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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • You are discussing strategy to avoid the most harm. Harm avoidance. That’s fear. You are literally describing fear without using the word fear and acting like I was the one misunderstanding. You need to understand that you are acting on fear. It’s ridiculous, and I was right to point it out.

    You mentioned my other comment in passing like it meant nothing to you, then say that no one hear has given any real arguments? Maybe you just need to read in better faith. You clearly don’t have any respect for my concerns with Biden if your comment demonstrates a complete unwillingness to even entertain the thought.

    Canadian btw, you don’t need to convince of anything to do with voting strategy anyway. Wasted energy. I just think you guys are being really silly and can’t see the forest from the trees. You could probably use third party observers to get your heads on straight.





  • You’re just not calling it a state.

    I love how that was the one moment you weren’t willing to expand your explanation and just left a link. Did you notice yourself accidentally describing a state and decided to not leave the opening?

    Whatever diplomatic routine you pull that results in the organization that communists are striving for: that’s the state. An external force with a plan about how people organize. You can call it whatever form of state you want, you can call it a commune, a collective, but whatever method the people use to organize themselves that way is that state.

    Think it through: how are decisions made, do we cast a vote? Well contracts, you have a democratic state. Do we use diplomacy? Congrats, you have a diplomatic state. Okay so what if we just want some rules for who does what and we don’t make people make those decisions, congrats you have a constitutional state. Uh oh people aren’t following rules, looks like we need to hire people to enforce those rules… Ever wonder why every communist system ever had an overabundance of police?

    The link you posted is completely untrustworthy by the way. I mean, look at this:

    If anything, getting paid to do something makes it less enjoyable

    Any health brain in the world would throw up alarm bells at this. A classic sophist technique, to prime the conclusions by peppering little lies that make it more palatable. Every study ever performed on paid/unpaid labor has this solved, don’t start pretending it’s true now.

    Here’s a hint: unpaid labor is called what exactly? Using unpaid labor to get things done, what’s that called?

    Plus, look at how this comment chain started. The original replier made the point that communism fascism and socialism all need a state to exist. Your source, when arguing that you don’t need bosses or state control mentioned a case where 500,000 workers over through a factory and controlled it democratically. He suspiciously doesn’t mention how long it lasted, only that it happened post WW1. He also doesn’t mention that that’s immediately before the fascist takeover of Italy, in which Mussolini cooperated with many of these violent revolutionaries called syndicates, and they were unproductive without right control.

    I hold the same sentiment as you in regards to the state, I have a natural distrust towards it I suppose. However, I do not agree that this is at all compatible with an ideology that necessitates maximal cooperation. It’s not any wonder to me at all that the regimes who felt most passionately about how people should cooperate and live together end up the most oppressive


  • Discussing ideas is not the same as getting my philosophy blindly from what people say on the internet.

    What you worry about, being led astray by a narrow view, is precisely what I worry about in people like you. If someone is unwilling to talk about their ideas or hear others out, which is what you did, then they are less likely to hear good reason to rethink their world view.

    Likewise, if you are unable to summarize your ideas in conversational form, I have low confidence in believing you understand the things you say. An expert in a scientific field is almost always able to explain more complicated theories in simpler ways that the layman can understand. If a theory can’t be explained to a layman, it’s effectively useless.

    You’re also suggesting that the reason I’m here is to finally get a grasp on all these theories I’ve heard about but never learned. That’s not what’s happening, and I already told you that explicitly. I am here to talk to you about what you think. That’s normal and should be understood as normal.


  • No I actually just wanted to have a conversation with someone who has thoughts of their own to share. Could imagine if you asked someone what they thought about something and that just handed you an essay written by someone else? Would you have any confidence that this person has any thoughts at all?

    And if you pointed that out to them, what would you think if their response was nothing but condescending?

    You have not come across very well here. I was not trying to contradict or dismiss, I was looking for an honest conversation. Your constant assumptions that I am a bad faith party have directly resulted in you acting in bad faith yourself, and now you’ve proudly defended an act of pure ignorance.

    You need to stop assuming you’re better than people, because you will only make yourself worse.



  • HardNut@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldReification
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    11 months ago

    Because we have limited resources, no riches can come to you without profiting from the work of others.

    Why is this true, and why is this a problem?

    look for yourself how rich people got their wealth and judge by yourself is that normal.

    In almost all cases I can think of, a rich person became rich because they provided a product or service that others saw value in, and this generally works for the betterment of civilization.

    Ford got rich off cars, the people benefitted by gaining access to transportation. JP Morgan got rich off trains, same thing, he provided a transportation service that people willfully used. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave us home computers, despite whatever your opinion is for each of them. Jeff Bezos got rich because he made the online marketplace so ridiculously easy to use, a service people enjoy and see value in.

    This is the principle reason they got rich in all of these cases: they sold something the people wanted, at a price they were willing to.

    Some moderately rich people are actually contributing positively.

