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Uldridge
Belgium4951 Posts
You can't just "tuck away" human genetic variation and personalities to obtain an ideal situation, but that's something that goes for every system. However, I'd say it's more of a pitfall for an "equality for all" system than a "free for all" system. I'll check the vid out, thanks. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
On April 23 2025 23:00 Uldridge wrote: I don't really know. There's tendency for people to form hierarchies. I think that's maybe something we can work on, at least that's an avenue that I'm interested in. It has always seemed pretty easy for me to argue that social hierarchies, just about everyone of them really, are detrimental to humans. We see countless examples in our real lives, from things that impact entire countries or the whole world, to things that impact individuals and companies. So there's a teaching process that can happen there I imagine, in which we make a clear distinction between a social hierarchy and expertise, or a social hierarchy and authority. In the same way that the concept of empathy classes that is IIRC in Denmark is interesting, I believe this is interesting too. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23453 Posts
On April 24 2025 01:20 Uldridge wrote: I'd say yes to curbing outdated human impulses as much possible in favor of, except when it's resulting for some individuals in extreme stress. You can't just "tuck away" human genetic variation and personalities to obtain an ideal situation, but that's something that goes for every system. However, I'd say it's more of a pitfall for an "equality for all" system than a "free for all" system. I'll check the vid out, thanks. That's part of why I started with Musk and Trump, they are plenty of a problem in a "free for all" system. Possibly big enough to break it for everyone permanently. The US is supposed to be an "equity for all" system btw. That's what the "with liberty and justice for all" in the pledge is supposed to reference, but Trump and Musk are demonstrating are bullshit. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4951 Posts
On April 24 2025 02:53 Nebuchad wrote: I think that's maybe something we can work on, at least that's an avenue that I'm interested in. It has always seemed pretty easy for me to argue that social hierarchies, just about everyone of them really, are detrimental to humans. We see countless examples in our real lives, from things that impact entire countries or the whole world, to things that impact individuals and companies. So there's a teaching process that can happen there I imagine, in which we make a clear distinction between a social hierarchy and expertise, or a social hierarchy and authority. In the same way that the concept of empathy classes that is IIRC in Denmark is interesting, I believe this is interesting too. Empathy is a very weird thing. I'm not sure it can be taught necessarily. One can be made aware of it, but it can just as well be used as a weapon. I think it's very difficult to organize people when there isn't people pulling other people along to start doing things. I think it's very difficult to engage everyone as meaningfully as they "should be". You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is. My base claim is basically the following: having people find their own purpose/responsibilities is very difficult in larger communities starting from a few thousand people onwards. There's just too many things to account for as an individual so where do you draw the line? Small communities tend to be socialist in nature because it's self evident. Everyone is accountable for everyone. We could argue to fraction larger communities in subcommunities but this might tribalize things. The socialist model might just be too empathic for globally organized systems, but I'd like to see the arguments for why it's not. On April 24 2025 03:25 GreenHorizons wrote: That's part of why I started with Musk and Trump, they are plenty of a problem in a "free for all" system. Possibly big enough to break it for everyone permanently. The US is supposed to be an "equity for all" system btw. That's what the "with liberty and justice for all" in the pledge is supposed to reference, but Trump and Musk are demonstrating are bullshit. It's quite clear that words and actions clearly do not align here. You don't need to show the most recent examples of the system being broken (again) that the "equity for all" clearly isn't true. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25995 Posts
Or perhaps, too small. For some folks, their meaningful, small-scale connection on the regular may be their nuclear family unit, work colleagues, and then effectively nothing, then a big, abstract jump up to nation states with millions of inhabitants and connections formed through things like media. Socialism doesn’t necessarily have to crack the code to perfection here, merely do a better job than what we have currently. I haven’t slept in 48 hours because my A little like this I guess Rather than a kind of linear set of relations often predicated on power as you scale up, instead you have clusters of communities, or workers more intimately tethered together and feeding upwards into some conception of a greater national (or international) ‘good’ as it were. Yeah you’ll still have natural hierarchies emerge within constituent parts, but they’ll be more intimate in natures and subject to a more multifaceted form of scrutiny. The borough feeds into the city, feeds into the region, etc etc. It’s certainly trickier to model and conceptualise, and I’ve likely done a And that’s really not great. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4951 Posts
Hope you find some sleep soon! | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23453 Posts
