Message from @pratel
Discord ID: 468537697237991425
~~STATISM, MORE LIKE SATANISM~~
~~My brain's too non-focused to weigh in, just making a funny, carry on~~
It's pretty stable as far as systems go.
Most people (Especially younger people) who say they're communist have in mind the stateless, or at least kind of libertarian concept of it. Not Stalinism.
There are a few stalinists out there though. They vary from stupid to malicious. Seem to be in the minority from what i can tell, as least in north america.
I think i can safely call people who want political prisoners and gulags to be a thing 'malicious'
I dunno
Just call them political tenants and political residents and it sounds a lot better
The holocaust did happen but Israel is really milking it for international support
The African Slave Trade existed in Africa before American the AA's are milking it in America.
Inconvenient facts.
a bigger inconvenient fact is that the term slave comes from enslaved white people,
the "Slavs" from eastern europe
so they literally appropriated white terms! 😮
If the N word was invented by white people, are black people who use it culturally appropriating it?
yes
You were damn fast on that, herr doctor.
every time they wear beads and use a mirror they're appropraiting white culture
We sold those "shinies" to tribes so they'd capture our slaves! 😛
Oh. :(
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