Yeah, down with the violence of the state! Although, to prevent bad actors and armed gangs we do need to have some sort of militia to protect the vulnerable from the greedy and cruel, human nature being what it is. And to prevent said militia from turning into the very thing it was supposed to protect us from, we need some sort of oversight, preferably from a democratically elected body, that tells the militia how to act and prevent them from violating the rights of the people. Oh wait I just reinvented violence of the state hehe.
People in Somalia hearing that America has a 1.8% homelessness rate: “wow. Things are really just as bad over there.”
That’s not what anarchists refer to as a state.
A common anarchist definition of the state is: The institutionized power structure which alienates people from the businesses of their daily lives.
If the whole constituency of the community that the militia protects is involved in controlling that militia, that’s not state violence anymore.
A common anarchist definition of the state is: The institutionized power structure which alienates people from the businesses of their daily lives.
So not the government at all, right? Because they aren’t responsible for hardly any alienating in my experience. I would attribute any alienating I feel to corporations.
What would happen to those corporations without the government enforcing their property? Have you ever tried to seize a McDonalds to distribute food to the homeless?
People have property rights too. I wouldn’t want someone seizing the food in my fridge to feed the homeless. Property rights are a good thing actually. The problem isn’t the government “protecting” corporations. It’s that wealth grants a greater degree of control over government due to corruption.
Ultimately though it’s a pointless discussion since anarchists are never going to see what they envision implemented beyond weirdo hippie commune towns because their ideas don’t scale up.
I wouldn’t want anyone to seize the food in your fridge. Unless with “seize” you mean “fill up unprompted” because people know you need to eat and that’s enough reason to give you food, and maybe you’re busy all the time with constructing bridges or whatnot so they also cook for you.
And while corruption is an issue, it’s not the only issue: The very act of having lots of capital to throw around allows companies to direct policy, you e.g. don’t need to grease hands to get different municipalities to overbid each other with tax breaks for your new fidget spinner factory. The BS is inherent in the system.
As to scaling: Possibly. Possibly not. I’d argue that it can’t yet be envisioned, not even by anarchists themselves (and we’re aware of that, hence all the gradualism)… but as you acknowledged that it can work in the small, what happens if all the municipalities we have turn into hippie communes? Would they elect, among themselves, an Emperor Commune to rule over them? I don’t think so. They’d find ways to cooperate at eye level. How that will look in detail, as said, I have no idea, it’s probably going to involve federation and plenty of subsidiarity.
Practically, right now, it makes no difference as most of us are not living in hippie commune towns. First step would be to get there, then we can think about luxury gay space anarchism.
Those small communes only work because everyone is opting in for the anarchist model. Most people have no interest in that model, and so it will never scale beyond such small communities where everyone opts in.
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated. The human brain craves an “us versus them” narrative. You know this to be true, because your brain does it too, even if you suppress that part of your brain, it’s still there and you’re aware of it. Some of us can rise above it, but we all know that especially in large groups, humans revert to their more base instincts. The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC? Not some hypothetical group of people who’ve all drunk the anarchism Kool aid. Literally just how does it work in a city that big with regular people who haven’t read your anarchist newsletter? Because you will never get everyone to agree that anarchism is the way to go. So you’re going to have to come up with a model that works for people even if they don’t want to be part of it.
Most people have no interest in that model,
Why? Would it not be in their self-interest? Enlightened self-interest, that is. If it is, and they still have no interest, what makes them choose otherwise? How do we free them from that kind of conditioning?
It especially isn’t going to work as soon as you reach the scale where tribalism sets in. That’s a natural human behaviour and cannot be eliminated.
That is true but also overstated. Over here in Europe we’re tribalist AF going down to the village level, doesn’t mean that we’re at each other’s throats. At least off the football pitch, that is.
The only way to prevent that tendency from dominating society is with the structure imposed by a government.
You’re overstating the power that governments have – they all, by necessity, even the likes of North Korea, govern by assent or acquiescence from the governed it’s a simple numbers game. It is a question of culture, not of having police at every corner. Who, btw, in many places do the exact opposite of reducing tribal tensions.
