We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
governor explicitly yields control, or the state’s legislature forces the governor to yield control
states vote with a super majority to declare war
legislative branch votes to declare war with a super majority
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to _decentralize_ power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that this is exactly what we are at Lemmy to do. Where capitalism produced Reddit, communitarianism produced Lemmy. The best effort of both systems is now live and the two are competing head to head. We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.
This argument is very different from the argument I’m talking about. Lemmy isn’t a government, nor does it attempt to fill that role (as much as my instance’s “Agora” community wants to think it does), so whether Lemmy is successful doesn’t give any insight into whether a more decentralized form of government could be successful.
communitarianism produced Lemmy
That’s a pretty generous description.
A more accurate description, IMO, is that two people wanted a safe space for their extremist community (tankies), and they had a working version at the time that a lot of people were frustrated with Reddit. Those two are still running the project, and they moderate their instances very tightly. But many people outside that community came and decided to make something good out of it, which is why additional instances popped up run by people with different motivations from the original pair.
So I don’t think communitarianism produced Lemmy, at least not initially, but it did help turn Lemmy into what it is today.
We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we have already won in that people choose to stay here over returning to Reddit or whatever social media platform they came from. That said, active users on Lemmy seems to be steadily dropping, which is a bummer, but I’m still able to have decent discussions here, so it’s working for me.
the people can hold their politicians more easily accountable if the politicians live closer to the people.
it’s some kind of “pitchforks and torches” thing: In historical times it was usual that people simply walked up to the castle of the feudal lord and demanded improvements if their life was too shitty or if they were treated too unfairly. That was possible because the feudal lord mostly lived within walking distance of where the peasants lived, like, maybe in the next village or sth, but not farther than that in most cases. As a consequence, feudal lords had a very significant interest in being on good terms with their neighbours and keeping the people happy enough so they won’t start a revolt over high taxes or sth.
Today, that’s not possible because all those politicians that decide the law (and therefore our fate) live far-away (thousands of miles!) in places that neither you or me can ever personally visit. Hence, there is no accountability. We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.
We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.
I agree with the conclusion, but not how you got there.
My Senators and House rep live pretty close to me, like 15 minutes away driving, so I could go visit them if I wanted. They spend a lot of time in DC, but they come back several times throughout the year.
The issue, IMO, isn’t where they sleep, but that they can’t easily be removed from office. Our districts are gerrymandered to the point that the main party usually wins with 20%+ margin. Why care about constituents if reelection is all but guaranteed? They could live next door to me and that wouldn’t change their mind. If I assassinate a rep, I’ll go to jail and the replacement will likely be worse. They’re more accountable to their party and donors than their constituents.
But yes, I very much do believe decisions should be made locally because party affiliation matters far less. My local legislature behaves very differently from the federal Congress, not because of where people live, but because they’re much more easily replaced and they can’t hide behind other reps from other states and argue that their decisions are careful chess moves to get what really matters passed.
and they can’t hide behind other reps from other states
yep, that’s what i meant. your representative might be easily replaced, but the other 49 representatives from the other 49 states don’t really care about you, and that’s the majority of congress.
That’s the thing, mine aren’t easily replaced and it’s not because they live in DC much of the year, but because my district is gerrymandered, and that seems to be true for most districts in the country. Only a fraction of races are actually competitive after the primary, and there’s not going to be a primary to replace a sitting rep unless they piss off the party.
If we simply made state politics more impactful than federal, parties would move their focus to rigging state elections.
The issue, IMO, is there’s too much incentive to rig politics. Government interferes so much in all aspects of life and is so powerful that it will absolutely attract money. If we shift more of that to the courts, now that money would need to focus on everyday people, which I think is an improvement.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
Moreover, capitalist production, by its very nature, cannot be restricted to such means of production as are produced by capitalist methods. Cheap elements of constant capital are essential to the individual capitalist who strives to increase his rate of profit. In addition, the very condition of continuous improvements in labour productivity as the most important method of increasing the rate of surplus value, is unrestricted utilisation of all substances and facilities afforded by nature and soil. To tolerate any restriction in this respect would be contrary to the very essence of capital, its whole mode of existence. After many centuries of development, the capitalist mode of production still constitutes only a fragment of total world production. Even in the small Continent of Europe, where it now chiefly prevails, it has not yet succeeded in dominating entire branches of production, such as peasant agriculture and the independent handicrafts; the same holds true, further, for large parts of North America and for a number of regions in the other continents. In general, capitalist production has hitherto been confined mainly to the countries in the temperate zone, whilst it made comparatively little progress in the East, for instance, and the South. Thus, if it were dependent exclusively, on elements of production obtainable within such narrow limits, its present level and indeed, its development in general would have been impossible. From the very beginning, the forms and laws of capitalist production aim to comprise the entire globe as a store of productive forces. Capital, impelled to appropriate productive forces for purposes of exploitation, ransacks the whole world, it procures its means of production from all corners of the earth, seizing them, if necessary by force, from all levels of civilisation and from all forms of society. The problem of the material elements of capitalist accumulation, far from being solved by the material form of the surplus value that has been produced, takes on quite a different aspect. It becomes necessary for capital progressively to dispose ever more fully of the whole globe, to acquire an unlimited choice of means of production, with regard to both quality and quantity, so as to find productive employment for the surplus value it has realised.
