Forum Replies Created
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We already have this freedom. It’s called owning your own business. You’re in charge. For good or bad.
Yes, the business owner is in charge of other humans. He or she owns them, at least for eight hours a day. And it used to be for a much longer period of time before enough anticapitalist activism forced changes in our labor laws. But they still get to legally steal workers’ production and profit from it. They stil get to decide FOR those workers what their pay will be, what they must do to keep their jobs, and if the workers don’t obey the dictates of that business owner, they lose their jobs.
Master/slave. Theft and coercion. A profoundly autocratic, antidemocratic and immoral system down to its very core.
The business owner may be “free” in a sense under capitalism, but the worker isn’t. He or she obeys or they get fired. He or she doesn’t have any control over what they do at work, how much they make, or the context of their employment. They are obviously NOT “free.” And because of the massive inequality in wages under capitalism, only the lucky few have the time/privilege to pursue their personal dreams to their fullest, and only the lucky few get to maximize their own potential.
Btw, there are roughly 7 million businesses in America with employees. Think about that in terms of percentages. A tiny fraction of society owns the means of production and other human beings at work.
Why anyone BUT the rich would accept such a despicable system is nothing short of insane.
Really? You ignored the G&T student predicament. So lets see what else. What if someone is ugly vs. gorgeous? Fat vs. fit? Extroverted vs. introverted? Still preaching equality or do you at all acknowledge human behavior and its undeniable effect?
I didn’t ignore anything. I said that you described the existing problems with society, thinking you had come up with some unique problem that would only apply to alternative systems. Again, the alternative wouldn’t have that problem, because the purpose of education in a socialist, left-anarchist society is completely different from a capitalist society. There is no need to create good little capitalist worker bees. There is no need to preach obedience to authority and mold young minds into mass children for a mass consumerist culture. There is no need to make sure kids surrender their own personal autonomy to the ruling class, to business owners, etc. Those things won’t exist.
As for individual differences? Why would any of that matter? We’re not looking for sameness in human beings, unlike the capitalist system, which depends upon sameness, teaches it, herds people into being compliant, complacent drones. It’s capitalism that couldn’t survive if everyone were actually free to do their own thing. It’s capitalism that couldn’t survive if people were taught to think for themselves, provide for themselves, self-govern, self-actuate.
So, again, who cares if people are radically diverse? In this alternative society, we celebrate, promote and do our best to provoke that.
I think you are seriously confused about the definition of “equality” in this context. It doesn’t mean individual to individual sameness. It means equal rights and all humans being equally valued. Our time being equally valued and valuable. It means equal say in one’s workplace, an equal voice in one’s community, and equal access to all the fruits of society, without hindrance. It means all citizens are co-owners of the means of production, with an equal share. It means everyone is entitled to personal autonomy and dignity, as citizens. No bosses. No masters. No slaves.
It doesn’t mean everyone acts alike or is expected to. It means quite the opposite. Because in this society, with everyone having all the tools they could possible need to achieve their potential, the diversity of individual human experience will be greater than in any previous system known to humankind. Rather than just a tiny fraction of society having the chance to pursue individuals dreams, everyone will have that chance.
Again, you seem to be critiquing this from the standpoint of how things work now, by the rules of capitalism and our existing system. That’s using the rules of Risk to say this or that Chess move can’t work.
In short, you have to think outside the box.
I’ve never been a Kenny Loggins fan. But I watched a lot of Gilligan’s Island. That seems like what you want to do but out of those 7 stranded castaways 3 are the Howels and Gilligan.
Actually, no. The point would be to make sure no one is stranded. No one. No one left behind. Everyone gets the chance to achieve their fullest potential, primarily because there would no longer be any monetary barriers between them and their dreams. For the first time in history, everyone, simply by being a citizen, would have unhindered access to the full range of educational, cultural, health and fitness and environmental options available, with no entrance fees. Instead of these things being set aside for the Howells alone, or those who manage the wealth of the Howells, everyone could take advantage of all the fruits of society. No exclusion. No one stranded.
As long as they are not the square peg to be forced into the round hole. That square peg looks around the packed gifted and talented classroom and decides the work is so ridiculously easy as to be meaningless. Feigning sleep to daydream of a life lived fully elsewhere brings some solace for now.