Like, how exactly would you envision anarchism working in NYC, with the current population of NYC?
NYC isn’t a good place to start moving towards an anarchist municipality. Plenty of anarchists in NYC, doing their neigbourhood thing, but capturing Manhattan is pretty much impossible without full smaller cities haven gotten the bug first. It’s like starting a D&D campaign as low-level character and saying “but this is pointless, I can’t even slay ancient dragons”.
Attempting the impossible is a sure-fire way to be disappointed. To feel disheartened, powerless, fatalist. To then fail to achieve the possible. Consider Anarchism not as a vision that is to be realised, or even provable in your lifetime, but as a compass to guide your direction: Can you take a step? Then what’s stopping you? Let things yet beyond the horizon be things beyond the horizon, they might not even exist any more once you get there. What’s the worst that can happen, that you made the world a bit of a better place? I’d take that risk.
I beg your pardon? what is the whole justice system if not the alienation of the community to settle their disputes?
I don’t feel alienated by the justice system. Maybe it’s because I don’t live in America. Corporations infringe on my enjoyment of my life a lot more than the government ever does. The only interactions I ever have with the justice system is when the police come to my neighborhood to shut up a domestic disturbance which is usually much appreciated on my part.
Also, the government provides all kinds of valuable services and benefits that I interact with every day. They build the roads that the corner shop across the street uses to get deliveries, they send out trash and recycling collectors every week, they run the clean water and power to my home, they maintain firefighting services and national free healthcare infrastructure. Sure they could be doing a bit better at some of these things, but I wouldn’t say I feel alienated by them.
Meanwhile corporations are constantly worsening my interactions with them, bombarding me with new and innovative forms of psychological warfare designed to trick me into giving them my money in exchange for something I don’t really need.
You’re describing alienation. You give power to an entity alien to you/the community. You could have mitigated the disturbances in your neighborhood together with your community. Sending the cops wont fix the issue systemically, though. The best they can do is take someone away.
All these services don’t need a hierarchical state.
The state is the entity protecting these corporations by enforcing their property rights.
So… If the police force is made of local people who are from your community and the sheriff is an elected official from the community…? It’s not like the feds are coming for these purposes.
The cops are always around, and seems like a pretty systemic fix to me.
Then the cops/sherrif cease to be members of the community, since you’ve introduced a hierarchy. You always know that the cop has power over you or they wouldn’t be a cop.
The “fix” is about as systemic as constantly taking pain meds for when you alway bonk your head on something. It adresses the symptom, not the underlying issue.
Wow, so today I learned anarchists and sov cits aren’t as discernible as I would have thought.
No, you’ve decided to learn nothing, today.
All these services don’t need a hierarchical state.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts? Or pick up trash? Obviously not. Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes. Boom, hierarchical state. The rest is just details.
Like it or not, the world is too big and complicated for everyone to live in self-governing communities anymore. Like imagine applying what you’re suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
You think people will just build roads out of the goodness of their hearts?
No, I think people build roads because they themselves decided in a council that roads needed to be built.
Or pick up trash?
You act as if there aren’t whole histories of volunteer work in the world. If you get lost in the alps and mountain rescue saves you, pretty much none of them are getting paid, for example.
Those services have to be performed by somebody who is getting paid, and in order to pay them, you need to levy taxes.
I find you lack in societal creativety sad.
Like imagine applying what you’re suggesting to a densely packed population centre like New York. It makes no sense.
Imagine trying to manage such a big society by giving decision power to fewer people who can’t possibly fathom the complexity of the system they’re trying to control.
If the whole constituency of the community that the militia protects is involved in controlling that militia,
Like having the militia answer to a democratically-elected government?
No, to councils, not representatives with a free mandate.
“We’ve changed the names of our institutions! That totally justifies burning society to the ground.”
Nice strawman, homie.
“I don’t understand something even after being given the answer, I’ll make fun of it instead!”
A handful of meaningless jargon is not an answer.
