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Thank god for this comm. I feel like I’m going sane in a crazy world outside of here.
what do you call me then, who thinks that money is a scam and we don’t need it?
An anarchist?
Not to be that guy, but if there wasn’t money, we’d be trading ten chickens for a table, or two tables for a cow. The concept of money is merely making the logistics of trade transactions more convenient, which barter trading doesn’t allow.
Or you know, we’d be meeting everyone’s need for wellbeing without expecting it to be a transactional process.
Even though hunter gatherer societies are generally egalitarian, they still do material transactions.
Luckily we don’t want to return to hunter gatherer societies. Gift economies exist, where the expectation is people take what they need.
there’s also the star trek way. Working for the betterment of both ourself and society.
Star Trek still has latinum, it’s just not used for things like food or rent so you don’t really have to care about it and are free to pursue whatever you actually want to do.
It’s not really even used within the Federation, just for trade with entities outside the Federation which do use currency.
Me: No one should work.
me: no one should HAVE to work. I feel like people would still do stuff even if they didn’t have to. they’d just do LESS of it.
Forbidden to work. Only allowed to stare into the distance. But not too hard
Too much work.
People should do stuff, but the paradigm of ‘work’ is fucked.
People do stuff all the time. But being forced to look at clocks and wear pants is inhumane.
More the insane authoritarian inefficiencies. Clocks are useful for some stuff. I would rather my fire fighters wore pants. On the job at least. Probably my chefs. I think id rather my programmers stuck to skirts shorter than their dicks and fur suits, but thats purely a selfish desire for working computer.
Any society that makes me look at a clock isn’t one I want to be a part of. Minutes are an illusion. Hours doubly so.
Baking without clocks is really hard.
Not really. In fact, due to pressure and temperature variances waiting until the dough has risen by double is better than using a fixed time. And you can smell when bread is done.
They baked without clocks for millennia.
They did, but ‘baker’ was like one of the highest skill jobs around for most of that. ‘risen by double’ is a rough rule for some kinds of leavening.
you can smell when
Sometimes. Often with especially thick loaves the cooking isn’t done until a while after it’s left the oven as internal heat continues to disperse.
That’s already good if it’s followed with the clause, ‘to escape poverty or an equivalent disadvantaged situation in a society.’
You don’t have to be wealthy, but all basic needs should be provided along with the means of finding employment that satiates a person. Granted, some people do still need intervention but not from a sterile or disconnected environment but from a community that is willing to engage with them.
No, because if one person is working for a salary that satiates them then it means other people must work for a salary.
No work.
No clocks.
No pants.
The top-one is soc-dems. Liberals are more like “👏 More 👏 black 👏 women 👏 CEOs!” and “👏 They 👏 go 👏 low 👏 we 👏 go 👏 high!”, sometimes even “Obama proves that real christians see secularism as a christian value, because «love thy neighbor», we need a second Obama instead of meaningfully fighting the dominionist cult!”.
Leftists really need to drop the “Holier than thou” ego. Like many social-democrats have their political worldview specifically because they are/have vulnerable people in their life.
Like I want stronger, higher societal floors built from recycled pieces of ceiling. I want a society that is built to support people from the bottom not control people from the top. I don’t want my standard of living to be held up by the backs of other people sacrificing their lives, domestic or abroad.
Everyone trying to divide voters left of center are either misguided or misguiding.
voters
More than voting matters. Im not sure viting does.
There’s a pretty hard attempt at making voting irrelevant by the right. I think this proves, that voting matters. I do however not fully blame you if you got disillusioned by voting, due to liberals masquerading as leftists.
Or the left beong ratfucked constantlu.
The whole harris thing. I worked with that monster’s victims for years. Trans women that shit pig put in the rape gulag. Then i see them choosing it as their presidential candidate because it’s its turn. Then being yelled at because i couldn’t support it or a party that would do that. Nope. Not bothering with bourgoise electoralism again. The investiture of power in a non-revocable idiot is already a compromise, the culture is more toxic than watching ‘rick and morty’ at the afterparty of a ‘tool’ concert. Im done.
Yeah, if you don’t do it it doesn’t work, duh.
But if you can get enough power to do whatever you mean by more, you can just use it to elect whomever you want, and if you can’t do even that, than you don’t have any power.
All this talks about “stop voting better do my version of firebombing wallmart” just reveals that you want to do your version of firebombing wallmart and don’t actually want meaningful changes politicallyelect whomever you want
I dont think anyone suould be invested with that kind of power, and compromising on that seems to always end in epic ratfuck or betrayal that feels like straight up diablous ex machina. If you remember that time we elected a charismatic community organizer from w rough neighborhood, the time we elected the kinda tech literate environmentalist former vp, or the various sanders campaigns here in the states.
Concentration of power always leads to disasters, that’s absolutely true
I would like to quit living in poverty where can I sign?
Anywhere you see a billionaire. You do not sign in ink.
Fucking excellent.
