So let’s say the guy making $19/hr and the guy making $50/hr come together to take on the really rich guy, what then? They kill the rich guy and take his money? And do what with it? Do they split it evenly, or do they end up fighting each other for it? And what happens when that money runs out? Because it will run out. You give somebody who’s used to living paycheck to paycheck a few million bucks and they will spend it. And once they have the money, aren’t they then the rich guy? Meaning now they would be the target of other working class people? Is the goal to become a rich asshole? Or is the goal for everyone to make $19/hr?
Obviously the problem is still relying on transactional society when we have the capability to become a post scarcity society.
We have lazy bums now under capitalism. We’d have lazy bums under socialism too, but they wouldn’t be an easy mark for the ultra rich to distract the working class with. They’d be free to pursue their interests.
The ultimate answer is to eliminate money and wage labor entirely in favor of a gift economy, as practiced in parts of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and depicted in The Dispossessed.
That would also mean all of us would only need to work about 2 to 3 months out of the year to maintain the base needs of everyone, with the rest of the year being free time to do with as you please. The lack of profit motive would also set us up to stop the progression of climate change before it destroys humanity and most other life on earth.
Gift economies favor the rich, because the are the ones who can gift the most. A gift economy obscures the power and transactions. It replaces direct transactions with indirect ones. Money makes it transparent, flexible, and decoupled.
In a gift economy you depend on the goodwill of the rich. Meaning you have far stricter social control and restrictions on your behavior.
A gift economy also doesn’t favor redistribution in practice. You have to stay in the good graces with the rich in order to survive. That means you have to gift your best gifts to the rich to curry favor.
A gift economy encourages strong social bonds. However that means neurodivergent people, and people with below average social skills, will be disadvantaged. Narcissistic sociopaths will be more empowered than even now.
lack of profit motive
Humans are social animals. There will always be desirable and rare things. People also want to improve their living conditions. Even without money, this will remain the same.
It fits more with a more traditional family, clan, feudal, and religion based system than contemporary individualism. That’s not inherently bad, but a huge difference.
Gift giving would be formalized, ritualized, and kept track off. For example Turkish people tend to have big marriage parties with hundreds of guests. The gifts given to the couple are carefully documented and tracked by the family. Depending on the value of the gift you and your family will receive favors, opportunities, or not be invited to the cousin‘s upcoming wedding, leading to social exclusion.
A gift economy is an economy based on favors and bribes.
Japanese culture might potentially be a good fit for this type of society. Complex manners and etiquette, prioritize group over the individual, favor of conformity and hierarchy, value specialized skills highly, also high honesty and honor.
There would be no rich in a fully libertarian socialist society, as it would be extremely difficult to accumulate wealth when there is no exploitative power over others, and where anything that isn’t able to be created by an individual can only be created in a voluntary worker cooperative where everyone benefits equally.
If all basic needs are freely lent out in a library economy, and everyone participating in the 2 to 3 months of yearly work equally benefitted from it in the form of free housing, food, healthcare - and public transportation and private property is abolished (distinct from personal property), then there would be virtually no avenues for an individual to accumulate enough personal property to wield any sort of substantive power over others.
difference between private and personal property
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves.
If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under a libertarian socialist society and you refuse to stop.
Quoting someone else:
I like to link the word “private” with “privation” or “deprivation”. Private property is easily identifiable by its effects on others, specifically, it’s deprivation. There are hundreds of thousands of hammers. Having one doesn’t deprive anyone of anything. At most only one person can use the hammer.
A house is usable by an entire family, and if I own it but don’t use it myself, my ownership deprives an entire family of its use. That scales to apartment buildings pretty easily. Then there’s farms where basically it’s impossible for one person to do all of the work on a farm or eat all of the products of a farm, but my ownership has the effect of depriving anyone the right to work there or the right to consume its products. A factoryn is truly impossible for one person to use, but my ownership of it allows me to deprive everyone of its products unless they meet my price demands and also allows me to deprive everyone of use of the factory to make anything at all.
Private property entails a deprivation of society of socially necessary commodities.
With the elimination of private property, and basic needs a human right, that would leave the gift economy on top of that, which would realistically be limited to just what individuals can create and share amongst themselves.
Either you’re describing anarchism with new words or you’ve got some really weird views.
Like libraries are a clear no-no under libertarian ideology because it “perturbs the market”. If access to something is free then you destroy competition which “breeds innovation” or some shit…
I’ve just never heard of a libertarian library… It’s so antithetical to the concept!
Either you’re describing anarchism with new words or you’ve got some really weird views.
It’s not new, I assure you. Libertarian Socialist is label that goes back to 1872. It’s often synonymous with Anarchism, which I do consider myself to be, but I sometimes use Libertarian-Socialist since it doesn’t immediately bring to mind the concept of chaos or bomb throwing that people unfamiliar with Anarchism may attribute to it.
Anarchists have never been for lawless chaos, that’s been put on them in a decades long smear campaign.
There was a time 100 years ago when ‘Propaganda of the deed’ was seen as a viable method toward waking up the masses, but it was quickly found to actually do the opposite of what they intended, and Anarchists today generally do not endorse such methods. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m just trying to avoid knee-jerk reactions from decades of anti-anarchist propaganda.
I don’t know who you’re trying to fool. Probably yourself, but we have plenty of video much more recently than 100 years with actual anarchists doing exactly what you’re trying to pretend they’re against.
