unknought asked: I suspect that your anon is taking Promethea's views (which they've described as trying to bridge the gap between ancoms and ancaps, among other things) as more representative of rationalism as a whole than they actually are. Anon, I think most of us are boring liberal statists, when it comes down to it.
sigmaleph:
What she said, anon.
actually, you probably shouldn’t assume any object-level belief strongly advocated by a rationalist is representative of the community without asking around.
Oh no you made me geek out on the history of libertarianism
Because anon was actually more correct than the explanation that it would be just about me
“Libertarian” in the 19th century meant just as laissez-faire as it means now, but the political alliances were reversed; they used to call us “voluntary socialists” because we considered ourselves allies of the labor movement and free enterprise against the state-supported capitalists and thought that a free society would be less inequal and oppressive.
(And that’s totally 100% true; without the Inclosure Acts and other such shit the dark satanic mills couldn’t have happened and the 18-19th century industrial capitalists were amazingly honest about how the entire point was to use the state to create a proletariat stripped of property so they could be forced into the mines and factories for a miserable living enriching others. (Every sin begins from treating people as product and so on…) Sometimes child labor was effectively legally mandated as parents weren’t allowed to work in the neighboring parish (or whatever they were called) so they had to send children instead even though there were unemployed adults who would’ve been willing to accept the jobs. And even during the Napoleonic wars the British army had more men keeping order in the industrial communities than fighting the French (anyone who’s played Civilization knows that thing where you put soldiers in a city so it stops rioting and that’s exactly what Britain did).)
Then Lenin happened, and everyone who was not a statist soon concluded that it was a terrible thing and the libertarian movement kind of split into two.
One part allied with right-wing statist capitalism against statist communism and the New Deal as it saw it as the lesser of two evils and over time mostly forgot that it was evil at all. That’s where the “points out every single law that favors the poor, and ignores every single law that props up the rich” type of “libertarian” comes from, or the type that triumphantly touts the $50B workers steal from bosses and disregards the $50B bosses steal from workers. Laissez-faire is not “pro-business”, laissez-faire is not “anti-business”, laissez-faire is “none of our business”.
(And real freedom in employment contracts inevitably implies at least a bare minimum of pro-union stance, and the absence of state intrusion in bargaining the details would make labor struggles meaningful as employers would need to give workers a deal worth taking but it would also simultaneously prevent redwashed rentiers from looting others. All in all I’d expect a freer market with fewer distortions to deliver everyone a money which is closer to the value they create than currently, and if workers are getting less than their true worth then they obviously would get more. Even if capital isn’t redistributed, one would expect its accumulation to lower its value over time as labor would become more of the limiting factor (there are some issues around automation and the control of human-displacing capital but “everyone who is not a robot loses their job and gets fired (upon)” is a very massive market failure). This line of thinking seems to be utterly alien to many non-libertarians, although I must say that those right-libertarians who are very R first with a really small l aren’t helping at all.)
Another part decided to go against both of them and usually got stomped every time (Ukraine, Kronstadt, Catalonia, etc.) and also lost its free-market laissez-faire ideals because those were now right-wing in the Big Ideology Fuckup of the 20th Century.
There were a few attempts at reconciliation eg. in the 60s when Vietnam made right-libertarians notice that the capitalist state was an oppressive piece of shit as well (eg. Barry Goldwater’s speechwriter Karl Hess switched sides to Emma Goldman because her writings were like Ayn Rand’s but with the boring parts stripped out; something that might appear completely incomprehensible to someone who doesn’t understand libertarianism), but Murray Rothbard decided that he wanted to appeal to “tight-assed conformists, who
want to stamp out drugs in their vicinity, kick out people with strange
dress habits, etc.” instead of the weirdos and founded “paleolibertarianism”. (As a weirdo, I decided that Rothbard was a total asshole.) And during the previous half-century the left got way too enarmored with social democracy and statism and when dissolving that system in the late 70s began opposing anything smelling of laissez-faire turned into a tribal symbol and an Important Hill To Die On. (You wouldn’t believe how frustrating it is to be surrounded by 5 million socdems who make Bernie Sanders look like Ron Paul in comparison. (By that I mean that he isn’t that socially liberal but he does propose low taxes. Yes, that’s Finland for you; where Bernie would be the low-tax candidate.))
