Cowbee

@Cowbee@lemm.ee

This town, in fact, has more than enough room for the two of us

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Cowbee,

“Is there a better solution? Before you answer, don’t”

Cowbee,

It’s also good to not use it, if you can afford to keep it and spend normally. HSA space is extremely limited, because it’s by far the best retirement account available. FSAs are fantastic for spending, as they don’t have as many restrictions and don’t carry over year over year.

Cowbee,

Anarcho-Capitalism cannot exist, it would cease to exist the very second it did.

Anarcho-Communism is a lofty goal, but is fully capable of existing.

That’s the fundamental difference, what you consider to be Private Property simply wouldn’t be, it would either be personal property or you wouldn’t have it. It is only through threat of violence that one can own the products of tools despite not doing the labor.

Cowbee,

You cannot seriously believe in a might makes right society, can you?

Cowbee,

Yes, absolutely. How would one win over with individual ownership? One dude with a couple guns vs an entire community?

Cowbee,

Private Property cannot exist without a state. That which gives private property legitimacy is a monopoly of violence, otherwise you have a winner-takes-all might makes right system.

Collective ownership of property can be enforced via the collective itself, without a need for a governing body.

Anarchism is certainly idealistic, but Anarcho-Capitalism is pure fantasy.

Cowbee,

Neither. It’s a replacement for money, based on hours worked. The difference between money and LVs are that LVs are destroyed upon first use, ie you create 4 hours of Value, then trade that for 4 different hours of Value.

Cowbee,

It’s one of the most Capitalist countries on the planet, and is filled with individual Capital Owners that employ Proletarians.

Cowbee,

So then it’s a wording issue, though it’s more accurate to say that revolution itself invariably turns to shit.

Cowbee,

They are.

To argue for Capitalism over Socialism, you must reject the idea of democratizing control of productuon in favor of dictatorial control. You can whitewash it into “meritocracy,” and pretend that ownership is a mystical concept that chooses those with the highest competency, but ultimately Capitalism is a rejection of Worker Control, and thus an affirmation of control in the hands of the few.

Similarly, to believe that this dictatorial control is worth it, you typically must also believe that growth is either non-existant if the Workers direct it, or pales in comparison to when Capitalists control production.

Therefore, you are rejecting the concepts of decentralization and democratization of production in favor of the “good men” theory, putting all your chips on Capitalists either being good people or being replaced by better Capitalists without input from the Workers.

Did I deliberately highlight the flaws of your thinking without putting the kid gloves on? Yes, and I won’t apologize for it, as the claims are logically a necessity to hold your beliefs.

Cowbee,

100c water, 12g coffee per 200g water, pour 50g water into press then wait 30sec, stir, add the rest, add the press so the water doesnt flow, wait 2 more minutes then press down until hiss.

Easy peasy.

Cowbee,

How would it go corporate beyond specific instances? That’s kind of the entire point.

Cowbee,

Decentralization is far more left than it is right, hence why Lemmy has a ton of leftists. It wasn’t just chance.

Cowbee, (edited )

I don’t think its easy, or reasonable. Part of my point is specifically that it’s unattainable for most.

Cowbee,

Plenty, but they appear to go over your head as you constantly dodge and pull whataboutisms.

Yes, I said that.

Trump isn’t to blame for Biden’s impact on gas prices. At the same time, Biden isn’t to blame for the disastrous economic policy of Trump that caused massive inflation and instilled purely incompetent people into stations like the Supreme Court. Gas prices have trajectory, if you can recognize that Biden has had a negative impact on gas prices then surely you can understand that Trump royally fucked the economy, along with Social Programs and steered the US towards fascism.

I’m not a Biden Stan, I think he’s a shitty lib. Shitty libs are better than incompetent fascists.

Cowbee,

Engineering is just the economical application of applied physics, without Physicists Engineers work off faulty knowledge, without Engineers nothing gets designed.

The level of understanding an Engineer needs, however, is purely within the practical and economical, while Physicists understandably have more in-depth knowledge.

Cowbee,

It just so happens to be a consequence of Capitalism, though.

Cowbee,

Marxist-Leninist. To simplify, Marx wrote some stuff, Lenin expanded on it and threw a revolution, shortly after which he fucking died. Stalin wrote a couple more sentences then distilled the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. That’s why you have non-Marxist-Leninist Marxists/Leninists like the ICP, as word-salady as that sounds.

The essential factor is the belief in the use of a Vanguard Party to carry out a revolution and build up a Socialist state to whither into Communism.

Cowbee, (edited )

I think your biggest issue is that you’re comparing a developing country that was severely underdeveloped before the USSR rose with a developed economy, as though they can be meaningfully compared. If your metrics for thriving consists of looking at people’s access to luxury commodities in a country that saw the bulk of the fighting in WWII, was founded in a Civil War during WWI, and was a backwater, feudal landscape that hadn’t even reached full Capitalism yet, then I’m afraid you aren’t being honest.

Let this be clear: I am not a Stalinist, nor am I saying the USSR was “good.” However, my point is that even in the USSR, the principles of Socialism are so sound that it dramatically improved people’s lives over what came before, and since becoming Capitalist, wealth inequality skyrocketed and life expectancy sharply dropped until the last decade.

As for control over their lives, the citizens of the USSR in many ways had more freedoms, and in many ways less freedoms. They couldn’t go against the party in any meaningful way, but the Soviet Democracy meant that they generally had more local control than workers in Capitalist workplaces. I would personally like to have the best of both worlds, more democracy, without top-down Capitalism.

Edit: as an example for the last point, George Lucas famously said that he was jealous of filmmakers’ freedoms in the USSR, as he claimed that creating movies for profit was even more constricting than not being able to criticize the Communist Party.

Cowbee,

I’d argue that the people who think Socialism can only work with abundance, even Communism, fail to understand that Socialism and Communism must be built over a long time, and imagine concepts like “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” must be applied to a pre-existing Capitalist economy.

Really, they just don’t see the timescale. There’s no meaningful reason Socialism cannot happen today with current productive forces.

Cowbee,

Couple things, here.

  1. Define “thriving,” even the most famously abusive Socialist economies like the USSR managed to double life expectancy, and achieve other good metrics like free Healthcare and education, which even modern Capitalist economies struggle with.
  2. “Capitalism” did not make everyone’s lives better. Development did. That’s why the USSR, in spite of its top-down, brutal structure, managed to double life expectancy.
  3. Simple “blind brand loyalty” and monopolization are not the only hallmarks of “Late-Stage Capitalism.” Other hallmarks include rampant consumerism, bullshit jobs, stagnating wages with respect to productivity, further alienation from labor, increased Imperialism, and more.
  4. Blind brand loyalty isn’t the issue here, and you cannot “fix” Capitalist exploitation within Capitalism, only make it more bearable.

All in all, lots of assumptions with no ground to stand on. As a leftist, I think it’s safe to say that democracy is generally a good thing, as is decentralization, so a better system than top-down Capitalism would be an economy with democratic participation from the bottom-up. Communism can achieve this.

Cowbee,

You’re starting to get it. You should read Manufacturing Consent, by Noam Chomsky. He describes the very mechanisms by which the bourgeoisie use the media to control the people into doing their bidding.

Cowbee,

Noted!

Cowbee,

People work to improve their material conditions. Material conditions drive society, after all. Do you do household chores at all, or do you let everyone else do them for you?

Communal ownership of property is the only way to truly aim at fulfilling needs and desires, rather than the profit motive.

Cowbee,

Yes, so we should decommodify housing.

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