To be fair, your explanations have been pretty shit, so
Sounds like a cross-over episode with libertarianism to me.
Yeah… libertarian socialism. It’s *older that right-wing so-called “libertarianism”/anarcho-capitalism.
Representatives don’t have a free mandate in a democracy, they’re bound by laws and by their constituency.
How are your councils formed and what restricts their power?
Please read up on what a free mandate is. Especially compared to an imperative mandate.
The gouncils are made up of the people. Their power is restricted by a breathing constitution based on consensus.
Sigh, it always ends up being a semantic issue because people hear “anarchist” and think “no government”. When really, the political philosophy of anarchism is a little different.
And then, the confusion about everyday political terms like “state”, “government”, etc. arises, were most people havenothing, but vibes-based definitions at hand. 🙄
Oh wait I just reinvented violence of the state hehe
Except if the state is a community voting on how they should be policed, it isn’t really violence, is it?
It is, that community will still have its marginalized groups that don’t get representation, and if anything, on a smaller scale it’s harder to form a group that would argue for necessary support for these people
on a smaller scale it’s harder to form a group that would argue for necessary support for these people
Idk, I kinda gotta disagree with that. Sure, mob violence against “undesirables” is always gonna be a problem, but communities know each other and are less likely to see different constituent groups as “outsiders”
But in this specific example, where we are talking about “how do we decide who gets to use violence to keep the peace,” I think community-based democratic approaches are the best option.
I also gotta disagree with
that community will still have its marginalized groups that don’t get representation
because by definition, if there is a marginalized group, they are not part of that community, and instead would form their own peacekeepers, like Guardian Angels.
Obviously there is a benefit to federalization, I’m not arguing for nor do I support statelessness, but I think if democracy is emphasized from the ground up, those issues naturally tend to erode. Like I think the core problem which necessitates the federal government stepping in to ensure rights comes from a lack of democracy.
but communities know each other and are less likely to see different constituent groups as “outsiders”
Tell that to every gay kid who grew up in a small rural Christian town…
form their own peacekeepers
So you expect every marginalized group to have their own personal cops? What about cross-sectional minorities. I don’t know how this works in your head but whatever you’re trying to say here is not translating well.
So you expect every marginalized group to have their own personal cops?
That is so clearly not what I’m saying, have a good day.
So not the person you’re replying to but maybe instead of disengaging you reevaluate and rephrase because following along that’s sure as shit how I read it too and if that’s not your idea, what is?
I don’t think community policing is state violence.
No it’s still definitely violence. Like, day to day, you try to use violence as little as possible but it is necessary for the laws of society to be backed by violence or people would ignore them. “Violence” doesn’t have to refer to killing people, it means the use of force against somebody without their consent (killing them, arresting them, or evicting/exiling them).
The state we have right now in America and most of Europe is a community that decides how it wants to be policed (i.e. a democracy). Different jurisdictions make different policing decisions and have different outcomes, but they all follow that structure.
The point I was making was that any attempt by anarchists to “overthrow the state” is silly because the “state” will return in a new form as power reconsolidates. If you consider a recognized federal or state government to be a “state” but an armed “anarchist” militia that runs a city to not be a state, that’s just a silly semantic argument.
Wow, that’s an impressively large strawman you built! Did you do that all on your own or through the mutual cooperation of other parties?
Yeah, this is a point espoused by people who see themselves as wolves, but end up finding out they are actually pigs.
I was about to say. Everyone here who is looking at this through a laptop or phone are guilty of violence according to this comic.
By killing all people who own land?
That’s a good start.
This doesn’t work as well without the rest of the comic.
I don’t think anyone who has done any thinking on this topic would deny this, but our hypocrisy does not mean that change isn’t desired or is somehow impossible.
Naomi Klein has written well on this topic in her book Doppelganger, which is the first place I ever heard this concept mapped out in all its dark detail.
