Other Forums Containment Thread

[benjipwns]

I wonder if there's a way I/ we can cause twitter to cost more money to run. I know it's small fry but it's tempting to write a python script which will post musk insults all day. Like if a bunch of people used the twitter APIs and just spammed posts I wonder if that would cause a cost.

Feels like it would be great for the userbase to rebel somehow - leaving a python script running whenever my computer is on wouldn't cost me anything but if enough people did it and enough anti musk posts ended up going up - it might cause twitter to drain more out of elons bank account

I wouldn't normally be like this - but unbanning trump could have untold impacts on all of our future and it feels like we ought to be able to fight back - and simply not using the site just gives it over to the types of people who will use it to cause untold damage

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-twitter-drama-ot-let’s-keep-it-here-parody-🔵-official-ꕤ-up-reinstates-2020-election-loser-trump.649272/page-288#post-96827646

Slacktivism, ahoy.

She told you what to do, Bob, direct action:

For large-scale sweeping reforms to happen that magically temper the worst ills of capitalism from a western lens (again, I fundamentally disagree with capitalism because the exploitation of the worst off is baked in, and you cannot get around it), you need either A.) for billionaires and the politicians they own to agree to those reforms or B.) Violence to occur.

A is laughable because the billionaires and politicians have no reason to stop the gravy train, and B is laughable because people who are pro-capitalism aren't actually willing to get their hands dirty for anything. Why would they; they have the system they want.

Get your hands dirty like Laura Loomer did at Twitter HQ. How many servers can one multi-billion dollar company have in how many locations?

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/psa-joke-links-to-terrorist-leader-donald-j-trumps-twitter-account-will-now-work-after-account-reactivated-by-bigoted-sack-of-shit-elon-musk.656232/

Yes, it was all fun and games until Elon decided he wants to get sued a lot.

B-Dumbs falling for the Rickroll

Once again, like we said before he got banned, please don't post the random bigoted shit that pops into his head. If it's actually newsworthy find an article about it, otherwise we don't need to hear about it.

Yep, get ready for the Milo links to go live any day now too. Congrats on making this site one of the highest referral spots for these bigots.

[joeboy101]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/psa-joke-links-to-terrorist-leader-donald-j-trumps-twitter-account-will-now-work-after-account-reactivated-by-bigoted-sack-of-shit-elon-musk.656232/post-96825921

Really hoping something replacing Twitter arrives soon.

I hope it doesn't and Twitter just burns. Frankly, Twitter so centralized the internet discourse that their bullshit somehow became the standard for what is expected in terms of moderation. And it was a piss poor standard.

Twitter normalized so much insane bullshit and behavior that it's done a huge amount of damage to our society. Without Twitter we don't get President Trump. We don't get the alt right and gamergate doesn't get as big as it did. The amount of damage done cannot be overstated.

Funny enough, I'm hoping Twitter burns as well, with the above stated being half the reason. His board's bullshit and the twitterstazi being the other half.

[benjipwns]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/psa-joke-links-to-terrorist-leader-donald-j-trumps-twitter-account-will-now-work-after-account-reactivated-by-bigoted-sack-of-shit-elon-musk.656232/

Congrats on making this site one of the highest referral spots for these bigots.

On what planet?

https://www.resetera.com/threads/psa-joke-links-to-terrorist-leader-donald-j-trumps-twitter-account-will-now-work-after-account-reactivated-by-bigoted-sack-of-shit-elon-musk.656232/post-96825921

Really hoping something replacing Twitter arrives soon.

I hope it doesn't and Twitter just burns. Frankly, Twitter so centralized the internet discourse that their bullshit somehow became the standard for what is expected in terms of moderation. And it was a piss poor standard.

Twitter normalized so much insane bullshit and behavior that it's done a huge amount of damage to our society. Without Twitter we don't get President Trump. We don't get the alt right and gamergate doesn't get as big as it did. The amount of damage done cannot be overstated.

The poor craftsman blames other people's tools.

[BisMarckie]

Holy shit, we haven't actually skimmed some of Nepenthe's unhinged shit in that thread, including from that utopian post, she almost literally is ResetERA.com's Pol Pot.

I didn't even bother to read anyone else because I saw the most common avatars and already knew all the stuff it was going to say.

But first, I did read this one because it was right above Nepenthe's post:

China's socialist experience is quite great even though it's demonized by western media/politics. Salaries have been increasing faster than the GDP, inflation and productivity combined meaning more money is effectively going to the workers and less to the billionaires.

As far as I know China has their own climate goals and they achieve them constantly but I don't know how they compare to goals set by UN or multilateral agreements. Their per Capita pollution indexes are lower than Europe/USA though. I also don't know how other countries are doing other than Bolsonaro just wanted to see the Amazon burn.

Their country is quite closed but it is impossible to imagine a country trying to not be a hardcore capitalist not being target by CIA 24/7. Add sanctions to that and you can see how free countries are to self determine their internal politics. Cuba has an economy fucked up by sanctions for the past half century yet they have better services (education, health care) than most countries including some of the richest capitalist ones... The USA will just never let a non-capitalist country be free to join the global economy. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of the CIA is to destabilize China right now. With that said their country being closed and acting as a vigilante state spying on its citizens is just what the external circumstances impose rather than what CCP believes is ideal.

Amazing, a totalitarian regime can deliberately slaughter tens of millions of its citizens for political and ethnic reasons, deliberately starve and work tens of millions of more to death and endlessly persecute an actual countless number of victims while telling everyone why they're doing it and our ACAB progressive friends will allege it's all necessary because of secret CIA plots undermining the deliberately harsh totalitarian system.

And now, Nepenthe:

Do you think there are no alternative forms of national living because it is scientifically impossible for humans to organize their lives any other way other than having most people slave away for a few, or do you think there are no other systems because capitalists want to make sure the entire world lives under a model that enriches them?

The abolishment of capitalism simply means we stop organizing our society in such a manner that the majority of us are forced to work for individuals who feast on our labor and their inverted unfettered access to the world's resources.

It's a false dichotomy that says that everyone's quality of life is definitely going to go down if we are not producing more and more, year after year, and destroying our planet under capitalism. Similar as saying that taking literally anything away from the US military budget to fund other things means the country will definitely be invaded, and who wants an invasion, right?

Fact is, we actually produce more than enough resources to satisfy every human's needs and wants, and we could easily pare down the amount of hours we work without really skipping a beat. The problem is that access to these resources is inherently dictated by capitalists who have no incentive to just give to the poorest among us. In fact, a highly stratified hierarchy of people who have it all and people who are dying because they've been barred from access to basic necessities as a result of the folks at top having it all is literally the point.

The pandemic didn't prove that no changes are to be made if we lower consumption. It actually proved the opposite- those who operated with communal, non-capitalist modes of thinking actually increased their chances of survival and inevitably saved the lives of others. Countries that had more robust welfare systems where you didn't have to continue working also had lower rates of infection. Had we all operated like the selfish capitalists demanding we "open back up," the numbers would've been worse. It also proved that capitalism- the so called "greatest we can ever do"- can completely fucking collapse under the power of a bat with a cold, that maybe organizing your society to only remain stable if people are forced to sacrifice their time and bodies for you doing menial labor isn't a good idea in the face of something like a pandemic, a phenomenon that's only going to get worse with climate change. Get ready for more capitalists to die on ventilators in droves when, not if, the next pandemic hits.

It may not be possible, but, at least we'll all die trying i guess.

I'm glad you're willing to sacrifice billions under the insistence that capitalism has to remain in place.

I don't want to continue with capitalism, my simple argument is whatever system replaces it cannot rely on lower consumption.

It's literally we decrease consumption or we allow billions to die. There isn't an alternative.

So then why did capitalism only arise within the last few centuries of our hundred thousand year existence? Do you think capitalism is natural?

But no one's arguing that. They're arguing that changing the system doesn't address the core problem which is human greed exploiting the system, whatever the system, for the benefit of the few.

If you change the conditions in which people are allowed to live and operate in, you're able to temper the ability for capitalism to continue wrecking havoc on the planet. Even pro-capitalism people believe that, even though I disagree with their methods. "Tax the billionaires more and everything will be fine! Sweden does it!"

So even they're not addressing human nature either. They're in favor of putting in systemic roadblocks to prevent the capitalists who by everyone's admittance are pieces of shit from ruining everything. But when people are in favor of bigger roadblocks, suddenly we have to start trying to change human nature. Kinda weird.

This is also fundamentally just a rewritten naturalist argument, by the way. "If you don't eliminate human greed, then you can't make society better" aka "capitalism is the best we can do because it leans into humans' nature to be greedy."

Empires don't last forever, but only one ideological empire in our millennia of existence is- once again- literally rendering the fucking planet uninhabitable.

My argument is we should maybe try something- anything- else before millions, potentially billions of us, die, especially since we have the means to organize society however we choose.

She should see what the Soviets and China did to their "collectively owned" natural resources like destroying million year old lakes in a matter of years and getting nothing out of it. She doesn't even care about the millions, mostly non-white, who have been deliberately killed by trying something, anything, else to organize society however "we" choose.

Ah yes, because capitalism has been great at mitigating human misery. How did that pandemic turn out again for the world? How many times have we had recessions and depressions that have starved people? How many people die from lack of access to basic necessities still, or just from the way capitalism has organized our infrastructure? And the Global South; I'm sure they've definitely been enjoying the riches of their exploitation since the colonists got off the boats. Surely.

Like, white Americans being able to buy graphics cards in the Global North isn't a meaningful metric of global human misery or happiness.

Diversity in human experience is not directly proportional to making absolutely sure that the powerful own our labor and thus our finite lives, and I'm not sure where the correlation is even coming from. Like, what do you think it has been like across African, Indigenous, and Asian cultures across millennia before capitalism? They were all wearing the same clothes, doing the same shit, never creating, never aspiring, never having meaningful human connections and experiences?

Perhaps we shouldn't base sweeping generalisations about human nature, and thus the sociopolitical systems that dictate human well being, on anecdotal observations and base assumptions that are carried without questioning.

That's kind of the insidiousness if capitalism. People assume it's natural without any proof of so.

Comfortable lifestyles can be maintained outside of capitalism, and with a significant reduction of capitalism. We already know we produce a lot of shit that ends up going to waste, and we know that with automation we could all be working a lot less. But if your definition of comfort means we have to keep burning the planet and enslaving the Global South because "Well, wanting five Nintendo Switches is imperative to the human condition and if I can't have that, it's inevitably back to the Iron Curtain," then you are ultimately arguing for capitalism regardless of how much you try to convince me you're really not for it.

Do you think Capitaism becoming the dominant economic system came without [death and chaos]?

The idea that the Europeans held the rest of the world hostage at the wrong end of disease blankets and gun barrels and forced capitalism into play is just critical race theory. Capitalism came about with robust debate and nice smiles.

I wonder if those who hate capitalism so much think feudalism was better?

Capitalism is essentially just feudalism 2.0 so, no, not really.

You've been adamant that capitalism has brought about a variance in human experience that can't be maintained in other systems. But all capitalism is is an socioeconomic model by which a few powerful people own our labor. I'm saying you don't need to have your labor owned by the powerful (aka capitalism) to achieve diverse human experiences. So this argument doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.

That is an excessively colonialist mindset but the questions stand. Do you think, even now, the Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures that maintain traditions that are not borne from capitalism are not diverse? Do you think people before capitalism never built cities, never had preventative healthcare and disease innoculation, didn't have science, math, and art, and never had dreams, myths, and heroes? You think humans just sat around doing nothing until white Europeans showed them the light with enslavement, genocide, and the Industrial Revolution?

My example is not saying that everyone would be barred from having more than one Switch. My example is saying that people wanting excess to the point of harming others is not a human experience I have to respect. We can still have Switches, but the nature of non-capitalist modes of living, where we temper exploitation of others and stop raping the planet for all she's worth, means there will be less Switches in general. But less Switches in general, as well, is not a harbinger of human misery. Again, we know we can cut back. It is a false dichotomy that says that cutting back means your life will suffer, and thus in order for life to not suffer, you must continue consuming more and more, with no end cap in sight.

I am not satisified with a system where only the west gets the benefits of technological advancement while other portions of the Earth don't have equal access because they're the ones propping up our technological advancement through exploitation, slavery, and genocide. We should be aiming for a system that ensures everyone has what they need and can reasonably want without leading back into a system where just about half of the Earth is fucked.

I can tell you right now poverty is not a result of laziness. It's a result of capitalism suppressing access to resources so that certain segments of the population literally will never be able to climb the social ladder and escape impoverishment, and this is by design.

Ignoring the fact that what you're describing is the status quo now, again, we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same. The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

Some post reads like passages taken out from the 1984 novel.

Ah yes, the anti-capitalist is taking passages from 1984.

Orwell was a socialist but I'd argue 1984 is anti authoritarian more than forwarding any economic ideals.

