Survival of the fittest mind set is a totalitarian mind set. Whether the individual is a anarchist or a capitalist.
People who harbour a violence first mindset believe they will never be touched by it themselves.
Tyranny is tyranny no matter how you dress it up.
Violence is not analogous to tyranny.
What’s to stop me from now taking from the wolf? His violence and the violence of his friends. The wolf becomes a tyrant in his own right. All he does is replace the pig nothing more.
Violence is justified on occasion.
But when everyone is just constantly allow to perpetuate violence on to one and other you just get a bunch of shitty war lords. The tyrannous of the world will always take advantage of it. It’s a trick, a trap, just like capatilism but in another form.
Again those who believe in the survival of the fittest have egos and think they are the fittest, untouchable by the violence they wish to perpetuate.
Mutual defense is what stops others.
The wolf cannot be a tyrant if he does not hold greater authority than others, and is kept in check by his peers through violence if need arise.
Mutual defense.
That’s why I return to the statement. “What’s to stop me from stealing from the wolf? Him and his friends”"
You’ll just get a bunch of shitty war lords. People protecting each other in little conclaves. My friends , my family, people who feel they owe me a favor.
Controlled access to resources through violence. The weak. The disabled. The sick. The old. All left out of these equations.
A vendetta someone has killed the wolfs friend for land. Now he rallies his buddies, and they rally their buddies, and come take it back. The wolf pack becomes the government.
Like it or not there will always be inequality. Especially physically inequality. And people will use that to their advantage. The physically strong, the physically hard to kill, the cunning, the ruthless, the persuasive. All have advantages in a world of violence that others do not.
To anyone who truly believes in anarchy I ask what’s stopping you from taking from the wolves now? Because it’s not pigs who sit in those Mansions. It’s wolves.
Only compassion will get us out of this world we have created. Not to say violence will never be necessary. Sometimes violence is the only language a wolf understands.
Anarchists do not become the government, they abolish the state apparatus and promote self-governance.
Please go understand anarchism before you try and argue against it.
This does not keep greed in check.
Guns certainly can keep greed in check.
I don’t want to engage in violence and I certainly don’t want a gun. So, in this violent world of yours. . . Where do I (and people like me) weed out? Do I just lose if everyone turns to violence to solve equality problems? Your logic is sound in some ways, but is definitely flawed in others.
How would you lose if people fought for you?
Likewise, do you think the natural state for people is constant violence? No, the majority of people get along without issue.
And on top of it all, you already live in a far more violent world.
You’re absolutely correct, however:
Violence is justified on occasion.
This cannot be disentangled from a natural derivative: ‘Tyranny is justified on occasion.’ Just what the occasion is that justifies it is much harder to pin down. Traffic laws can be a form of tyranny, for example.
Importantly, this should not be confused with despotism. The statement ‘Despotism is justified on occasion’ is distinct, and uh, less defensible. Every time there’s even the semblance of a benevolent dictator a religion ends up spawning that plagues humanity for centuries with a fixation on the dictator instead of the benevolence.
So to bring it back, if the wolf wasn’t already blowing down and eating the pigs using straw and wood, he’d have his justification, instead of the convenience of one.
I have mixed feelings about modern anarchist wolf.
On one hand, I don’t agree with every idea or value that anarchists hold, but I do respect the positions broadly.
On the other hand he kinda cute.
Lol, my favorite take on this whole thing
The wolf uses violence to take property that was owned by other animals before the capitalist pig but instead of giving it back to those other animals he only gives it to his own kind. Kind of fucked up.
I’d give to my kind as well - the working class.
We’re not here to cater to the rich pigs.
Where does the comic say the other animals are rich? Much of the american land stolen from the natives was taken with contracts.
There are two types of people in this world. Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data, and…
It’s a leftist/philosophical comic series, showing a capitalist property owning pig, and an anarchist wolf talking about seizing property from the state.
And who does the state take land from?
Everyone.
So you do get it.
Original comic: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/553
First thought… edgy
Second ITT: generational trauma
Humanity got in general less violent throughout human history because the violent people did stupid things and got themselves killed. That’s why there was less and less of them over time.
This is ridiculously wrong.
Most violence (and crime in general) between humans tends to happen due to harsh living conditions. If you’re struggling to make ends meet, you take what you can however you need if you’re desperate enough.
As technology has improved (and more importantly, was obtainable by more people), living conditions have also improved. Hence why crime rates go down
Where did you get your history degree, Facebook university?
