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Does this thread really count as checking the bubble or are we just blowing hot air into another bubble
the only true path forward is the destruction of the cheez wiz industrial complex
(In an ideal world I agree with CrimzonSamurai but it's gonna be a motherfucker to get there if we ever do)
If our bubble gets big enough we can absorb the other bubble and then we'll be a sweet-ass giant bubble and we can really get some shit done.
(In an ideal world I agree with CrimzonSamurai but it's gonna be a motherfucker to get there if we ever do)
If our bubble gets big enough we can absorb the other bubble and then we'll be a sweet-ass giant bubble and we can really get some shit done.
liberals are as bad as conservatives for all i care
"Is fighting for social justice actually a bubble?? Are we actually the baddies for treating marginalized groups as people??"
if being leftist is a bubble or an echo chamber, then society was a mistake and i want off this rock
"Is fighting for social justice actually a bubble?? Are we actually the baddies for treating marginalized groups as people??"
if being leftist is a bubble or an echo chamber, then society was a mistake and i want off this rock
Yeah, that is a question I had for people suggesting alternatives in here. How do alternative systems address issues such as climate change?
Well in an anarchist or communist system, the removal of capitalism would allow for the end of prioritization of profit over environmental health. This would make the transition away from fossil fuels much easier. Anarchism is better for this because statist communism still allows for capital it just places it all in the hands of the state, which is why the Soviet industrial complex was just as brutal as a capitalist one. In that system the political class would still find it in its best interest to continue environmental destruction for the sake of state productivity. Whereas a hierarchy-free working class would find it much easier to recognize that environmental stability is in the best interest of the whole population because of solidarity.
Okay, but the question still remains, who owns all that stuff? Because it's certainly not people in the middle/lower class.
Take software companies shifting to a renting/service model where you subscribe to their products instead of owning them. Will people need to rent everything from a company in the future? What will they own that's theirs? What prevents this from being abused by the capital owners, like it is today? See: landlords, IP holders, supply chain monopolies, etc.
If these problems exist today, why would they not continue to exist in the future? Capitalism doesn't have an answer for this. The best answer capitalists can come up with is "regulatory agencies will step in when it detects abuse", but this just shifts the problem. Both you and I know regulatory capture is another recurrent problem in capitalism and there's no solution for regulatory capture within the confines of capitalism. People seem to assume "it just won't be a problem" but they rarely explain why.
To add to CrimsonSamurai's response, socialism and anarchism place an emphasis on democratization of labor and organization. In this clime of ours where regular people are engaged and alarmed, yet stifled by corporate and governmental interests, turning the levers of power over to them suggests that more would be done at a greater pace.
Not to mention that the concentration of wealth on the people who will do whatever it takes to gain more wealth, creates a group of people with an immense amount of wealth to which no democracy can stand up. That kind of wealth in the hands of so few who are willing to abuse it as long as they don't get "caught", means that they will always search for, find, and use loopholes around protection against corruption in the democratic system.
Actually that's a good question. Why do you think humans grouped up into states? Cause as I recall from my history classes, it was largely due to singular people or families acquiring wealth and power over their surroundings. Beyond that, people just kinda lived their lives until their lords and masters told them to go fight other people just trying to live their lives for their land and wealth.
Yes, nobody ever fought over land or resources or because they just felt like it until the dirty rich showed up and told them
Why would NIMBYism not operate at an even bigger scale in this case? Regular people are engaged and alarmed, yet are they REALLY willing to sacrifice to do more? I'm not sure they would be.
They discovered agriculture and increased birth rates with centralized food production?
Many are willing to sacrifice more than corporations and their government representatives are. How far does that extend? Open question. In any case, NIMBYism loses much of its power with such a systemic change. The home still exists, but the commons are everywhere and shared. Everyone has a stake in their preservation, and not just the corporation that holds the land for its own uses.