1984 is indeed anti-authoritarian because it's basically a rebuke of Nazi Germany and Russia and didn't really talk economics, but it's also in general just against impregnable concentrations of power (good thing we're not living under a system where power is concentrated at the top for no reason amirite?!), because they're unjustifiable and senseless. The ending makes that pretty clear. Regardless, anyone can read my posts in this thread and-assuming they've actually read the book- know my views are incompatible with Oceania's. It was a dumb remark.

I agree with you. The trick is, if we build a system where everyone has what they need and reasonably want, this will result in more overall resource usage than we have now.

No it won't. You're assuming that people are going without because there isn't enough. I'm telling you there is enough. It just doesn't get to everyone because the arbiters of society decided that it's better to stratify access to resources.

For large-scale sweeping reforms to happen that magically temper the worst ills of capitalism from a western lens (again, I fundamentally disagree with capitalism because the exploitation of the worst off is baked in, and you cannot get around it), you need either A.) for billionaires and the politicians they own to agree to those reforms or B.) Violence to occur.

A is laughable because the billionaires and politicians have no reason to stop the gravy train, and B is laughable because people who are pro-capitalism aren't actually willing to get their hands dirty for anything. Why would they; they have the system they want.

Nah, a wealthy few hogging resources and grinding up the masses is what keeps humanity back and curbs its progress. It actively makes humanity worse and more vile, and is why this is all we have reached at this point in time.

Yep. How many brilliant people have died because of capitalism and colonialism before they could fully contribute to their communities and to the world? The amount of culture, knowledge, and potential for progress that's been deliberately wiped off the map because of the systems we have in play now has to be immeasurable.

(It's also weird that- again- people keep equating happiness and fulfillment with capitalism. Like, stop doing that. That's why that PS5 you snagged still hasn't made you any real life friends.)

I'm not necessarily advocating for socialism as the end goal here, although it would be a better system than capitalism for the workers (because I don't think writing a different name on the deed to the factory makes the factory more environmentally and morally sound, but you know).

But as is hinted at in the parenthetical, socialism is a system where the government or the social commons own the means of production instead of private individuals. So like, Tesla would still exist, but instead of being owned by Elon fucking Musk it'd be owned by the public instead. The benefits to this are that, theoretically, Tesla workers under socialism profit more off their than they did under than capitalism and are more interested in the company's well-being and day-to-day operations because they wouldn't be forced to send significant chunks of their true wages up towards the fucking apartheid baby that owns the company under the guise of "profit" that he alone "earned." It would also necessitate the easier access to healthcare, because now that the libelous sexual predator who owns Tesla now can't dangle healthcare benefits above his workers' heads as essentially a threat, and indeed no one else could, well that shit would fall to the government as well.

Things like free higher education, maternity/paternity leave, etc. aren't necessarily "socialist" policies. They can exist in a capitalist system. Capitalists just hate these things because they feel entitled to all of the money, and they're not getting all of the money if they're having to subsidize college or if their child-bearing workers have the gall to want to leave and take care of their children. Fuck that shit. Good things for the commons do not translate into power for our oligarchs.

That wasn't my assertion anywhere in this thread. My assertion was that we physically have enough stuff to feed, cloth, and house everyone, and the reasons we don't are for logistical, structural, and philosophical reasons related to capitalism. This was specifically in response to that poster's presumed assertions that we have scarcity because the stuff we need to prevent scarcity doesn't actually exist. Essentially, homeboy said "people go hungry because we don't produce enough food." I responded "We actually produce enough food for everyone to eat; it just doesn't get to everyone who needs it." That's not an assertion about how getting the food to anyone would affecting the climate. So you're saying my rebuttal to that assertion means that I believe we can raise all 8 billion people to have a middle class American standard of living with a zero carbon footprint somehow, even though I've been very clear in this thread and others that I just don't fundamentally agree with a US/EU standard of living anyway considering what we know it's doing to the planet, and that we should indeed cut back significantly everywhere or risk runaway climate change where billions die.

The only time I ever mentioned a baseline standard of living is when people were assuming that infinite greed is just innate human nature, when instead we know that studies out there say that human happiness caps out at around $75k, or what this calculator says would be $40/hr for a basic 8 hour/5 day week. But you're asking these questions under an assumption that, once again, I think we should raise everyone to a US/EU standard of living under capitalism and that this can definitely be done with a zero or negative carbon footprint or such nonsense I never said. That's impossible, and I've been clear that's impossible because the point of capitalism has always been to concentrate access to resources at the top, and its rampant industrial expansion is the reason the climate is worsening.

We already do very expensive R&D through the government as demonstrated by a shitload of scientific and medical research and innovation we're privy to. Finding the money would not necessarily be the problem if there was a demand- civilian side or state side- for electric cars, especially if we had a government that was prone to doing what was best for the people and the planet versus what is best for shareholders.

I can’t imagine socialism going well here with the people we have in power or the type of people who will be in power.

Well, the point of changing the system would be to make sure the people who are in charge of the system aren't in charge anymore. So before we can attempt speedrunning socialism into ruin we'd have to get rid of the capitalists first.

Violence is inevitable in any change of the status quo. Capitalism did not just spring up immediately and peacefully. It was brutally forced on the Europeans who were mucking about with it who in turn brutally forced it upon the rest of the world, and it took centuries of fuck-ups and dealing with worse standards to "fix it." Like, remember child laborers, no weekends, robber barons, the Transatlantic Slave trade, all that fun jazz? Capitalism is inherently soaked in bloodshed and yet there's plenty of folks extolling its virtues regardless.

Capitalism was not a concrete idea when it was originally constructed across time and many philosophers who engaged with it either. Like, Adam Smith specifically advocated for absolutely minimal government interference in market economies, and that if everyone is allowed to fend for themselves then you would achieve this sprawling utopia of equality. Anyone person of color holding down a menial 9 to 5 knows that shit is fundamentally wrong on the surface lol.

So asking for a fully-formed alternative wherein you know exactly how you are going to get a new refrigerator in a post-capitalist society, from the construction to delivery to your doorway, is a fool's errand. You are never going to get that answer, but more importantly it shouldn't be expected for anyone to provide it, especially when pro-capitalist folks can't even agree on basic terms of engagement such as to what extent, if any, should we tax the rich today.

I will say though that I agree that liberals and leftists in general need to be better orators and storytellers, and should be able to boil down dense theory to more easily talk with laymen.

As an aside, Adam Smith (like Hayek) argued for social welfare programs especially universal ones. (Hayek argues for universal health insurance for example. Smith primarily for public education which didn't exist at the time.) The ideal is unlimited free trade, neither argued humanity has reached the ideal point yet as Nepenthe does.

Lack of access to necessities is not exclusive to capitalism, true, but it is inherent in its design. Capitalists have no reason to provide basic livability for everyone if it means getting in the way of their access to as much capital as possible, especially since people are not willing to physically fight for a higher baseline standard for the poorest among us.

I haven't done a lot of reading on it yet, but I do vibe with the true anti-work movement (not the Reddit shit where people just complain about the state of their job) which ties back into another poster's mentioning of degrowth. We waste a lot of time of our finite lives absolutely struggling every day to keep afloat when frankly I like to imagine the world would be much better if we were more encouraged to pursue what we're good at and passionate about.

I don't know what to tell you other than there's no reason to think like this because we have expressed more egalitarian ways of thinking and living all throughout our history.

And once again, no one can even provide a meta study that says that humans are innately and scientifically incapable of working together to achieve better outcomes for more people, which is weird, don't you think? Such a conclusion would be one of the few scientific advancements capitalists would be lining up to fund from their own pockets. "Objective proof that wage slavery is the natural order of things and I belong on top exploiting every living thing I can get my hands on? Yes please."

Subscribing to capitalist realism is entirely a conscious choice.

She seems to rule out people willingly working for others because they personally benefit as "working together to achieve better outcomes for more people" however. To quote a social welfare advocate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages"

A lot of problems are difficult to solve. But problems nonetheless have solutions and measures of mitigation that we can reach over time, otherwise we wouldn't really call them problems. The better phrase would be "facts of life", but if no one who is pro-capitalism is able to provide proof that capitalism is scientifically a natural state of humanity, then it makes no sense to treat it as a biological reality. Capitalism is a economic and political system that we arbitrarily designed. That means we can also get rid of it, provided we understand that doing so is possible regardless of how awful we believe humanity to be.

Well again, one of the problems I have with socialism is like you said- it's basically capitalism without capitalists. Most people are beholden to growthism and the idea that we need to produce just to produce, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of socialist fantasy that is significantly different from stories of a capitalistic status quo. I also did agree that leftist needs to get better at storytelling and plain language, and allow ourselves to be imaginative rather than sticking within circles that espouse theory as jargon. I actually did start briefly making a personal kind of world-building document for myself about what I would imagine a "post capitalist" society to be, both to have some sort of idea to pitch to people and work towards tangibly in the real world, and as a vehicle to read and learn more about alternative ways and philosophies of living. In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s in that it is primarily communal. My basic ideas were as follows:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

Great post, read every single word of it.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Hecht's Little Fat Bitch Royal

Remember what I said.

I'm no longer bothering with side-eying Trump.

I'm side-eying YOU.

Trump is such a cliche Twitter fanatic that it still blows my mind anyone anywhere ever read his posts and saw anything other than 110% bullshit.

Cameron and Shard Shinjuku right now since they're obsessed with Trump's tweets

[Propagandhim]

In the time Nepenthe wrote all of that she could have completed a meaningful bit of Khan Academy's free Javascript or SQL course and became a little closer to being of use to someone.

 

[benjipwns]

In the time Nepenthe wrote all of that she could have completed a meaningful bit of Khan Academy's free Javascript or SQL course and became a little closer to being of use to someone.

This is the inherent insanity of capitalism she warned you to stop consciously choosing. Thanks for doing your part to stop us from all just getting what we need and want from the community goods and services inventory. All because you selfishly refuse to think outside of the capitalist box and have everyone work together instead of working for others.

[Propagandhim]

edit: why am i bothering

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/GothamGirlBlue/status/1594095627222519808

                    Nepenthe?
 

[PogiJones]

Holy shit, we haven't actually skimmed some of Nepenthe's unhinged shit in that thread, including from that utopian post, she almost literally is ResetERA.com's Pol Pot.

I didn't even bother to read anyone else because I saw the most common avatars and already knew all the stuff it was going to say.

But first, I did read this one because it was right above Nepenthe's post:

China's socialist experience is quite great even though it's demonized by western media/politics. Salaries have been increasing faster than the GDP, inflation and productivity combined meaning more money is effectively going to the workers and less to the billionaires.

As far as I know China has their own climate goals and they achieve them constantly but I don't know how they compare to goals set by UN or multilateral agreements. Their per Capita pollution indexes are lower than Europe/USA though. I also don't know how other countries are doing other than Bolsonaro just wanted to see the Amazon burn.

Their country is quite closed but it is impossible to imagine a country trying to not be a hardcore capitalist not being target by CIA 24/7. Add sanctions to that and you can see how free countries are to self determine their internal politics. Cuba has an economy fucked up by sanctions for the past half century yet they have better services (education, health care) than most countries including some of the richest capitalist ones... The USA will just never let a non-capitalist country be free to join the global economy. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of the CIA is to destabilize China right now. With that said their country being closed and acting as a vigilante state spying on its citizens is just what the external circumstances impose rather than what CCP believes is ideal.

Amazing, a totalitarian regime can deliberately slaughter tens of millions of its citizens for political and ethnic reasons, deliberately starve and work tens of millions of more to death and endlessly persecute an actual countless number of victims while telling everyone why they're doing it and our ACAB progressive friends will allege it's all necessary because of secret CIA plots undermining the deliberately harsh totalitarian system.

And now, Nepenthe:

Do you think there are no alternative forms of national living because it is scientifically impossible for humans to organize their lives any other way other than having most people slave away for a few, or do you think there are no other systems because capitalists want to make sure the entire world lives under a model that enriches them?

The abolishment of capitalism simply means we stop organizing our society in such a manner that the majority of us are forced to work for individuals who feast on our labor and their inverted unfettered access to the world's resources.

It's a false dichotomy that says that everyone's quality of life is definitely going to go down if we are not producing more and more, year after year, and destroying our planet under capitalism. Similar as saying that taking literally anything away from the US military budget to fund other things means the country will definitely be invaded, and who wants an invasion, right?

Fact is, we actually produce more than enough resources to satisfy every human's needs and wants, and we could easily pare down the amount of hours we work without really skipping a beat. The problem is that access to these resources is inherently dictated by capitalists who have no incentive to just give to the poorest among us. In fact, a highly stratified hierarchy of people who have it all and people who are dying because they've been barred from access to basic necessities as a result of the folks at top having it all is literally the point.