And speaking of tribal symbols, the question of private property had alwas been divisive but I see that
as kind of a ??? thing because there’s no way to enforce private
property on a voluntary collectivist community without violence, nor is
there a way to non-violently expropriate a community which
maintains consensual private property, and neither side could destroy the other so making some kind of peace in the form of “agree to disagree, each side
goes its own way and doesn’t fuck with the other’s stuff” is the only
stable outcome anyway unless the entire world was instantaneously
brainwashed into one or the other.
(And the division of that stuff would end up being such that ancoms would actually have some to begin with. For pragmatic reasons. By pragmatic reasons I mean that letting ancoms expropriate enough to have their ancommunities be actually economically viable is more economically efficient than dealing with a lot of disgruntled ancoms. Disgruntled ancoms with guns and a special interest in expropriating things, specifically. Even Murray Rothbard thought that capital owned by the state or businesses that receive enough tax money is a legitimate target for homesteading and thus there is a clear win-win solution in expropriating the state and its monopolist cronies for the ancommunities so ancoms can get a real job building their vision of a good society without bothering others or being bothered, while ancaps can run their own society instead of whining on reddit. And mutalists and other inbetweeners can inbetween freely.)
Ancaps usually recognize that there
is nothing stopping ancoms from having ancommunities in ancapistan while
ancoms tend to be vaguely uncomfortable around the opposite equivalent,
usually evading the question with something like “but nobody would want
it”; my opinion is that if a bunch of people want to live on a ship among themselves, bothering nobody, stopping them with violence makes one the bad guy. At that point I don’t care about lofty proclamations about how “that ship is made from materials that belong to everyone” or the other usual justifications some (but fortunately not all) ancoms give for why they would do violence to stop those people and take their ship; I’d be there, protecting their right to do whatever the fuck they want amongst themselves without bothering anyone else, with whatever amount of violence I need, and I’d probably go on the ship with them because if land is filled with people who won’t let people do some consensual thing among themselves because it would be immoral, I don’t want to live there. (this is totally going to end up misquoted in a call-out post some day as “promethea is an ancap” but do I look like I give a shit)
More abstractly, I can sidestep the issue of the morality of private property by looking at it with cynical pragmatism: in most of the possible outcomes, ancaps won’t, or more importantly can’t, prevent ancommunities; and ancoms can’t prevent ancapistan existing somewhere, so both could and should be happy with the deal of “let’s build a new society where we both can do our thing without bothering the other side”. What I think about the morality of property doesn’t matter for my anarchism because I wouldn’t impose my views on non-consenting people anyway, and I’m willing to ally with anyone who agrees with that.
(Intellectual property is an exception; when it comes to things like copyright and patents I’m 100% pirate and in favor of expropriating everything; people could obviously keep trade secrets and use DRM and make license contracts and that’s fair game, but breaking DRM and using cracked licensed software is totally fair game too.)
And about the word “libertarian”? I’ll let Murray Rothbard explain: “One gratifying aspect of our
rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we,
‘our side,’ had captured a crucial word from the enemy…
'Libertarians’… had long been simply a polite word for left-wing
anarchists, that is for anti-private property anarchists, either of the
communist or syndicalist variety. But now we had taken it over…”
And my response is that Rothbard is once again being a massive dickbag of an asshole and I’m not letting assholes monopolize that word.
But yeah, even right-libertarianism actually has its roots in the same soil as communism and the history is fascinating and people should learn it. (And Lenin and Stalin are assholes.)