I had noticed the tension between right and left wing libertarian concepts. Very interesting stuff. I suspect on Lemmy anarchist or anarchosocialist will get more love than libertarian-socialist. But that’s an interesting name to use in public because it invites questions rather than fear of ANARCHY!
The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses. You establish democratic structures inside those businesses such that the workers choose who is in charge and what everyone is paid. Any amount of money an individual makes is supplemental to basic income that pays for your needs. Establish a wealth cap such that if your income exceeds it, the funds are distributed back down to the needs of society. Things like education and medicine could be entirely funded through excess earnings and a proper tax structure. A wealth cap means that oppressive amounts of liquid funds can’t be used to control people or lobby governments.
These are very very basic ideas. Not at all difficult to wrap your head around. And people are angry because we are constantly being told by the boots on our necks that it won’t work and that’s why we won’t even try. But in reality, the reason we won’t try is because the wealthy will lose their massive wealth. Wealth that most of them lucked into. This has nothing to do with how hard you work or how smart you are. It has everything to do with who is in control and who is not.
The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses.
I think that’s a very nice idea. But I think you’re going to have a very hard time getting enough people to support it.
For a very long time I considered myself a democratic socialist. I joined the Democratic Socialists of America eight years ago, but I left after just a few years. To me, democratic socialism just made so much sense. I thought, this is the solution. I was convinced that Democratic socialism, along with environmental sustainability, was the future. Boy, was I wrong. Very few people shared my view. After a while I realized it was futile.
Most people who would read this cartoon don’t want to overthrow and replace the system, they just want the money. They’d prefer the $4 million, but they’d settle for the $50 /hr. You can tell them there’s a better way, but your words will just fall on deaf ears. They ain’t interested. They just want the money.
There won’t be an awareness campaign followed by a wave of socialist political movements that sweep the parliaments and governments of the world. There won’t be a glorious proletarian revolution, which sees the workers seize the means of production. A post capitalist society will one day emerge, but it will only be after capitalism has collapsed, taking the modern world down with it. Maybe on the other side of that, democratic socialism might be possible, in some small pockets of what’s left of humanity. But it will only be on small scales. Democratic socialism is incompatible with empires, and other large, complex civilizations. So any democratic socialist societies that do exist will be relatively small. Not that’s a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, I think it’s much more sustainable. But that means no dynamic, fast growing, expansionist civilizations. Again, better, more sustainable, but much different than the world we know today.
But if this happens at all, it’ll be long after I’m dead.
The “socialism only works at small scales” argument is tired, lazy, and boring.
Explain why. Be honest with me and yourself. And if you start in about “but the oil is funding that”, yes exactly. That’s how it should work, the USA gives away billions of dollars to capitalists every day with it’s mineral riches.
Democratic socialism (or social democracy… the definitions are not crisp or distinct) is already working in several Nordic countries of millions. Together they have populations of tens of millions. We can argue definitions if you like, but they’re much closer. So much closer that I’ll take that as the first several steps in our journey as a society.
Even if for some weird reason democratic socialism won’t ‘work’ at the size of hundreds of millions when it works at the scale of tens of millions, capitalism is currently falling flat in the USA and dozens of other countries, and offers much worse outcomes for 99.9% of it’s population all the while.
Democratic socialism is already working in several Nordic countries of millions.
Those countries are social democracies, not democratic socialist. Democratic socialism and social democracy are different systems. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but they really are distinct.
Social democracy is a mostly capitalist economy with a democratic government that has a progressive tax system that funds a social welfare system and basic, universal public services. Social democracy does exist in many nations around the world today. Even the US has hada version of this model in the past.
Democratic socialism is a socialist economy with a democratic government. Most services would be provided by community or government owned non-profit organizations. Some for-profit businesses might exist but they would be worker owned. Unlike social democracy, Democratic socialism has never actually been tried. It’s entirely theoretical.
Together they have populations of tens of millions.
Yeah, tens of millions. Not 350 million like the US. Of the top ten democracies, according to the democracy index, all have populations under 20 million, and most have populations under 10 million. Clearly, social democracy has a population limit. I believe democratic socialism would too.
Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence. The mechanism I propose is that if a society looks even slightly too leftist the billionaire class does everything they can to destroy or sabotage it.
Also, there isn’t a crisp definition or delineation between a social democracy and a democratic socialist one. Again- quibble over definitions as much as you want. A social democracy is several important steps in the right direction.
And capitalistic centrism / authoritarianism is NOT “working” globally. It’s just managed to kick the can down the curb for a while.
Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence.
I was thinking about it and it came to me. It’s actually simple math.
Norway is the world’s top democracy, according to the world democracy index. Norway has a total population of about 5.6 million people. Their parliament has 169 seats. That means each seat represents about 33,000 people. The US, on the other hand, has a total population of about 341 million people. The US Congress has 535 total seats (435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate). That’s about 637,000 people per seat. For each US Congress seat to represent 33,000 Americans, our Congress would need to grow to about 10,300 seats. Obviously, that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to act like a representative can represent 637,000 people as well as 33,000 people.
Social democracy can, and does work, under the right circumstances. One of those is a reasonable population level. For social democracy to work, you need democracy. It’s in the dang name. But a representative democracy where each representative needs to try and represent 637,000 people is unreasonable. If you want social democracy to work, you need to get the democracy part working, and that requires a manageable population.