The pandemic didn't prove that no changes are to be made if we lower consumption. It actually proved the opposite- those who operated with communal, non-capitalist modes of thinking actually increased their chances of survival and inevitably saved the lives of others. Countries that had more robust welfare systems where you didn't have to continue working also had lower rates of infection. Had we all operated like the selfish capitalists demanding we "open back up," the numbers would've been worse. It also proved that capitalism- the so called "greatest we can ever do"- can completely fucking collapse under the power of a bat with a cold, that maybe organizing your society to only remain stable if people are forced to sacrifice their time and bodies for you doing menial labor isn't a good idea in the face of something like a pandemic, a phenomenon that's only going to get worse with climate change. Get ready for more capitalists to die on ventilators in droves when, not if, the next pandemic hits.

It may not be possible, but, at least we'll all die trying i guess.

I'm glad you're willing to sacrifice billions under the insistence that capitalism has to remain in place.

I don't want to continue with capitalism, my simple argument is whatever system replaces it cannot rely on lower consumption.

It's literally we decrease consumption or we allow billions to die. There isn't an alternative.

So then why did capitalism only arise within the last few centuries of our hundred thousand year existence? Do you think capitalism is natural?

But no one's arguing that. They're arguing that changing the system doesn't address the core problem which is human greed exploiting the system, whatever the system, for the benefit of the few.

If you change the conditions in which people are allowed to live and operate in, you're able to temper the ability for capitalism to continue wrecking havoc on the planet. Even pro-capitalism people believe that, even though I disagree with their methods. "Tax the billionaires more and everything will be fine! Sweden does it!"

So even they're not addressing human nature either. They're in favor of putting in systemic roadblocks to prevent the capitalists who by everyone's admittance are pieces of shit from ruining everything. But when people are in favor of bigger roadblocks, suddenly we have to start trying to change human nature. Kinda weird.

This is also fundamentally just a rewritten naturalist argument, by the way. "If you don't eliminate human greed, then you can't make society better" aka "capitalism is the best we can do because it leans into humans' nature to be greedy."

Empires don't last forever, but only one ideological empire in our millennia of existence is- once again- literally rendering the fucking planet uninhabitable.

My argument is we should maybe try something- anything- else before millions, potentially billions of us, die, especially since we have the means to organize society however we choose.

She should see what the Soviets and China did to their "collectively owned" natural resources like destroying million year old lakes in a matter of years and getting nothing out of it. She doesn't even care about the millions, mostly non-white, who have been deliberately killed by trying something, anything, else to organize society however "we" choose.

Ah yes, because capitalism has been great at mitigating human misery. How did that pandemic turn out again for the world? How many times have we had recessions and depressions that have starved people? How many people die from lack of access to basic necessities still, or just from the way capitalism has organized our infrastructure? And the Global South; I'm sure they've definitely been enjoying the riches of their exploitation since the colonists got off the boats. Surely.

Like, white Americans being able to buy graphics cards in the Global North isn't a meaningful metric of global human misery or happiness.

Diversity in human experience is not directly proportional to making absolutely sure that the powerful own our labor and thus our finite lives, and I'm not sure where the correlation is even coming from. Like, what do you think it has been like across African, Indigenous, and Asian cultures across millennia before capitalism? They were all wearing the same clothes, doing the same shit, never creating, never aspiring, never having meaningful human connections and experiences?

Perhaps we shouldn't base sweeping generalisations about human nature, and thus the sociopolitical systems that dictate human well being, on anecdotal observations and base assumptions that are carried without questioning.

That's kind of the insidiousness if capitalism. People assume it's natural without any proof of so.

Comfortable lifestyles can be maintained outside of capitalism, and with a significant reduction of capitalism. We already know we produce a lot of shit that ends up going to waste, and we know that with automation we could all be working a lot less. But if your definition of comfort means we have to keep burning the planet and enslaving the Global South because "Well, wanting five Nintendo Switches is imperative to the human condition and if I can't have that, it's inevitably back to the Iron Curtain," then you are ultimately arguing for capitalism regardless of how much you try to convince me you're really not for it.

Do you think Capitaism becoming the dominant economic system came without [death and chaos]?

The idea that the Europeans held the rest of the world hostage at the wrong end of disease blankets and gun barrels and forced capitalism into play is just critical race theory. Capitalism came about with robust debate and nice smiles.

I wonder if those who hate capitalism so much think feudalism was better?

Capitalism is essentially just feudalism 2.0 so, no, not really.

You've been adamant that capitalism has brought about a variance in human experience that can't be maintained in other systems. But all capitalism is is an socioeconomic model by which a few powerful people own our labor. I'm saying you don't need to have your labor owned by the powerful (aka capitalism) to achieve diverse human experiences. So this argument doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.

That is an excessively colonialist mindset but the questions stand. Do you think, even now, the Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures that maintain traditions that are not borne from capitalism are not diverse? Do you think people before capitalism never built cities, never had preventative healthcare and disease innoculation, didn't have science, math, and art, and never had dreams, myths, and heroes? You think humans just sat around doing nothing until white Europeans showed them the light with enslavement, genocide, and the Industrial Revolution?

My example is not saying that everyone would be barred from having more than one Switch. My example is saying that people wanting excess to the point of harming others is not a human experience I have to respect. We can still have Switches, but the nature of non-capitalist modes of living, where we temper exploitation of others and stop raping the planet for all she's worth, means there will be less Switches in general. But less Switches in general, as well, is not a harbinger of human misery. Again, we know we can cut back. It is a false dichotomy that says that cutting back means your life will suffer, and thus in order for life to not suffer, you must continue consuming more and more, with no end cap in sight.

I am not satisified with a system where only the west gets the benefits of technological advancement while other portions of the Earth don't have equal access because they're the ones propping up our technological advancement through exploitation, slavery, and genocide. We should be aiming for a system that ensures everyone has what they need and can reasonably want without leading back into a system where just about half of the Earth is fucked.

I can tell you right now poverty is not a result of laziness. It's a result of capitalism suppressing access to resources so that certain segments of the population literally will never be able to climb the social ladder and escape impoverishment, and this is by design.

Ignoring the fact that what you're describing is the status quo now, again, we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same. The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

Some post reads like passages taken out from the 1984 novel.

Ah yes, the anti-capitalist is taking passages from 1984.

Orwell was a socialist but I'd argue 1984 is anti authoritarian more than forwarding any economic ideals.

1984 is indeed anti-authoritarian because it's basically a rebuke of Nazi Germany and Russia and didn't really talk economics, but it's also in general just against impregnable concentrations of power (good thing we're not living under a system where power is concentrated at the top for no reason amirite?!), because they're unjustifiable and senseless. The ending makes that pretty clear. Regardless, anyone can read my posts in this thread and-assuming they've actually read the book- know my views are incompatible with Oceania's. It was a dumb remark.

I agree with you. The trick is, if we build a system where everyone has what they need and reasonably want, this will result in more overall resource usage than we have now.

No it won't. You're assuming that people are going without because there isn't enough. I'm telling you there is enough. It just doesn't get to everyone because the arbiters of society decided that it's better to stratify access to resources.

For large-scale sweeping reforms to happen that magically temper the worst ills of capitalism from a western lens (again, I fundamentally disagree with capitalism because the exploitation of the worst off is baked in, and you cannot get around it), you need either A.) for billionaires and the politicians they own to agree to those reforms or B.) Violence to occur.

A is laughable because the billionaires and politicians have no reason to stop the gravy train, and B is laughable because people who are pro-capitalism aren't actually willing to get their hands dirty for anything. Why would they; they have the system they want.

Nah, a wealthy few hogging resources and grinding up the masses is what keeps humanity back and curbs its progress. It actively makes humanity worse and more vile, and is why this is all we have reached at this point in time.

Yep. How many brilliant people have died because of capitalism and colonialism before they could fully contribute to their communities and to the world? The amount of culture, knowledge, and potential for progress that's been deliberately wiped off the map because of the systems we have in play now has to be immeasurable.

(It's also weird that- again- people keep equating happiness and fulfillment with capitalism. Like, stop doing that. That's why that PS5 you snagged still hasn't made you any real life friends.)

I'm not necessarily advocating for socialism as the end goal here, although it would be a better system than capitalism for the workers (because I don't think writing a different name on the deed to the factory makes the factory more environmentally and morally sound, but you know).

But as is hinted at in the parenthetical, socialism is a system where the government or the social commons own the means of production instead of private individuals. So like, Tesla would still exist, but instead of being owned by Elon fucking Musk it'd be owned by the public instead. The benefits to this are that, theoretically, Tesla workers under socialism profit more off their than they did under than capitalism and are more interested in the company's well-being and day-to-day operations because they wouldn't be forced to send significant chunks of their true wages up towards the fucking apartheid baby that owns the company under the guise of "profit" that he alone "earned." It would also necessitate the easier access to healthcare, because now that the libelous sexual predator who owns Tesla now can't dangle healthcare benefits above his workers' heads as essentially a threat, and indeed no one else could, well that shit would fall to the government as well.

Things like free higher education, maternity/paternity leave, etc. aren't necessarily "socialist" policies. They can exist in a capitalist system. Capitalists just hate these things because they feel entitled to all of the money, and they're not getting all of the money if they're having to subsidize college or if their child-bearing workers have the gall to want to leave and take care of their children. Fuck that shit. Good things for the commons do not translate into power for our oligarchs.

That wasn't my assertion anywhere in this thread. My assertion was that we physically have enough stuff to feed, cloth, and house everyone, and the reasons we don't are for logistical, structural, and philosophical reasons related to capitalism. This was specifically in response to that poster's presumed assertions that we have scarcity because the stuff we need to prevent scarcity doesn't actually exist. Essentially, homeboy said "people go hungry because we don't produce enough food." I responded "We actually produce enough food for everyone to eat; it just doesn't get to everyone who needs it." That's not an assertion about how getting the food to anyone would affecting the climate. So you're saying my rebuttal to that assertion means that I believe we can raise all 8 billion people to have a middle class American standard of living with a zero carbon footprint somehow, even though I've been very clear in this thread and others that I just don't fundamentally agree with a US/EU standard of living anyway considering what we know it's doing to the planet, and that we should indeed cut back significantly everywhere or risk runaway climate change where billions die.

The only time I ever mentioned a baseline standard of living is when people were assuming that infinite greed is just innate human nature, when instead we know that studies out there say that human happiness caps out at around $75k, or what this calculator says would be $40/hr for a basic 8 hour/5 day week. But you're asking these questions under an assumption that, once again, I think we should raise everyone to a US/EU standard of living under capitalism and that this can definitely be done with a zero or negative carbon footprint or such nonsense I never said. That's impossible, and I've been clear that's impossible because the point of capitalism has always been to concentrate access to resources at the top, and its rampant industrial expansion is the reason the climate is worsening.

We already do very expensive R&D through the government as demonstrated by a shitload of scientific and medical research and innovation we're privy to. Finding the money would not necessarily be the problem if there was a demand- civilian side or state side- for electric cars, especially if we had a government that was prone to doing what was best for the people and the planet versus what is best for shareholders.

I can’t imagine socialism going well here with the people we have in power or the type of people who will be in power.

Well, the point of changing the system would be to make sure the people who are in charge of the system aren't in charge anymore. So before we can attempt speedrunning socialism into ruin we'd have to get rid of the capitalists first.

Violence is inevitable in any change of the status quo. Capitalism did not just spring up immediately and peacefully. It was brutally forced on the Europeans who were mucking about with it who in turn brutally forced it upon the rest of the world, and it took centuries of fuck-ups and dealing with worse standards to "fix it." Like, remember child laborers, no weekends, robber barons, the Transatlantic Slave trade, all that fun jazz? Capitalism is inherently soaked in bloodshed and yet there's plenty of folks extolling its virtues regardless.

Capitalism was not a concrete idea when it was originally constructed across time and many philosophers who engaged with it either. Like, Adam Smith specifically advocated for absolutely minimal government interference in market economies, and that if everyone is allowed to fend for themselves then you would achieve this sprawling utopia of equality. Anyone person of color holding down a menial 9 to 5 knows that shit is fundamentally wrong on the surface lol.

So asking for a fully-formed alternative wherein you know exactly how you are going to get a new refrigerator in a post-capitalist society, from the construction to delivery to your doorway, is a fool's errand. You are never going to get that answer, but more importantly it shouldn't be expected for anyone to provide it, especially when pro-capitalist folks can't even agree on basic terms of engagement such as to what extent, if any, should we tax the rich today.

I will say though that I agree that liberals and leftists in general need to be better orators and storytellers, and should be able to boil down dense theory to more easily talk with laymen.

As an aside, Adam Smith (like Hayek) argued for social welfare programs especially universal ones. (Hayek argues for universal health insurance for example. Smith primarily for public education which didn't exist at the time.) The ideal is unlimited free trade, neither argued humanity has reached the ideal point yet as Nepenthe does.

Lack of access to necessities is not exclusive to capitalism, true, but it is inherent in its design. Capitalists have no reason to provide basic livability for everyone if it means getting in the way of their access to as much capital as possible, especially since people are not willing to physically fight for a higher baseline standard for the poorest among us.