1 week ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist #this is a social democracy hateblog #this is an emma goldman fanblog #still bitter for '36 #i _may_ have a special interest in this topic #at least based on the word count #bitching about the country of birth #laissez-faire used to mean _stop trying to help us_ · 14 notes · source: sigmaleph · .permalink
"If you do talk about [Rojava’s] politics, misrepresent them as a Kurdish nationalist movement fighting to establish a Kurdish state. Because of course a neoliberal “democratic” state is what any freedom loving people would want. Ignore the fact that while mostly Kurds, there’s a variety of ethnicities, religions, and languages in Rojava. Absolutely do not mention words like “democratic confederalism,” “direct democracy,” “anticapitalist,” “feminism,” “social ecology,” or “libertarian socialism”. Remember, according to Fukuyama we’ve reached the “end of history.” And according to Thatcher, “there is no alternative.” That depends on you not talking about the alternative."
Phineas Phisher, to Ars Technica for an article about their hack
CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS FRICKING SNARK THOUGH
(via thetransintransgenic)
This is your daily reminder that there is a Problematic oligopoly in governance and attempts to supply alternative products to the Marketplace Of Ideas That Actually Get Implemented Somewhere should be protected at, not all because that would be dangerous, but significantly more costs than they are currently protected at.
Furthermore, this should be an agreeable meta-level policy regardless of what one thinks of any particular implementation; how else are we supposed to figure out which exotic form of more-consensual-than-currently governance would actually work the best? A world with both both seasteaders and Rojava getting to try out their systems without authoritarians fucking with either should be preferable to all varieties of freedom-appreciating people over a world without such experiments. There is a natural coalition waiting to be built is what I’m saying.
1 month ago · tagged #this is a rojava fanblog #still bitter for '36 #promethea's empiricism fetish · 9 notes · source: thetransintransgenic · .permalink
mugasofer:
socialjusticemunchkin:
metagorgon:
i have had some extraordinarily interesting thoughts about chickens, including, but not limited to:
- the trolley problem but with chickens
- chickens in gimp suits
- masses of chickens being spontaneously created and destroyed
- every chicken on earth being replaced with something that is almost but not quite like a chicken
- a chicken spa with rows of chickens being massaged
- an infinite amount of chickens
- chicken upload
- cyborg chickens
- becoming a chicken
- and a poor family watching in horror as their chickens disappear one by one.
Oh no, chicken politics:
Capitalism: You have two chickens. The chickens have planned obsolescence built in so you have to repurchase them every few years. The chickens are classified as software and you don’t really own them but simply license a right to use them, and thus PoliceMob will hunt you down if you try to breed more chickens or CRISPR away the self-destruct genes.
Social democracy: You have two chickens. The state takes one of your chickens. You spend several weeks filling forms to qualify for the Chicken Investment Subsidy Program, after which you can get your chicken back. If you didn’t do this, your neighbor would be the one to get your chicken instead. The website www.governmentisgood.com explains how great it is that the state gives free chickens to people.
Statist socialism: You have two chickens. The state takes both; slaughters one and gives the meat to its voters; sends the other to the president’s offshore bank account in Panama; sets a price ceiling on eggs; and declares you a class enemy for not being able to produce eggs under that price. You buy eggs from the black market for twenty times the official price.
Anarcho-capitalism: You have two chickens. After your regular payments to Dawn Defense to make sure that your chickens aren’t stolen and that any rooster you would hypothetically buy in the future would actually be a rooster and that you are protected against all the things you couldn’t possibly anticipate, you can save a few satoshis each day. But one day you will surely have saved enough to purchase a rooster and hire your own servants.
Anarcho-communism: You have two chickens. PoliceMob shows up and shoots them because fuck you that’s why. The mainstream media says the chickens must have deserved it because surely PoliceMob wouldn’t do such a thing without a very good reason.
Mutualism: You have two chickens. You keep your chickens in your living room so that they remain unambiguously in your possession. You spend every waking hour doing something vaguely chicken-related so you can claim your daily production of eggs are worth 16 work-hour-units.