I’ll just paste the Q & A here, because I think it’s important that people read it. You can look up more on this yourselves:
Q: You also write about another kind of shadow self, borrowing a formulation from the writer Daisy Hildyard—the idea being that, while we’re typing on iPhones, we also exist in rare-earth mines alongside poisoned teen-age laborers. The awareness of the plunder and damage inherent in the idealized American life has increased, but so, perhaps, has the lived acceptance of it, and the result is a simmering sense of unease.
NK: I quote James Baldwin a lot in the book, because I think he’s probably the most powerful theorist of the fear of what Hildyard is talking about. She calls it the second body—the shadow self that’s implicated in all of these systems that are unveiled. It isn’t just that they’re hard to look at, it’s also that we are implicated; we are not apart from them. There is my body sitting in this chair, and there’s my other body, hovering over the tax dollars funding drone warfare, implicated in oil wars, implicated in the plastic in the ocean. That’s not other people—that’s me, that’s us.
Emphasis mine. I just chose this link because it’s free. Not the original source.
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I hate it when I’m accidentally defending the concept of private property. Both sides are the same, what do words even mean really.
“Violence [is] The supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived.” - Robert A Heinlein
https://www.britannica.com/topic/state-monopoly-on-violence
And nation states rob their subjects of this option.
Edit: can someone explain their downvote to me? I’m not advocating violence, only saying that nation states hold a monopoly on it.
Re-reading my comment, I kind of maybe was a bit agressive when I wrote it. Fuck it, take the power back.
Well yeah, that is the social contract. It’s how society works.
Contracts are not something you are born into, raised to fit it’s clauses, and unable to opt out of.
Society is one thing, nation states another. They’re relatively new and not a great system IMO. I believe we can do better.
Decentralized autonomus scalable communities would be better.
To quote my own comment;
“I like to think of economies (and nation-states) as loosely coupled monolithic legacy systems.
Due to poor developer practices and lack of architecture, parts of these systems have poorly written functions that hog 99% of the resources. You would not try to patch or update such a poorly designed system because there is no way to correct all the myriad built-up legacy back-doors, bugs, privilege escalation vulnerabilities, etc. The systems have been completely corrupted and cannot be recovered. We would like to avoid shutting off the hardware on which these systems run (the human race).
So we slowly drain away processing power to power up a new properly designed scalable system.
This new system is intentionally designed to avoid all pitfalls of the old system. It purposefully avoids attempts at privilege escalation, resource hogging, and doesn’t allow bad coding practices. Through scalable architecture, we implement a modular and resilient system that is decentralized and federated. Better yet, this new system is written in a language that is incompatible with the old system; they can only interface via APIs specifically designed to minimally interface with the old and unsafe system.
Of course, you’re right, it’s not independent or tamper-proof, but we can sure as shit try to make it that way!”
Seems like you read too much Engels.
I mean its totally accurate, Pretty much all countries today can trace their current borders back to violence, most land ownership traces back to violence, laws are one way or another enforced by the threat of violence…
Anarchists don’t seek authority, though.
That wolf does though.
Where?
He devoured the pig and took his land. How is that not using violence?
No one ever claimed that it wasn’t violent. That’s the whole punchline.
I mean, this is literally an advocacy for racist authoritarianism, tho.
It’s advocacy for “might makes right”.
If the little piggies had grown up in the wild, they would be Razorbacks and would rip the wolf to shreds and then eat him. Or perhaps the little piggies could have spent some of their wealth contracting wolfhounds to keep their houses safe. Instead, they trusted to their ivory-tower theories and got eaten.
Wolfs do not normally loose to individual wild pigs
A typical wolf may kill 50 boars in a year and especially preys on piglets
That’s why I used plural forms
How?
“I can take things from those people that are different from me because I’m physically stronger than them and might makes right. You should do the same.”
The wolf who killed the pig distributed the pig’s land and resources to other wolves. This is wolf-supremacy with a supreme leader.
Why “racist”?
Because he distributed land he took from pigs to his wolf friends. Even if you consider it as an analogy, you’re dehumanizing the pigs.
Anarchist theory is pretty much the opposite of that or “might makes right”.