So, let’s say each representative would represent no more than 50,000 people. It’s an arbitrary number but I’m just picking something for the sake of argument. We also wouldn’t want the legislative body to be too large and unwieldy, so let’s say it shouldn’t have more than 200 seats. That means the total population shouldn’t exceed 10 million.
That doesn’t mean the correlation is irrelevant. The fact is, not a single one of the top ten democracies on the planet today have populations above 20 million. Not a single one. Source. I don’t necessarily know why that is, but it is.
I don’t think modern global capitalist civilization will peacefully transition to social democracy, or democratic socialism, whatever you want to call it. I think the capitalist global economy will continue growing until we hit some hard limits to growth, at which point it will collapse, which could be sooner than most realize. It’s not going to be pleasant. Global population could decrease significantly, average life expectancy could decline, as could total global industrial output and average living standards. Who knows what will come out on the other side of that.
Explain why socialism works in large scales. What’s your best example of a LARGE SCALE socialist society ever in the history of Earth? You’re very favorite. Norway?
lol, I find it funny that you went straight to murder and not taxation or seizure of assets but OK lets go with your take.
you actually think these business can’t survive without their billionaire founders/investors, nieve. Those people built the position they did through deal making, not some special big brain strat, nothing special about them really and nothing that cant be repeated by someone else, easily replaced practically speaking.
also at what point do we consider hoarding a crime, many would say that line was already crossed a while ago. how much needs to be stolen from society to warrant a death penalty. “a human life cant be messured in dolla-” yes it can and has many a time, how much does it cost to raise a child? between 250k to 500k, how many live could be raised if those billionaire stopped with their tax havens, extractive deals, crocked backroom deals, and straight up fraudulent practices. The blatant manipulation and funding of disinformation and lobbying efforts to further and further fill their pockets while closing of services to the public, some vital some not so vital, either or could easily be taken as an attack on the majority of people in the country and this is barely scratching the surface of their collective offenses.
its easy to pick on the “few” when their crimes are some commonplace yet their are always highly regarded individual like you arguing on their behalf. i think we’ll go with the taxation and or seizure of assets route to make things clean but i could care less about their well being at this point cuz they’ve made it clear they don’t give a fuck about mine.
The whole system is fucked, which includes them or their peers, and people don’t want to hear it. As evidenced by the downvotes-for-disagreement rather than upvotes-for-discussion. It’s not the billionaires themselves. That’s a symptom of the problem. As you’ve outlined eliminating billionaires by whatever means, is not going fix the fundamental problem. It’s nothing but short term solution Some other group will become the rich and powerful. People see that take and get angry at the wrong thing.
The goal is for the rich guy to make 2,00 dollars an hour if his labor actually deserves that and the poor guy to make 20 and the range between to actually be filled up by ability and effort vs inheritance and manipulation of the playing field.
the medical system in the US is fucked because the system doesn’t actually care about the health of the people; obviously that sucks idk what you expect me to say
I wonder what system people are increasingly upset about that doesn’t care about people’s health, but instead enriching the wealthiest people in the country?
i’d say it’s christianity or the concept of natural law that’s historically been pushed by christianity.
it roughly says that there are natural laws that are derived from god (i.e. unchangeable circumstances) and are therefore unchangeable themselves. they typically revolve around (political/military) power being the center and origin of all law; it roughly corresponds to the nazi principle “might makes right” which says that if you’re too weak, you have to adhere to stronger people’s rules.
that historically influenced US politics a lot. that’s why you have the modern concept of “when people are 60 years old and they get sick from cancer, well that’s natural and therefore good and therefore we shouldn’t do anything about it.” i think that’s the major influence, not so much about shareholder value.
in fact medical companies would make a shitton of money if they treated every disease. it’s actually hurting the economy that the US does not spend more money on social healthcare. but ideology seems to be more important to the US government in this case.
edit: eh after reading the above wikipedia article it speaks mostly about the medieval concept of natural law but that’s not how the term is used these days. these days the term natural law mostly refers to things such as anarchy (as it’s used by the media) and doing away with a (human-made-rules)-based world order. in other words “eat shit, be free” but for politicians.
it’s used like this: “i am a politician. i want to suppress other people. because i have this natural urge, surely it must be a natural thing to do. that’s why i do it”. while things that would limit this behavior such as democratically elected laws and human-made laws such as the legal system are ignored because they are “not natural and therefore not to be taken too seriously”. trump is the best example of this.
You really don’t know why we have lobbyists pouring money into Congress to prevent us from having universal healthcare? You think it’s all religious, and in no way related to the parasite class rent seeking in the most depraved way possible?
Yeah. I bet it’s because Jeebus.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, you’ve clearly spent a “lot” of “time” “thinking” about “this.”
You think it’s all religious, and in no way related to the parasite class rent seeking in the most depraved way possible?
turn the question the other way around and ask yourself what motivates people to seek money beyond what a single person can spend. there’s no short-term benefit in it so i argue there must be a long-term trajectory behind it. what is that and what do you call it?
They expect you to regurgitate Marxist or libertarian socialist rhetoric. Or at least social democratic rhetoric. Because that will show that you’re the right kind of person with the right kind of ideas. Whether or not it will accomplish anything is another matter. I’m not sure they care about that. I mean, they probably care about it, but they care about ideological purity more.
