or political impact due to current systemic racism and sexism being directed at others. But bigotry is still bigotry, and I don’t like bigotry against anyone.
I think it’s important to differentiate systemic racism from bigotry. There are some people who have a definition of “racism” that actually means “systemic racism,” and they make a more compelling case that “racism against white people” doesn’t exist.
I’m of the opinion that systemic racism against white people is pretty rare, but you can find it in niche communities, not as much society as a whole. I also think of systemic racism as being about inequity rather than inequality; but if you were to consider it as being about inequality instead of inequity, then you could make a case that e.g. affirmative action is systemic racism against white people.
A lot of this is semantics, which is a distraction from real problem solving.
As a woman I’m not a fan of calling men simple or easy. They’ve just been conditioned differently, and that’s a continued part of the patriarchy.
Freedom of speech for absolutely everyone, especially people I disagree with and that disagree with me
Yep. Lemme isn’t really a fan if free speech and they usually say it leads to nazi things. But I’m all for free speech even if bad guys use it too.
Also the freedom to punch each other in the sternum
Insane take. We don’t have the right to physical violence just for a difference of opinion.
Who said anything about opinions?
I did. We were talking about freedom of speech, so opinions and beliefs are about the only things people really disagree about to the point of violence with regards to speech.
punches you in the sternum
Why you would do this?
Words make my head hurt