Utilitarianism: You have two chickens. You slightly inconvenience yourself to increase their welfare substantially.
Postmodernism: You have two chickens and absolutely no clue how to produce eggs. You invent ever more complicated constructs to try to stop anyone from noticing that material chickens in the material world actually do produce material eggs, no matter how clever your arguments are.
Steel postmodernism: Chickens are a social construct. You can’t eat social constructs, but the social construct “egg” usually refers to something that can be eaten so you use it as a convenient shorthand to conceptualize reality. You laugh at people who seriously ask questions like “what came first, the chicken or the egg?”
Anarcho-communism is reality?
Every time someone attempts anarcho-communism a lot of angry authoritarians with guns show up and fuck things up, without exception. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a demonstration in ‘016 or Catalonia in '36; someone is going to fuck the anarchists’ shit up.
1 month ago · tagged #still bitter for '36 · 102 notes · source: metagorgon · .permalink
blog impact assessment survey
oligopsony:
this blog is first and foremost a shitpost curation station, BUT if I had to pretend it had some sort of greater mission I think increasing intellectual exchange between rationalists and leftists would be up there
if you are a rationalist, has this blog corrupted you at all with leftism? if there’s something at the level of “getting” ideas that prevents you from being corrupted, can you articulate what it is?
if you are a leftist, has this blog corrupted you at all with rationalism?
if there’s something at the level of “getting” ideas that prevents you from being corrupted, can you articulate what it is?
(where leftism/t arbitrarily and somewhat sloppily means “discourse community descended from marx’s writings” and rationalism/t means “discourse community descended from yudkowsky’s writings” and corruption means “getting more positively disposed to the idea that the associated people (at least here, On Tumblr) and ideas are worth engaging with,” but if you have a more interesting answer for different values of these go ahead - these definitions are sloppy and I really just mean “no, not bernie sanders” and “no, not descartes and spinoza” and “no, not selling all your possessions and joining the other cult”)
((credit for inspiring this come from @sinesalvatorem, who reminds me that i haven’t done that “reducing inferential distance from rationalism to communism” thing I said I would do, and also inadvertently that it would be a good idea to get a lay of what the inferential distances (in either direction) actually are))
Okay, so as someone who not only knows but cares about the Marx/Bakunin distinction (and thus felt really compelled to pick the nits of “descended from Marx’s writings” because as far as taking sides on the topic of two pre-all-the-empiricism-of-the-last-150-years dudes makes sense I’m on side Bakunin; for example when marxists.org tries to argue that Marx was right their arguments simply make Bakunin appear as the more sympathetic one even though they have been able to pick and choose them with the obvious itent of being favorable to Marx) I’m pretty much leftiness georg already by those standards, but then there’s the other distinction that is more political than cultural and which I am confused by.
The “communism as a vague description of the goal of post-scarcity and the end of poverty and material lack and rentseeker bullshit forcing people to toil for the benefit of powerful non-value-creator parasites; 3d-printers for everyone; beeline for future society: eudaimonic” thing makes sense; C4SS and David Friedman alike make sense (and I think the idea of “substantial basic income + actually laissez-faire” is effectively more socialist in the meaning of “alleviates the plight of the working class” than the entire state of Sweden), and “get maximum cash, invest in 3d-printers, share them, prevent the state from taking them away” is an actionable strategy, but what is the actionable strategy of “communism as politics, switch to economy: planned”, and what are its contents actually?
All I’ve managed to pick up from elsewhere is roughly “we have a lot of valid complaints about how a lot of things are really sucky for non-rich people but no proposed solution other than some kind of nebulous ~global revolution~ that is unlikely to ever actually happen and any attempts to do anything else than carry on the decades-old tradition of discussing the imminent revolution is liberal reformist bullshit, and we will control the economy democratically and it will ~automagically~ make it work better than markets despite not containing any actual replacement for the very important mechanisms markets have, and we will not expropriate your toothbrush even though we totally could expropriate your toothbrush and you’re supposed to trust us because this time subjecting everything to democracy would not work as disastrously as your previous experiences with democracy and de facto mob rule have led you to expect because this time democracy will ~automagically~ not vote on your body even though it totally could vote on your body and you would be a class enemy if you object” (this may sound a bit uncharitable but my interactions with statist marxists haven’t exactly been that fruitful because the inferential distance is too large)
So basically I’d like to know what steel marxism is _actually_ about, and especially wtf is up with the labor theory of value and democratic economy/economic democracy.