On April 24 2025 22:11 Uldridge wrote: + Show Spoiler + Empathy is a very weird thing. I'm not sure it can be taught necessarily. One can be made aware of it, but it can just as well be used as a weapon. I think it's very difficult to organize people when there isn't people pulling other people along to start doing things. I think it's very difficult to engage everyone as meaningfully as they "should be". You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is. My base claim is basically the following: having people find their own purpose/responsibilities is very difficult in larger communities starting from a few thousand people onwards. There's just too many things to account for as an individual so where do you draw the line? Small communities tend to be socialist in nature because it's self evident. Everyone is accountable for everyone. We could argue to fraction larger communities in subcommunities but this might tribalize things. The socialist model might just be too empathic for globally organized systems, but I'd like to see the arguments for why it's not. It's quite clear that words and actions clearly do not align here. You don't need to show the most recent examples of the system being broken (again) that the "equity for all" clearly isn't true. One reason for pointing out the contradictions with Musk and Trump is to reiterate that we don't need socialism to be perfect. In fact, we know it won't be, it will have to be updated based on new information as time goes on. As to your base claim, aren't people currently supposed to be "finding their own purpose/responsibilities" in an ostensibly free society? So we're starting from society already botching this task of ostensibly free people freely choosing their purpose/responsibilities and subversively replacing that with whatever you think we have now. What makes that subversive replacement for the lie of "free people, choosing freely", better than socialism at this task in your opinion? | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
On April 24 2025 22:11 Uldridge wrote: You say you think social hierarchies are detrimental, why is that? Because there's winners and losers in this way? If the top of the pyramid is always accountable and isn't sectioned off of the base of the pyramid, it might just be the most beneficial thing there is. I just can't think of any example where that is the case, really. The standard mechanism appears to be that it creates a separation between the people on top and the people on the bottom, and then the people on top have a tendency to work not to benefit our society, but to maintain their position on top of the societal model, sometimes for added reasons but as a general rule mainly because of the benefits that they gain from being on top of the system. Throughout history it seems to me that we can draw very clear parallels between social hierarchies becoming less rigid and things improving for humans, and social hierarchies becoming more rigid and things getting worse for humans. I'm sure you can think of examples yourself so I'm only writing this to be academic, lives saved by the end of slavery, lives saved by the legalization of abortion, conditions improved when monarchies are replaced by democracies and conditions worsened when dictators get in power. We can also see that it works as an explanation mechanically, because the way the privilege of being on top is shown is mainly by denying something to some humans. It's not that you can do something, it's that others don't get to do it, and you get to. How could those mechanics possibly not be detrimental to the other humans in question? It just feels intuitive and quite simple to argue that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and honestly I just think it's true, like it's a factual claim about reality, I don't think it's my opinion. Usually when I get a rightwinger on this topic they're not arguing against that claim, the main thing that they counter is that forming social hierarchies is human nature and we can't live without them. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4951 Posts
On April 24 2025 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote: One reason for pointing out the contradictions with Musk and Trump is to reiterate that we don't need socialism to be perfect. In fact, we know it won't be, it will have to be updated based on new information as time goes on. As to your base claim, aren't people currently supposed to be "finding their own purpose/responsibilities" in an ostensibly free society? So we're starting from society already botching this task of ostensibly free people freely choosing their purpose/responsibilities and subversively replacing that with whatever you think we have now. What makes that subversive replacement for the lie of "free people, choosing freely", better than socialism at this task in your opinion? I'm not claiming it's better, I'm even agreeing it's worse. I also don't believe we need it to be perfect from the get go. My current understanding, as is yours but feel free to correct me, is that we currently live in some kind of neo feudalism where capitalism somehow paved the way for this new elite ultra rich (it has never gone away and was just revamped for their benefit), but people claim all sorts of smooth talking point for these ultra wealthy (which, by my standards is already when you have 1 million $$ plus by the way, but that's a fuzzy and arbitrary cutoff as I'm sure one could make a cost benefit analysis of everyday life to see what is needed to make one's life more than comfortable enough in today's standards) that living standards have improved immensly and one has never been more free when looking back. Meanwhile I'm sitting here, yes, fully employed (so, secure), but having to pay off a loan to a bank because I wanted a house with a garden for my kids and wife and I have to take care of my kids and I have to keep up with all these demands from work and school and yadda yadda yadda I can barely keep up. I don't feel especially trapped and I'm not especially high class, but I do have a house. But things are limited, especially