I haven't done a lot of reading on it yet, but I do vibe with the true anti-work movement (not the Reddit shit where people just complain about the state of their job) which ties back into another poster's mentioning of degrowth. We waste a lot of time of our finite lives absolutely struggling every day to keep afloat when frankly I like to imagine the world would be much better if we were more encouraged to pursue what we're good at and passionate about.

I don't know what to tell you other than there's no reason to think like this because we have expressed more egalitarian ways of thinking and living all throughout our history.

And once again, no one can even provide a meta study that says that humans are innately and scientifically incapable of working together to achieve better outcomes for more people, which is weird, don't you think? Such a conclusion would be one of the few scientific advancements capitalists would be lining up to fund from their own pockets. "Objective proof that wage slavery is the natural order of things and I belong on top exploiting every living thing I can get my hands on? Yes please."

Subscribing to capitalist realism is entirely a conscious choice.

She seems to rule out people willingly working for others because they personally benefit as "working together to achieve better outcomes for more people" however. To quote a social welfare advocate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages"

A lot of problems are difficult to solve. But problems nonetheless have solutions and measures of mitigation that we can reach over time, otherwise we wouldn't really call them problems. The better phrase would be "facts of life", but if no one who is pro-capitalism is able to provide proof that capitalism is scientifically a natural state of humanity, then it makes no sense to treat it as a biological reality. Capitalism is a economic and political system that we arbitrarily designed. That means we can also get rid of it, provided we understand that doing so is possible regardless of how awful we believe humanity to be.

Well again, one of the problems I have with socialism is like you said- it's basically capitalism without capitalists. Most people are beholden to growthism and the idea that we need to produce just to produce, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of socialist fantasy that is significantly different from stories of a capitalistic status quo. I also did agree that leftist needs to get better at storytelling and plain language, and allow ourselves to be imaginative rather than sticking within circles that espouse theory as jargon. I actually did start briefly making a personal kind of world-building document for myself about what I would imagine a "post capitalist" society to be, both to have some sort of idea to pitch to people and work towards tangibly in the real world, and as a vehicle to read and learn more about alternative ways and philosophies of living. In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s in that it is primarily communal. My basic ideas were as follows:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

Great post, read every single word of it.

Oh Benji, do I have the thread to end all threads for you.

[Potato]

I wonder if there's a way I/ we can cause twitter to cost more money to run. I know it's small fry but it's tempting to write a python script which will post musk insults all day. Like if a bunch of people used the twitter APIs and just spammed posts I wonder if that would cause a cost.

Feels like it would be great for the userbase to rebel somehow - leaving a python script running whenever my computer is on wouldn't cost me anything but if enough people did it and enough anti musk posts ended up going up - it might cause twitter to drain more out of elons bank account

I wouldn't normally be like this - but unbanning trump could have untold impacts on all of our future and it feels like we ought to be able to fight back - and simply not using the site just gives it over to the types of people who will use it to cause untold damage

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-twitter-drama-ot-let’s-keep-it-here-parody-🔵-official-ꕤ-up-reinstates-2020-election-loser-trump.649272/page-288#post-96827646

Slacktivism, ahoy.

I just love how these idiots think all of Musk's wealth is just cash sitting in a bank account...it's almost as if these dimwits still operate their finances out of the little hobby savings account their parents set up for them when they were 5 years old.

[Potato]

In the time Nepenthe wrote all of that she could have completed a meaningful bit of Khan Academy's free Javascript or SQL course and became a little closer to being of use to someone.

I think her time would be better suited to learning to plant a fucking single carrot though

[Potato]

Holy shit, we haven't actually skimmed some of Nepenthe's unhinged shit in that thread, including from that utopian post, she almost literally is ResetERA.com's Pol Pot.

I didn't even bother to read anyone else because I saw the most common avatars and already knew all the stuff it was going to say.

But first, I did read this one because it was right above Nepenthe's post:

China's socialist experience is quite great even though it's demonized by western media/politics. Salaries have been increasing faster than the GDP, inflation and productivity combined meaning more money is effectively going to the workers and less to the billionaires.

As far as I know China has their own climate goals and they achieve them constantly but I don't know how they compare to goals set by UN or multilateral agreements. Their per Capita pollution indexes are lower than Europe/USA though. I also don't know how other countries are doing other than Bolsonaro just wanted to see the Amazon burn.

Their country is quite closed but it is impossible to imagine a country trying to not be a hardcore capitalist not being target by CIA 24/7. Add sanctions to that and you can see how free countries are to self determine their internal politics. Cuba has an economy fucked up by sanctions for the past half century yet they have better services (education, health care) than most countries including some of the richest capitalist ones... The USA will just never let a non-capitalist country be free to join the global economy. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of the CIA is to destabilize China right now. With that said their country being closed and acting as a vigilante state spying on its citizens is just what the external circumstances impose rather than what CCP believes is ideal.

Amazing, a totalitarian regime can deliberately slaughter tens of millions of its citizens for political and ethnic reasons, deliberately starve and work tens of millions of more to death and endlessly persecute an actual countless number of victims while telling everyone why they're doing it and our ACAB progressive friends will allege it's all necessary because of secret CIA plots undermining the deliberately harsh totalitarian system.

And now, Nepenthe:

Do you think there are no alternative forms of national living because it is scientifically impossible for humans to organize their lives any other way other than having most people slave away for a few, or do you think there are no other systems because capitalists want to make sure the entire world lives under a model that enriches them?

The abolishment of capitalism simply means we stop organizing our society in such a manner that the majority of us are forced to work for individuals who feast on our labor and their inverted unfettered access to the world's resources.

It's a false dichotomy that says that everyone's quality of life is definitely going to go down if we are not producing more and more, year after year, and destroying our planet under capitalism. Similar as saying that taking literally anything away from the US military budget to fund other things means the country will definitely be invaded, and who wants an invasion, right?

Fact is, we actually produce more than enough resources to satisfy every human's needs and wants, and we could easily pare down the amount of hours we work without really skipping a beat. The problem is that access to these resources is inherently dictated by capitalists who have no incentive to just give to the poorest among us. In fact, a highly stratified hierarchy of people who have it all and people who are dying because they've been barred from access to basic necessities as a result of the folks at top having it all is literally the point.

The pandemic didn't prove that no changes are to be made if we lower consumption. It actually proved the opposite- those who operated with communal, non-capitalist modes of thinking actually increased their chances of survival and inevitably saved the lives of others. Countries that had more robust welfare systems where you didn't have to continue working also had lower rates of infection. Had we all operated like the selfish capitalists demanding we "open back up," the numbers would've been worse. It also proved that capitalism- the so called "greatest we can ever do"- can completely fucking collapse under the power of a bat with a cold, that maybe organizing your society to only remain stable if people are forced to sacrifice their time and bodies for you doing menial labor isn't a good idea in the face of something like a pandemic, a phenomenon that's only going to get worse with climate change. Get ready for more capitalists to die on ventilators in droves when, not if, the next pandemic hits.

It may not be possible, but, at least we'll all die trying i guess.

I'm glad you're willing to sacrifice billions under the insistence that capitalism has to remain in place.

I don't want to continue with capitalism, my simple argument is whatever system replaces it cannot rely on lower consumption.

It's literally we decrease consumption or we allow billions to die. There isn't an alternative.

So then why did capitalism only arise within the last few centuries of our hundred thousand year existence? Do you think capitalism is natural?

But no one's arguing that. They're arguing that changing the system doesn't address the core problem which is human greed exploiting the system, whatever the system, for the benefit of the few.

If you change the conditions in which people are allowed to live and operate in, you're able to temper the ability for capitalism to continue wrecking havoc on the planet. Even pro-capitalism people believe that, even though I disagree with their methods. "Tax the billionaires more and everything will be fine! Sweden does it!"

So even they're not addressing human nature either. They're in favor of putting in systemic roadblocks to prevent the capitalists who by everyone's admittance are pieces of shit from ruining everything. But when people are in favor of bigger roadblocks, suddenly we have to start trying to change human nature. Kinda weird.

This is also fundamentally just a rewritten naturalist argument, by the way. "If you don't eliminate human greed, then you can't make society better" aka "capitalism is the best we can do because it leans into humans' nature to be greedy."

Empires don't last forever, but only one ideological empire in our millennia of existence is- once again- literally rendering the fucking planet uninhabitable.

My argument is we should maybe try something- anything- else before millions, potentially billions of us, die, especially since we have the means to organize society however we choose.

She should see what the Soviets and China did to their "collectively owned" natural resources like destroying million year old lakes in a matter of years and getting nothing out of it. She doesn't even care about the millions, mostly non-white, who have been deliberately killed by trying something, anything, else to organize society however "we" choose.

Ah yes, because capitalism has been great at mitigating human misery. How did that pandemic turn out again for the world? How many times have we had recessions and depressions that have starved people? How many people die from lack of access to basic necessities still, or just from the way capitalism has organized our infrastructure? And the Global South; I'm sure they've definitely been enjoying the riches of their exploitation since the colonists got off the boats. Surely.

Like, white Americans being able to buy graphics cards in the Global North isn't a meaningful metric of global human misery or happiness.

Diversity in human experience is not directly proportional to making absolutely sure that the powerful own our labor and thus our finite lives, and I'm not sure where the correlation is even coming from. Like, what do you think it has been like across African, Indigenous, and Asian cultures across millennia before capitalism? They were all wearing the same clothes, doing the same shit, never creating, never aspiring, never having meaningful human connections and experiences?

Perhaps we shouldn't base sweeping generalisations about human nature, and thus the sociopolitical systems that dictate human well being, on anecdotal observations and base assumptions that are carried without questioning.

That's kind of the insidiousness if capitalism. People assume it's natural without any proof of so.

Comfortable lifestyles can be maintained outside of capitalism, and with a significant reduction of capitalism. We already know we produce a lot of shit that ends up going to waste, and we know that with automation we could all be working a lot less. But if your definition of comfort means we have to keep burning the planet and enslaving the Global South because "Well, wanting five Nintendo Switches is imperative to the human condition and if I can't have that, it's inevitably back to the Iron Curtain," then you are ultimately arguing for capitalism regardless of how much you try to convince me you're really not for it.

Do you think Capitaism becoming the dominant economic system came without [death and chaos]?

The idea that the Europeans held the rest of the world hostage at the wrong end of disease blankets and gun barrels and forced capitalism into play is just critical race theory. Capitalism came about with robust debate and nice smiles.

I wonder if those who hate capitalism so much think feudalism was better?

Capitalism is essentially just feudalism 2.0 so, no, not really.

You've been adamant that capitalism has brought about a variance in human experience that can't be maintained in other systems. But all capitalism is is an socioeconomic model by which a few powerful people own our labor. I'm saying you don't need to have your labor owned by the powerful (aka capitalism) to achieve diverse human experiences. So this argument doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.

That is an excessively colonialist mindset but the questions stand. Do you think, even now, the Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures that maintain traditions that are not borne from capitalism are not diverse? Do you think people before capitalism never built cities, never had preventative healthcare and disease innoculation, didn't have science, math, and art, and never had dreams, myths, and heroes? You think humans just sat around doing nothing until white Europeans showed them the light with enslavement, genocide, and the Industrial Revolution?

My example is not saying that everyone would be barred from having more than one Switch. My example is saying that people wanting excess to the point of harming others is not a human experience I have to respect. We can still have Switches, but the nature of non-capitalist modes of living, where we temper exploitation of others and stop raping the planet for all she's worth, means there will be less Switches in general. But less Switches in general, as well, is not a harbinger of human misery. Again, we know we can cut back. It is a false dichotomy that says that cutting back means your life will suffer, and thus in order for life to not suffer, you must continue consuming more and more, with no end cap in sight.

I am not satisified with a system where only the west gets the benefits of technological advancement while other portions of the Earth don't have equal access because they're the ones propping up our technological advancement through exploitation, slavery, and genocide. We should be aiming for a system that ensures everyone has what they need and can reasonably want without leading back into a system where just about half of the Earth is fucked.

I can tell you right now poverty is not a result of laziness. It's a result of capitalism suppressing access to resources so that certain segments of the population literally will never be able to climb the social ladder and escape impoverishment, and this is by design.

Ignoring the fact that what you're describing is the status quo now, again, we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same. The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

Some post reads like passages taken out from the 1984 novel.

Ah yes, the anti-capitalist is taking passages from 1984.

Orwell was a socialist but I'd argue 1984 is anti authoritarian more than forwarding any economic ideals.

1984 is indeed anti-authoritarian because it's basically a rebuke of Nazi Germany and Russia and didn't really talk economics, but it's also in general just against impregnable concentrations of power (good thing we're not living under a system where power is concentrated at the top for no reason amirite?!), because they're unjustifiable and senseless. The ending makes that pretty clear. Regardless, anyone can read my posts in this thread and-assuming they've actually read the book- know my views are incompatible with Oceania's. It was a dumb remark.

I agree with you. The trick is, if we build a system where everyone has what they need and reasonably want, this will result in more overall resource usage than we have now.