With your local communist party. No guarantees, but the current system definitely won’t get you there.
Gosh darn
How did you come up with that question?
It was a request
The constitutional right to basic living necessities; food, water, shelter, and medical treatment. Capitalism would still be there, but anyone could fall back on these “minimums” whenever they wanted … no questions asked.
Is that “left of leftist”?
“Left-Right” isn’t really a cohesive model of politics, but it’s a hard sell for any form of capitalism to be considered left of socialist economics. Like PugJesus said, you’ve generally described modern social democracy (not to be confused with democratic socialism). It’s an improvement, but still a long way away from ‘left of left’.
No, that’s modern social democracy, which is generally considered fairly centrist. The issue with that is that capitalism still allows massive accumulation of power into the hands of individuals who can they leverage that power in an oppressive manner which is difficult to combat by ordinary folk.
They will just roll it back eventually.
I would honestly just start making so much of my own stuff for just myself, do only gig work for the occasional extra, produce and sell food. If everyone did as I did, we would only have the bare minimum alright…
They will just roll it back eventually.
Capitalists will always try, which means that leftists will be forced into the position of either wasting effort defending those hard-fought-for rights, or be discredited by their failure to do so (see: literally every leftist critique and analysis of popularity of mainstream parties in Western democracies for the past 40 years).
It doesn’t mean that what has been gained is doomed, and certainly not that it’s worthless. But it does mean that as long as capitalism lives, it will always fight against everything that’s been torn from it.
Tear if there’s nothing more to be done at a given moment. But kill it if you can.
We have to how do I put this…rig things, so that there can be no rollback.
Specifically, empower the individual enough, that it will be really hard to convince them that they need a government at all.
I think that goes under ‘killing capitalism’.
Everything comes down to “billionaires should not exist” literally, a couple of thousand people vanishing off the Earth would start fixing things.
We need a Death Note.
At least until the next billionaires came about.
And pissing on it’s desecrated remains.
The next line should read
Liberals: “You’re not who I’m trying to convince.”
Followed by
Leftists: “We’re trying to convince you”
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. There will always be a more ideal goal. If you refuse to work towards something that’s actually achievable because you want more, well, that’s why leftists fight each other more than fighting the fascists that have taken over the usa and are well on the way to taking over the rest of the world too.
The issue is that we aren’t asking for perfect. We are asking for the bare minimum.
Liberal and neoliberalist politics are not progress. They are regressive holding actions of the capitalist state that gives meager concessions to pacify any revolutionary action as they continue to consolidate power until they can impose their fascist rule later down the line.
Liberalism and Neoliberalism, fundamentally being a capitalist Imperialist ideology, intrinsically enables fascism to exist and acquire power.
You are trying to say that one step forward and two steps back is forward progress.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Stop framing genocide supporters as good.
Voting for the lesser evil is still voting for evil. Just because they’re not as bad doesn’t mean they aren’t just as unpalatable to leftists.
Then let’s vote for good! there’s dozens of us!
How many people are voting? oh.
Then let’s vote for good!
Good isn’t on the ballot.
If there’s so few leftists it doesn’t matter, why blame them, hrm? Oh, it’s virtue signalling for the Democrats screwing up the election and for their winning strategy of going for the former MAGA vote? Well damn, you convinced me!
because if there’s one thing leftists are good at, aside from infighting of course, it’s convincing people not to vote.
And there’s one good thing neo-liberal chuds do, is be only slightly better than MAGA.
This seems utopian, akin to one saying “participating in wage labour empowers capitalists - working most jobs is still evil”.
What is the point of such abstract declarations? I’m an anti-capitalist because I want to improve the world, not to be “good” or “correct” or some other philosophical purity; “the point is to change it”.
Let’s have a moment of silent gratitude for all those US leftists who preserved their personal sense of moral superiority by not voting or voting third party in the 2024 election. Where would we be without them?
Evidentially nowhere because the Dems when leftist vote for them shout they weren’t needed and proceed to not pass anything. But keep on compromising your morals and values for the lesser evil, I’m SURE that’ll win them over in the end.
But keep on compromising your morals and values for the lesser evil
Your interlocutor isn’t compromising anything. They got 100% of what they wanted from every candidate in the race.
Biden-era Democrats: passing child cash payments, drug-price negotiation, insulin caps, the biggest climate bill in US history, and the biggest federal gun-safety law in decades. With a 50-50 Senate and an obstructionist opposition.
Obama-era Democrats: passing ACA, Fair Sentencing Act, Dodd Frank, creating CFPB, etc. With only like 70 days of having 60 votes in the senate.
Leftists: dems pass nothing.
Question for you: do you think Palestinians should thank you for rejecting imperfect Democrats and helping to hand the presidency, house and senate to the party whose members openly support fewer restrictions on Israel?
But keep rejecting them to preserve your sense of superiority, I’m SURE that’ll help the most vulnerable more than keeping Republicans out of power.