If you’re waiting for a powerful military force to end capitalism and allocate resources as their leader wishes, that’s not anarchy. That’s just new management.
fdafgood thing that’s not what I’m aiming for then? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Woah, he is bad!
And big
And
hotI mean basedNo, no, he’s also hot, no need to deny your inner truth
The two aren’t mutually exclusive!
The fourth little pig build it’s house out of the skulls of wolves. Which wasn’t very stable, but it sure got the message across.
The fourth little.pig built his house out of depleted uranium and the wolf was like “dude… What the fuck?”
What fourth pig? The wolf ate the rich, they’re gone.
So what you’re saying is that it’s okay for me to just walk into someone’s home, murder the entire family and just live there now because I’m the most violent of all?
You just described colonialism.
That’s literally American history.
That’s literally most of world history.
Not even limited to humans.
Yup, until the authorities turn up with their monopoly on violence and deprive you of your newly gained property
Is lemmy okay today
No one said it was right, just that without violence or the threat thereof, you can’t have private property rights
What they’re saying is that all rights are derived from force. The state that enforces your rights uses force to do so. This comic is mostly dunking on anarcho capitalists, in that they seemingly believe that property rights are magic.
That’s literally how states formed and they consider themselves as legitimate.
If they have one home, no.
If they have 100’s of homes …
That anarchist wolf would make for a sick tattoo
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You!
We were robbed of a truly incredibly human being when Graeber passed away. I’m a huge fan of “Debt: The First 5000 Years”. And I’m heartbroken that “Bullshit Jobs” was the last publication he produced.
You may be happy to know he and David Wengrow wrote The Dawn of Everything. It was published posthumously but his fingerprints are all over it. Great book to boot! Pirate Enlightenment was also published posthumously. Haven’t had a chance to read it but I think it’s safe to assume it’s great too.
I really loved it (Pirate Enlightenment) as well. It’s not as life changing a read as Debt or Dawn, but its a nice story and gives a little hope in the emergent nature of democracy. Who doesn’t love a pirate story?
That only applies to news articles, not political essays. Those have titles not headlines.
Betteridge talks about something fundamentally different. Read the essay, it’s really short.
I skimmed it. It’s bullshit. Reminds me of the “not technically a lie but essentially a lie” bullshit that the door-to-door “have you heard the Good News” religious bastards would try to sucker you in with when I was a kid in the South. A lot of “like us” type bullshit.
If you’re stupid enough, you might think it makes sense. But it’s a fairytale.
I’m not saying the author is stupid. I’m saying he’s maliciously pandering to stupid people.
Let’s take a super quick example.
If there’s a line to get on a crowded bus, do you wait your turn and refrain from elbowing your way past others even in the absence of police? If you answered “yes”
I’ll try to get past my gag reflex at how condescending this is. But sure. Start with an eminently, universally reasonable position.
The most basic anarchist principle is self-organization
Still sounds fairly reasonable, but the intelligent among you might be thinking “hmm, sounds pretty reductive”
Everyone believes they are capable of behaving reasonably themselves. If they think laws and police are necessary, it is only because they don’t believe that other people are. But if you think about it, don’t those people all feel exactly the same way about you?
Now we’ve gone fully into “only really dumb people aren’t skeptical at this point” territory. I mean, first of all, in the interest of saving your mental health, it’s a decent idea to ignore any statement that starts with “but if you think about it”. However even going past that, you get to the premise: “I’m a good person, therefore everyone is a good person!” Which is…like…seven-year-old logic.
Anarchists argue that almost all the anti-social behavior which makes us think it’s necessary to have armies, police, prisons, and governments to control our lives, is actually caused by the systematic inequalities and injustice
This is the part where we go off the deep end. The author hopes you’re either not paying attention or are really stupid at this point.
Yeah I was like “maybe I was wrong” but then I came to that part and just had to laugh.
I would love to assume that everyone is benevolent - but they simply are not. It’s not like there aren’t sufficient examples of states without police or military power. They surely don’t correspond to this fantastical view.