From Rosa Luxemburg: The Accumulation of Capital, Chapter 26 - The Reproduction of Capital and Its Social Setting
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
We can change our technology to be more sustainable or we can regress to a pre-industrial society with 90% of the population dying in the process. Which do you prefer?
That’s a false dichotomy. We can also improve our technology while ditching capitalism.
That’s reductive. Seeing capitalism as the root cause of all problems is disingenuous. The particular ideology oligarchies are using to justify their rule is incidental.
But… It is the root of a lot of problems and it helps the oligarchs… And it just sucks and makes no sense in general?
It makes a lot of sense, but I doubt we can have a rational debate about that. In short, people tend to be motivated by profit, so theoretically productivity goes up when the economic system rewards that.
The root of the problem has little to do with the economic system, and it’s like blaming bombs for war. The real problem is government structures that reward and encourage consolidation of power, both in the government itself and in the private sector. If you strip away capitalism, you just consolidate that power into the public sector, and for examples of that look at China and the USSR.
I would think that people on Lemmy who likely left other social media due to centralization wouldn’t be so enamored w/ more centralization in the government space. We need solutions that look like Lemmy in the public space to decentralize power so we don’t run into this type of problem. I don’t think there’s a magical structure that fixes everything, and I don’t even necessarily think that capitalism has to be the dominant economic system in play, I just think we need to come up with ideas on how to reduce the power of those at the top.
Specific example of the US military
We should dramatically reduce the federal standing military, increase the National Guard to match, and put stricter limits on when the President can use the National Guard. IMO, the only way the President should access the National Guard is if one of the following happen:
That’s it. The President would otherwise be left with a small standing military that’s enough to deter or perhaps assist in peacekeeping, but nowhere near large enough to invade another country.
I personally think we should embrace capitalism as it’s decentralized by nature, unless forces centralize it, and then create rules that discourage/punish over-centralization. For example, I think small companies should have liability protections, and larger companies should lose it, such that lawsuits could target specific individuals in the organization instead of allowing the organization to be used as a shield. For example, if a company files bankruptcy and it’s over a certain size (maybe $1B market cap? $100M?), then shareholders and top executives become responsible to cover whatever the debts are still unresolved after liquidation. If a crime is committed, it shouldn’t simply result in a fine that’s factored in as the cost of doing business, it should result in arrests. The problem isn’t capitalism, it’s corruption and protectionism.
It’s worth reminding ourselves that this is exactly what we are at Lemmy to do. Where capitalism produced Reddit, communitarianism produced Lemmy. The best effort of both systems is now live and the two are competing head to head. We win when Lemmy is the superior option for enough people that we actually start bleeding Reddit out.
This argument is very different from the argument I’m talking about. Lemmy isn’t a government, nor does it attempt to fill that role (as much as my instance’s “Agora” community wants to think it does), so whether Lemmy is successful doesn’t give any insight into whether a more decentralized form of government could be successful.
That’s a pretty generous description.
A more accurate description, IMO, is that two people wanted a safe space for their extremist community (tankies), and they had a working version at the time that a lot of people were frustrated with Reddit. Those two are still running the project, and they moderate their instances very tightly. But many people outside that community came and decided to make something good out of it, which is why additional instances popped up run by people with different motivations from the original pair.
So I don’t think communitarianism produced Lemmy, at least not initially, but it did help turn Lemmy into what it is today.