Don’t let lesser be the enemy of what’s right. There will always be liberals seeking compromise on the right thing, and they’re wrong. That’s why the left fights and resists these right wing half measures.
I’ll take what I can get.
And this is the hard part for most people: I don’t stop there, because I’ve achieved goal 1 of 99 and the road is long and hard and where is everyone going
That’s why the left fights and resists these right wing half measures.
But historically, leftists in the strongest age of labor agitation have supported ‘half-measures’ that didn’t bring about full socialism.
And that’s why many leftist don’t like the half-measures
… because they think accelerationism would have worked?
But historically, leftists in the strongest age of labor agitation have supported ‘half-measures’ that didn’t bring about full socialism.
Modern incrementalists are not fit to speak of people who accomplish things other than genocide.
And yet the leftists accomplish nothing other than empowering the right through their weaponized political ineptitude. They are not fit to gatekeep liberals from political action.
They are not fit to gatekeep liberals from political action.
Liberals don’t take political action. They prevent it. With one notable exception, in which they get out of their own way.
And yet the leftists accomplish nothing other than empowering the right through their weaponized political ineptitude
Like all those elections liberals are winning. Oh wait.
Modern incrementalists are not fit to speak of people who accomplish things other than genocide.
“Incrementalism is when harm reduction”
I see one of my tankie bootlicker fans has come to chime in. Sorry that I didn’t want tens of thousands of Iranians murdered, while you view it as a price you’re willing to pay for moral purity and absolutely no positive change.
Sorry that I didn’t want tens of thousands of Iranians murdered, while you view it as a price you’re willing to pay for moral purity and absolutely no positive change.
And you view it as an acceptable price to pay as long as no one got to vote against the genocide you masturbate to.
Either would be an upgrade at this point.
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Liberals; no one working 40 hours a week should live in poverty, bit what are you gonna do?
Subscribe to netflix.
Proper leftist argument that glitches liberals’ material conditions:
Don’t force poverty on the incapable to overperform you.
Everyone conscious has the ability to preform some type of labor so…. Let’s just skip this stupid argument and just say UBI.
My cousin has consciousness as well as Chromosome 5q minus. She can not preform any type of labor.
Fucking abelist class traitor.
Forgive my ignorance of the condition but what are her limitations? Can she communicate? Care for house plants? Read a book? Perform any artistic expression? Can she make you laugh? Even once a week/month/year?
I’m struggling to think of a scenario where a person has any amount of conscious agency but can’t do anything of that produces a even a minor amount of value, unless you’re unduly restricting the definition of labor.
UBI keeps capitalism and thus inequality. It’s a zero sum game where people’s wealth will flow towards the rich, enabling them in future to amass power to undo UBI and repeat the mistakes we have now.
Better solution is to ditch currency and focus on meeting people’s wellbeing needs directly.
People aren’t equal in their abilities, need, desires, and dreams. Being able to perform better should be rewarded in some way. Otherwise the incentives aren’t there to get anywhere.
How selfish do you have to be to not understand that there are incentives other than the profit incentive?
If the only reason you do anything is because you believe you are rewarded for it, you’re a terrible person who needs to practice some introspection at why you are only motivated by personal greed.
No, nobody should fucking be rewarded more than another. Wellbeing for fucking all you right wing fuck.
You can’t ditch currency. Currency isn’t some grand invention of the state. It’s the direct result of beings valuing things at different amounts at different times. Technically current is using any stand in to ease the trade barrier but colloquially some people use love as a currency. Many kinds of social animals trade and what they trade could be deemed currency.
You can 100% ditch currency, you don’t not need a trade or barter based system. Humans have been operating on a gift economy model for hundreds of thousands of years, currency and trading is a blip in our history.
People are capable of supporting each other without profit incentives.
Gift economies mean the rich get to buy favors and influence with their gifts. Those who can gift the most will be the ones with the most power and influence. A gift economy is pure trading of favors and influence. At the same time there’s zero transparency. It’s institutionalized bribery. It’s pretty horrible for people with below average social skills. Charming narcissists will rule this society according to their whims.
. . . There can’t be rich people in a system where resources are owned by the community.
Please just stop arguing nonsense takes and go learn about anarchism. I’m not here to debate bro your lib shit opinions.
So let’s say I really want to investigate superconducting magnets, because I really like that field and want to do research. I need processed rare earth products that only exist on the other side of the globe.
In your gift economy, how would I proceed to acquire those?
I suspect these policies often assume that either we live in startrek or we’re back to the woods and have no need for superconducting magnets :-/
Since those are the only two ways most Anarchist “economics” can work, you’re probably not wrong.
surely no other people have any benefit or incentive to find those superconductors and so no one would be willing to aid you in your research, including people who could get those minerals, right?
Is being flippant part of the economic model or an extra? Doesn’t get me closer to those hard to extract materials that are in very short supply.