You're confusing states with civilizations and societies. People have always self-organized, the state apparatus came to be as it is because of advancements in technology for violence that enabled population control. Your argument only holds weight against anarcho-primitivism, which is not considered a serious doctrine by the overwhelming majority of anarchists. Nobody is saying we abandon surplus agriculture and go back to hunter-gatherer tribalism. Anarchist collectives would essentially be "states" but they don't really fit that definition because they wouldn't have centralized political structures or geographic borders. Anarchism means "without rulers, not without rules." It's order born out of cooperation and solidarity, and not forced by the heavy and violent hand of governments or market economies.
Well we can't really shut that pandora's box no matter what the prims say
I understand that it's a pretty fringe view in socialism and anarchism that the clock must be turned back. We can take inspiration from aspects of the past, but history happened. Material conditions changed. The future we build will have to change with them.
Without permanent private property there isn't a back yard to gripe over. I think a utilities worker's collective would be quite willing to destroy their dangerous and toxic coal plants in favor of constructing wind, solar, and geothermal farms, and once those are in place they could be sufficiently automated if members of that collective would rather go about making art, poetry, music, or anything else they want to do that they weren't able to because they had to work that specific job because of the circumstances of capitalism, mainly that their basic survival was tied to their labor.
Civilizations fight over resources. States fight over power. And we've moved well beyond the need to fight over resources - we produce enough to feed the world's population and then some. We have more empty houses than houseless people in much of the world. We have plenty. It's just not distributed correctly because of the profit motive and the commodification of basic human needs, which is fueled by the state to maintain the wealth of the powerful.
Nothing is stopping cleaner energy right now, hell it would even be profitable to get to do it but it's still not happening, why would it be more likely in your scenario.
Hillary found out the hard way that coal workers don't want to build wind farms even if the reeducation was paid for
People still go hungry today despite us producing enough food to feed the world. First world countries waste an assload of food and people in those countries go hungry despite there not being a lack of food for them.
It is a strange feature of capitalism that a country can both waste 40% of its food production but also have 12% of people go hungry.
We've already long since solved the production problem of food, but we haven't solved the distribution problem and it's becoming increasingly clear capitalism has no intention of solving it unless you think the invisible hand will take care of it sooner or later.
Concentration of wealth is not unique to capitalism.
But let's look at why it happens in a free market society. Very few firms and entrepreneurs succeed. Most are failures. The tiny fraction that do succeed are responsible for all of the wealth creation. For example, between 1990 to 2018, five companies accounted for 10% of all global wealth creation. Just 300 companies accounted for 73% of total wealth creation. The majority of public companies actually have shareholder returns LESS than one-month treasury bills. Not to mention the thousands of private companies that go under every day. Add to this the magic of compounding and then you get extreme generational wealth creation.
But, here's the thing: extreme wealth is very temporary. 94% of people who reach the top 1% only enjoy it for a single year. 99% of people will lose their top 1% status. Between 1992 and 2013, 70%+ of the top 400 earners belonged to the club for no more than a year.
So a byproduct of free markets is these extreme bubbles that pop up from time to time. But remember they're fleeting and temporary. What matters is how the society is doing as a whole--per capita income, per capital GDP, life expectancy, various measures of happiness, innovation, productivity, etc.
As a said before, when looking back at history, it's tough to find a system that does this better than free markets + private ownership + democracy.
You show a problem but how does anarchism solve it.People still go hungry today despite us producing enough food to feed the world. First world countries waste an assload of food and people in those countries go hungry despite there not being a lack of food for them.
It is a strange feature of capitalism that a country can both waste 40% of its food production but also have 12% of people go hungry.
We've already long since solved the production problem of food, but we haven't solved the distribution problem and it's becoming increasingly clear capitalism has no intention of solving it unless you think the invisible hand will take care of it sooner or later.
Where would the collective get the resources to replace their existing means of production with entirely different means that likely would need to be done at a completely different location with an entirely different architecture. Your faith in humanity in these collectives is admirable.