    Can you describe what some of these moderately rich people are doing better than the mega rich people?

    But the true goal of society would be to distribute riches correctly in the first place.

    Why is this the goal of society? How do you determine it’s been distributed correctly?



  • Land value tax is simply unjustifiable, because land is the most important thing to leave in private hands. To allow for land tax is to concede that the state has a right to the land you own. The problems that has directly lead to in history are innumerable. From Rome to Russia, state control of land was at the forefront of their issues.

    Why do you think reducing their wealth is a moral good? If you want to improve life for some people, your focus should not be on reducing wealth for others. The latter does not necessarily lead to the former, and it’s an inherently destructive mindset. Destroying one person’s wealth merely destroys their wealth, it does not make others lives better by default



  • My point of view is that the money all capitalist have is a resource that was taken from the rest of us.

    Why?

    you’re right we also need to figure out a plan to distribute it properly in the first place

    I didn’t suggest that. Redistribution of resources doesn’t work, because people don’t easily comply with their wealth being taken away. This idea requires the assumption that it’s not theirs to begin with, so we’re back to the first question: why is a capitalist’s wealth not rightfully theirs?


  • HardNut@lemmy.worldtoLemmy Shitpost@lemmy.worldReification
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    11 months ago

    Historical precedence says you’re wrong. Rockefeller, a prominent capitalist and thus commonly demonized by anti-capitalists, supported initiatives to combat hunger. His foundation provided substantial funding for soup kitchens during the great depression, and his foundation has continued to focus on public health, education, and scientific research.

    JP Morgan, “the ghost of rich dudes passed”, was also philanthropic as fuck. He didn’t donate food directly, but his efforts supported educational institutions, scientific research, and the arts.

    Even Elon Musk has a foundation that studies renewable energy research, space exploration, pediatric research, and more, all at cost for the betterment of the world. In fact, when it was especially popular to point out that his wealth could end poverty entirely, he started directly asking people for their metrics and potential methods. He was clearly ready to put resources into fixing a problem, but nothing ever came of it because no one actually had real metrics or methods, they just wanted a reason to dunk on Elon.

    Okay so those are just some guys I already knew about, what if I just pick a random “capitalist” name I hear commonly thrown around. Carnegie, sure, not sure what he did but I know I’ve seen his name besmirched for being capitalist aaaaand yep look at that! In his older age he donated most of his wealth to the establishment of public libraries, educational institutions, and foundations aimed at promoting world peace. I literally had no idea about any details of this guy’s life, but yeah, it’s not surprising that a successful prominent capitalist lived a life of philanthropy in his later years, because that’s the more consistent pattern.

    Have you ever once even tried to look into whether what you believe is true or not? Or would you just rather hate a label you’ve been told to hate?




  • HardNut@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
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    11 months ago

    I’m sure that’s part of it. Antifa is definitely not well structured, and anarchists could probably be opposed to any official organization.

    Let me put it this way, the post talks about a journalist who investigates antifa, which the op of this comment chain mocked because they’re not an organization. But, this is an argument of semantics, and the post didn’t use that word to begin with. Regardless of what you call antifa, he’s trying to investigate and see what they’re about.

    It’s a very dishonest way to deride people. If you don’t mind me asking, if you don’t think the word organization is appropriate, what’s better? I mean I just say group, can’t really be wrong going that general but it also doesn’t say much. Like, when you said “people who participate in Antifa…”, what type of thing are those people participating in?


  • HardNut@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlMath
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    11 months ago

    I find this comment thread horribly ironic, and I hope I can show you why without starting an argument because this is genuinely kind of funny.

    Fascism is when a state achieves (or attempts to achieve) totalitarianism through corporatization. All corporations are chartered and controlled through the state, and private industry becomes corporatized.

    One of the ways they did this was through legitimizing specific channels of distribution, and labeling all who take a more independent route as illegitimate. Farmers, for example, were coerced into selling their products to state distributors, and pressured out of independent channels. Likewise, farmers who weren’t part of the state organization were often treated with suspicion and derision.

    Basically, if you were a _____ and did _____ things, but were not part of the _____ organization, then you weren’t a real ______ no matter how good you are at _____.

    Anyway, antifa is a real thing that exists, and that’s the thing people here are talking about. They’re a group that has identifiable goals, and they work together under the label. It’s really funny to me that so many here are appealing to “they’re not even a real org” in the face of dissent, because that’s one of the most fascist mind sets that exist commonplace today.


  • You need to pay more attention. Almost every state bordering Mexico and several that aren’t are backing Texas on the decision of opposing the federal branch on this. The Fed coming after Texas wouldn’t necessarily mean secession either: that’s why it would be a civil war, with much of the south joining Texas in their cause.

    That is, if it goes that far to begin with. There’s just no way Texas will be alone in their cause, whether you like their cause or not. They already aren’t perfectly aligned with the fed, and there’s no universe where every state is in alignment with the fed against Texas.