Look at how people responded to the COVID pandemic and you will see that human beings are terrible at looking out for their community.
I read your comment, then I read
I’ll try to get past my gag reflex at how condescending this is.
again and I thought to myself: “Hell, if that’s not the pot calling the kettle black!”
With that much antagonistic priming, any political essay will be interpreted as gondescending bullshit.
If you’re that easily swayed into believing something is bullshit, I can see how you got into anarchism.
You shouldn’t see it as bullshit because of “priming”. You should see it as bullshit because it’s bullshit.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse intensifies!
Underappreciated TTRPG
While I find anarchist ideas intriguing, I don’t like how the comic seems to encourage a violent takeover of property like this.
yep. classic “the bad guy is actually good bc i drew him as a cool furry”
When interpreting the comic, I find it interesting to keep in mind that a wolf pack is a family unit, consisting of parents of children. So the wolf is taking the property for his family. The comic is advocating banditry, basically.
I don’t like how the comic seems to encourage a violent takeover of property like this.
May have something to do with the fact that the capitalists have armies of state-funded paramilitaries called “police” that makes any kind of peaceful takeover utterly impossible.
What would a “peaceful takeover” even look like?
Out-competing and out-organising them. Decommodifying things, e.g. things like housing cooperatives and similar are an antidote to the real-estate market. Also, capturing even state structures, replacing hierarchical power into horizontal relations where you can, no topic is too small there. If the stars align just right simply changing the way the city’s road planning authorities communicates, how it comes to decisions, can cause a cultural shift making the electorate want to have more of that stuff. With a thousand little things organised that way it becomes harder and harder for the people at large to not ask “hey why aren’t we doing this big thing like that”.
Ultimately, the enemy is not one particular thing but the idea that organisation necessarily involves hierarchy and domination.
None of that sounds impossible. Housing cooperatives (“andelsbolig” in Danish) are quite common in Denmark - I even live in one myself.
A Care Bears episode. Any attempt at solidarity with the police ends with them turning on the rest of us. It’s how they got unions and everyone else still had to fight to get them
It’s hardly been peaceful, though.
Where I live, The police are generally worse armed than the population. They’re also haven’t been any unwarranted police shootings in my memory. The only police shooting that I can remember happening in the came with a whole firefight. Unfortunately, this is generally uncommon in the more authoritarian states.
A peaceful takeover would in my mind involve a democratic decision to do the takeover - I don’t see how the police would stand in the way of that. The bigger issue would seem to me to be convincing people to vote for such a democratic decision. But at least that is a peaceful path.
a democratic decision to do the takeover
That’s why you are not allowed anything that remotely resembles democracy - instead, you get an interactive horse and pony show every few years where you are allowed to choose which gang of racketeers gets to represent the rich’s interests.
u don’t see how the police would stand in the way of that.
They are standing in the way of that right now. It’s their only function - it’s the only function they have ever had and ever will have.
But at least that is a peaceful path.
There is no peaceful way to dismantle capitalism. The capitalists and their cronies has seen to that.
That’s why you are not allowed anything that remotely resembles democracy
I don’t agree with that. I think the Danish democratic political system is functioning quite well, all things considered.
Don’t you guys still have a King who was born into wealth because his great great great great grandfather killed the most people and took their land?
The monarchy is slightly controversial but the majority of danes like it. There are certain benefits - if we didn’t have a king, we’d need a president instead who would be a much more politically divisive figure than the king is. As it is, the king is a much more uniting figure. We also don’t need to have elections for the president or any of that stuff.
And no, of course he has no real power. Which is honestly good, cause a president would have more power than that. I personally prefer the situation as it is right now. The king stays because the people say so - that is also democracy.
That you accept the child of the wolf as your king doesn’t change that your King was born into wealth because of the violence of his ancestors.
I don’t agree with that.
You don’t have to agree with it… reality is not on your side.
I think the Danish democratic political system is functioning quite well
You can’t even tell what qualifies as democratic or not - how can you tell if there is anything democratic about Denmark?