(via oligopsony-deactivated20160508)
1 month ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist #still bitter for '36 #promethea's empiricism fetish · 46 notes · .permalink
ozymandias271:
okay my actual proposal:
- May 1st reserved for outdoor fucking, for historical reasons and because we have a song about it
- May 4th, the actual anniversary of the Haymarket Massacre, is worker’s day
- Victims of Communism Day can be the second or the third as they prefer
Okay so 30.4. || 4/30 is Walpurgisnacht, then it’s fucking day, then it’s victims of utopian experiment day and then it’s erased-from-history day (because nobody remembers the anarchists! Haymarket was about anarchists, not about tankie pieces of shit!). Sounds like things gone full Meguca. Not that I’m complaining.
Besides, victims’ day needs to be 7.11. || 11/7 because statist communists were the ones who caused them. There was never any anarchist regime killing people en masse because there was never any anarchist regime because authoritarians always fuck with other people’s experiments.
2 months ago · tagged #still bitter for '36 #i am worst capitalist #does space lesbianing count as outdoor fucking? #i say it does #saint madoka patron of transhumanist loophole exploitation #saint homura patron of something to protect · 24 notes · source: ozymandias271 · .permalink
ilzolende:
socialjusticemunchkin:
wirehead-wannabe:
psybersecurity:
wirehead-wannabe:
Carson + Paul is obviously the best choice. Heal the world + never worry about being sick or getting STDs + end the drug war. Only downside is spending three hours a day praying, which is honestly the easiest downside to deal with.
Also I think Paul’s running mate bonus is supposed to say “decriminalization” in the last paragraph.
Taken from /u/annextasia at https://www.reddit.com/r/makeyourchoice/comments/4gtu83/2016_gop_nomination_cyoa_oc/
Kasich is better than Carson I think. If you have a legion of 11 million loyal followers willing to heed your beck and call you could do pretty much anything and it would be a lot more fun than standing around all day touching people and feeling guilty every second that you’re doing anything else
I’m trying to figure out why Ted’s running mate bonus is supposed to be a good thing lol
I mean you could probably earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a day curing AIDS and cancer if you really just wanted to use it on yourself. Which is arguably just as good if not better than having 11 million loyal followers.
Or you could tax the ohioans just a few dollars a day each to earn a hundred times more.
Assuming “Ohio” means the legal state of Ohio, and not “the territory which currently forms the state of Ohio”, Kasich/Paul is totally OP and broken.
First, I legalize individuals and communities choosing which state to belong to democratically. The other states may whine, but governance only with the consent of the governed doesn’t violate basic rights, so with Paul I can totally do it.
Then I end the drug war. In Ohio, because I’ve legalized states setting their own drug laws.
I decriminalize states setting their own immigration rules, and open the borders in Ohio, defining ohioans as “anyone present in Ohio, or who announces their decision to join Ohio, or who has previously fulfilled either condition and has not renounced their ohioanness” (thus, making me immune to assassinations as anyone who would try to do it would have to travel to Ohio, become ohioan, and stop wanting to assassinate me and start wanting to protect me instead).
Then I implement a basic income in Ohio (for those who have been ohioans for a sufficient amount of time, as I have previously suggested). And all the other cool stuff, in Ohio.