They don't want to build alternative, cleaner energy solutions because, at least from what I have heard from them, they honestly believe that they will not be able to get a new job and continue to provide for their family if their current job is taken away. In addition, when we keep saying "coal is bad" they are hearing "you are bad for doing this job that provides for your family", and hearing something like that puts people on the defensive. It's a messaging issue and a pride issue.
Assuming it transitions to anarchism from socialism, after the means of production has been seized, people will simply get their own share of the total food supply, either from farming it themselves with a plot of land they work, or taking it from the common supply.
The organizational problems of this are many and vast but I don't think the theory is unsound. The problem of capitalism is that food is produced for exchange, not for consumption. This is why super rich cities like NYC have empty houses and homeless epidemics. Those homes only have value as investment vehicles, they're not actually made to house people.
This theoretical workers collective is just as likely to be offended you say coal is bad. Especially because coal would be what provides them with power in such a society, to switch would be to disarm them
Contrary to what some people have struggled with in this thread as well as many others, in American terminology liberalism is indeed synonymous with progressivism in modern usage. Around the early-mid 2000s, American liberals, retreating from the demonization of the term "liberal" often began calling themselves "progressives." And "liberal" to the overwhelming supermajority of Americans means nothing more than "broadly left-leaning."
Americans do not mean capital-L Liberal centrism when they say liberal, and they most certainly do not mean Liberal Conservatism when they say it as some countries do.
Self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is "the most liberal" Democrat running for president this year. If you can't get this, I don't know how you can begin to interact with American politics.
Americans do not mean capital-L Liberal centrism when they say liberal, and they most certainly do not mean Liberal Conservatism when they say it as some countries do.
Self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders is "the most liberal" Democrat running for president this year. If you can't get this, I don't know how you can begin to interact with American politics.
By removing capital from the equation you ensure an equal distribution of resources because farming collectives will want to exchange their labor for the products of other labor. There's no reason to horde food without the potential or need for excess profit.
Resources could be taken from scrapped fossil fuel plants and machinery as well as given from other other collectives in exchange for the power the utility collective will provide. Keep in mind this is not a snap scenario, there will be a transitional period where this is all organized through mutual agreement.
You talk as if food is farmed to throw in the trash. What would stop people from taking more than they use from the common supply? Have you never purchase food and have it go bad because you didn't eat it? Or ordered something from a restaurant and not eat every bite?
There isn't actually an unbiased forum out there so this is actually a null criticism. I don't think you could find an unbiased answer to this question anywhere in the world except maybe in a Comparative Politics course in Berlin.
i think we need to take solid steps to reach what we consider an ideal society while protecting from the pitfalls along the way: a world with no borders, robots do all the work, and people can do what makes them happy in a safe and happy environment where we don't harm or destroy natural balance.
They don't have power without the ability to create excess capital. If they don't want to do it then another group of people will. And again like another poster said if you remove their worry that they won't be able to provide for their family without that specific job then they won't be as attached to burning coal. The pride issue is easily solved through compassion and solidarity, I.e "comrades we know you did this under the yoke of capital and you bare no personal responsibility, come and help us make the world better for all our children."
Part of socialist ideology is separating the need to work from the ability to live. From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. People would work to support their friends, their family, their community, not out of a desperation for wages to survive. We have the capability to produce vast amounts of food with a relatively miniscule proportion of the population. There are plenty of people more than happy to work on farms or orchards and find great meaning in that. That's actually my dream life, working on a farm at my own pace helping to provide for everyone. But there are so many barriers to that that it will never happen for me.
If we can separate work from life, then suddenly working coal won't be necessary to provide for your family. It won't be an insult to say coal is bad, it would be a community agreement to work on things less harmful. The transition is of course the hard part.