But it FEELS true, therefore it is
Someone smarter than me is probably gonna own me after this comment, and I know this is a comic so it can’t include a ton of nuance, but if I willingly exchange/gift my property to someone else, they didn’t gain it through violence (state or otherwise). Sure, the threat of violence might prevent someone else from breaking the social contract, but it isn’t like the buyer did something unethical to acquire the property.
Unethical is a matter of prospective and degrees.
This pig is obviously a capitalist libertarian private property owner stand-in. If you exploit other people’s labor by paying them a wage lower than the value of their labor, you are effectively stealing from them. Profits are theft via extortion.
You may say “they both agree to this, that’s what makes it ethical”. I disagree. If you are held at gunpoint, you will do what the person says, it doesn’t mean it was willing. This is called being “under duress”. If not working for a property owner means that you face homelessness, starvation, and police violence; your life is similarly threatened.
the reason why you’re faced with homelessness if you don’t work for a company is because we don’t have an universal basic income. therefore, truly “free will employment” can only exist if there’s strong enough social safety nets sothat you don’t need to work. only then can the property of the owning class actually be accumulated through a series of “freely entered into” contracts.
And even if they’re not being held at gunpoint, a difference in available information between the parties can make it unethical. Consoder if the employer says someone’s labor is worth x amount, but it’s really worth significantly more. But then the employer doesn’t disclose that and does everything in their power to make sure the employee doesn’t know the true value than their labor, that’s effectively lying and therefore unethical.
Willing agreements can only be ethical when all parties involved are fully informed. It’s one of the fundamental principles under age of consent laws
For sure. I’m only taking issue with the last panel’s broad assertion that any gain of property is the result of violence. The landlord in this comic is an asshat.
When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, […] knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.
What the story of that property? Wharever it’s come to you came from violence at some point in history, and was maintained by that violence.
Are we responsible for the sins of the fathers? For how many generations? No thank you. And if the state has to use force to prevent someone from taking my property by force, does that really count?
Just like you don’t want to be affected by the actions of your fathers and not be held accountable for their sins, others don’t want to still be affected by the exploitation of their father’s.
History still affects us either way, there is no getting around it. Not even if you say no thank you.
Just like you don’t want to be affected by the actions of your fathers and not be held accountable for their sins, others don’t want to still be affected by the exploitation of their father’s.
Just like you don’t (…) actions of your fathers (…) others don’t want to still be affected by the exploitation of YOUR father
The comic, and the deeper philosophical meaning talks about a lower bound, not an upper bound (pick your own point of reference).
What is necessary to force a system against somebody else’s will. A gift or exchange implies agreement and cooperation.
A person only has the rights they can hold on to.
— Kumo CrewI feel like this quote from Elite: Dangerous sums up well, the lower bound.
In the comic, the other animals that freely decided to abide by the non-aggression principle lacked a way to ensure compliance by those, outside of the contract.
Not amassing power is a good way to prevent internal threats, but in case of external threats, which will amass power, this makes it too weak.
the owner abused the poor people, because he has a capital and they don’t. and he will now charge them everything they have for the rest of their lives.
in wild west, people used guns to take everything from you, we live in a world where people with money convinced people without them to forgo weapons and accept money as a means to play the same game, and he used his money against them in the exact same manner as he would use the weapons. and so you can argue it is unethical in a same way as being robbed at gunpoint.
and this their power is only power because we tolerate it. this comics is about what happens when we finally stop.
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Use imminent domain to repossess wealth
eminent domain doesn’t actually repossess wealth, as another commenter (tal) pointed out, they just exchange it for other wealth of some form. however, taxes do repossess wealth. we actually already have that mechanism, it just needs to be used appropriately.
Eminent domain. As implemented in the US, the government needs to pay for something if it takes it using eminent domain, so it’s not really a mechanism to move wealth around.
You’d normally use it when the value to the public of something is much higher than to the individual. Like, say someone has a piece of property that they don’t want to sell, but it’s blocking an interstate highway that a ton of people need to use. The value of the one piece of property is limited, but blocking the construction of the highway is a big deal; it lets the government say “you don’t get to choose not to sell”. The government still pays for the property.
And conveniently they get to tell YOU what its value is. Million dollar property? Nah. Not according to THEIR records. Best they can do is $37k and a huge thank you.
No governments don’t get to cheap out on property values with eminent domain, it often happens that the value gets disputed and a court decides the value. And the governments often lose that battle.
It’s not just arbitrarily setting a number. There’s a valuation process of some form. This isn’t a new problem; if, for example, someone destroys something else, you need to have some way to determine the value of the thing that was destroyed.