Great, now please scale this up to all of human civilisation and society with all of its mind-bogglingly complex logistics and infrastructure, ever changing needs, countless adversarials and requirements for advanced science.
Its a nice idea but doesnt feel very applicable unless the entire human race just kinda has a change of heart.
Okay, there is literally nothing about it that can’t be scaled up except for capitalism being the predominant system backed by violence.
You shouldn’t state this as fact. It’s not, archaeologists have been arguing between the formalist and substantavist theories of economic models for decades now. You seem to be favoring the formalist view, but there is a strong arguement to be made that market principles such as supply and demand existed deeper in the past as well.
While there may not have been currency, the historic economics of humanity were certainly greater than a gift economy model.
I’m confident that if you waved a magic wand and removed currency, an hour later it would be reinvented via “hey, will you do me this favor? I’ll owe you one” -> “You already owe me one. But I guess you’ll owe me two? Let me write this down”
Yup. Gets even easier once all the emancipatory technology innovations cease being classified, suppressed and secreted to maintain the corporate monopolisation rigged game of kleptarchy. When that stops, obsoleting currency/money becomes a greater viable potential, if not just removes some areas from profiteering. Such things are not cosmic fundamentals. Greedy eyes are on water, air, sunlight.
I imagine quality would improve and enshitification would cease, without corrupt fiat currency driving churn. And [as we currently are, it’s an] accelerating churn at that, in a desperate race to the bottom. Unsustainable. Essential vital necessity to move beyond it.
UBI may be a stepping stone, perhaps a step away from reducing currency/money to mere resource accounting, on to greater things yet. But yes, not if left in the hands of the current oligarchs, nor in any such system that so readily gives oligarchs absolute power.
Sublimation out of their rigged game trap may come fast [, or not at all, only piecemeal placatium fakery].
You can absolutely do away with currency if the current mode of production got abolished. Currency itself is a necessity in a society that produces commodities for exchange, which creates rise for social constructs such as value, value forms like money, the possibility for an innate crisis and so on.
The first 2 chapters of Capital explains this, the commodity production system was a historical development rather than something coming out of nature (no chemist was able to find value through microscope), and we can certainly produce things to satisfy needs rather than exchange, with a much lower amount of work hours needed to do so.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Order of operations matters.
There’s always a better perfect solution. If you’re not willing to work for something achievable because your special vision for how things should be is the only thing you care about, well, that’s why leftists fight each other instead of fighting the fascists that have taken over the usa and are in the process of taking over the rest of the world.
You have 1,000 slaves. Do you accept freeing 500 instead of fighting for all to be free?
Fight for what’s right, fuck compromise that perpetuates suffering. That’s what centrists do.
Do the thing that helps now and work to do the things that help in the future as well. Why would I allow 500 slaves to remain in servitude just because I can’t free all 1,000 right now?
You have 1,000 slaves. Do you accept freeing 500 instead of fighting for all to be free?
Accepting freeing 500 doesn’t mean stopping the fight to free the other 500.
Should the Union during the US Civil War have refused to free any slaves until it could guarantee all slaves would be free?
I think the proposed situation is that the slavers will agree to free 500 slaves if you let them keep the other 500. Would you take the deal?
I mean, that is the situation stated? Unless you mean “You are forbidden from engaging in abolitionism ever again”, which is generally not what people object to when they decry ‘reform’, which rarely, if ever, comes with such terms in the contexts it’s discussed in on here.
Choices should be made fundamentally on two issues: reduction of suffering, and improvement of strategic positioning. If it does both, it is morally necessary to take it. If it helps one goal, but does not harm the other goal, it is morally necessary to take it. If it helps one goal, but harms the other goal, you must make your own estimation of the relative value of each.
Freeing 500 slaves reduces suffering. Ceteris paribus, it also improves strategic positioning. If an argument can be made that, in context, it degrades strategic positioning, then the choice becomes more ambiguous, but the emphasis here is on ‘degrades’, not simply ‘does not improve’. But you’d better be ready with a damn good argument for keeping 500 people in chains on strategic grounds when you could very well free them, and not just a general feeling of ‘All or nothing’.
That’s true, the hypothetical I posed isn’t remotely analogous to the perfection vs harm reduction debate. I have a tendency to fixate on questions I find interesting regardless of how realistic or practical they are.
You refused to compromise, and now you have 1000 slaves. But at least you can tell yourself you did the right thing, as the slaves, slave on.
Because refusal to compromise = never succeeding?
You’d be in favour having some slave states and some non-slave states instead of fighting a civil war to end slavery.
You’d be in favour having some slave states and some non-slave states instead of fighting a civil war to end slavery.
But wouldn’t you be in favor of not having any non-slave states until you could assure that there were no slave states? Thus eliminating the political and demographic power which allowed the abolitionists to be a faction strong enough to contest a civil war?
No, I’d compromise to buy time, until I can stab the confederates in the back, duh.
Does freeing 500 take 1% of the effort of freeing all 1k? Do the 500 first and then start working towards freeing the rest.