Again adding on to CrimzonSamurai, the entire infrastructure doesn't go up in smoke in the process. Not all of it will be suited, this much is true, but regular-ass people working on the ground have a better picture of the needs of their community than the corporations and governments this would be expropriated from. This isn't merely speaking from a belief in human goodness, the practical differences in perspective are vast.
What? Why are you talking about it not being unique to capitalism, when we're talking about the one point where concentration of wealth is actually a discerning factor?
The rest of your post is also not an argument against anything, what are you trying to say by claiming that being in the top 1% is mostly ephemeral?
...a significant proportion of the food we produce is thrown in the trash. And you speak as if people will just eat everything they can. I dunno about you, but I get full after a while. Yes, people do end up throwing out food they aren't able to eat, but that's usually due to poor proportioning of foods sold at stores (at least in my experience, this happens to me all the damn time). If food was freely available from a community supply, you wouldn't need to stock up when food is on sale, you wouldn't have to worry about getting to work on a tight schedule every day. You could just take what you need for the next day or two, eat it, then come back for more when you need it.
An organizational problem I haven't figured out, which is why I'm a socialist and not an anarchist. It's not because I think "it can never work", but simply because I haven't figured out a satisfactory answer to some of those question for my own purposes.
Capitalism doesn't fail to work merely because the problem of distribution hasn't been solved. Not all problems need to be solved in order for an economic mode of production to work, as capitalism makes obvious. I don't know why this is such a sticking point for people. "THIS THING WON'T WORK OUT PERFECTLY". Yes, but that's true of feudalism, which "worked" for a couple of hundred years, mercantilism, which worked for 100-200 years, and capitalism, which worked for another 100-200 years. When a system is incapable of solving its own problems, it tends to be replaced by a new one as it collapses under its own weight. There is nothing strange about this, it's generally how human society progresses. The only question I care about is "Is the new system more just?".
Anyway bringing up the monopoly problem as a critique of anarchism is very ironic. Oh no, anarchism is bad because someone might monopolize all the food and become a capitalist. The HORROR. Now if only people applied this same train of thought to capitalism itself. If anarchism is bad because it can collapse into capitalism, what does that tell you about capitalism?
I was raised to eat all the food I purchased. I make a big point of doing so, and to never buy more than I can consume, or perhaps save it for later. It's not like my food waste is zero, but I minimize it wherever possible.
In the context of climate change, I don't know that there is a reasonable path forward, and we're already too late.
They have power in their knowledge and what they provide, removing the koch brothers from the equation doesn't make the source of their wealth less important, you're simply redistributing their power to their workers, the idea they can't or won't abuse it is required to have faith in such a system
It is easier for 1 or 2 people to abuse the power of billions of dollars than for thousands/millions of people to abuse their collective power of billions of dollars. Do you disagree with this? Because if not, this is just an argument for seizing the wealth of Koch Industries and distributing it among all the workers.
A single ruler invites concentration of power and power invites abuse. Various forms of democracy distribute power among many "rulers" and lessens the possibility of abuse. To think otherwise is to believe democracy is not preferable over autocracy. But this doesn't mean democratic majorities never abuse their power. We also have a term for this kind of abuse, "tyranny of the majority". It's simply preferable to "tyranny of the aristocrat-by-birth".
Uhhh, you do realize that the more distributed wealth is, the more difficult abuse is, right? Otherwise wealth concentration wouldn't result in an increase in political power, which it does.
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Other people can self-educate to learn how to build sustainable power plants if necessary. The average coal plant worker is not an expert on energy systems or their construction.
The concentration of wealth is a discerning factor between socialism and capitalism.
I'll add that I'm neither a vanguardist nor a utopian socialist, so I think it inappropriate to lean hard into prescriptions for the ideal society. To use my hometown as an example? There's rich tillage and orchards all over that would do ample work in feeding the community, and I could see how worker councils would be a natural evolution out of the co-ops that presently operate. Material conditions are specific, and I am but one voice in that community that would have to negotiate how to move forward.