No it won't. You're assuming that people are going without because there isn't enough. I'm telling you there is enough. It just doesn't get to everyone because the arbiters of society decided that it's better to stratify access to resources.

For large-scale sweeping reforms to happen that magically temper the worst ills of capitalism from a western lens (again, I fundamentally disagree with capitalism because the exploitation of the worst off is baked in, and you cannot get around it), you need either A.) for billionaires and the politicians they own to agree to those reforms or B.) Violence to occur.

A is laughable because the billionaires and politicians have no reason to stop the gravy train, and B is laughable because people who are pro-capitalism aren't actually willing to get their hands dirty for anything. Why would they; they have the system they want.

Nah, a wealthy few hogging resources and grinding up the masses is what keeps humanity back and curbs its progress. It actively makes humanity worse and more vile, and is why this is all we have reached at this point in time.

Yep. How many brilliant people have died because of capitalism and colonialism before they could fully contribute to their communities and to the world? The amount of culture, knowledge, and potential for progress that's been deliberately wiped off the map because of the systems we have in play now has to be immeasurable.

(It's also weird that- again- people keep equating happiness and fulfillment with capitalism. Like, stop doing that. That's why that PS5 you snagged still hasn't made you any real life friends.)

I'm not necessarily advocating for socialism as the end goal here, although it would be a better system than capitalism for the workers (because I don't think writing a different name on the deed to the factory makes the factory more environmentally and morally sound, but you know).

But as is hinted at in the parenthetical, socialism is a system where the government or the social commons own the means of production instead of private individuals. So like, Tesla would still exist, but instead of being owned by Elon fucking Musk it'd be owned by the public instead. The benefits to this are that, theoretically, Tesla workers under socialism profit more off their than they did under than capitalism and are more interested in the company's well-being and day-to-day operations because they wouldn't be forced to send significant chunks of their true wages up towards the fucking apartheid baby that owns the company under the guise of "profit" that he alone "earned." It would also necessitate the easier access to healthcare, because now that the libelous sexual predator who owns Tesla now can't dangle healthcare benefits above his workers' heads as essentially a threat, and indeed no one else could, well that shit would fall to the government as well.

Things like free higher education, maternity/paternity leave, etc. aren't necessarily "socialist" policies. They can exist in a capitalist system. Capitalists just hate these things because they feel entitled to all of the money, and they're not getting all of the money if they're having to subsidize college or if their child-bearing workers have the gall to want to leave and take care of their children. Fuck that shit. Good things for the commons do not translate into power for our oligarchs.

That wasn't my assertion anywhere in this thread. My assertion was that we physically have enough stuff to feed, cloth, and house everyone, and the reasons we don't are for logistical, structural, and philosophical reasons related to capitalism. This was specifically in response to that poster's presumed assertions that we have scarcity because the stuff we need to prevent scarcity doesn't actually exist. Essentially, homeboy said "people go hungry because we don't produce enough food." I responded "We actually produce enough food for everyone to eat; it just doesn't get to everyone who needs it." That's not an assertion about how getting the food to anyone would affecting the climate. So you're saying my rebuttal to that assertion means that I believe we can raise all 8 billion people to have a middle class American standard of living with a zero carbon footprint somehow, even though I've been very clear in this thread and others that I just don't fundamentally agree with a US/EU standard of living anyway considering what we know it's doing to the planet, and that we should indeed cut back significantly everywhere or risk runaway climate change where billions die.

The only time I ever mentioned a baseline standard of living is when people were assuming that infinite greed is just innate human nature, when instead we know that studies out there say that human happiness caps out at around $75k, or what this calculator says would be $40/hr for a basic 8 hour/5 day week. But you're asking these questions under an assumption that, once again, I think we should raise everyone to a US/EU standard of living under capitalism and that this can definitely be done with a zero or negative carbon footprint or such nonsense I never said. That's impossible, and I've been clear that's impossible because the point of capitalism has always been to concentrate access to resources at the top, and its rampant industrial expansion is the reason the climate is worsening.

We already do very expensive R&D through the government as demonstrated by a shitload of scientific and medical research and innovation we're privy to. Finding the money would not necessarily be the problem if there was a demand- civilian side or state side- for electric cars, especially if we had a government that was prone to doing what was best for the people and the planet versus what is best for shareholders.

I can’t imagine socialism going well here with the people we have in power or the type of people who will be in power.

Well, the point of changing the system would be to make sure the people who are in charge of the system aren't in charge anymore. So before we can attempt speedrunning socialism into ruin we'd have to get rid of the capitalists first.

Violence is inevitable in any change of the status quo. Capitalism did not just spring up immediately and peacefully. It was brutally forced on the Europeans who were mucking about with it who in turn brutally forced it upon the rest of the world, and it took centuries of fuck-ups and dealing with worse standards to "fix it." Like, remember child laborers, no weekends, robber barons, the Transatlantic Slave trade, all that fun jazz? Capitalism is inherently soaked in bloodshed and yet there's plenty of folks extolling its virtues regardless.

Capitalism was not a concrete idea when it was originally constructed across time and many philosophers who engaged with it either. Like, Adam Smith specifically advocated for absolutely minimal government interference in market economies, and that if everyone is allowed to fend for themselves then you would achieve this sprawling utopia of equality. Anyone person of color holding down a menial 9 to 5 knows that shit is fundamentally wrong on the surface lol.

So asking for a fully-formed alternative wherein you know exactly how you are going to get a new refrigerator in a post-capitalist society, from the construction to delivery to your doorway, is a fool's errand. You are never going to get that answer, but more importantly it shouldn't be expected for anyone to provide it, especially when pro-capitalist folks can't even agree on basic terms of engagement such as to what extent, if any, should we tax the rich today.

I will say though that I agree that liberals and leftists in general need to be better orators and storytellers, and should be able to boil down dense theory to more easily talk with laymen.

As an aside, Adam Smith (like Hayek) argued for social welfare programs especially universal ones. (Hayek argues for universal health insurance for example. Smith primarily for public education which didn't exist at the time.) The ideal is unlimited free trade, neither argued humanity has reached the ideal point yet as Nepenthe does.

Lack of access to necessities is not exclusive to capitalism, true, but it is inherent in its design. Capitalists have no reason to provide basic livability for everyone if it means getting in the way of their access to as much capital as possible, especially since people are not willing to physically fight for a higher baseline standard for the poorest among us.

I haven't done a lot of reading on it yet, but I do vibe with the true anti-work movement (not the Reddit shit where people just complain about the state of their job) which ties back into another poster's mentioning of degrowth. We waste a lot of time of our finite lives absolutely struggling every day to keep afloat when frankly I like to imagine the world would be much better if we were more encouraged to pursue what we're good at and passionate about.

I don't know what to tell you other than there's no reason to think like this because we have expressed more egalitarian ways of thinking and living all throughout our history.

And once again, no one can even provide a meta study that says that humans are innately and scientifically incapable of working together to achieve better outcomes for more people, which is weird, don't you think? Such a conclusion would be one of the few scientific advancements capitalists would be lining up to fund from their own pockets. "Objective proof that wage slavery is the natural order of things and I belong on top exploiting every living thing I can get my hands on? Yes please."

Subscribing to capitalist realism is entirely a conscious choice.

She seems to rule out people willingly working for others because they personally benefit as "working together to achieve better outcomes for more people" however. To quote a social welfare advocate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages"

A lot of problems are difficult to solve. But problems nonetheless have solutions and measures of mitigation that we can reach over time, otherwise we wouldn't really call them problems. The better phrase would be "facts of life", but if no one who is pro-capitalism is able to provide proof that capitalism is scientifically a natural state of humanity, then it makes no sense to treat it as a biological reality. Capitalism is a economic and political system that we arbitrarily designed. That means we can also get rid of it, provided we understand that doing so is possible regardless of how awful we believe humanity to be.

Well again, one of the problems I have with socialism is like you said- it's basically capitalism without capitalists. Most people are beholden to growthism and the idea that we need to produce just to produce, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of socialist fantasy that is significantly different from stories of a capitalistic status quo. I also did agree that leftist needs to get better at storytelling and plain language, and allow ourselves to be imaginative rather than sticking within circles that espouse theory as jargon. I actually did start briefly making a personal kind of world-building document for myself about what I would imagine a "post capitalist" society to be, both to have some sort of idea to pitch to people and work towards tangibly in the real world, and as a vehicle to read and learn more about alternative ways and philosophies of living. In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s in that it is primarily communal. My basic ideas were as follows:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

Great post, read every single word of it.

Oh Benji, do I have the thread to end all threads for you.

It was indeed a benjigeddon

[Cauliflower Of Love]

Holy shit what's wrong with you guys?

[SmokyDave]

Would you prefer the list alphabetised or listed in order of severity?

[Potato]

Holy shit what's wrong with you guys?

Did you mean this post?

Holy shit, we haven't actually skimmed some of Nepenthe's unhinged shit in that thread, including from that utopian post, she almost literally is ResetERA.com's Pol Pot.

I didn't even bother to read anyone else because I saw the most common avatars and already knew all the stuff it was going to say.

But first, I did read this one because it was right above Nepenthe's post:

China's socialist experience is quite great even though it's demonized by western media/politics. Salaries have been increasing faster than the GDP, inflation and productivity combined meaning more money is effectively going to the workers and less to the billionaires.

As far as I know China has their own climate goals and they achieve them constantly but I don't know how they compare to goals set by UN or multilateral agreements. Their per Capita pollution indexes are lower than Europe/USA though. I also don't know how other countries are doing other than Bolsonaro just wanted to see the Amazon burn.

Their country is quite closed but it is impossible to imagine a country trying to not be a hardcore capitalist not being target by CIA 24/7. Add sanctions to that and you can see how free countries are to self determine their internal politics. Cuba has an economy fucked up by sanctions for the past half century yet they have better services (education, health care) than most countries including some of the richest capitalist ones... The USA will just never let a non-capitalist country be free to join the global economy. I have no doubt the ultimate goal of the CIA is to destabilize China right now. With that said their country being closed and acting as a vigilante state spying on its citizens is just what the external circumstances impose rather than what CCP believes is ideal.

Amazing, a totalitarian regime can deliberately slaughter tens of millions of its citizens for political and ethnic reasons, deliberately starve and work tens of millions of more to death and endlessly persecute an actual countless number of victims while telling everyone why they're doing it and our ACAB progressive friends will allege it's all necessary because of secret CIA plots undermining the deliberately harsh totalitarian system.

And now, Nepenthe:

Do you think there are no alternative forms of national living because it is scientifically impossible for humans to organize their lives any other way other than having most people slave away for a few, or do you think there are no other systems because capitalists want to make sure the entire world lives under a model that enriches them?

The abolishment of capitalism simply means we stop organizing our society in such a manner that the majority of us are forced to work for individuals who feast on our labor and their inverted unfettered access to the world's resources.

It's a false dichotomy that says that everyone's quality of life is definitely going to go down if we are not producing more and more, year after year, and destroying our planet under capitalism. Similar as saying that taking literally anything away from the US military budget to fund other things means the country will definitely be invaded, and who wants an invasion, right?

Fact is, we actually produce more than enough resources to satisfy every human's needs and wants, and we could easily pare down the amount of hours we work without really skipping a beat. The problem is that access to these resources is inherently dictated by capitalists who have no incentive to just give to the poorest among us. In fact, a highly stratified hierarchy of people who have it all and people who are dying because they've been barred from access to basic necessities as a result of the folks at top having it all is literally the point.

The pandemic didn't prove that no changes are to be made if we lower consumption. It actually proved the opposite- those who operated with communal, non-capitalist modes of thinking actually increased their chances of survival and inevitably saved the lives of others. Countries that had more robust welfare systems where you didn't have to continue working also had lower rates of infection. Had we all operated like the selfish capitalists demanding we "open back up," the numbers would've been worse. It also proved that capitalism- the so called "greatest we can ever do"- can completely fucking collapse under the power of a bat with a cold, that maybe organizing your society to only remain stable if people are forced to sacrifice their time and bodies for you doing menial labor isn't a good idea in the face of something like a pandemic, a phenomenon that's only going to get worse with climate change. Get ready for more capitalists to die on ventilators in droves when, not if, the next pandemic hits.

It may not be possible, but, at least we'll all die trying i guess.

I'm glad you're willing to sacrifice billions under the insistence that capitalism has to remain in place.

I don't want to continue with capitalism, my simple argument is whatever system replaces it cannot rely on lower consumption.

It's literally we decrease consumption or we allow billions to die. There isn't an alternative.

So then why did capitalism only arise within the last few centuries of our hundred thousand year existence? Do you think capitalism is natural?

But no one's arguing that. They're arguing that changing the system doesn't address the core problem which is human greed exploiting the system, whatever the system, for the benefit of the few.

If you change the conditions in which people are allowed to live and operate in, you're able to temper the ability for capitalism to continue wrecking havoc on the planet. Even pro-capitalism people believe that, even though I disagree with their methods. "Tax the billionaires more and everything will be fine! Sweden does it!"