when compared to those who have multiple millions and can basically live lavishly and whatever, but do I actually want that? Not necessarily. I want to be able to, without a smidge of uncertaintly, be able to live securely, work on something that matters, feed and raise my children and all that jazz. I'm managing mostly, but I just hope I can keep it alll up. And there are many people who are in a worse position and I hope we find ways to elevate them to at least positions of relative security. I kind of got stuck on a tangent here, sorry about that. So what am I actually claiming here (to get back on topic)? I think socialism has one very strong advantage and that's shared responsibility creates purpose. If you're going for the same end goal, then you find meaning in just that. That's why religion is so powerful to so many people, it's a shared experience. It also strengthens one of our fundamentals as humans: being social. Modern society has never been more alienating due to its segmenting in part caused by the internet (but also globalisation and ease of travel). I think "freedom" is a hoax, a carrot held in front of ordinary people, perhaps even the ultra rich. A shared delusion which can never be fulfilled because it's a Nirvana. People are never free. They always have some responsibility or vice or one thing or another they're tied to. The lie was that we could choose what we wanted to be all along, when in reality it doesn't really matter. Tinderfying society was a mistake. On April 25 2025 00:37 Nebuchad wrote: I just can't think of any example where that is the case, really. The standard mechanism appears to be that it creates a separation between the people on top and the people on the bottom, and then the people on top have a tendency to work not to benefit our society, but to maintain their position on top of the societal model, sometimes for added reasons but as a general rule mainly because of the benefits that they gain from being on top of the system. Throughout history it seems to me that we can draw very clear parallels between social hierarchies becoming less rigid and things improving for humans, and social hierarchies becoming more rigid and things getting worse for humans. I'm sure you can think of examples yourself so I'm only writing this to be academic, lives saved by the end of slavery, lives saved by the legalization of abortion, conditions improved when monarchies are replaced by democracies and conditions worsened when dictators get in power. We can also see that it works as an explanation mechanically, because the way the privilege of being on top is shown is mainly by denying something to some humans. It's not that you can do something, it's that others don't get to do it, and you get to. How could those mechanics possibly not be detrimental to the other humans in question? It just feels intuitive and quite simple to argue that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and honestly I just think it's true, like it's a factual claim about reality, I don't think it's my opinion. Usually when I get a rightwinger on this topic they're not arguing against that claim, the main thing that they counter is that forming social hierarchies is human nature and we can't live without them. I don't have any examples, but perhaps for small villages where the elder/leader needs to make good decisions on behalf of the village or they get ousted/forced to step down. It's a direct accountability we desperately need in modern democracies. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
On April 25 2025 01:29 Uldridge wrote: I don't have any examples, but perhaps for small villages where the elder/leader needs to make good decisions on behalf of the village or they get ousted/forced to step down. It's a direct accountability we desperately need in modern democracies. Okay sure but that's not really a hierarchy then is it? Or at least it's a very soft one. The power primarily lies in the people, and the elder is working for them. If we're doing a market socialism, something similar would happen for larger companies, they would elect a manager and then if he doesn't make good decisions on behalf of the company he could be replaced in the next election. The risk is then you create a managerial class and they agree with each other to offer more or less the same stuff rather than to fight each other for the spot, as happened for "left" and "right" politicians in a lot of social democracies. That's something companies would have to fight against, probably a union would still be necessary for large companies even with the democracy in place. Either way, surely it can't be as bad as getting to the stage of Musk and friends. | ||
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Uldridge
Belgium4951 Posts
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25995 Posts
On April 24 2025 22:49 Uldridge wrote: GPs being overworked making mistakes is also a sign of the system falling apart. Can you calculate the dosage yourself? Maybe find a competent pharmacist who can do it for you? Hope you find some sleep soon! I’m all for worker solidarity with the very, very specific exception of the receptionists at my GP. I’ve had nothing but acceptable thru good experiences with every other facet of the NHS I’ve ever dealt with, and that’s been quite a few. To the gulag I say! But nah joking aside, thanks! | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
We're touching on one the main fictions of liberalism here, which is that political violence is bad. This is realistically speaking an impossible opinion, every societal model ever has included some violence, what people do is they define out of the word "violence" the violence that they are comfortable with and then they conclude that "violence" is bad. Taking someone's liberty is a violent act, doing so because the guy has committed a murder is also a violent act, just one that we've decided is fine. Evicting someone because they can't pay rent is violent. And so on. The reason why far right violence is bad isn't because it's violent, it's because it's far right. Violence against fascists is also violent, but fighting against fascism is healthy and good for society, and therefore that violence is fine. Having that opinion is a sign that you understand politics, not a sign that you "lose credibility" because you're "hypocritical" or whatever conservatives tell themselves. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25995 Posts