Now, this requires actually doing the second part, but some good actually done is better than all the good wished for but none done.
What it comes down to is a matter of trust. For example, let’s say there’s a strike going on and management makes a generous offer, but it would only apply to the senior employees. If the union accepts this, then the newer employees will feel like the union is only working for the people who have been there longer, and are less likely to take risks or stick their necks out for the “common good,” because that “common good” seems to benefit some people more than others.
Now, with the workers divided, they have less power and less ability to resist whatever the company decides. In time, even the senior employees may end up worse off.
However, I do agree with you that you don’t have to do everything at once. Small victories can serve as a proof of concept, showing tangible results of organization. But there’s a difference between a small victory that’s shared or fair and a small victory that only benefits part of a coalition and serves essentially as a bribe.
In the hypothetical of “freeing half the slaves” it’s kind of impossible to answer from a purely theoretical standpoint, it depends on the specific conditions. If the level of trust and political consciousness is high enough, then the ones who benefit can be trusted to keep fighting for the others and the others won’t feel betrayed or left behind. But if it’s a fledgling coalition and opportunists are present, then it’s a recipe for the whole thing to fall apart.
Every proletarian has been through strikes and has experienced “compromises” with the hated oppressors and exploiters, when the workers have had to return to work either without having achieved anything or else agreeing to only a partial satisfaction of their demands. Every proletarian—as a result of the conditions of the mass struggle and the acute intensification of class antagonisms he lives among—sees the difference between a compromise enforced by objective conditions (such as lack of strike funds, no outside support, starvation and exhaustion)—a compromise which in no way minimises the revolutionary devotion and readiness to carry on the struggle on the part of the workers who have agreed to such a compromise—and, on the other hand, a compromise by traitors who try to ascribe to objective causes their self-interest (strike-breakers also enter into “compromises”!), their cowardice, desire to toady to the capitalists, and readiness to yield to intimidation, sometimes to persuasion, sometimes to sops, and sometimes to flattery from the capitalists.
- Some guy
People get complacent after doing some, it’s always better to do it all than half arse it and promise to come back later.
Plus it y’know actually stops the suffering rather than prolonging it but lesser.
Example, ACA, there’s been no real talk from Dems after “compromising with Republicans” to pass that to try and make it better. To maybe go with the original plan of universal healthcare for all and not health insurance for all.
People get complacent after doing some, it’s always better to do it all than half arse it and promise to come back later.
To some degree, this is correct - people tend to leave behind the passion once they’ve done something about it. But this is a reason to do as much as one can with the circumstances given, regardless of worrying whether it is ‘too radical’ to last; not a reason to refuse to do anything that doesn’t immediately result in the end-goal of your ideology.
Put another way, this argument could be used to oppose anarchist organizing - after people do a little for the revolution, like organizing, they tend to get complacent. Only immediate and violent action in service to revolution is moral.
Plus it y’know actually stops the suffering rather than prolonging it but lesser.
But it doesn’t stop the suffering until it succeeds, if it succeeds.
Which is the better outcome? Someone wanting to save 10,000 lives, but failing to save anyone’s life; or someone who wants to save 1,000 lives, thinking it’s all they can do (rightly or wrongly), and succeeds in saving 500?
It’s almost like reality has nuance and shit.
No. Currency is convenience and convenience wins 99% of the time.
Yeah I’ll pass thanks, currency and capitalism is killing the planet and us along with it.
Nothing easier than being dead tho I guess.
Can you explain your non- currency economy for those of us without that much imagination?
Does trade still exist?
If so what is the medium of exchange?
How is value evaluated?
Unfortunately it seems that proponents of these systems fail to deliver when we get to practical issues - I’m open-minded enough to consider the thought, but I too have a bunch of questions that seem will go unaddressed.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again. If one (or a group) of these anarchists is willing to do an AMA, I think it’d be very enlightening for a lot of us. I for one am curious to learn how lots of things are supposed to work under their proposed system. But whenever I find an anarchist in the wild, it doesn’t feel like an appropriate time/place to ask such questions.
There are some big issues that are difficult to address, but if someone truly believes anarchy is the ideal system, providing information to help others understand how it’s all supposed to work can go a long way. A dedicated AMA can clear up questions, and who knows, maybe even win some people over to their side.
Go on YouTube and watch videos by Anark and World Beyond Capitalism. They have many videos explaining the practicalities of Anarchism.
From this side of life, seems true. Can’t say the dead agree, but they’re not complaining much.
Bring on the convenience of the emancipation by technology, provisioning each and all free energy and energy-to-matter transfer, effectively “star trek replicators”.
Star Trek however needed most governments to collapse as a result of WW3 and Vulcans showing up to help rebuild afterwards.
We got WW3 almost covered, just not that sure about those Vulcans …
Oh, and there is nothing zero sum about it. That’s kind of the point of a good teade
That’s exactly zero sum, one person gains from one persons losses. I pay/you profit, loss/win.