So even they're not addressing human nature either. They're in favor of putting in systemic roadblocks to prevent the capitalists who by everyone's admittance are pieces of shit from ruining everything. But when people are in favor of bigger roadblocks, suddenly we have to start trying to change human nature. Kinda weird.

This is also fundamentally just a rewritten naturalist argument, by the way. "If you don't eliminate human greed, then you can't make society better" aka "capitalism is the best we can do because it leans into humans' nature to be greedy."

Empires don't last forever, but only one ideological empire in our millennia of existence is- once again- literally rendering the fucking planet uninhabitable.

My argument is we should maybe try something- anything- else before millions, potentially billions of us, die, especially since we have the means to organize society however we choose.

She should see what the Soviets and China did to their "collectively owned" natural resources like destroying million year old lakes in a matter of years and getting nothing out of it. She doesn't even care about the millions, mostly non-white, who have been deliberately killed by trying something, anything, else to organize society however "we" choose.

Ah yes, because capitalism has been great at mitigating human misery. How did that pandemic turn out again for the world? How many times have we had recessions and depressions that have starved people? How many people die from lack of access to basic necessities still, or just from the way capitalism has organized our infrastructure? And the Global South; I'm sure they've definitely been enjoying the riches of their exploitation since the colonists got off the boats. Surely.

Like, white Americans being able to buy graphics cards in the Global North isn't a meaningful metric of global human misery or happiness.

Diversity in human experience is not directly proportional to making absolutely sure that the powerful own our labor and thus our finite lives, and I'm not sure where the correlation is even coming from. Like, what do you think it has been like across African, Indigenous, and Asian cultures across millennia before capitalism? They were all wearing the same clothes, doing the same shit, never creating, never aspiring, never having meaningful human connections and experiences?

Perhaps we shouldn't base sweeping generalisations about human nature, and thus the sociopolitical systems that dictate human well being, on anecdotal observations and base assumptions that are carried without questioning.

That's kind of the insidiousness if capitalism. People assume it's natural without any proof of so.

Comfortable lifestyles can be maintained outside of capitalism, and with a significant reduction of capitalism. We already know we produce a lot of shit that ends up going to waste, and we know that with automation we could all be working a lot less. But if your definition of comfort means we have to keep burning the planet and enslaving the Global South because "Well, wanting five Nintendo Switches is imperative to the human condition and if I can't have that, it's inevitably back to the Iron Curtain," then you are ultimately arguing for capitalism regardless of how much you try to convince me you're really not for it.

Do you think Capitaism becoming the dominant economic system came without [death and chaos]?

The idea that the Europeans held the rest of the world hostage at the wrong end of disease blankets and gun barrels and forced capitalism into play is just critical race theory. Capitalism came about with robust debate and nice smiles.

I wonder if those who hate capitalism so much think feudalism was better?

Capitalism is essentially just feudalism 2.0 so, no, not really.

You've been adamant that capitalism has brought about a variance in human experience that can't be maintained in other systems. But all capitalism is is an socioeconomic model by which a few powerful people own our labor. I'm saying you don't need to have your labor owned by the powerful (aka capitalism) to achieve diverse human experiences. So this argument doesn't make a whole bunch of sense.

That is an excessively colonialist mindset but the questions stand. Do you think, even now, the Indigenous, African, and Asian cultures that maintain traditions that are not borne from capitalism are not diverse? Do you think people before capitalism never built cities, never had preventative healthcare and disease innoculation, didn't have science, math, and art, and never had dreams, myths, and heroes? You think humans just sat around doing nothing until white Europeans showed them the light with enslavement, genocide, and the Industrial Revolution?

My example is not saying that everyone would be barred from having more than one Switch. My example is saying that people wanting excess to the point of harming others is not a human experience I have to respect. We can still have Switches, but the nature of non-capitalist modes of living, where we temper exploitation of others and stop raping the planet for all she's worth, means there will be less Switches in general. But less Switches in general, as well, is not a harbinger of human misery. Again, we know we can cut back. It is a false dichotomy that says that cutting back means your life will suffer, and thus in order for life to not suffer, you must continue consuming more and more, with no end cap in sight.

I am not satisified with a system where only the west gets the benefits of technological advancement while other portions of the Earth don't have equal access because they're the ones propping up our technological advancement through exploitation, slavery, and genocide. We should be aiming for a system that ensures everyone has what they need and can reasonably want without leading back into a system where just about half of the Earth is fucked.

I can tell you right now poverty is not a result of laziness. It's a result of capitalism suppressing access to resources so that certain segments of the population literally will never be able to climb the social ladder and escape impoverishment, and this is by design.

Ignoring the fact that what you're describing is the status quo now, again, we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same. The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

Some post reads like passages taken out from the 1984 novel.

Ah yes, the anti-capitalist is taking passages from 1984.

Orwell was a socialist but I'd argue 1984 is anti authoritarian more than forwarding any economic ideals.

1984 is indeed anti-authoritarian because it's basically a rebuke of Nazi Germany and Russia and didn't really talk economics, but it's also in general just against impregnable concentrations of power (good thing we're not living under a system where power is concentrated at the top for no reason amirite?!), because they're unjustifiable and senseless. The ending makes that pretty clear. Regardless, anyone can read my posts in this thread and-assuming they've actually read the book- know my views are incompatible with Oceania's. It was a dumb remark.

I agree with you. The trick is, if we build a system where everyone has what they need and reasonably want, this will result in more overall resource usage than we have now.

No it won't. You're assuming that people are going without because there isn't enough. I'm telling you there is enough. It just doesn't get to everyone because the arbiters of society decided that it's better to stratify access to resources.

For large-scale sweeping reforms to happen that magically temper the worst ills of capitalism from a western lens (again, I fundamentally disagree with capitalism because the exploitation of the worst off is baked in, and you cannot get around it), you need either A.) for billionaires and the politicians they own to agree to those reforms or B.) Violence to occur.

A is laughable because the billionaires and politicians have no reason to stop the gravy train, and B is laughable because people who are pro-capitalism aren't actually willing to get their hands dirty for anything. Why would they; they have the system they want.

Nah, a wealthy few hogging resources and grinding up the masses is what keeps humanity back and curbs its progress. It actively makes humanity worse and more vile, and is why this is all we have reached at this point in time.

Yep. How many brilliant people have died because of capitalism and colonialism before they could fully contribute to their communities and to the world? The amount of culture, knowledge, and potential for progress that's been deliberately wiped off the map because of the systems we have in play now has to be immeasurable.

(It's also weird that- again- people keep equating happiness and fulfillment with capitalism. Like, stop doing that. That's why that PS5 you snagged still hasn't made you any real life friends.)

I'm not necessarily advocating for socialism as the end goal here, although it would be a better system than capitalism for the workers (because I don't think writing a different name on the deed to the factory makes the factory more environmentally and morally sound, but you know).

But as is hinted at in the parenthetical, socialism is a system where the government or the social commons own the means of production instead of private individuals. So like, Tesla would still exist, but instead of being owned by Elon fucking Musk it'd be owned by the public instead. The benefits to this are that, theoretically, Tesla workers under socialism profit more off their than they did under than capitalism and are more interested in the company's well-being and day-to-day operations because they wouldn't be forced to send significant chunks of their true wages up towards the fucking apartheid baby that owns the company under the guise of "profit" that he alone "earned." It would also necessitate the easier access to healthcare, because now that the libelous sexual predator who owns Tesla now can't dangle healthcare benefits above his workers' heads as essentially a threat, and indeed no one else could, well that shit would fall to the government as well.

Things like free higher education, maternity/paternity leave, etc. aren't necessarily "socialist" policies. They can exist in a capitalist system. Capitalists just hate these things because they feel entitled to all of the money, and they're not getting all of the money if they're having to subsidize college or if their child-bearing workers have the gall to want to leave and take care of their children. Fuck that shit. Good things for the commons do not translate into power for our oligarchs.

That wasn't my assertion anywhere in this thread. My assertion was that we physically have enough stuff to feed, cloth, and house everyone, and the reasons we don't are for logistical, structural, and philosophical reasons related to capitalism. This was specifically in response to that poster's presumed assertions that we have scarcity because the stuff we need to prevent scarcity doesn't actually exist. Essentially, homeboy said "people go hungry because we don't produce enough food." I responded "We actually produce enough food for everyone to eat; it just doesn't get to everyone who needs it." That's not an assertion about how getting the food to anyone would affecting the climate. So you're saying my rebuttal to that assertion means that I believe we can raise all 8 billion people to have a middle class American standard of living with a zero carbon footprint somehow, even though I've been very clear in this thread and others that I just don't fundamentally agree with a US/EU standard of living anyway considering what we know it's doing to the planet, and that we should indeed cut back significantly everywhere or risk runaway climate change where billions die.

The only time I ever mentioned a baseline standard of living is when people were assuming that infinite greed is just innate human nature, when instead we know that studies out there say that human happiness caps out at around $75k, or what this calculator says would be $40/hr for a basic 8 hour/5 day week. But you're asking these questions under an assumption that, once again, I think we should raise everyone to a US/EU standard of living under capitalism and that this can definitely be done with a zero or negative carbon footprint or such nonsense I never said. That's impossible, and I've been clear that's impossible because the point of capitalism has always been to concentrate access to resources at the top, and its rampant industrial expansion is the reason the climate is worsening.

We already do very expensive R&D through the government as demonstrated by a shitload of scientific and medical research and innovation we're privy to. Finding the money would not necessarily be the problem if there was a demand- civilian side or state side- for electric cars, especially if we had a government that was prone to doing what was best for the people and the planet versus what is best for shareholders.

I can’t imagine socialism going well here with the people we have in power or the type of people who will be in power.

Well, the point of changing the system would be to make sure the people who are in charge of the system aren't in charge anymore. So before we can attempt speedrunning socialism into ruin we'd have to get rid of the capitalists first.

Violence is inevitable in any change of the status quo. Capitalism did not just spring up immediately and peacefully. It was brutally forced on the Europeans who were mucking about with it who in turn brutally forced it upon the rest of the world, and it took centuries of fuck-ups and dealing with worse standards to "fix it." Like, remember child laborers, no weekends, robber barons, the Transatlantic Slave trade, all that fun jazz? Capitalism is inherently soaked in bloodshed and yet there's plenty of folks extolling its virtues regardless.

Capitalism was not a concrete idea when it was originally constructed across time and many philosophers who engaged with it either. Like, Adam Smith specifically advocated for absolutely minimal government interference in market economies, and that if everyone is allowed to fend for themselves then you would achieve this sprawling utopia of equality. Anyone person of color holding down a menial 9 to 5 knows that shit is fundamentally wrong on the surface lol.

So asking for a fully-formed alternative wherein you know exactly how you are going to get a new refrigerator in a post-capitalist society, from the construction to delivery to your doorway, is a fool's errand. You are never going to get that answer, but more importantly it shouldn't be expected for anyone to provide it, especially when pro-capitalist folks can't even agree on basic terms of engagement such as to what extent, if any, should we tax the rich today.

I will say though that I agree that liberals and leftists in general need to be better orators and storytellers, and should be able to boil down dense theory to more easily talk with laymen.

As an aside, Adam Smith (like Hayek) argued for social welfare programs especially universal ones. (Hayek argues for universal health insurance for example. Smith primarily for public education which didn't exist at the time.) The ideal is unlimited free trade, neither argued humanity has reached the ideal point yet as Nepenthe does.

Lack of access to necessities is not exclusive to capitalism, true, but it is inherent in its design. Capitalists have no reason to provide basic livability for everyone if it means getting in the way of their access to as much capital as possible, especially since people are not willing to physically fight for a higher baseline standard for the poorest among us.

I haven't done a lot of reading on it yet, but I do vibe with the true anti-work movement (not the Reddit shit where people just complain about the state of their job) which ties back into another poster's mentioning of degrowth. We waste a lot of time of our finite lives absolutely struggling every day to keep afloat when frankly I like to imagine the world would be much better if we were more encouraged to pursue what we're good at and passionate about.

I don't know what to tell you other than there's no reason to think like this because we have expressed more egalitarian ways of thinking and living all throughout our history.

And once again, no one can even provide a meta study that says that humans are innately and scientifically incapable of working together to achieve better outcomes for more people, which is weird, don't you think? Such a conclusion would be one of the few scientific advancements capitalists would be lining up to fund from their own pockets. "Objective proof that wage slavery is the natural order of things and I belong on top exploiting every living thing I can get my hands on? Yes please."

Subscribing to capitalist realism is entirely a conscious choice.

She seems to rule out people willingly working for others because they personally benefit as "working together to achieve better outcomes for more people" however. To quote a social welfare advocate: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages"

A lot of problems are difficult to solve. But problems nonetheless have solutions and measures of mitigation that we can reach over time, otherwise we wouldn't really call them problems. The better phrase would be "facts of life", but if no one who is pro-capitalism is able to provide proof that capitalism is scientifically a natural state of humanity, then it makes no sense to treat it as a biological reality. Capitalism is a economic and political system that we arbitrarily designed. That means we can also get rid of it, provided we understand that doing so is possible regardless of how awful we believe humanity to be.

