How do you earn a living out of curiosity? :)

:)

I am happy that you are happy. Spread the happiness around.

This doggo demands it.

Capitalism isn't a lifestyle choice, we're forces to take part in because all of life's essentials are unobtainable if we don't.

The alternative is vagrancy and dumpster diving, both of which are already criminalized in many places.

And this is why I support libertarian socialism, a concept most users in this sub do not realize exists

libertarian socialism

Sounds like a contradiction?

lol

I used to think that, then after much reading and thinking I realized the real contradiction is "libertarian capitalism".

What about communist libertarianism?

Depends what you mean by "communism"

1. Stateless, classless, moneyless society described by Marx as the endpoint of history: no

2. State-managed capitalism under a "communist party" such as the USSR: yes

1. I meant to make fun of the isms.

2. I actually would rather talk about gift economies and anthropology. Which cultures appear to deal with violence in the most diffusive fashion?

Reminds me of an anecdote from a researcher living with the Fehe Pygmies of the Congo. When domestic violence seemed imminent, onlookers would applaud the attacker such that they would hand him a large stick and say, "go on, you're a big man. You could kill her with this stick." All the while laughing and mocking him until he'd feel such shame his anger would diffuse.

Instead of police we should have clowns.

Which cultures appear to deal with violence in the most diffusive fashion?

I was going to say, I'm not an expert in anthropology at all, but many (far from all) so-called "primitive" societies seem to handle it with an eye toward diffusion, or at the very least, minimizing the cycle of violence. Outside of shaming, exile/non-association seem to me to make the most sense. Like, if you can't work with us without being abusive, then go find your own river to fish.

Reminds me of an anecdote from a researcher living with the Fehe Pygmies of the Congo

That's extremely interesting.

Instead of police we should have clowns.

I wonder if the division of society into "policers" and "policed" is the first step in creating cycles of "justice-minded" violence. Once that police-class is established, the issue of dealing with violence is no longer something the community as a whole has to think about, it's delegated by that division of labor instead. Also, by throwing violators into jail, we don't solve the problem so much as hide it away. Yes, the community now has one fewer vagrant who has been stealing bread, but what about the chain of events that led the person into that situation in the first place?

I wonder if the division of society into "policers" and "policed" is the first step in creating cycles of "justice-minded" violence.

Well said. I wonder this often myself. It seems like people abdicate their responsibility of regulating themselves and that's how we end up with corrupt regulators and apathetic consumers.

Not sure if you have heard of Rojava (an independent state in northern Syria), but they're taking an interesting approach to this - a citizen-run police force (in other words, many citizens are expected to become police or take police training in some way, or at least have input on their organization structures), a great deal of whom are women.

It isn't, unless your definition of socialism is predicated on its application by the state. But that's only one form of socialism, and there are more libertarian schools of thought such as anarcho-syndicalism (essentially direct ownership of the means of production by self organized workers and trade unions, rather than state collectivization as in Marxist-Leninist states like the USSR/China).

I had a much longer response to this written up but my phone browser refreshed and woops, it's gone. But /u/groman32's post here is pretty good as well.

If you want an example of this sort of socialism, Revolutionary Catalonia was doing pretty well for itself (numerous writers even alleging 50% increases in productivity after the workers adjusted, the transition was chaotic as to be expected), although it was by no means perfect. That only lasted until the USSR-funded Marxist-Leninist Communist Party started to gain dominance, though (which is what prompted George Orwell to return to Britain).

Interesting stuff thanks

Can you explain it? I just googled it and the impression I'm getting is you guys just want anarchy.

Can you explain it?

the impression I'm getting is you guys just want anarchy.

"Anarchy" gets often misunderstood. It does not mean the absence of order, it means the absence of rulers. We can have self-government without creating independent classes of career politicians and police.

We can also have an economy, self-managed, without having a class of owners who do not work themselves. We can still have managers, CEO's, etc., but they could be appointed by the workers themselves democratically, rather than imposed from above by stockholders.

I don't pretend to have all the answers, nowhere near, but I think we should at least dare to dream of a world better than this one, which is definitely far from perfect itself. That's the first step to making it a reality, and I'd expect a long process of trial and error so we can discover the possibilities for ourselves and build them from the ground up. I'm not looking for a revolution where a new political class is installed who then dictates the new society from on high, that's Bolshevism, not my cup of tea.