Have you even bothered to check how many factories and workplaces in Denmark are democratically run?
Yes? No?
Codetermination: German law specifically mandates democratic worker participation in the oversight of workplaces with 2000 or more employees. Similar laws exist in Denmark for businesses with more than 20 workers and France for businesses with more than 5000 workers.
Damn that wasn’t hard to find
It’s 35 employees in Denmark, btw.
But yeah… “industrial democracy” does exist in some places in Europe.
There is no way to peacefully dismantle capitalism
Just stop using money. Don’t engage with billionaires. Go live off-grid on a tiny plot of farmland and get it registered as a church so you don’t pay taxes. Tada, you are now free of capitalism.
If you have enough money to buy a tenth of an acre of land ($500) and a tent, then stop pretending like your continued engagement with billionaires is anyone’s fault but your own.
But I don’t want to live in a tent
Living in a tent is far better than our early ancestors lived, but alright. Find someone willing to build you a house for free, then. Or you can barter it for a goat.
But my living in a tent won’t end capitalism
Yes, you cannot end capitalism on your own. Unless you’re suggesting that you should you have the authority to stop others from doing capitalism just because you don’t like it?
But if everyone lived off grid, the government would come in and kill them
Millions of people are currently living off-grid in the US and the government has protected and continues to protect their right to do so. Don’t assume that everyone in the US (or wherever you are, Russia probably) is a capitalist just because you surround yourself with capitalists.
But historically the government has killed people
“The government” is not an entity. There are tons of different governments at all different levels, and you need to look at their behavior in aggregate rather than looking at individual examples. In aggregate, most people find that democratic governments keep them safe, fed, and healthy.
Oh look… a liberal arguing with itself!
How are those millions coming along, temporarily embarrassed billionaire?
Oh look, someone who thinks they’re being clever embarrassing themselves in public
I’m not the one arguing with myself on a public forum, genius - you are.
If the little piggy were a capitalist instead of a libertarian, he would have a pack of wolfhounds who would fuck that wolf up if he came near the piggy’s house.
The moral of the story:
Liberal > anarchist > libertarian
Without a government to keep them in check, the wolfhounds would be the ones in charge, and everybody would have to pay them or their shit would get wrecked.
Yep. That’s why the piggies set up a system of government. If the wolfhounds start going back on their word, society collapses and the wolves move in. With an orderly system, enforced by the wolfhounds who themselves are subject to the democracy set up by the piggies, everyone’s house stays up and wolves are kept back.
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Yet this is what a state is anarchism must devolve into.
I think that’s a bit extreme - there are many different varieties of anarchism (some even say that every anarchist has their own definition, which makes the term itself very non-descript). Some might need to devolve to violence but I’m not convinced all of them do.
The ultimate way to show dominance is to eat your opponent. I’m craving BBQ for dinner, thanks Lemmy!!
I do wish there were content labels though - people on Reddit avoid the Fediverse b/c of its “extremist political views”, which limits our growth.
Fwiw I do enjoy the comic on a personal level.
people on Reddit avoid the Fediverse b/c of its “extremist political views"
If you’re a Reddit regular, you might want to throw stones. The Fediverse exists in large part because of the extremist political views of Reddit administrators.
You’re behind the times. Censorship and capitalist exploitation is mainstream now.
I haven’t been for weeks, but got sent there today from Lemmy and saw this https://old.reddit.com/r/RedditAlternatives/comments/1cv9g73/after_recent_fuckup_from_reddit_what_is_decent/.
https://lemmy.eus/comment/106486
Unsurprising that Reddit would fill up with posts trashing Lemmy, given that they’ll ban users prostylitizing it.
Because folks are notoriously open and welcoming to people explicitly pushing something. “No soliciting” signs are almost completely unheard of.
Reddit, famous for not having ads.
Reddit, also famous for people complaining and leaving the platform because of the ads.
And then not doing it, sure.
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Existential Comics aren’t advocating any of these philosophical/ideological arguments. Its usually about it being funny to inject these things where we wouldn’t normally expect them, or to have well-known philosophers behave out of character, etc.