Honesty, I thought you were a far-right german, based on how you called all leftists lazy and your username and instance being german. But I see you deleted your previous comment, so I looked at a bit of your comment history, and I was apparently mistaken. My apologies for lumping you in with neo-nazis.
I just cannot fathom what brings someone to make blanket statements about giant groups of people like that, other than ignorance and/or propaganda indoctrination.
i think my worldview is well-founded and actually reasonable once you explore it more; maybe i just phrased it really badly in my comment above. well anyways i deleted it because i noticed this thread develops into a shitshow and i’d like to stay on serious discussions only.
like i realize now that my original wording was rude when i said that “leftists are lazy” because it is seen as an insult by the people. which at the moment that i said it was not at all meant as an insult. and i support worker’s rights overall, i think my comment just came out wrong. anyways, i’m closing this thread now because it’s too deep into mess.
it’s not scare quotes, it’s just quotes because people call themselves leftist so it’s a self-describing term. i always put those in quotes.
also note that there’s no universal agreement on what “leftist” means. note i’m not putting that in scare quotes but normal quotes to distinguish the word from what it refers to. it’s famous that leftists always infight because they can’t agree on what leftism actually means.
I’m not necessarily arguing for or against capitalism. This cartoon is something I would’ve up-voted not too long ago. I understand the sentiment. But I don’t think a lot of the people who up-vote this kind of stuff really think it through. Some do. Some people have thoroughly thought out theories about revolutions overthrowing capitalism and establishing some kind of post capitalist society. I know I did. But I am as certain as I can be about anything that the vast majority of people making $19/hr, and the vast majority of people making $50/hr, don’t necessarily want to all join together, violently overthrow capitalism and create a post capitalist, moneyless society.
The thing is, I don’t think the majority of people who up-vote a cartoon like this know what they want. They’re mad, they’re frustrated, they think it’s unfair, but they don’t necessarily know what they want to do about it. More than anything I just want people to think about it. What’s the problem? Is there a problem? If so, what is it exactly? What do you want to do about it? Revolution? Socialism? Something else? If so, what?
I think people want to not be hungry, I think they want to have time for leisure, I think they want to not worry about whether they will pay the rent or put groceries in their fridge (forget about a vacation).
I think people want a guarantee that after working for 40 years they can retire and spend some of their life freely.
I think people want to know that they won’t go bankrupt because they get cancer.
I think you’re making it way more complicated than it is.
If the top 1% wasn’t collecting an equal share of wealth to the bottom 40% people these things could be possible.
I think that’s a fair assessment. That being said, you think I’m overcomplicating, but I think you’re oversimplifying. I don’t think all of what you just said encompasses all human needs, wants and desires.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. That’s what people want, and they can’t have what they want because the 1% have too much of the wealth. What should we do about it?
I never intended to posit my comment as encompassing all human wants and desires, but I do believe I have touched on the “basic bill of rights” that most people would agree on.
Tax the excessively wealthy.
I’m not an economist, so I won’t sit here and give a number of what level of wealth should be taxed, but I think it fits under “I know it when I see it”
If you’re buying multiple vacation properties, if you own a yacht or a private jet, you’re probably it.
This comic shows that when people who can barely make it complain, the average middle/upper middle class person get upset and fights them. It also shows that this dynamic greatly benefits the very people who benefit unfairly from underpaying the work of the poor (and the middle class).
Upvoting it is just a recognition that this dynamic hurts us all. Maybe someone who sees this will think twice when they hear a poor person complain about their living conditions. Think past their reactionary reflex. If the middle class doesn’t fight the poor, the poor can move past that obstacle at least. Maybe if they REALLY think about it they’ll join in solidarity, make it easier for the poor to fight for better working conditions. Maybe they won’t, it’s just a meme.
You’re right, the current revolutionary meta isn’t worked out enough or universally agreed upon enough to be plausible yet… But this comic isn’t about that. It’s just about the fact that this fight helps the exploiters and we shouldn’t fight people who want better working and living conditions. This comic can be fixed a minimum wage hike and a tax on the wealthy to mitigate the inflationary pressure this can create.
You’re getting down voted because you’re protecting a complex set of ideas over a simple cartoon and stating that your interpretation is the only logical conclusion/solution proposal of this cartoon. I don’t see any solution proposal here. It feels like a bad faith argumentation on your part against something no one really said. People don’t generally support arguments they see as bad faith.
So let’s say the guy making $19/hr and the guy making $50/hr come together to take on the really rich guy, what then? They kill the rich guy and take his money? And do what with it? Do they split it evenly, or do they end up fighting each other for it? And what happens when that money runs out? Because it will run out. You give somebody who’s used to living paycheck to paycheck a few million bucks and they will spend it. And once they have the money, aren’t they then the rich guy? Meaning now they would be the target of other working class people? Is the goal to become a rich asshole? Or is the goal for everyone to make $19/hr?
Obviously the problem is still relying on transactional society when we have the capability to become a post scarcity society.
We have lazy bums now under capitalism. We’d have lazy bums under socialism too, but they wouldn’t be an easy mark for the ultra rich to distract the working class with. They’d be free to pursue their interests.
just to clarify, “lazy bums” doesn’t apply to the guy making $4000/s while wiping his ass and furiously posting on twitter?
deleted by creator
“Lazy bums”
Did you know a typical “hunter gatherer” worked about 20 hours a week, with the rest of the time for fucking, eating, and talking bullshit?