You’re describing our current situation, not the alternative. The alternative wouldn’t be tasked with churning out good little capitalist cogs for the machine. Instead, the duty of our teachers in the alternative society would be to provoke and hone critical thinking skills, creativity, independence of mind and body. Study the Paris Commune. This was a really big deal to its theorists and practitioners. They sought to raise a new generation of independent minds, capable of self-provisioning, self-governance, no longer under the beck and call of capitalist bosses. No longer forced into the economic machine against their will, because they had no other option, not being members of the financial elite.
No gods, no masters. We’d teach our children this, and give them the tools to thrive in an open, democratic and cooperative society. No more dependence on capitalism, corporations, the state. No more class hierarchies. They’d have access to the widest possible array of avenues to explore, all of them without prices attached. And because every community would have the resources they needed to present that array, in full, no child would have to choose between fewer and fewer options, because rich people wanted their taxes cut and public goods and services slashed to pay for them.
No class system. No chance for the rich to demand tax cuts, paid for by slashing programs for the poor and the middle. Instead, everyone gets full access to the entire gamut of learning, with no one left out.
This is also pretty much the same exact thing that led to right-wing evangelicals becoming politically active back in the early 1970s. For them, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the ruling against Bob Jones University, on the issue of segregation. Samantha Bee explains: …
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I assume the Religious-evangelicals are still a powerful core faction
of the Rep Party. They may not be quite as visible as they used to be
but I assume they still carry a significant amount of weight on the Right.
Lots of votes out there, among the fundamentalist-christian crowd.w
v
“You believe in a book that has talking animals, wizards, witches, demons, sticks turning into snakes, burning bushes, food falling from the sky, people walking on water, and all sorts of magical, absurd and primitive stories, and you say that we are the ones that need help?” ― Mark Twain“The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization.” — Robert Anton Wilson
Great quotes, WV. I’ve never gotten a coherent response from Christians who believe the bible literally, when I talk about their god as genocidal madman. The trap is that literal belief. The only way to really get around the fact that the Christian and Jewish god is the most evil father god in all of organized religion is to NOT take the texts literally. Take them poetically, as allegory, myth, legend, etc. etc. . . . and you can avoid that conclusion. But if a person actually sees the bible as the inerrant word of their god, there is no other conclusion. He’s profoundly evil on a colossal scale.
Anyway . . . . if you want to be seriously depressed by the ugliness of right-wing fundamentalists, watch this women ranting in a Target, which is the latest boycott from conservatives — again, due to the transgendered and bathrooms issue.
….was listening to NPR on the car radio and i heard that Bruce Springsteen and Itzak Perlman and a bunch of glittering celebrities were boycotting North Carolina.
Cause of the Identity politix thing. Trans people cant use bathrooms of their choice.
They have to use the other bathroom.THAT brings about a boycott.
Meanwhile… NC can pass laws the crush the poor every legislative session, and that gets
no reaction from the rich celebs.And so it goes.
wv grouch
I agree that it would be much better if celebs advocated on behalf of the poor, dealt seriously with class issues, inequality, poverty, hunger, our melting planet, etc. etc. . . . instead of waiting for this kind of bill to come along. Hell, they should really boycott every “right to work” state. Perhaps that would force change. But the bill in question does more than just force the transgendered into going against their gender identity. It’s actually quite sweeping in its discriminatory practices:
The new law did more than repeal the Charlotte ordinance. It made the state’s law on antidiscrimination — which covers race, religion, national origin, color, age, biological sex and handicaps — the final word. Meaning cities and local governments can’t expand “employment” or “public accommodations” protections to others, such as on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Minimum wage also falls under the state’s antidiscrimination law, so this law means local governments aren’t able to set their own minimum wages beyond the state standard.
This is also pretty much the same exact thing that led to right-wing evangelicals becoming politically active back in the early 1970s. For them, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the ruling against Bob Jones University, on the issue of segregation. Samantha Bee explains:
So the squirrel analogy was utterly lost on you. Oh well.
No, I got it. It just doesn’t work.