That’s how currency works unless you’re suggesting we just print money off any time we need to make a purchase.
I can make good shoes. I make bad pastries.
You make good pastries. You make bad shoes.
I make you shoes. You make me pastries. Now I have good shoes and pastries. You also have good shoes and pastries. Everyone wins.
That’s bartering not currency.
An even better system is, you can make shoes so you make people shoes. I can make pastries so I make people pastries. There’s no requirement to exchange, we can just make stuff for people and they can likewise do the same.
That’s a gift economy, people cooperating together for the benefit of everyone.
you can make shoes so you make people shoes
Here’s a hypothetical:
I’m in a feud with the person who runs the pasture land. He won’t kill his cattle/sheep if it’s to provide leather for my shoes. Everyone else likes him and his milk and they tell me to bury the hatchet.
But he insists on ever thicker and higher quality boots because the pasture he “works” is so overgrown and muddy from poor maintenence. This cuts into my ability to supply quality shoes for everyone else so I can’t do it.
Of course, I stutter and don’t do well with public speaking but he has a silver tongue. I can’t even lay out half the facts before he’s convinced the town that I’m a lazy parasite and a bad shoemaker; I’m exiled. I will now die starving and alone. The town will waste time and energy wearing through low quality woven shoes, content with the thought that they’re not wasting milk cows on that shitty cobbler.
If there was a market/bartering economy:
- I probably never have to interact directly with the herdsman
- The value of shoes would counterbalance the lazy herdsman, forcing him to properly maintain his field or go shoeless
- I’m not punished for my poor social skills and the herdsman is not rewarded for his. The value of our labor is insulated from our social ability, allowing for a less biased assessment of our goods and services.
Currency is an abstraction for all the goods and services you might barter. I can sell you a pair of shoes for 1 currency unit, then buy your pastries for 1 currency unit. The result is the same.
That sounds really lovely, but for some of us, we wouldn’t even be able to get our families to participate. Consider the families that make their adult kids pay rent, even though they own the house the live in. I’d think that doing things like laundry, cleaning, cooking, picking up prescriptions, groceries, etc. should suffice for contributing to the household. Thankfully, that’s how it worked when I was an adult living with my parents - I didn’t pay rent, but I was often a “gopher” that was sent out to do errands on behalf of my mom. It was annoying, but I figured that by doing such things I was supporting my family just as they were supporting me, and there was an unspoken agreement about it.
Unfortunately, not all families/households operate like that, at least here in the highly-individualized US. If some parents won’t extend a gift economy within their own families, it’d be an uphill battle to get them to apply it toward people they aren’t related to.
Zero sum presumes that there is no net gain or net loss, but trade results in both.
A ‘good’ trade, the kind that economists tout as a benefit, results in both parties gaining, because both parties receive objects they value more than the objects traded away, especially within contexts like comparative advantage.
A ‘bad’ trade, the kind that many leftists observe and are aware of, results in one party gaining at the other’s disproportionate expense - such as capitalists damaging actual economic activity by extracting all the value they can extort from their workers.
A zero-sum trade is theoretically possible, but generally not the case even with the extreme abstraction of currency.
The mechanism of markets is that the price of goods follows the law of supply and demand. Prices are a universal signal to producers that they should produce more/less of a good.
Without currency you need a mechanism to replace this. Given your previous posts in favour of anarchism, I’m guessing you don’t favour central planning. So what mechanism for determining how much and of what kinds of goods should be produced, do you prefer?
Given I’m an anarchist, I value a gift economy where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing.
How much a person should have is as much as they need.
Given I’m an anarchist, I value a gift economy where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing.
But that’s not what a gift economy inherently results in.
Yes it is.
Unless you have something concrete to prove all societies (even the current ones still existing) that engage in such practices inevitably must change away from such a system, that isn’t just a “this happened a few times historically so it must always be true even though there are still gift economies operating today” I don’t want to hear it.
I interpreted your statement as “I value a gift economy, which is where we stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing”, since it was contrasted with economies of exchange, rather than “I value a gift economy of the kind where we will stop assigning value to goods and focus on providing for wellbeing.”
Sorry, you know I’m pedantic and tend to interpret things a bit narrowly in that light. Since the former is not what you meant, I do apologize for the interruption.
I didn’t mean to say that a gift economy can’t be what you want it to be, or that it can’t sustain itself in that position of altruism. I just am always wary of treating alternate systems as innate cure-alls. Like liberals who think that democracy is the cure for social ills, instead of just one component of the cure. A gift economy is a legitimate and arguably important proposal, just like democracy is, just not inherently exclusive of the issues that it is sometimes proposed to fix.
EDIT: Put another way, it would be like someone said “I value democracy where we will stop embracing hierarchy and focus on equal power redistribution.” Valuing a democracy in which that happens is laudable, but there are definitely people who think “The more democratic the system, the more egalitarian it becomes”, which any number of democratic systems will show… that democracy alone is insufficient for egalitarianism. I interpreted your statement more like the latter and less like the former. Again, I apologize.