Even peasants in much of medieval Europe had it better. They used to get months off every year, just sat out winter.
We weren’t evolved to work 80 hours a week for our lifetime. It’s fucked
So they become job creators?
Well I guess those are definitely the only possible outcomes, aren’t they?
No. Those aren’t the only possibilities. I think there are others. So, what are they?
The ultimate answer is to eliminate money and wage labor entirely in favor of a gift economy, as practiced in parts of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War, and depicted in The Dispossessed.
That would also mean all of us would only need to work about 2 to 3 months out of the year to maintain the base needs of everyone, with the rest of the year being free time to do with as you please. The lack of profit motive would also set us up to stop the progression of climate change before it destroys humanity and most other life on earth.
Gift economies favor the rich, because the are the ones who can gift the most. A gift economy obscures the power and transactions. It replaces direct transactions with indirect ones. Money makes it transparent, flexible, and decoupled.
In a gift economy you depend on the goodwill of the rich. Meaning you have far stricter social control and restrictions on your behavior.
A gift economy also doesn’t favor redistribution in practice. You have to stay in the good graces with the rich in order to survive. That means you have to gift your best gifts to the rich to curry favor.
A gift economy encourages strong social bonds. However that means neurodivergent people, and people with below average social skills, will be disadvantaged. Narcissistic sociopaths will be more empowered than even now.
Humans are social animals. There will always be desirable and rare things. People also want to improve their living conditions. Even without money, this will remain the same.
I agree. It’s going to be a lot more personal favor and nepotism. People skills and social capital are going to dominate society. Sounds like hell.
There are other ways to do this
It fits more with a more traditional family, clan, feudal, and religion based system than contemporary individualism. That’s not inherently bad, but a huge difference.
Gift giving would be formalized, ritualized, and kept track off. For example Turkish people tend to have big marriage parties with hundreds of guests. The gifts given to the couple are carefully documented and tracked by the family. Depending on the value of the gift you and your family will receive favors, opportunities, or not be invited to the cousin‘s upcoming wedding, leading to social exclusion.
A gift economy is an economy based on favors and bribes.
Japanese culture might potentially be a good fit for this type of society. Complex manners and etiquette, prioritize group over the individual, favor of conformity and hierarchy, value specialized skills highly, also high honesty and honor.
There would be no rich in a fully libertarian socialist society, as it would be extremely difficult to accumulate wealth when there is no exploitative power over others, and where anything that isn’t able to be created by an individual can only be created in a voluntary worker cooperative where everyone benefits equally.
If all basic needs are freely lent out in a library economy, and everyone participating in the 2 to 3 months of yearly work equally benefitted from it in the form of free housing, food, healthcare - and public transportation and private property is abolished (distinct from personal property), then there would be virtually no avenues for an individual to accumulate enough personal property to wield any sort of substantive power over others.
difference between private and personal property
Personal property is classified as what an individual person or family can actively use themselves.
If you begin hoarding more than you or your family can realistically use, the excess is no longer considered personal property, but private property, which may get you ejected from that community if you actively hoard under a libertarian socialist society and you refuse to stop.
Quoting someone else:
With the elimination of private property, and basic needs a human right, that would leave the gift economy on top of that, which would realistically be limited to just what individuals can create and share amongst themselves.
Also @dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone
Libertarian socialist?
Either you’re describing anarchism with new words or you’ve got some really weird views.
Like libraries are a clear no-no under libertarian ideology because it “perturbs the market”. If access to something is free then you destroy competition which “breeds innovation” or some shit…
I’ve just never heard of a libertarian library… It’s so antithetical to the concept!
It’s not new, I assure you. Libertarian Socialist is label that goes back to 1872. It’s often synonymous with Anarchism, which I do consider myself to be, but I sometimes use Libertarian-Socialist since it doesn’t immediately bring to mind the concept of chaos or bomb throwing that people unfamiliar with Anarchism may attribute to it.
Libertarian alone also used to refer to left-wing anarchist types, but the term was co-opted by right-wing free-market ancap type folks a while back. I’m just doing my part to reclaim it :)
Anarchists are the ones that created that view in the first place. If you’re ashamed of it, perhaps you aren’t really meant for anarchism.
Anarchists have never been for lawless chaos, that’s been put on them in a decades long smear campaign.
There was a time 100 years ago when ‘Propaganda of the deed’ was seen as a viable method toward waking up the masses, but it was quickly found to actually do the opposite of what they intended, and Anarchists today generally do not endorse such methods. I’m not ashamed of it, I’m just trying to avoid knee-jerk reactions from decades of anti-anarchist propaganda.
I don’t know who you’re trying to fool. Probably yourself, but we have plenty of video much more recently than 100 years with actual anarchists doing exactly what you’re trying to pretend they’re against.
I had noticed the tension between right and left wing libertarian concepts. Very interesting stuff. I suspect on Lemmy anarchist or anarchosocialist will get more love than libertarian-socialist. But that’s an interesting name to use in public because it invites questions rather than fear of ANARCHY!
It’s not a zero sum game
No, the goal is to avoid that such stupidly huge wealth inequalities to even exist
Is this a copypasta?
No.
Is it mayonnaise?