Everyone would give anything for the cause, so I ask the people to be excellent to each other, and otherwise be free to do whatever they want as long as they don’t deprive others of the same right (but if they wish to give to charity they really should prioritize EA instead of Make-a-Wish). Crime in Ohio plummets to zero, and so does poverty, deprivation, and coercion. The economy gets an immense boom from the immigrants, and the abolition of zero-sum and negative-sum bullshit games, and all people working together for their prosperity, like a weird libertarian (or, in fact, full-blown anarchist in all but name) version of North Korea’s propaganda films come true.
The obvious consequence is that a lot of people would want to be a part of Ohio. Just as planned. It won’t take long until Ohio has a population of approximately 200 million and covers a vast fractal shape encompassing most of the major cities.
Then I become the president of the US in the most overwhelming election since Washington, seize control of all brances of the government, and turn my Paul powers to international law instead. Rinse repeat with a bit more restraint to not provoke a nuclear war, and I’ll soon have acquired most of the Americas, the major liberal cities of Europe, and vast swathes of territory in Africa as well (I’m deliberately not touching Russia or China because that way lies armageddon), in this only-nominally-stateful community of freedom and dignity.
It’s immune to invasions because open borders mind control magic, it’s immune to terrorism because surely you wouldn’t want to hurt your fellow ohioans, it’s immune to pretty much everything except ICBMs. For ICBMs my policy will be a clear and ruthless MAD if attacked, but otherwise non-interference in the affairs of the other superpower and the little regional Shitholistan with a superiority complex propped up by its ridiculous nuclear arsenal. In fact, I can afford a comparably submissive foreign policy, letting Russia pick the arctic oil and China get whatever gas fields it wants because our anarchist regime is too rich to care about such slim pickings.
We’re going to outer space instead. All the labor and ingenuity currently wasted in pointless things will be redirected in a program of technology and space colonization (and AI research but I’m assuming no FAI because it kind of cuts everything short and turns things boring). We’re going to cure all the diseases, conquer the Moon, Mars, and everywhere. We’re going to win.
A wise man once asked: “Why does everything always end in world domination with you guys?”
The rationalist answered: “Have you ever tried giving us a scenario that did not have world domination built in?”
To the US I came seeking fortune
But they’re making me work til I’m dead
The congressmen have it so easy
The bankers put gold on their bread
The people of the world are so hungry
But think what a feast there could be
If we could create an anarchist state
That cared for the people like me:
I am the man who arranges the blocks
That descend upon me from up above.
They come down and I spin them around
Til they fit in the ground like hand in glove.
Sometimes it seems that to move blocks is fine
And the lines will be formed as they fall -
Then I see that I have misjudged it!
I should not have nudged it after all.
Can I have a long one please?
Why must these infernal blocks tease?
I am the man who arranges the blocks
That continue to fall from up above.
Come Ohioan! To the every last one!
An individualist regime of peace and love.
I work so hard in arranging the blocks
But the landlord and taxman bleed me dry
But Ohio will rise! We will not compromise
For we know that the old regime must die.
Long live freedom, burn the flags!
We salute the orange and black!
I am the man who arranges the blocks
That continue to fall from up above.
The food on your plate no concern of the state
An individualist regime of peace and love.
I have my choice in arranging the blocks
Under promethean rule, what you say goes.
The rule of the game is our rights are the same
And my blocks can make my own-shaped rows.
Long live Ohio! It loves you!
Sing these words, you know what it’ll do…
I am the man who arranges the blocks
That are made by the men from Shitholistan.
They came two weeks ago and back there they won’t go
Now they’re working to our world conquest plan.
I am the man who arranges the nukes
That will make all the Putin keep away
The hopes have come back, and ‘Murica is Black!
Let us point all our dollars at EA.
We shall live forever more!
We can start an altruism war!
I am the man who arranges the blocks
That are building a highly secret base.
Hip hip hurray for the AS of A!
We are sending our men to outer space.
This is #amazing, you are #amazing, 10/10.
Note to self: Sing this when I have microphone access.
Also, orange-and-black is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory), yes?