I don’t think that’s necessarily true. I think we have already won in that people choose to stay here over returning to Reddit or whatever social media platform they came from. That said, active users on Lemmy seems to be steadily dropping, which is a bummer, but I’m still able to have decent discussions here, so it’s working for me.
the people can hold their politicians more easily accountable if the politicians live closer to the people.
it’s some kind of “pitchforks and torches” thing: In historical times it was usual that people simply walked up to the castle of the feudal lord and demanded improvements if their life was too shitty or if they were treated too unfairly. That was possible because the feudal lord mostly lived within walking distance of where the peasants lived, like, maybe in the next village or sth, but not farther than that in most cases. As a consequence, feudal lords had a very significant interest in being on good terms with their neighbours and keeping the people happy enough so they won’t start a revolt over high taxes or sth.
Today, that’s not possible because all those politicians that decide the law (and therefore our fate) live far-away (thousands of miles!) in places that neither you or me can ever personally visit. Hence, there is no accountability. We need to shift power back to the local levels; only that way we can personally ensure our wellbeing.
I agree with the conclusion, but not how you got there.
My Senators and House rep live pretty close to me, like 15 minutes away driving, so I could go visit them if I wanted. They spend a lot of time in DC, but they come back several times throughout the year.
The issue, IMO, isn’t where they sleep, but that they can’t easily be removed from office. Our districts are gerrymandered to the point that the main party usually wins with 20%+ margin. Why care about constituents if reelection is all but guaranteed? They could live next door to me and that wouldn’t change their mind. If I assassinate a rep, I’ll go to jail and the replacement will likely be worse. They’re more accountable to their party and donors than their constituents.
But yes, I very much do believe decisions should be made locally because party affiliation matters far less. My local legislature behaves very differently from the federal Congress, not because of where people live, but because they’re much more easily replaced and they can’t hide behind other reps from other states and argue that their decisions are careful chess moves to get what really matters passed.
yep, that’s what i meant. your representative might be easily replaced, but the other 49 representatives from the other 49 states don’t really care about you, and that’s the majority of congress.
That’s the thing, mine aren’t easily replaced and it’s not because they live in DC much of the year, but because my district is gerrymandered, and that seems to be true for most districts in the country. Only a fraction of races are actually competitive after the primary, and there’s not going to be a primary to replace a sitting rep unless they piss off the party.
If we simply made state politics more impactful than federal, parties would move their focus to rigging state elections.
The issue, IMO, is there’s too much incentive to rig politics. Government interferes so much in all aspects of life and is so powerful that it will absolutely attract money. If we shift more of that to the courts, now that money would need to focus on everyday people, which I think is an improvement.
No, it’s not. Not seeing that it’s capitalism is the reductive view. Instead of trying to type down a huge text while I’m tired, I’d like to introduce a 112 year-old text that still seems extremely relevant today:
This passage is kind of an introduction to Rosa Luxemburg’s definition of imperialism. Back then, capitalism was not yet developed in the whole world and she argued that simply because it’s a question of survival for companies, these companies will push for the right to exploit the whole world. And now, 112 years later, I’m pretty sure we can agree that happened. And in the past few decades, when they can’t expand spacially, now it’s all about squeezing every last bit of profit from nature, the workers and the consumers.
Here, we have a point of agreement. The USSR developed into something that was no better than capitalist states. In my opinion, that’s because it’s bureaucracy developed into something very similar to the burgeoisie in capitalism, resource hoarders led by self-interest.
But I believe your answer built on another false dichotomy here. The alternative to capitalism I have in mind isn’t a one-party state with central planning and communist aesthetics. I’m more of a proponent of decentralized power, dismantling the state and people governing their surroundings cooperatively.
Question: would I have to give up my exploitative companies that fuel my bid to become the first King of Internet? Because that’s kind of a dealbreaker for me.
What are you talking about, you filthy usurper? I’m the only legitimate king of the internet!
Are you inviting me to a money fight? I do love those. Let’s both put in ludicrous bids on some AI company and fight over ownership to pump it’s value in the market, I haven’t done one of those in months. Winner buys the next yacht we sink in the Bermuda Triangle to appease the Elder Ones, Respect upon their Unknowable Names. If only the poor knew how hard we worked to prevent this puny planet from being eaten by elder demons, they would be grateful.
Pathetic! My penis rocket is much bigger than your penis rocket!
The world isnt binary. There are plenty of options in between those two. We could reduce our global emissions drastically without any noticeable difference in quality of life for most people. There is so much junk and single use stuff being produced that we could replace or simply stop producing. Banning all forms of commercial AI would hurt literally nobody except the idiots that decided to make it their career. If governments were serious about fighting climate change they would just take control of large parts of the industry and force them to stop making pointless shit that nobody actually needs.
Yes.
How tf does this dumb shit get 15 upvotes?