Truly living up to their tankie label.

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    14 days ago

    You are mistaken from the first sentence! The purpose of anarchy is to dismantle unjust heirarchies, NOT to remove the existence of authority. It’s a common mistake, and one I used to make myself.

    I don’t think anyone would disagree that capitalism’s competitive drive has in ways benefitted humanity, amd I’m grateful for those benefits. It’d be foolish to discard them. Howver, all one needs to do to see how it’s harming us more than helping, is to look at the weather.

    ‘Just make a new system’ is actually the point of most communist/socialist movements. Because the world is so defined by capitalism, communism right now basically just means ‘everything else’, but if you look at the history of communism in the world (which is as fascinating as it is heartbreaking) you can see that there is a huge variety in beliefs of how it should be instituted! Socialists, anarchists, tankies, environmentalists (yes, ecology is intend3d as that alternative system you suggest) all have to act as more or less the same movement because of the overwhelming success of capitalist propoganda

    • @nthavoc@lemmy.today
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      14 days ago

      Alright well, it’s in the definition. I just can’t get onboard with those groups you just listed because I have not seen a practical application that didn’t end well for anarchists, communists, especially tankies, and environmentalists. Socialists as in what you see in places like Canada seems to work for them and that’s about as close as I would get to a new movement. This is primarily because each system does not scale very well with the size of the population. It all falls apart when you rely on a human to do the right thing and ultimately ends in gate keeping fueled by greed. Capitalism, which has its fatal flaw, has lasted so long because the idea that every person can jump in on a level playing feel is much more appealing to the greedy side of human nature. The “earn your own way and don’t rely on anyone” has been ingrained in countless cultures.

      What you see today is capitalism run completely out of control. Again, if you trusted all humans to do the right thing in a capitalist system, they would reinvest all of their profits back into the company and share it amongst the employees of the organization in the form of livable wages to include disposable income, bonuses, or stocks, so they too can live comfortably by buying their own food, shelter, and water. In turn organizations profit off the people as they use goods and services and continue to reinvest for improvement and not focus strictly on share holders. Leisure time can also be factored in and you have a productive society.

      This is called ethical capitalism. Think of it as the ideal counterpart to any of the ideal systems you stated. You see none of that today and the money is horded by the greediest person at the top of every organization. These billionaires only aim to please shareholders who also horde money by taking profits out of the organization and distributing it into their own personal wealth. The 1% of the population are too busy trying to be the richest person and killing everyone doing it. Oligopolies are the fatal flaw of capitalism, but then again greed is the fatal flaw of every system. Hence, my original comment of figuring out how to solve for the inherent evil nature of humans.

      Yeah that’s way over simplifying it, but that’s the way I see it. Mitigate or eliminate greed and you’ll make any of those systems work as intended.

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        14 days ago

        If capitalism truly was a level playing field, free of inheritance and prejudice… I would certainly agree with you. But it too, is imperfect. I would encourage you to compare, sometime, the results of a country being permitted to attempt communism. Modern day Vietnam is a lovely place, for example.

        Regardless! The fact that you seek socialism makes us Comrades, because I do too. I’m actually a pacifist! While I have pretty radical beliefs, I have peaceful hopes for achieving them. Which means a road back through democracy, into social democracy, and hopefully one day direct democracy. We both want the same thing, less greed. I’m happy to fight (metaphorically) side-by-side with anyone who has that same goal.