Collecting enough goods for the winter is not the same thing as selling them for profit. Putting aside enough for a rainy day, a bad harvest, a rough year, etc. etc. . . . is not remotely the same thing as selling these things for a profit. You can do the one and not the other.
And, again, no production facilities in this alternative ever need to make any money on their production in the first place, much less a profit. The system isn’t set up to make money and it’s not at all legal. The legal, social, societal structure in place doesn’t allow for it, and soon enough, it will be but a distant memory that things were done a different way in the past.
Again, revenues aren’t tied to funding in any way, shape or form. A totally separate stream of funding is held in common, in those public banks, in the form of digits, so if a “plant” needs upgrades or alterations, it puts in the request — or the community does it before that. Community councils vote on the upgrades, alterations, etc., make sure these adhere to the constitution and to environmental and civil rights parameters, and we go from there. There is absolutely no need, whatsoever, for them to show “earnings” beyond costs in order to “reinvest” in anything. That’s all decided democratically. There is never a matter of “business success” or failure involved. It’s all about the needs of the people, of every single citizen, not how well the commonly-held outlets and production facilities do on their own.
They’re just tools and means to an end, never ends in themselves, as they are under capitalism.
Those profits (surplus) are necessary in any system. Without profit there isn’t opportunity for trade or reinvestment. The work day cut in half better have twice as many workers since that profit must be maintained or the enterprise will fail. It works the same in nature. The squirrel that puts up half as much nuts as another won’t have as good a chance surviving winter nor the ability to reinvest in the planting of new trees.
There is absolutely no need to make profits in the alternative. None. There is no profit in nature, obviously. I think you’re confusing “profit”
with the production of surplus goods, and there is a huge difference between these things. They’re not remotely the same.Under capitalism, profits are generated by workers from the surplus value they create, which is then appropriated by capitalists for themselves. They can not produce a surplus value if their production matches their pay, so the capitalist must get them to work additional hours beyond that, additional unpaid hours, which is how the capitalist makes the majority of his/her own compensation. Collecting the most unpaid labor hours possible.
Think about a single builder of chairs. He builds and sells them himself. No employees. He is not a capitalist. He does not appropriate surplus value created by others. He takes payment for what he, himself, does, and no one else. If, however, he hires workers to build those chairs for him, and appropriates their surplus value, he is a capitalist. And they have to work hours in excess of their costs (including their pay), which also means in excess of what they would need to produce if they were their own boss.
In order for the capitalist to “profit,” his/her employees must work enough hours each day to produce surplus value in excess of their pay and overall costs. That always means more than they would have to work in any non-profit economy, or if they were on their own. In either case, it’s not “capitalism.”
Changing to a non-profit, publicly-owned economy would radically reduce hours worked for everyone. We only work as many as we do, under capitalism, to generate profits for others. It’s only “necessary” under capitalism. Not under the alternative under discussion.
Yet your solution is to huddle small groups of the desperately poor to locate their skills and resources to starve together in non egalitarian agreement?
Huh? I honestly don’t even know what that means. One of THE central tenets of the alternative is egalitarianism. And no one would starve. Everyone would have food and all of their needs met. That’s the point. That would be THE focus, rather than the “creation of wealth” for a few.
See, the real problem, when it comes to poverty, inequality, hunger and the rest IS the mal-allocation and the mal-distribution of goods and services by the few, instead of the many. The control of those resources by the few means the many are an after-thought and never the focus. The focus is how much money can the few make, on the backs of the many, and if that means concentrating those goods and services primarily among the already rich — which is how capitalism works — then so be it.
If, however, you change to a system where EVERYONE has an equal share in ownership, equal rights, equal voice, and the economy is fully democratized, you’re simply not going to have 80% of the world forced to pick from the remnants left over by the richest 20%, with the richest 1% and above calling all the shots.
Again, the richest 20% consume 85% of all resources. Alter the way we distribute the total, and no one goes hungry. Make it match up, and no one goes hungry.
You have a room filled with 100 people. You have 100 apples. If 20 people get 85 of those apples, then 80 people have to fight over the remaining 15. But if you distribute one apple per each person . . . . . etc. etc.