Orange and black is just the general symbol I use for free market anarchism to distinguish the anarchism of Utopian Ohio from anarcho-capitalism (yellow and black) and anarcho-communism (red and black). A utopian “would you kindly be excellent to each other” anarchism would have basically the best features of both.
Mutualism is one form of these free-market anarchisms but I don’t personally necessarily subscribe to it because the labor theory of value and “same work for same work” break horribly (even some red-black people I’ve talked to about the theory agree that it has bad incentive structures), and occupancy-and-use also has some pretty significant issues.
I don’t do theory on that level because that level is pretty much only good for eulering people, but “I’m opting out of the capitalism debate so +free market, -crony capitalism, +anarchism” is roughly the direction I’m intensely gesturing in for the purposes of moving towards a society of A Bit Less Bullshit. (Somalia is a surprisingly less-bullshitty place considering that it’s a third-world Shitholistan with an islamist infestation and a civil war, so not having the state make things even worse by propping up robber barons seems to have at least some empirical support (I suspect it’s doing relatively well because they don’t have sea slugs in the desert). And Turkey needs to let Rojava try their thing without fucking with other people’s experiments. Because you know who fucked with other people’s experiments? Stalin. Be smart, don’t be like Stalin.) And every red-black I know calls me orange-black so I’m not protesting because at least that way they don’t outgroup me into yellow-black.
(via ilzolende)
2 months ago · tagged #i am worst capitalist #promethea's empiricism fetish #still bitter for '36 · 58 notes · .permalink
multiheaded1793:
oligopsony:
nuclearspaceheater:
leviathan-supersystem:
bitcoitus:
leviathan-supersystem:
the belief that ‘order = hierarchy’ is one of the most pernicious mythologies. and it is equally pernicious whether it convinces someone that order is bad, or when it convinces them that hierarchy is good.
order is good. hierarchy is bad. they are not linked.
What the fuck is ‘order’
i mean it’s not limited to this but one example for what i’m talking about is “socially agreed on protocol for acceptable behavior”
romantic notions that people can all just do ~whatever they want~ are childish and ultimately rooted in liberalism.
For this reply we’ve secretly swapped tumblr communist leviathan-supersystem with my conservative Mormon divisional Chief. Let’s see if anyone notices.
Your Divisional Chief Is Correct Though
Actually, “doing whatever you want” and “no need for hierarchy uwu” were both kinda steelmanned by Marcuse with his concept of ~surplus repression~.
The way he does it is simple but kinda subtle, and I’m bad at explaining it, he says it, like, more persuasively and less naively - but basically you don’t *actually* want to do that stupid shit
[1]
to the extent that people would need to shun you, call the cops, etc, right?
Self-image, self-interest, seeking immediate peers’ approval, etc - necessary repression in his Freudian-ish terms - would quite suffice for a more laid-back life, like they suffice in making (many) people e.g. wash their hands and flush toilets. But to do shit like Taylorist discipline, you need to beat people down more actively, past acquiescence and into submission - hence the “surplus”.
[1] Not unless you’re destitute, sick, angry, wasted, crazy, etc, which he kinda discounts, because, in his time and place, capitalism seemed to him about to eliminate
glaring scarcity and obvious Dickensian misery. I mean, of course that looks incorrect now - but imo not that awful of him as far as extrapolation goes.
That sounds testable enough. Build a sufficiently low-scarcity intentional community with population and norms initially selected for prosociality, easy access to psych treatment etc. and let people do what they want, and see if it inevitably degenerates into either hierarchy or chaos. My money would be on “it probably could be done as long as authoritarians don’t get to fuck with it”
4 months ago · tagged #playing your cards right #promethea's empiricism fetish #still bitter for '36 #stalin you asshole don't fuck with other people's experiments #fortunately syria doesn't have stalinists #also how on earth did the us become rojava's air force #lifegoals level #whatever the outcome is #the state of our knowledge wins #unless authoritarians fuck with it #we already know that ruins everything we don't need more replications · 191 notes · source: leviathan-supersystem · .permalink