so i reported her to ICE and she's now back in Mexico! 😉

Zing!

@Ryecast, @Dr.Wol about your thing from yesterday.

Ryecast is right. The reality is that hierarchies always form. A lot of it is just that not all people are equal in ability and ambition and there are people who tend to want to follow and people who want to lead. You put any significant number of people in a group and someone emerges as a de facto leader. When that person gains the ability to force conformity (an inevitability in a group of people with any shared identity and collective problems) you are left with the beginnings of a tyranny.

This is fundamental human nature. It is also is the case that as power concentrates, power corrupts and the formed institutions become vulnerable to subversion and abuse.

Ultimately, we must ask though, when it comes to stateless communism and democratic socialism, what is the difference between production and consumption and how is it allocated. In a capitalist system this is decided with money and ownership of property. If we abolish money and property but instead use 'abstract points' to allocate resources, is that not equivalent to money? What if we use cultural influence? Would the fact that Tim Pool has more influence and a bigger platform for any of use indicate he should have a better say in the distribution of resources? Would these things not form a hierarchy and something akin to money (you could, after all, count something like twitter followers and derive some kind of index of influence)?

"fairly distributed society" is like true stateless society, it's a myth. Democratic socialism falls from the same issues of socialism except that it admits the reality of a state and of money. But conceptually, you run into alot of the same issues when it comes to the allocation of resources (namely, it's very easy to game).

As it is, we should also remember that not all "democracies" are democratic. China has freedom of speech enshrined in it's constitution (and some Chinese will insist they are more free to speak than we are) but I don't think there are any illusions about how effective that guarantee actually is. North Korea is a "Democratic People's Republic" (with elections!) but it's rather totalitarian in practice. Simply creating a democratic superstructure is insufficient to actually guarantee democracy.

a faction that calls itself "Democratic" can be as democratic as the leftists are for freedom, or be actually democratic (aka, true to what they call themselves)

That said

Capitalism solved the issue of how money should be allocated, and its a heirarchy made by the people themselves.

You get compensated for how many resources deliver,
And society determines the value of these resources.

Look at athletes,
They don't exactly contribute to the success of a society, but they get paid millions.
Because they are of high value to the company that pays them.
That company gains millions by having them attract the public.

If the public decides an athlete isn't interesting, they wont attend, the company that pays them has no use for having them around, so the athlete doesn't get anything

Its like that for all things, you can pay Tim Pool because you value the information and opinions he gives.
His work is as valuable as the consumers make it.

Thats the glory of private property, YOU get to decide what you do, not someone else. So if you agree, you can support it with your resources, if you don't, you don't have to and no one will take it from you

the issue with social democracy is saying "We get to decide what you do with your money" and they get to do it under any pretense, "the good of society", "help the poor"

Which means your money isn't even your money to begin with anymore. as with socialism and the lack of private property

All you have is by the grace of the state at that point

and as you said yourself, the state is corruptable too

I'm with JP on this one. When you look around at the stuff that does work, even if it's barely limping along, I have to wonder how it functions at all

Like, why does the US not be even more like China?

Why does a piece of paper have any power?

All these people who complain about the state having all this power and act like the state is the enemy, yet can't tell me how they have this power. Why does anyone in the police force bother enforcing the law? Why does the military do as it's told? They talk about fait currency? I say governments have fait power.

That's the danger. It doesn't. That's why I'm concerned of the present political moment. There are forces, especially cultural forces, that believe it doesn't and it shouldn't.

This is most pertinent and obvious if you see the free speech debates at Universities.

The government does have a great deal of power. But it's power confined by convention and popular edict. If the government does too much too fast, there's the threat of rebellion.

The police and military have power because they hold a monopoly on violence and no one wants to get in a shooting war with either. The government leadership hold power as long as they hold the support of key institutions.

The state isn't the enemy, the state is Order,

And if everything is ordened, then nothing can change, nothing improves,
The state should maintain the order of the people,
And let go of how the people manage things,

This way society will have chaos to break loose the weakness,
And have order to rebuild it.

And in the end, through a mixture of chaos and order, you evolve stronger.
Weak perish, strong survive.

But **why**

it is a cycle

Like, if the military turned around and said "fuck off leadership".... What would they do?

Dr. Wol gets it. The state is order. It can be a good force or a bad force.

They would have no power

It depends. What if the CIA said "fuck off Trump" but the US Army responded "no you don't"

That's why it's a balance of power between institutions which hold their own influence and power.

I mean, the CIA really has no physical power

They just have dirt on people

They hold *alot* of pseudo-miiltary power. Particularly if the revolution is localized.

you are correct Grenade,

but the military is there to ensure the sovereignty of the state.

The people in it (the soldiers) stay loyal because they believe the state is there to protect the people they love.

They are the fist of society

Imagine what you could do if you could dox anyone at will, if you knew what everyone was doing, and had a couple trained assasins and hackers at your disposal.

But that's a side issue.

and well, its the Central Intelligence Agency,

All they do is gather intel, its not the Central Elimination Agency 😉

My point is, why do all these individuals work together at all? And literally play house.

I just seems so impossible yet here we are

strength in unity,

They want to protect their own, so they stand together to fight off those that would be a danger to their families

This is also why people go around proclaiming the 2nd amendment as the "ultimate defense against tyranny."

A large, sudden organized force can violently revoke the monopoly on violence of the state.

Yes. And in tyrannical states, the military is specifically designed so that members cannot defect easily without exposing themselves and or their families to grave danger.

And any incipient rebellion cannot spread easily.

as much as i like the 2nd amendment,

Organised force is not gonna happen, too many people, too many aggression, and too many targets,

But no organisation

Yeah, the organization element is the big issue. Really, the bigger issue is how easily any potential leadership could be targeted.

But organization springs up quickly given the proper threats. And decentralized organization is actually advantageous in a hypothetical 21st century civil war.

Because it becomes harder to eliminate.

you get a guerillia war

That's what a hypothetical civil war would probably look like, TBH

and at that point, you'd better hope the state still has a shred of humanity left