On May 26 2025 21:19 Nebuchad wrote: Introvert => "Don't forget the guy that firebombed the Governor's mansion in Pennsylvania. Or the Palm Springs bomber. And the congressional shooter. That post is a perfect distillation. Left-wing political violence is a hoax and when it isn't it's justified. See also: radical students who "disrupt" campuses. The left has absolutely no room to complain about anything, Jan 6 included. They don't object to violence at all." We're touching on one the main fictions of liberalism here, which is that political violence is bad. This is realistically speaking an impossible opinion, every societal model ever has included some violence, what people do is they define out of the world "violence" the violence that they are comfortable with and then they conclude that "violence" is bad. Taking someone's liberty is a violent act, doing so because the guy has committed a murder is also a violent act, just one that we've decided is fine. Evicting someone because they can't pay rent is violent. And so on. The reason why far right violence is bad isn't because it's violent, it's because it's far right. Violence against fascists is also violent, but fighting against fascism is healthy and good for society, and therefore that violence is fine. Having that opinion is a sign that you understand politics, not a sign that you "lose credibility" because you're "hypocritical" or whatever conservatives tell themselves. You can’t be a hypocrite for a view you don’t hold. Tends to be a problem I find quite consistently :p Bit irksome but ah well I think a problem with the liberal thru conservative worldview is a sense that things are static, that we’ve collectively ‘cracked it’ as it were in terms of societal structures. Even though many such structures were informed by it, or at least the threat of violence. And a seeming belief in inalienable progress, or at least stasis. If one holds the view that structures that maintain the peace have to function properly, or violence ends up back on the table, it’s not advocacy for violence it’s an acknowledgment of why and how our societies were formed. We’ve thousands of years of history to look at, progress and stability ebbs and flows, and indeed can go backwards. It’s presumptuous in the extreme to just assume that our current epoch is immune. It’s not as if the majority of people are rigidly pacifistic either, far from it. Respect to those who live it but it’s a tiny, tiny minority. Most people are OK with it, thresholds of acceptability will be the divergence, and fair enough. But just don’t clutch your pearls and make out otherwise. I mean Osama Bin Laden was a bit of a megacunt to put it lightly, you had street parties when he snuffed it. Clearly it’s fine for most sensibilities, sometimes. But there’s an argument that it wasn’t Seal Team 6, but Luigi Mangione who killed a person responsible for more premature American deaths. Not necessarily one that folks have to agree with, but if you hold some kind of adjacent view, it’s celebrated on a similar framework. Ultimately people would much, much rather people weren’t dying unnecessarily to maximise shareholder value and renumeration packages than having vigilantes gunning down CEOs. | ||
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
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GreenHorizons
United States23453 Posts
On June 17 2025 20:55 Nebuchad wrote: Probably multiple things at play.One thing I'll never understand is how you can watch the american electorate so disatisfied with their governance that they keep voting for the party that isn't in power every chance they get and conclude "Americans are a rightwing country, they like this kind of governance". There's likely some sort of Stockholm syndrome at play it seems. Something like 9 out of 10 voters are picking the same party every election regardless of their performances and both parties are right wing. That said, most people actually want a further left country than they think they have (which is actually much further right than they realize), this goes back to at least that wealth distribution survey At a societal level, people literally (sometimes due to willful ignorance) don't know how to bring about the sort of government capable and willing to work in good faith toward just the inequality people already think is the case, let alone to bring about their ideal. This significantly contributes to the futility where the Stockholm syndrome aspect thrives. | ||
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GreenHorizons
United States23453 Posts
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Nebuchad
Switzerland12318 Posts
Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25995 Posts
On June 25 2025 15:12 Nebuchad wrote: Beautiful result. Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway. Yeah, I definitely think it’s a very promising development | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland25995 Posts
On June 25 2025 15:12 Nebuchad wrote: Beautiful result. Also probably much more meaningful than when, say, AOC did it, because AOC did it while they weren't really paying a lot of attention. Here they all lined up behind Cuomo and gave it their best effort, and he lost anyway. Yeah, I definitely think it’s a very promising development for sure. I guess the next task is to ensure it’s not an anomaly but is something that galvanises similar change elsewhere. | ||
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