Thanks for reminding me I'm not alone here.

Yes. The process has been completed. I sometimes feel agony at the recognition that the ways of our ancestors are long lost to us. My attempts to recover them seem insubstantial so far.

Capitalism and statism go hand in hand. Trying to live off the land feels all but impossible having been born into a community that sees phones as more essential than lands.

It ain't all bad. The phone currently houses aeons of information on how to live off the land. Fashioning it into anything from food and fire to medicine and transportation.

Steal land. Fuck isms. Live willfully or die a slave.

Living off the land is luxury in and of itself! In order to do so, you have to play the Capitalist game just to get the money to buy some land at all, whether or not the seller is actually using it or just hoarding it to drive the price up. It's all one big racket masquerading as "freedom". Yes. Freedom to choose your own master and negotiate exactly how much you're exploited.

You can't even buy rights to land. Just the privilege of using it. I say steal land. Be your own master.

Western capitalism is the only society that has allowed for rights for disadvantaged classes to develop and grow. It's severely flawed when regulators get neutered, but what other categories of economics have led to, say, gay rights or freedom of speech or protection for endangered species?

In most cases, Western capitalism is what caused those disadvantages to begin with.

gay rights or freedom of speech or protection for endangered species?

Almost all of these things, for most of the US's history, were pushed for by profoundly anti-capitalist groups. The credit here goes to democracy, not capitalism.

The Spanish Civil War provides some valuable lessons and parallels to our own times. It's worth reading up on for anyone unfamiliar with the story.

It's pretty sad watching Russia abandon its social progress as it settles into a conservative oligarchy. Seems like there's a trend. I was watching those old Soviet cartoons the other day imagining what could have been.

Ok wait a second. Ideologies are valid. Some more valid than others. To discount any 'ism' is an incredibly shortsighted thing to do and negates a lot of philosophy.

'Ism's only form because people subscribe to another's ideas; eventually it grows and they have to organize and lay out tenets or a foundation. Which eventually leads to an ism.

Capitalistism/socialism and to an extent communism are all isms are all decent enough ideals that have unfortunately been hijacked by either a runaway market or malevolent dictators.

Why do they have to lay out tenets and a foundation? Is it not because they believe in the ism?

"The map is not the territory" seems to ring pretty true to what OP said. Don't buy into isms, it makes you vulnerable to having your mind hijacked by misanthropic capitalists and malevolent dictators.

You can entertain the philosophy of isms without devoting your belief to them. We can use them, rather than letting them use us.

It's almost like they're ideas and calling them "isms" is an intellectually lazy excuse to not think about them

Naming them is step one to thinking about them.

Yeh.

I believe someone here is shadowbannes

That's absurd, just because I think an ideology works doesn't mean It's wrong, it has to be proved wrong with logic first.

Also yeah, the elites corrupted modern capitalism so It's the same as blind consumerism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DotBVZ26asI

Capitalism is self corrupting by nature, no need for any elite conspiracy.

Of course not, capitalism in It's basic form has nothing to do with consumerism, the elites corrupted modern capitalism so It's almost the same as consumerism now.

Did you not read my whole post? Capitalism lends itself to consumerism easily, even in the entirely hypothetical "basic capitalism", no elites necessary. Well, except for the government elites who are necessities create capitalism in the first place by forcefully enclosing the commons.

I agree, ism's only distract us. Problem is, we do eventually need to come together on a method of organizing large scale projects to provide everyone with their needs. The satanic elite's argument is that we're all parasites on Earth incapable of enhancing the world more than we destroy it through consumption.

Personally, I like the American System of economics, which has had a fairly successful history but has rarely been implemented.

Check out /r/New_American_System

I am certain that we can meet all of our needs without organizing large-scale projects.

As far as I can tell civilization isn't too successful unless people work together. What would you do to meet your energy needs?

Civilization isn't too successful. Unless destruction is to be considered success. Civilized peoples live more brutal and less sovereign lives than their indigenous relatives.

To which energy needs are you referring?

I'm not sure what world you live on but right now, thanks to my ancestors, I'm drinking clean, organism-free water and living in a space which protects me from natural disasters. If not for that I could have been injured in the last hurricane that passed through.