Well again, one of the problems I have with socialism is like you said- it's basically capitalism without capitalists. Most people are beholden to growthism and the idea that we need to produce just to produce, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of socialist fantasy that is significantly different from stories of a capitalistic status quo. I also did agree that leftist needs to get better at storytelling and plain language, and allow ourselves to be imaginative rather than sticking within circles that espouse theory as jargon. I actually did start briefly making a personal kind of world-building document for myself about what I would imagine a "post capitalist" society to be, both to have some sort of idea to pitch to people and work towards tangibly in the real world, and as a vehicle to read and learn more about alternative ways and philosophies of living. In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s in that it is primarily communal. My basic ideas were as follows:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

Because, there's nothing wrong with it.

[BIONIC]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/15-years-of-being-great-from-small-beginnings.656271/

I owe the last 15 years of my life to Uncharted. I would have never moved to LA, fallen in love, or gotten into the gaming industry if it wasn't for Drake's Fortune.

It's one of those franchises that I get irrationally emotional about, and I'm not even sorry about it.

Thank you Nathan Drake, I'm a legitimately better man because of you.

Sic Parvis Magna...

How do you feel about Uncharted?

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

I'm not reading all that shit, but Nepenthes utopian societal structure is that everyone lives in a fucking homeowners association?

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Locking this on the basis that we're not really doing any Trump threads unless there's something newsworthy to discuss.

yeah, c'mon guys, just follow the clearly written rules that were drafted by a comittee and not randomly made up by forum janitors at a whim based on their daily feels

[Snoopycat_]

Brother, I know a guy that’s one of my best friends. We used to go to bars. Specifically one called “Suite 23”. He was Corey and I was Wade, better known as Birdman. We called it the SUITE life of Bird and Corey. We were the only ones in our friend group that were 21 and could live this life and I’d say, we were kings. We did it up on a nightly basis. He got off of work at Publix and I got off of work at Aflac and we painted the town red.

Years later, we ended up living together, his future wife and my girlfriend with us. Just living life. Young, wild, and free. And I began to notice one day, he called his brother “Brother”. They were close and just called each other that and so every time Corey’s brother, “Brother”, would come over, I’d call him my “Brother” too.

Fast forward.

Now Corey has his wife. I have a child with my girlfriend. We live in the same town. And we still have the same “Brother”. So “Brother” and I start taking about games one day. I’m into jrpgs and odd shit and Diablo 2 and he tells me about Uncharted. He describes Indiana Jones and a tale I won’t believe. A tale I won’t believe until I play it. And so I buy the uncharted collection on a whim that week. My son, a toddler, my life a mess, my girl left at his birth, but my brother described something I had to have.

60 hours later… I had one of the greatest experiences of my life. Hate be damned, I fell in love with so many characters and moments and found not only the goat game in Uncharted 2, but I found my favorite series ever, and the only series I will replay. It’s so good, I COMB every area in the game to make sure I miss nothing. It’s THAT damn good to me. I’m a person who obsessed over stats and recruitment and skills and loot, and with Uncharted I just pack all of that away and eat it up.

Now, personally, after Uncharted, I’m still a single, white, male and a father with a black son. It’s been me and him. Alone. Just living life. Since about the time “Brother” turned me on to Uncharted in 2015. My son has grown. He went from Mario Kart 8 to Breath of the Wild, to Forza, to Monster Hunter, to FF14, to Elden Ring and so many more, he’s done it all with me and Brother. But as a parent of an 11 year old, starting middle school, telling me how I dress wrong, and how lame I am, I personally can’t wait to show him Uncharted. Give me the FUCKING collection on PC damnit. I’ll buy two copies for us.

So, at the end of the day. You say it’s happy birthday Nathan Drake, then I am right there with you. Happy Fucking Birthday. He didn’t lead me to my career like you OP, but he led me to one of the greatest experiences of my adult life, freed me, gave me something I want to share with my son, and made one of my best friends brothers, my Brother!

https://www.resetera.com/threads/15-years-of-being-great-from-small-beginnings.656271/page-2#post-96840192

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-twitter-drama-ot-let%E2%80%99s-keep-it-here-parody-%F0%9F%94%B5-official-%EA%95%A4-up-reinstates-2020-election-loser-trump.649272/page-289#post-96828768

User Banned (Permanent): Advocating for suicide, intentionally breaking the rules

I hope he and Elon kill themselves.

I'll eat another permaban for posting this.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/fifa-president-gianni-infantino-at-a-qatar-conference-i-know-what-it-feels-like-to-be-discriminated-i-was-bullied-because-i-had-red-hair.656094/page-4#post-96816240

Pretend that all the issues were thousands of years ago and call out people pointing the hypocricy as whataboutism. No making amends, changes in course or acknowledgement of wrongdoings are necessary when it's time to give a moral lecture to those sand you-know-whats.

- [risky edit but fuck it, at this point it's deserved] Just like how everything got quiet when Trump left, while the practices continue. This is the neolib routine - no substance, no consitency, no real anything. Just outrage to trend well and feel good about looking down on those other dumbasses. Tell me I'm wrong.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/

 

[HaughtyFrank]

Brother, I know a guy that’s one of my best friends. We used to go to bars. Specifically one called “Suite 23”. He was Corey and I was Wade, better known as Birdman. We called it the SUITE life of Bird and Corey. We were the only ones in our friend group that were 21 and could live this life and I’d say, we were kings. We did it up on a nightly basis. He got off of work at Publix and I got off of work at Aflac and we painted the town red.

Years later, we ended up living together, his future wife and my girlfriend with us. Just living life. Young, wild, and free. And I began to notice one day, he called his brother “Brother”. They were close and just called each other that and so every time Corey’s brother, “Brother”, would come over, I’d call him my “Brother” too.

Fast forward.

Now Corey has his wife. I have a child with my girlfriend. We live in the same town. And we still have the same “Brother”. So “Brother” and I start taking about games one day. I’m into jrpgs and odd shit and Diablo 2 and he tells me about Uncharted. He describes Indiana Jones and a tale I won’t believe. A tale I won’t believe until I play it. And so I buy the uncharted collection on a whim that week. My son, a toddler, my life a mess, my girl left at his birth, but my brother described something I had to have.

60 hours later… I had one of the greatest experiences of my life. Hate be damned, I fell in love with so many characters and moments and found not only the goat game in Uncharted 2, but I found my favorite series ever, and the only series I will replay. It’s so good, I COMB every area in the game to make sure I miss nothing. It’s THAT damn good to me. I’m a person who obsessed over stats and recruitment and skills and loot, and with Uncharted I just pack all of that away and eat it up.

Now, personally, after Uncharted, I’m still a single, white, male and a father with a black son. It’s been me and him. Alone. Just living life. Since about the time “Brother” turned me on to Uncharted in 2015. My son has grown. He went from Mario Kart 8 to Breath of the Wild, to Forza, to Monster Hunter, to FF14, to Elden Ring and so many more, he’s done it all with me and Brother. But as a parent of an 11 year old, starting middle school, telling me how I dress wrong, and how lame I am, I personally can’t wait to show him Uncharted. Give me the FUCKING collection on PC damnit. I’ll buy two copies for us.

So, at the end of the day. You say it’s happy birthday Nathan Drake, then I am right there with you. Happy Fucking Birthday. He didn’t lead me to my career like you OP, but he led me to one of the greatest experiences of my adult life, freed me, gave me something I want to share with my son, and made one of my best friends brothers, my Brother!

(Image removed from quote.)


https://www.resetera.com/threads/15-years-of-being-great-from-small-beginnings.656271/page-2#post-96840192

Not quite sure why he had to highlight his race 

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/page-3#post-96845706

I'm actually an immigrant - naturalized. For the first couple of years of my citizenship I was just another American. Support the troops, hang the flag during Memorial and Independence day. Slowly but surely, my eyes opened up to the fundamental and structural problems, and the propaganda I have been fed for my whole life. I learned to realize the corrosive and debilitating effects of Capitalism.

Today, I will gladly burn the American flag - it represents nothing but misery and death. I totally understand why people from India want to emigrate here, and I do not fault them. There are some really amazing people here (just like everywhere I imagine), some incredible communities, cultural and food pockets that remind you of the motherland. That is the one aspect I admired: people can speak, eat, do whatever they want, form their communities, live however they want. All of this ideal is under siege and sadly looks like we're going to lose the fight or have lost already - especially in the areas of dignified living.

It will take time, but I hope Immigrants will realize the dangerous society we live in America.

[HaughtyFrank]

Stephen Fry: "I wish both sides could come to an understanding"

RE: "TERF TERF TERF TERF"

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stephen-fry-goes-to-bat-for-jk-and-the-gc-movement.656154/

[Cauliflower Of Love]

I wouldn't be surprised if the only reason Trump hasn't posted yet is because he's trying to make a deal for partial ownership of Twitter or complete control of content moderation behind the scenes.

 

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/page-3#post-96845706

I'm actually an immigrant - naturalized. For the first couple of years of my citizenship I was just another American. Support the troops, hang the flag during Memorial and Independence day. Slowly but surely, my eyes opened up to the fundamental and structural problems, and the propaganda I have been fed for my whole life. I learned to realize the corrosive and debilitating effects of Capitalism.

Today, I will gladly burn the American flag - it represents nothing but misery and death. I totally understand why people from India want to emigrate here, and I do not fault them. There are some really amazing people here (just like everywhere I imagine), some incredible communities, cultural and food pockets that remind you of the motherland. That is the one aspect I admired: people can speak, eat, do whatever they want, form their communities, live however they want. All of this ideal is under siege and sadly looks like we're going to lose the fight or have lost already - especially in the areas of dignified living.

It will take time, but I hope Immigrants will realize the dangerous society we live in America.

I'm surprised he's still able to post, I figured he might have a medium-to-strong case of RSI from mashing the report buttons for islamophobia in multiple World Cup "Fuck Qatar" posts

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Stephen Fry: "I wish both sides could come to an understanding"

RE: "TERF TERF TERF TERF"

https://www.resetera.com/threads/stephen-fry-goes-to-bat-for-jk-and-the-gc-movement.656154/

The fuck does he think trans people are doing to impede "women to have all the rights and dignities that they demand." Nobody ever seems to elaborate on that. He wants trans people to live full, accepted lives, which means TERFs need to fuck off. He wants women to have all their rights, which means trans people need to... need to... uh... they need to... uh...

I mean... they've been pretty clear that they want more stringent checks than "I am, whatever I say I am, if I wasn;t, then why would I say I am?" about things like admittance to single sex bathrooms, changing rooms, prisons, designated safe spaces and sports.

If we're getting into "nobody will enumerate what the actual fucking problem is" territory, let's discuss JKR expressing an opinion and how that is removing someone elses "human rights"

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

I mean, it's hard to both sides this issue when one side wants to basically erase the other side from existing

I mean... "Trans women are women" seems an awful lot like a false equivocation wrapped up as an unproven axiom that literally denies one groups identity as separate from anothers.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Like maybe rally behind something like "Trans people deserve respect" that doesn't immediately step right into someone elses hard fought battles instead of saying "Mexicans are Black Americans" then going  FUCK YOU WHY NOT? when people on one side of that equivalence have a problem with what its implicitly doing

[Propagandhim]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/page-3#post-96845706

I'm actually an immigrant - naturalized. For the first couple of years of my citizenship I was just another American. Support the troops, hang the flag during Memorial and Independence day. Slowly but surely, my eyes opened up to the fundamental and structural problems, and the propaganda I have been fed for my whole life. I learned to realize the corrosive and debilitating effects of Capitalism.

Today, I will gladly burn the American flag - it represents nothing but misery and death. I totally understand why people from India want to emigrate here, and I do not fault them. There are some really amazing people here (just like everywhere I imagine), some incredible communities, cultural and food pockets that remind you of the motherland. That is the one aspect I admired: people can speak, eat, do whatever they want, form their communities, live however they want. All of this ideal is under siege and sadly looks like we're going to lose the fight or have lost already - especially in the areas of dignified living.

It will take time, but I hope Immigrants will realize the dangerous society we live in America.

lol no.  As an immigrant, I love it here.  Easy as shit to make money, great laws, great sights, great people, bustling industry and opportunity everywhere, and quiet, placid areas whenever you want to seek them out.    A more equitable healthcare system would be nice, with less pockets of violent, crime-ridden areas, and issues of income inequality, but I'm not burning any flags anytime soon.   

I hope Immigrants will realize the dangerous society we live in America.

No thanks.  Intersectional Immigrant Identity is a no-go for me, dude.

Today, I will gladly burn the American flag

Why even bother?  Just go back to where you came from?  I don't understand this mentality - are you stuck here, Rusty?   I could easily, and should want to make plans to go back to Italy if I hated it here - why is the consideration off the table? 

