A smaller group of privileged people? What? Why would it be a smaller group? Distributing wealth across the population would distribute that power, not concentrate it.
Humans are not greedy. Maybe you are, but if you'd take any effort to empathize with others, you'd soon realize that humans aren't greedy at all. Capitalism breeds greediness, sure, but it's nothing inherent to people, where are you getting this?
It should never be about followers electing leaders, even though that's a big part of the status quo. We are all the leaders, people have to take responsibility for their part in democracy. Every follower that we as a society create is a failure. We as the people need to scrutinize, actively have our own opinion and communicate amongst each other in order to ensure we're working toward the best consensus possible. The representatives we elect shouldn't be our leaders, they shouldn't be someone we "follow", they should execute a consensus. I don't see this as being related to the point though.
Tell that to Banting, MacCloud, et al. They put in a lot of work to keep insulin from being patented and exploited by pharma, to the point where their own ethics became more important than money.
Immigration can actually save welfare systems from a rapidly aging population.
Remember when the DNC reversed an environmental donation rule because of internal union pressure? The interests of labor and the larger business do often align. The coal workers will continue to want to maintain the status quo because people hate change, hate threats to their status, and will take action to artificially maintain their current position at the expense of other people.
Their self preservation instinct is dysfunctional. Not all of them, mind you, but some of them seem to be beyond reasoning.
So here's one of my main snags with anarchism. It's not that I don't think it's possible, but I think that current humans are currently incapable of making it work, because there's too much cultural baggage (racism, homophobia, sexism) that started way before capitalism proper and won't disappear simply with the abolishment of material relations. Tradition doesn't abide by logic, tradition happens simply because it has always happened.
I don't believe in the axiom that power corrupts absolutely. It's just that we have to begin giving power to people who have fewer pressure points like greed or dirty secrets. The truth is that those with charisma or money tend to be easily corruptable because those pressure points work.
If your coal mine closes you are not going to starve. You are, however, going to have to make massive life changes in the wake of it closing that those workers would prefer not to make. They don't want to have to change, to move, to abandon that town which existed only to support a business which is no longer necessary. Look at how heavily base closings get lobbied against.
www.nytimes.com
Businesses will often seek to artificially limit competition through regulatory capture. Local control of decisionmaking gets you NIMBY behavior where local residents prioritize policy that enriches current residents at the expense of everyone else. Why would local control of energy production behave in any sort of different way and not as a fusion of these types of behaviors?
Who decides how that wealth is distributed? A smaller group of elites than we currently have under our capitalist system.
Top two sections on this pyramid:
What comes from having children? They're not fiscally-positive, that's for damn sure, but people keep having them. Trust me, I'm a cynic too, but I understand the selfish desire one gets from doing something outside of their immediate best interest like procreation and it informs my position.
Perhaps a sensible division of power where the state can only intervene on issues that require massive collaborative scale?
You can disagree all you like, that's your prerogative, but if what you say is true, NO system of governance, even anarchism, is free of corruption and will always trend towards it. And if that's the case, may as well just give up.
I'm just speculating. You know where I fall on this, I believe in the state, just simply not how it exists currently.
But if every person on earth is corruptable, you just end up with less individual corruption and corruption of large blocs of people with aligned goals. Communal corruption is corruption all the same.
Anarchism doesn't concentrate decision making power in the form of a state or representative political class. All decisions are made by local collectives. Economic ones by worker's collectives and political ones by all people within a given collective. These videos will break it down for you better than I can in this format.
What about a religious one? Say Christian groups want exemption from something like an Obamacare mandate, or an establishment/collective says people with Hijabs are not allowed on beach/restaurant?
Last thing we need.