Only if mayonnaise is an instrument
The goal is to evenly distribute the wealth such that everyone has what they need to survive and then if you still have enough wealth left over (if the wealthy class were dismantled we would), you make sure everyone has enough to be comfortable. You take the business assets and you share ownership with the people working in those businesses. You establish democratic structures inside those businesses such that the workers choose who is in charge and what everyone is paid. Any amount of money an individual makes is supplemental to basic income that pays for your needs. Establish a wealth cap such that if your income exceeds it, the funds are distributed back down to the needs of society. Things like education and medicine could be entirely funded through excess earnings and a proper tax structure. A wealth cap means that oppressive amounts of liquid funds can’t be used to control people or lobby governments.
These are very very basic ideas. Not at all difficult to wrap your head around. And people are angry because we are constantly being told by the boots on our necks that it won’t work and that’s why we won’t even try. But in reality, the reason we won’t try is because the wealthy will lose their massive wealth. Wealth that most of them lucked into. This has nothing to do with how hard you work or how smart you are. It has everything to do with who is in control and who is not.
I think that’s a very nice idea. But I think you’re going to have a very hard time getting enough people to support it.
For a very long time I considered myself a democratic socialist. I joined the Democratic Socialists of America eight years ago, but I left after just a few years. To me, democratic socialism just made so much sense. I thought, this is the solution. I was convinced that Democratic socialism, along with environmental sustainability, was the future. Boy, was I wrong. Very few people shared my view. After a while I realized it was futile.
Most people who would read this cartoon don’t want to overthrow and replace the system, they just want the money. They’d prefer the $4 million, but they’d settle for the $50 /hr. You can tell them there’s a better way, but your words will just fall on deaf ears. They ain’t interested. They just want the money.
There won’t be an awareness campaign followed by a wave of socialist political movements that sweep the parliaments and governments of the world. There won’t be a glorious proletarian revolution, which sees the workers seize the means of production. A post capitalist society will one day emerge, but it will only be after capitalism has collapsed, taking the modern world down with it. Maybe on the other side of that, democratic socialism might be possible, in some small pockets of what’s left of humanity. But it will only be on small scales. Democratic socialism is incompatible with empires, and other large, complex civilizations. So any democratic socialist societies that do exist will be relatively small. Not that’s a bad thing. Not at all. In fact, I think it’s much more sustainable. But that means no dynamic, fast growing, expansionist civilizations. Again, better, more sustainable, but much different than the world we know today.
But if this happens at all, it’ll be long after I’m dead.
The “socialism only works at small scales” argument is tired, lazy, and boring.
Explain why. Be honest with me and yourself. And if you start in about “but the oil is funding that”, yes exactly. That’s how it should work, the USA gives away billions of dollars to capitalists every day with it’s mineral riches.
Democratic socialism (or social democracy… the definitions are not crisp or distinct) is already working in several Nordic countries of millions. Together they have populations of tens of millions. We can argue definitions if you like, but they’re much closer. So much closer that I’ll take that as the first several steps in our journey as a society.
Even if for some weird reason democratic socialism won’t ‘work’ at the size of hundreds of millions when it works at the scale of tens of millions, capitalism is currently falling flat in the USA and dozens of other countries, and offers much worse outcomes for 99.9% of it’s population all the while.
Those countries are social democracies, not democratic socialist. Democratic socialism and social democracy are different systems. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but they really are distinct.
Social democracy is a mostly capitalist economy with a democratic government that has a progressive tax system that funds a social welfare system and basic, universal public services. Social democracy does exist in many nations around the world today. Even the US has hada version of this model in the past.
Democratic socialism is a socialist economy with a democratic government. Most services would be provided by community or government owned non-profit organizations. Some for-profit businesses might exist but they would be worker owned. Unlike social democracy, Democratic socialism has never actually been tried. It’s entirely theoretical.
Yeah, tens of millions. Not 350 million like the US. Of the top ten democracies, according to the democracy index, all have populations under 20 million, and most have populations under 10 million. Clearly, social democracy has a population limit. I believe democratic socialism would too.
Correlation does not imply causation. Show me a mechanism, with evidence. The mechanism I propose is that if a society looks even slightly too leftist the billionaire class does everything they can to destroy or sabotage it.
Also, there isn’t a crisp definition or delineation between a social democracy and a democratic socialist one. Again- quibble over definitions as much as you want. A social democracy is several important steps in the right direction.
And capitalistic centrism / authoritarianism is NOT “working” globally. It’s just managed to kick the can down the curb for a while.
I was thinking about it and it came to me. It’s actually simple math.
Norway is the world’s top democracy, according to the world democracy index. Norway has a total population of about 5.6 million people. Their parliament has 169 seats. That means each seat represents about 33,000 people. The US, on the other hand, has a total population of about 341 million people. The US Congress has 535 total seats (435 in the House of Representatives and 100 in the Senate). That’s about 637,000 people per seat. For each US Congress seat to represent 33,000 Americans, our Congress would need to grow to about 10,300 seats. Obviously, that’s not realistic. It’s also not realistic to act like a representative can represent 637,000 people as well as 33,000 people.
There’s your evidence.
That doesn’t show that democratic socialism or social democracy won’t work.
Social democracy can, and does work, under the right circumstances. One of those is a reasonable population level. For social democracy to work, you need democracy. It’s in the dang name. But a representative democracy where each representative needs to try and represent 637,000 people is unreasonable. If you want social democracy to work, you need to get the democracy part working, and that requires a manageable population.