[joeboy101]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/page-3#post-96845706

Why even bother?  Just go back to where you came from?  I don't understand this mentality - are you stuck here, Rusty?   I could easily, and should want to make plans to go back to Italy if I hated it here - why is the consideration off the table?

Probably because he knows how difficult it is in his country. Slacktivism at its finest.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/jason-david-frank-the-green-and-white-power-ranger-has-died-confirmed-by-tmz.656307/page-3#post-96850089

Was that one of the many Power Rangers that hurled homophobic abuse at Blue Ranger Billy Cranston until he quit?

[Boredfrom]

Why even bother?  Just go back to where you came from?  I don't understand this mentality - are you stuck here, Rusty?   I could easily, and should want to make plans to go back to Italy if I hated it here - why is the consideration off the table?

I imagine is because India has little tolerance to Muslims:

https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/10/07/india-surge-summary-punishments-muslims

I mean, Rusty, you don’t need to go all “American immigrant” and celebrate everything the US do, but is telling how you bat for countries against “Frezee Peaches” as long as they are Muslim.

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/jason-david-frank-the-green-and-white-power-ranger-has-died-confirmed-by-tmz.656307/page-4#post-96851565

Ah I thought it was either the Red or Green Ranger! Also can't believe I forgot the actors name 🤦‍♀️

For what is worth, Im sure JDF is a conservative and probably didnt have positive views of LGBTQ people, but David Yost has said that he always had a good relationship with JDF and constantly did baby sitting for JDF sons. Also they both did a collaboration last year to get gifts to poor kids for christmas

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Um... no? Autistic people are perfectly capable of diagnosing themselves.

That isn't something thats obvious to me. Interesting to know.

I kind of get the impression you might have some dated views on Autism. It may be wise for you to look up more details, or ask other autistic people about their experiences with it. Just be aware that there are some hate groups out there, like Autism Speaks.

Safe to say, the autistic spectrum (and overlapping neurodivergent spectrum as well) is a very wide spectrum, and covers a lot of different characteristics. Self-diagnosis is perfectly possible, and for many it might even be ideal as having an "official" diagnosis can open you up to discrimination and harassment in certain parts of the world.

[Boredfrom]

Holy shit, Android Sophia.

I hope that is the only thing you have self diagnosed. Because will explain a lot of you mental breakdown…

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Yes. Have you wondered why only America and Britain instituted the concept of chattel slavery and genocide of native people? It was solely to build Capital.

[Potato]

Um... no? Autistic people are perfectly capable of diagnosing themselves.

That isn't something thats obvious to me. Interesting to know.

I kind of get the impression you might have some dated views on Autism. It may be wise for you to look up more details, or ask other autistic people about their experiences with it. Just be aware that there are some hate groups out there, like Autism Speaks.

Safe to say, the autistic spectrum (and overlapping neurodivergent spectrum as well) is a very wide spectrum, and covers a lot of different characteristics. Self-diagnosis is perfectly possible, and for many it might even be ideal as having an "official" diagnosis can open you up to discrimination and harassment in certain parts of the world.

(Image removed from quote.)

Self-diagnosed neurological disorders are the best. You get all the pity points without having to deal with the actual social and personal issues that come with actually being neuro-divergent!

[Propagandhim]

Yes. Have you wondered why only America and Britain instituted the concept of chattel slavery and genocide of native people? It was solely to build Capital.

only America and Britain instituted the concept of chattel slaver

He's serious, too.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

Jail is mostly for minorities. White people will need to fuck up on Elizabeth Holmes' level in order to get jailed, or get captured for committing a mass shooting like this one. Otherwise they get the "good 'ol boy" treatment.

Gotta-hand-it-to-ISIS is on a real tear with the hot takes today, he must be super fucking pissed about something none of us could guess about and wants to start some shit

[Taco Bell Tower]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-twitter-drama-ot-let%E2%80%99s-keep-it-here-parody-%F0%9F%94%B5-official-%EA%95%A4-up-reinstates-2020-election-loser-trump.649272/page-289#post-96828768

User Banned (Permanent): Advocating for suicide, intentionally breaking the rules

I hope he and Elon kill themselves.

I'll eat another permaban for posting this.

I'll eat another permaban for posting this.

So we don't need anymore Nintex's email burners?

[Propagandhim]

 https://twitter.com/alessabocchi/status/1029358426256683008

Have you wondered why only America and Britain instituted the concept of chattel slavery and genocide of native people? It was solely to build Capital.

Rusty cleaning his hands of slavery as a Muslim is hilarious.  Forget the Barbary Slave trade, the Moorish colonization, the Ottoman wars -- that's just Europe.  Rusty, you're a colonizer - it's okay, you're in good company.   But as a practicing Muslim, you should know the Quran and the Hadith are full of examples of justifying slavery as a god-given right.  Slavery in Tunisia, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Yemen, Libya, etc.  How the fuck does he get off talking about Britons being the only slavers.     I won't even litigate the modern day 'extremists' like ISIS doing it, because he'll say it's a perversion of the true Islam, even though he wouldn't grant the courtesy to the white devils doing it during the Crusades.  Fuck this idiot.   

[Propagandhim]

Please excuse my inherent disregard

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/jason-david-frank-the-green-and-white-power-ranger-has-died-confirmed-by-tmz.656307/page-3#post-96850089

Was that one of the many Power Rangers that hurled homophobic abuse at Blue Ranger Billy Cranston until he quit?

Imagine going into a thread of someone who just died and throw around an accusation because you can't be fucked to Google the name for two seconds

[Potato]

Rusty Nails is just following the tried and true path of failed migrant children in all western countries.

His parents migrated from India (which most likely means they were wealthy) and came to the west seeking better opportunities. They probably worked hard and gave little Rusty Nails a privileged childhood and probably even found him a job and potential wife. However, teenage Rusty rebelled against his parents and discovered communism and hardline Islam.

Unironically, the only reason he's able to indulge this fantasy is because his long-suffering parents are probably financing his lifestyle out of a sense of duty and cultural traditions while living in the hope that he'll "just grow out of it" one day.

Little do they know, Rusty and Neopetenthe plan to overthrow the evil captialist pigs and institute their utopian commune based on the "take a carrot, leave a carrot" system of trade which is enforced by a shadowy cabal of mysterious moderators who never publish the laws in the open, but permanently banish transgressors to the Badlands of neogoofville.

[GreatSageEqualOfHeaven]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/jason-david-frank-the-green-and-white-power-ranger-has-died-confirmed-by-tmz.656307/page-3#post-96850089

Was that one of the many Power Rangers that hurled homophobic abuse at Blue Ranger Billy Cranston until he quit?

Imagine going into a thread of someone who just died and throw around an accusation because you can't be fucked to Google the name for two seconds

I mean, just in general, imagine what kind of a cunt you have to be to appoint yourself the hall monitor of commiseration in the first place and check dead peoples hall passes to see if they're allowed mourning

[benjipwns]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/elon-musk-twitter-drama-ot-let%E2%80%99s-keep-it-here-parody-%F0%9F%94%B5-official-%EA%95%A4-up-reinstates-2020-election-loser-trump.649272/page-289#post-96828768

User Banned (Permanent): Advocating for suicide, intentionally breaking the rules

I hope he and Elon kill themselves.

I'll eat another permaban for posting this.

I really like the ban message not even mentioning the "another permaban" thing.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/if-you-could-leave-the-usa-to-a-country-of-your-choice-no-questions-asked-and-be-granted-residency-citizenship-would-you.656292/page-3#post-96845706

I'm actually an immigrant - naturalized. For the first couple of years of my citizenship I was just another American. Support the troops, hang the flag during Memorial and Independence day. Slowly but surely, my eyes opened up to the fundamental and structural problems, and the propaganda I have been fed for my whole life. I learned to realize the corrosive and debilitating effects of Capitalism.

Today, I will gladly burn the American flag - it represents nothing but misery and death. I totally understand why people from India want to emigrate here, and I do not fault them. There are some really amazing people here (just like everywhere I imagine), some incredible communities, cultural and food pockets that remind you of the motherland. That is the one aspect I admired: people can speak, eat, do whatever they want, form their communities, live however they want. All of this ideal is under siege and sadly looks like we're going to lose the fight or have lost already - especially in the areas of dignified living.

It will take time, but I hope Immigrants will realize the dangerous society we live in America.

I can tell you naturalized. Probably at a young age too.

I kind of get the impression you might have some dated views on Autism. It may be wise for you to look up more details, or ask other autistic people about their experiences with it.  ... Self-diagnosis is perfectly possible, and for many it might even be ideal

So he can ask just anybody?

Yes. Have you wondered why only America and Britain instituted the concept of chattel slavery and genocide of native people? It was solely to build Capital.

Hey, wait until China finds out about how they've been building capital the entire time!

Jail is mostly for minorities. White people will need to fuck up on Elizabeth Holmes' level in order to get jailed, or get captured for committing a mass shooting like this one. Otherwise they get the "good 'ol boy" treatment.

Only 1.3 million white people incarcerated in the United States, the largest group of any race!

[benjipwns]

https://twitter.com/CartoonsHateHer/status/1593625156324364289

 

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/ICooperAuthor/status/1593710261399166976

spoiler (click to show/hide)

https://twitter.com/CartoonsHateHer/status/1593696444522831879

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[Propagandhim]

What happens if one commune has cooler shit than another commune?  Like, one commune has people that are so good at taking and leaving carrots that they can afford to give out free Cool Blue Razz Gatorade?  Can you just go to the other commune and get 2nd and 3rd helpings or do they have laws that protect their capital ownership Cool Blue Razz?    Because I'm not letting a cop pig get between me and some blue razz

[HaughtyFrank]

Jail is mostly for minorities. White people will need to fuck up on Elizabeth Holmes' level in order to get jailed, or get captured for committing a mass shooting like this one. Otherwise they get the "good 'ol boy" treatment.

Gotta-hand-it-to-ISIS is on a real tear with the hot takes today, he must be super fucking pissed about something none of us could guess about and wants to start some shit

 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in 2018 black males accounted for 34% of the total male prison population, white males 29%, and Hispanic males 24%. White females comprised 47% of the prison population in comparison to black females who accounted for 18% of the female population.

Why do they always have to be such idiots? Yes the justice system is racist, no this doesn't mean that white people don't go to jail. The pattern I'm seeing is that Rusty just tries his hardest to turn reality into a very simple worldview.

[benjipwns]

What happens if one commune has cooler shit than another commune?  Like, one commune has people that are so good at taking and leaving carrots that they can afford to give out free Cool Blue Razz Gatorade?  Can you just go to the other commune and get 2nd and 3rd helpings or do they have laws that protect their capital ownership Cool Blue Razz?    Because I'm not letting a cop pig get between me and some blue razz

I assume this is why Nepenthe said that the commune can present "demands" to an undescribed higher authority, so that higher authority can redistribute the cooler shit to all. She ever so briefly recognized that even her unconstrained hypothetical utopia would have the scarcity she claims our current world doesn't have.

[Propagandhim]

central authority that doles out resources to willing participants is fool proof.

laaaaand back

[BIONIC]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/god-of-war-ragnorak-music-producer-jessica-mao-says-she-wasnt-credited-for-contribution-to-the-game.656376/#post-96859359

i would happily download the mao patch featuring a short video highlighting her work on the game and thanking her for it.

I hope she sees this, bro.

[Uncle]

all of this shit they moan about wanting a new society, I'm just like do it

do a flip

"ohhh but the maaaan has engineered things so that it's too haaaard"

ok do something other than whining online

like they say about peaceful protest, whining online has been tried for decades and demonstrably does not work

go black hammer and wander into the wilderness with a cheap chinese-made amazon basics hatchet and make your utopia

[Propagandhim]

Holy shit, I had to go back to her post about scarcity:

...we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same.  The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

Wait, so she thinks that people just create an over abundance of goods and services because there exists a deliberate conspiracy to inflate the value of them instead of scarcity playing out...?     So an oppressive system maintained for the benefit of a few operators at the top exists to change the market value of items and services in overabundance?  And not one of those operators is trying to undercut the other operator in the system in order to profit off of it even more?   Wtf, what is stopping someone from being part of the oppressive capitalist in that system?  Why not skip the middle man and start selling clothes and food since they have no real market value?  It's the capitalists setting the prices since there's no scarcity?  WTF, you idiot - you work minimum wage.  Go do it!  You're one of the few people on earth, apparently privy to knowledge that will allow you to do whatever you want with your time because value isn't implicated in scarcity.  You could just be a capitalist and take all of the clothes and food and resell them to people that don't need or want it.

we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams"

The pyramid is very close because, as you say, scarcity and efficient markets don't exist.  Step 1.) Buy item from idiot  Step 2.) Sell item to idiot.   Step 3.) Profit 

[Uncle]

I think she goes to the store and sees the shelves stocked with so much food and thinks, oh my god, people come here all day and buy this stuff and it never runs out

not realizing that if it was all free the store would be empty in 30 minutes and 90% of the local public wouldn't have gotten any of it