Chlorinated or flouridated?

An apartment or your parents' basement?

How's that job working out?

Well if all people work together, rather than just a select few who work against the majority by fluoridating their water, we wouldn't be in such a sad state. And even better, if you and a few others work together to build something capable of escaping this death-trap we're currently on, eventually you can fly off into space and locate yourself away from anyone who could harm you.

Lmao. There there, buddy. I, too, suck on the teat of my own hypocrisy.

I don't count on a space escape, tho my dream job is as a space smuggler. I drink spring water and rainwater when I can. Escape is my goal. And survival is a group effort.

Well just so you know, we've had the potential to build an orbital ring space elevator for decades now. Many companies claim they will have one functioning in under 15 years. The political situation is obviously a variable but there could be a market for space travel very soon.

http://imgur.com/a/De5or

Who are you that you've had that potential? I can homestead the planet better than I can homestead in space.

Oh damn, a primmie! I'm not on your side but I applaud the dedication it takes to be on that team.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

Just about every political -ism has it's good points that look decent on paper/end up being fucked up once implemented. A major issue is the all-knowing/all-believing devotee to any particular system, in which only that system and perspective is 10000000% right and holy and good and the rest are fully evil and wrong. Cult-like devotion and polarization always sucks, and disregards anyone with a different set of perspectives and experiences. This seems to play into the competition v. cooperation conundrum that truly defines the basic political right-left/capitalism-communism divide. Less extremist assholes in the world would be a good start, more listening and working together.

I don't know, do I come off like a commie for feeling this way?

Anarchism

Beware capitalism is a hegelian word, it means very different things to different people. To some it might mean economic freedom. To others it means neoliberalism.

Is a fat international banker, cigar in mouth, buddies with all government bureaucracts, who uses his influence to lobby for laws that allows him to legally commit fraud, a capitalist?

IMO the only political dichotomy is liberty vs tyranny. Clearly a system that relies on a politburo of old senile central planners who fix prices, manipulate interest rates and provide benefits to their banker buddies belongs to the latter category.

And about the vocabulary, how could we say this economic system is "capitalist" when it adheres almost to-the-letter with the 5th "commandment" of the communist manifesto?

Regardless, if everyone agreed on the meaning of words, I think everyone in the end would be pro-liberty (except 1% of sociopaths who are currently in jail if they're stupid and in power otherwise). Control the language and you control the mind.

This needs to be a post in itself, excellent! I remember Joseph Tito allowed a good deal of free market expression in former Yugoslavia which as a policy, was much more popular than the soviet bloc policies. We need to differentiate economies as pro-liberty vs. autocratic, by degrees, and not take the basic rules of a fair and level playing field for competition as autocratic. No game is fair when the rules are rigged by an elite against the people.

Not sure every economic system formulated in this civilization isn't a conspiracy actually. Not saying capitalism should therefore be supported. No. Just saying that I'm not sure that whatever other system you go to won't have its share of conspiracy attached to it as well.

Better dead than red

Capitalism is what they called the new and improved version of Feudalism. The wealthy elites and aristos set their serfs free but they still had no wealth or property were suddenly forced to compete with one another for their old positions in order to secure the basic necessities of life. The rich simply got richer and no longer had to worry about feeding and sheltering the serfs who were no longer called that, but rather "employees". That's why you still aren't an equal with equal rights when it comes to any employment contract you enter into. It's still considered a master/servant relationship and contract under the law.

This is fascinating. What about us in the middle, where we don't have to worry about finances yet we can;t run off and spend millions? What about those working to become "upper class"? Where do we stand?

Not as far from the bottom as we'd like to think, as it turns out. The top 1% of the population has more wealth and property than the bottom 90% do. They also have more wealth and property than the next 9% who collectively also have more wealth and property than the bottom 90% do. So the top 10% have over two thirds of all of the wealth and property. That remaining less than a third is long gone before you reach the bottom 50% who not only don't have any wealth or property but have far more debt than any real assets to cover and remember that what they owe, they owe mainly to that same top 10% who in the end actually own it all and then some.

:)

I am happy that you are happy. Spread the happiness around.

This doggo demands it.

Capitalism isn't a lifestyle choice, we're forces to take part in because all of life's essentials are unobtainable if we don't.