So, let’s say each representative would represent no more than 50,000 people. It’s an arbitrary number but I’m just picking something for the sake of argument. We also wouldn’t want the legislative body to be too large and unwieldy, so let’s say it shouldn’t have more than 200 seats. That means the total population shouldn’t exceed 10 million.
That doesn’t mean the correlation is irrelevant. The fact is, not a single one of the top ten democracies on the planet today have populations above 20 million. Not a single one. Source. I don’t necessarily know why that is, but it is.
I don’t think modern global capitalist civilization will peacefully transition to social democracy, or democratic socialism, whatever you want to call it. I think the capitalist global economy will continue growing until we hit some hard limits to growth, at which point it will collapse, which could be sooner than most realize. It’s not going to be pleasant. Global population could decrease significantly, average life expectancy could decline, as could total global industrial output and average living standards. Who knows what will come out on the other side of that.
Explain why socialism works in large scales. What’s your best example of a LARGE SCALE socialist society ever in the history of Earth? You’re very favorite. Norway?
(not a trick question)
Nope.
The claim is “it doesn’t work”. The proof is due on behalf of the people making the claim.
I’m not making a claim. I’m asking “tell me why, specifically, this won’t work but other systems do.”
lol, I find it funny that you went straight to murder and not taxation or seizure of assets but OK lets go with your take.
you actually think these business can’t survive without their billionaire founders/investors, nieve. Those people built the position they did through deal making, not some special big brain strat, nothing special about them really and nothing that cant be repeated by someone else, easily replaced practically speaking.
also at what point do we consider hoarding a crime, many would say that line was already crossed a while ago. how much needs to be stolen from society to warrant a death penalty. “a human life cant be messured in dolla-” yes it can and has many a time, how much does it cost to raise a child? between 250k to 500k, how many live could be raised if those billionaire stopped with their tax havens, extractive deals, crocked backroom deals, and straight up fraudulent practices. The blatant manipulation and funding of disinformation and lobbying efforts to further and further fill their pockets while closing of services to the public, some vital some not so vital, either or could easily be taken as an attack on the majority of people in the country and this is barely scratching the surface of their collective offenses.
its easy to pick on the “few” when their crimes are some commonplace yet their are always highly regarded individual like you arguing on their behalf. i think we’ll go with the taxation and or seizure of assets route to make things clean but i could care less about their well being at this point cuz they’ve made it clear they don’t give a fuck about mine.
The whole system is fucked, which includes them or their peers, and people don’t want to hear it. As evidenced by the downvotes-for-disagreement rather than upvotes-for-discussion. It’s not the billionaires themselves. That’s a symptom of the problem. As you’ve outlined eliminating billionaires by whatever means, is not going fix the fundamental problem. It’s nothing but short term solution Some other group will become the rich and powerful. People see that take and get angry at the wrong thing.
The goal is for the rich guy to make 2,00 dollars an hour if his labor actually deserves that and the poor guy to make 20 and the range between to actually be filled up by ability and effort vs inheritance and manipulation of the playing field.
deleted by creator
It’s so cute when people who have never authentically considered another perspective weigh in on what leftists think and why.
Can you do people who can’t afford cancer treatment next?
the medical system in the US is fucked because the system doesn’t actually care about the health of the people; obviously that sucks idk what you expect me to say
I wonder what system people are increasingly upset about that doesn’t care about people’s health, but instead enriching the wealthiest people in the country?
i’d say it’s christianity or the concept of natural law that’s historically been pushed by christianity.
it roughly says that there are natural laws that are derived from god (i.e. unchangeable circumstances) and are therefore unchangeable themselves. they typically revolve around (political/military) power being the center and origin of all law; it roughly corresponds to the nazi principle “might makes right” which says that if you’re too weak, you have to adhere to stronger people’s rules.
that historically influenced US politics a lot. that’s why you have the modern concept of “when people are 60 years old and they get sick from cancer, well that’s natural and therefore good and therefore we shouldn’t do anything about it.” i think that’s the major influence, not so much about shareholder value.
in fact medical companies would make a shitton of money if they treated every disease. it’s actually hurting the economy that the US does not spend more money on social healthcare. but ideology seems to be more important to the US government in this case.
edit: eh after reading the above wikipedia article it speaks mostly about the medieval concept of natural law but that’s not how the term is used these days. these days the term natural law mostly refers to things such as anarchy (as it’s used by the media) and doing away with a (human-made-rules)-based world order. in other words “eat shit, be free” but for politicians.
it’s used like this: “i am a politician. i want to suppress other people. because i have this natural urge, surely it must be a natural thing to do. that’s why i do it”. while things that would limit this behavior such as democratically elected laws and human-made laws such as the legal system are ignored because they are “not natural and therefore not to be taken too seriously”. trump is the best example of this.
Our economic system is not Christianity.
You really don’t know why we have lobbyists pouring money into Congress to prevent us from having universal healthcare? You think it’s all religious, and in no way related to the parasite class rent seeking in the most depraved way possible?
Yeah. I bet it’s because Jeebus.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, you’ve clearly spent a “lot” of “time” “thinking” about “this.”
turn the question the other way around and ask yourself what motivates people to seek money beyond what a single person can spend. there’s no short-term benefit in it so i argue there must be a long-term trajectory behind it. what is that and what do you call it?