But how does that work in terms of manufacturing in a global economy? Or are you calling for a return to villages with cottage industries?
I’m calling for an extreme reduction in global manufacturing, because what we do is excessive due to capitalism. But that’s unrelated to general anarchism and follows other branches.
And it works by people organising and planning together for their mutual benefit instead of accumulation of currency.
You do understand that people can coordinate and cooperate internationally out of their choosing right? We don’t need a person up top to tell us what to do and what to send where.
Everybody is not equal. Sorry to break it to ya. We can lessen the disparity between highest and lowest income, but there will always be a rift. Some people just don’t output at much value as others.
“output as much value” value according to what? To who? To you? Well I don’t listen to music or look at paintings so anybody calling themselves an “artist” isn’t outputting my definition of value so they should be worse off.
Do you see how quickly that line of thinking can be thrown off? Why can’t we just give people food, water, and shelter? We’re more than capable.
Do you agree that there are better and worse artworks? There are better and worse carpenters and brick layers?
Nah. It’s not thrown off at all. Measure of output is, measure of output. Output of “what”, relies on consensus of necessity or interest from the population for what the goal is.
And this will always be the case.
One interest, is food production. If one person busts their ass and sows more seed or harvests more crops than another, they are outputting more. It’s simple
And this would be true for any other system whether it be a system of necessity or recreation or art, as long as it’s in the consensus of being a goal to achieve.
There is no world where everyone gets EXACTLY the same benefits, that’s just an ideological extreme. It goes against natural law. It de-incentivizes any extra effort or discovery.
Plus, it’s just fucking boring.
Drawing down disparity is the actual goal. Sure CEOs should not make [insert your multiple here] more money/credit/possibility than the worker.
People round here seem to immediately dismiss the CEO. But the (some) CEO may actually have worked harder, been blessed with more intelligence and organizational skills, and contributed more to, say, maximizing food production so that ALL can be fed more for even less effort.
That should be rewarded in society.
Just not to the ridiculously disproportionate extent it is now.When there is no profit incentive an individuals output simply doesn’t matter.
“Measure of output is measure of output” You know i think you might be onto something with that.
Anyway, food production, what if there was enough people working as farmers that everyone only took four hours to plant the necessary seeds? And if you still needed some kind of individual reward, if you bust your ass and get it done faster you got to go home sooner.
It’s funny you call this “simple” when it’s only simple to you. No imagination, no big dreams, no thinking outside the box. Still stuck in the confines of the current system.
Okay, we’ll go take your shit take elsewhere bud. If you don’t believe people are equal you might enjoy stormfront or something.
UBI will just cause inflation, it increases aggregate demand without increasing aggregate supply. More dollars chasing the same amount of goods leads to inflation.
It also doesn’t really address inequality, anyone’s relative position on the income hierarchy doesn’t change, if I make $500 more than another guy before UBI, I’ll still make $500 more than them after UBI, and your position on the income hierarchy determines your standard of living, not your absolute income. Eg. If you get a raise that matches inflation your absolute income may have gone up, but your relative income stayed the same and thus so did your standard of living.
We need to stop focusing on money and focus on the systems of production and hierarchy that actually determine our living standards. Money is just an expression of those structures, it’s downstream, and changing that won’t change the actual structures.
UBI can make lots of other dead end spending unnecessary. For example you won’t need huge unemployment offices, bureaucracy, less social workers, less law enforcement because of lower crime. All of these don’t add any value to the economy directly. You won’t need inefficiencies like social workers, food stamps, etc.
UBI increases demand in some areas. Low income folks tend to spend most of their income out of necessity. Supply will increase with demand, leading to more jobs for building housing, groceries, schools, etc.
It’s cheaper to give people enough money they don’t need to become criminals to survive. Give everyone the opportunity for education, healthier lives, become more productive members of society.
UBI is an uplift mechanism which, along with socialized housing, transport, food, healthcare, etc., provides those who would otherwise be marginalized with the means by which they can become more productive. There will be people who take advantage and live on the dole, but in all of the trials done thus far, that has been a vanishing minority. What has happened is people went back to school, learned a new trade, produced art, and made themselves better and more able to help society in a fashion that better suits their capabilities.
Is it perfect? no, absolutely not. It’s a patch that can be implemented with relatively little difficulty in most “western” governments, and help a lot of people.
For your inflation argument, say I make $5,000 a month before UBI, and maybe I’ll make $10,000 after. Jeff Bezos alone robs us of about $24,000 every 60 seconds and wants more. UBI would have about as much impact on inflation as pissing on a forest fire to put it out would.
UBI doesn’t uplift people, again it doesn’t touch the income hierarchy which is the source of inequality, it just inflates the hierarchy.