The last bullet point rule of this community says:
Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
However, the cute little piggy is literally being eaten alive - look at his cute whittle frowny face! Why, he is shocked, shocked I say, shocked! … but perhaps capitalist piggy should not be quite so shocked, hrm?:-P In any case, it is “gore”:
Murder, bloodshed, violence.
What makes it “funny” is the dehumanization - the play between how piggy wanted to devour the wolf('s work product), but instead got devoured himself, the implication being that the turnabout is fair play. I get it, I do think it’s funny, it is an inspiring message, and if I had seen a gore warning I would have clicked past it and enjoyed it. Although, I will say that the gore portion does seem unnecessary - if capitalist piggy had been like on a treadmill hooked up to make electricity for the wolf, that would have worked almost as well to convey a message, without escalation. Anyway, I’m not here to criticize the author in any way, and the latter suggestion in particular does seem to spoil the purity of the vision, where what is best for the wolf is decided by himself (the carnivorous, apparently hungry wolf), not by either piggy or the external viewer. It’s the ultimate anarchist freedom - maybe wolf will get shot in the evening, but this afternoon he dines on piggy!!
My points though are: (1) intellectual honesty - we can do whatever we want but why can’t we follow our own rules that we claim to follow, in the rules tab? Is this truly “fun for people of all ages”, REALLY? and (2) If we want to grow the Fediverse, e.g. to get more content, then like it or not we must either restrict ourselves to post solely more mainstream stuff (booo - yes that’s right I’m booing this suggestion, bc I very much like an eclectic variety of message content and format), or else label the things that most “average” people are going to find objectionable. Like porn, I’m not suggesting to ban it, only label it so that it doesn’t catch people unawares. Otherwise, back to intellectual honesty, we should just give up trying to claim that we want to grow the Fediverse, and accept that we don’t really mean it - this is what it is, apparently, and we are never going to invest efforts to change it.
Right now, I am too ashamed to continue recommending the Fediverse to anyone else, as I have done several times in the past, if it is going to remain something that only the MOST extreme among leftists are going to be able to enjoy, and even among that crowd, the subset that ignores our own rules set up for our very selves.
K
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No he’s not.
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Go read some other existential comics, some are hilarious.
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The only proper response when a liberal tries to hide behind the NAP no one can freely or willingly enter into a contract under duress of starvation and homelessness.
No liberal has ever mentioned the NAP.
I didn’t even know what NAP was until a few weeks ago. Marx and Smith never used the initialism.
You have to be into Libertarianism or have debated Libertarians to know what NAP stands for.
“American Libertarians” are acolytes of Economic liberalism. They fetishize Adam Smith. Economic liberalism is generally referred to as liberalism. They are definitionally liberals. Not libertarians.
You mean libertarian. LIberals aren’t stupid enough to believe in a silly non aggression pact.
They call themselves libertarian. But they aren’t. They don’t believe in public ownership of natural resources. A core precept of Libertarianism. Or many of the other things actual libertarians do. Also the NAP isn’t a libertarian thing itself. The man who coined and defined the term PARTICIPATED IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. The NAP is a thought short circuiting exercise designed by Rothbard 100 years after the establishment of Libertarianism. To discourage and alienate actual libertarians from the group.
Those that often call themselves libertarian babble about the invisible hand of the market. As well as fetishizing Adam Smith and his ideology. Economic liberalism. Because they are liberals. In the actual political definition of the term. Not the modern colloquial misuse of the term.
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Being a con doesn’t mean it’s liberalism. It just means it’s a con.
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Well it’s definitely not liberalism. It’s such an extreme, it’s well past what liberals would consider effective policy. It’s way beyond laissez-faire capitalism, which is typically the rightmost edge of liberalism. Dunno what you’d call that, but liberalism it ain’t.
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To me a cheeseburger is a helicopter
Then there’s also the little issue of them denying that such a thing as a social contract exists, and I never signed no NAP so I cannot possibly be bound to it.
