There’s a particular kind of person who imagines themselves as a principled leftist, or opponent of capitalism, or critic or tyranny, or whatever, right up until you criticize their pet aspect of capitalist modernity.
Last time, it was landlording; some “mom-and-pop” types absolutely lost their shit.
Tonight it was intellectual property and taxes, of all things.
Folks, all of these things—literal rents collected by a landlord, taxes collected by the state, profits collected by a copyright holder—are all fundamentally aspects of the same phenomenon.
You can’t separate them from each other. They are all claims to your labor, backed by the threat of violence, by someone who claims some sort of sovereign ownership of *something* you’re using—your home, a song, your community, whatever.
I don’t really care if you can imagine ways in which collecting those rents might be useful to you, or could be put to use in service of some higher purpose. That’s the logic of the capitalist, not of liberation.
The thing that's always frustrated me about anarchists (from what you've written, I'm assuming that's you) is that you imagine groups of people will just *do* things, collectively, for the betterment of all. And that will work. Humans have way too much of the "what's in it for me?" gene for that to work on any kind of scale. I mean, hell, sit through any HOA meeting ever held...
And you have become insulated in your little bubble, and imagine it's the world.
Cool, thanks for dropping by to shit on me unsolicited
You post publicly, the public can respond.
You’re welcome, of course, to be a decent human being and try to engage in a conversation. But, failing that, you’re also welcome to go publicly fuck yourself. Your call.
Based on results, your idea of a conversation is where I agree with what you're saying. Since I don't, your "go publicly fuck [my]self" tells me this wouldn't be a productive use of my time.
You knows what you knows, and you ain't gonna hear nothin' else.
By all means, you're free to prove me wrong - I welcome it. Show me data. Platitudes won't work with me.
I don’t work for you.
@ScottSoCal @HeavenlyPossum you are on an open source social media. The writers of the software are not making money off every post you or I make. Yet it still exists? If we enable better cooperation, better cooperation will happen. The internet is a phenomenal example frequently. People just aspire to do better for no other reason than they can. Private institutions like to hide and obscure that from you, but it happens all day every day
People don't like to be coerced to work more than is necessary without benefit. Your anecdote about HOAs is not supported by data from scientific and anthropological studies on human and other primate behavior.
I suppose you would just let people bleed out in front of you as there is no benefit to you in helping them not so.
@ScottSoCal @HeavenlyPossum Stories about a breakdown and anarchy are always about struggle that is because people are involved. If you look at North America prior to the arrival of Europeans, there could be peace or war between tribes. There was no state, but there still was authority and structure on a smaller scale. I think the anarchist point is this is better, than the large State,. But the issue today with billions of people on the planet, it would be the bloody transition as I imagine.
@ScottSoCal
You have watched circus tigers jumping through a hoop to evade the whip and concluded that tigers will only jump when whipped.