Capitalism.
They expect you to regurgitate Marxist or libertarian socialist rhetoric. Or at least social democratic rhetoric. Because that will show that you’re the right kind of person with the right kind of ideas. Whether or not it will accomplish anything is another matter. I’m not sure they care about that. I mean, they probably care about it, but they care about ideological purity more.
I’ve never seen an AFD guy on lemmy, this is a first for me.
what’s AFD?
German nazi party V2
The hand up your ass and the words in your mouth.
Honesty, I thought you were a far-right german, based on how you called all leftists lazy and your username and instance being german. But I see you deleted your previous comment, so I looked at a bit of your comment history, and I was apparently mistaken. My apologies for lumping you in with neo-nazis.
I just cannot fathom what brings someone to make blanket statements about giant groups of people like that, other than ignorance and/or propaganda indoctrination.
i think my worldview is well-founded and actually reasonable once you explore it more; maybe i just phrased it really badly in my comment above. well anyways i deleted it because i noticed this thread develops into a shitshow and i’d like to stay on serious discussions only.
Well lets have a serious discussion. According to your worldview, why is there such wealth inequality in the USA?
These are just some charts that display some basic data, of course the matter is more complicated.
like i realize now that my original wording was rude when i said that “leftists are lazy” because it is seen as an insult by the people. which at the moment that i said it was not at all meant as an insult. and i support worker’s rights overall, i think my comment just came out wrong. anyways, i’m closing this thread now because it’s too deep into mess.
Why is leftist in scare quotes
it’s not scare quotes, it’s just quotes because people call themselves leftist so it’s a self-describing term. i always put those in quotes.
also note that there’s no universal agreement on what “leftist” means. note i’m not putting that in scare quotes but normal quotes to distinguish the word from what it refers to. it’s famous that leftists always infight because they can’t agree on what leftism actually means.
Explain to me why shareholders, who do exactly 0 work and sit on their asses all day, should receive free money?
Why are people allowed to be parasites on society just because they have money?
I’m not necessarily arguing for or against capitalism. This cartoon is something I would’ve up-voted not too long ago. I understand the sentiment. But I don’t think a lot of the people who up-vote this kind of stuff really think it through. Some do. Some people have thoroughly thought out theories about revolutions overthrowing capitalism and establishing some kind of post capitalist society. I know I did. But I am as certain as I can be about anything that the vast majority of people making $19/hr, and the vast majority of people making $50/hr, don’t necessarily want to all join together, violently overthrow capitalism and create a post capitalist, moneyless society.
The thing is, I don’t think the majority of people who up-vote a cartoon like this know what they want. They’re mad, they’re frustrated, they think it’s unfair, but they don’t necessarily know what they want to do about it. More than anything I just want people to think about it. What’s the problem? Is there a problem? If so, what is it exactly? What do you want to do about it? Revolution? Socialism? Something else? If so, what?
I think people want to not be hungry, I think they want to have time for leisure, I think they want to not worry about whether they will pay the rent or put groceries in their fridge (forget about a vacation).
I think people want a guarantee that after working for 40 years they can retire and spend some of their life freely.
I think people want to know that they won’t go bankrupt because they get cancer.
I think you’re making it way more complicated than it is.
If the top 1% wasn’t collecting an equal share of wealth to the bottom 40% people these things could be possible.
I think that’s a fair assessment. That being said, you think I’m overcomplicating, but I think you’re oversimplifying. I don’t think all of what you just said encompasses all human needs, wants and desires.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. That’s what people want, and they can’t have what they want because the 1% have too much of the wealth. What should we do about it?
I never intended to posit my comment as encompassing all human wants and desires, but I do believe I have touched on the “basic bill of rights” that most people would agree on.
Tax the excessively wealthy.
I’m not an economist, so I won’t sit here and give a number of what level of wealth should be taxed, but I think it fits under “I know it when I see it”
If you’re buying multiple vacation properties, if you own a yacht or a private jet, you’re probably it.
This comic isn’t about any of that stuff.
This comic shows that when people who can barely make it complain, the average middle/upper middle class person get upset and fights them. It also shows that this dynamic greatly benefits the very people who benefit unfairly from underpaying the work of the poor (and the middle class).
Upvoting it is just a recognition that this dynamic hurts us all. Maybe someone who sees this will think twice when they hear a poor person complain about their living conditions. Think past their reactionary reflex. If the middle class doesn’t fight the poor, the poor can move past that obstacle at least. Maybe if they REALLY think about it they’ll join in solidarity, make it easier for the poor to fight for better working conditions. Maybe they won’t, it’s just a meme.
You’re right, the current revolutionary meta isn’t worked out enough or universally agreed upon enough to be plausible yet… But this comic isn’t about that. It’s just about the fact that this fight helps the exploiters and we shouldn’t fight people who want better working and living conditions. This comic can be fixed a minimum wage hike and a tax on the wealthy to mitigate the inflationary pressure this can create.
You’re getting down voted because you’re protecting a complex set of ideas over a simple cartoon and stating that your interpretation is the only logical conclusion/solution proposal of this cartoon. I don’t see any solution proposal here. It feels like a bad faith argumentation on your part against something no one really said. People don’t generally support arguments they see as bad faith.
Capitalism values capital and socialism values what?