All the previous trials were limited to a set group. If you give money to a set group then yes there position on the income relative to everyone else will increase, and thus there access to goods and services. If it is truly universal and everyone gets it then the income hierarchy remains the same, just the incomes are inflated in absolute terms. Just like if everyone got the same percentage raise in a year prices would just go up by that same percentage because the people setting the prices know you can now pay x percent more. If you give a select group of people a raise though then they can now outbid others and get more products and services.
Jeff bezos doesn’t spend most of the money he gets, it just gets reinvested into his ungodly hoard. If that money doesn’t actually get spent and doesn’t enter the economic system it doesn’t effect inflation. The lower you go on the income ladder the larger percent of your money gets spent until you get to the bottom of people living paycheck to paycheck, saving nothing. If you give those people money they’ll spend it right away, because they have to, and that will contribute to inflation.
Wouldn’t inflation be a good immediate signal on which systems of production need to be fixed first? E.g. housing prices spike = need more housing
Also, if someone earns 1000 and you earn 500 before an UBI of 500, they earn 2x as much as you before and 1.5x after.
We have way more than enough housing. The problem is they’re wildly unaffordable or hoarded by people buying vacation homes or investment properties. Some are also from inheritance that they just refuse to get rid of cause they’d lose money or some nonsense.
Maybe but we already know we need more housing, no need to spend a bunch of money to find that out, especially if that money can be spent on actually building housing. There are plenty of other stats and signals we can use to determine what to produce which don’t require bringing inflation into the mix that can cut into peoples savings.
Also, if someone earns 1000 and you earn 500 before an UBI of 500, they earn 2x as much as you before and 1.5x after.
Yes but your ability to outbid that other person stays the same. In a market system your access to limited goods and services is determined by your ability to outbid others to gain those goods and services.
Take housing for example, say I can spend $500 on housing for a shitty apartment and another person can spend $1,000 on housing for a good apartment, and there’s another unhoused person who can’t afford any housing.
Now give each of these people $500, like you said the relative gap has shrinked but the place in the hierarchy stays the same. The person with the good apartment will bid up prices to keep me from moving into their unit, and I’d be forced to bid up for my unit to make sure the unhoused person doesn’t get it. The distribution of housing would stay the same, assuming no new housing gets built, and all the money just goes to the landlord.
Why are you assuming an extra shitty apartment that cost $500 wouldn’t be built, now that the unhoused person has some money to pay with?
Because some money doesn’t mean it’s enough to profit off of building that shitty apartment. If UBI is implemented and the economy inflates then the price of building a shitty apartment will go up, and if that price goes up past the point where it’s profitable to charge $500 a month for it then it either won’t get built or they will increase the rent, probably to the new $1,000 market rate.
You can do social housing and remove the profit incentive, but it’s hard for the state to build housing when all of its money is going to UBI.
That’s the same flawed argument often used to shoot down minimum wage increases. Income increases to the poorest people historically does not lead to unsustainable inflation.
WHERE DID LIBERALS SIT IN THE ASSEMBLEE NATIONALE DURING THE FRENCH REVOLUTION? TO THE LEFT OR TO THE RIGHT???
I mean, this is both true and pointless. Left and right are usually relative positions.
In the 18th century, abolition of feudalism was a distinctly and uniquely leftist position. Now it would be hard to find even right-wingers who are (at least formally) for feudal privileges.
It’s relevant because it goes to the foundation of the word “left” and “leftism”. To claim otherwise is to misunderstand its very meaning.
TIL that only anciene royalists are right wing. You can’t claim otherwise, that’s what it means.
That IS what it meant. And if you read conservative monarchists like Edmund Burke, and his critique of the French Revolution, the criticism he presents is that. The Right. In support of monarchy for stability, much like Hobbes’ Leviathan. Whereas classical liberalism was republican (with a little r), meaning equality under the law regardless of one’s caste position. And if you go to Marx, I mean actually read the essays he and Engles wrote, you’ll see he actually promoted democratic freedoms and worker owned coops. Not state communism. He’d have considered Leninism and particularly Stalinism and Maoism to be abhorrent. Because… hear me out here, because dictatorships are but many forms of Kingship and monarchy. Which Marx OPPOSED.
Giving real “party of Lincoln” vibes 🙄
No. It’s fucking history.
You sound like a right winger trying to convince people that the Democratic Party is currently the party of the KKK.
Please read more books.
Tell me again how political movements never realign.
Words have meaning. People and their movements may realign, but this does not negate historical fact. The entire premise is wrong. Liberalism IS definitionally the left.
Liberalism has been co-opted and is in turn trying to co-opt the entire left. Modern liberalism is just oligarchy wearing liberalism’s skin.
The left used to be a labor movement. It no longer is.
It still is, there just aren’t more than a handful of left wing politicians in this country.
Neoliberals are NOT the left. These are the corporate Democrats that tsk at Trump’s speech and actions, but ultimately agree with what he is doing because the same donors are making money.
Which country?
Yup.
Word up
