If you would stop bending my words for a moment, you would realize that I’m advocating for direct ownership by the workers, not some phony representative democracy. Any system with hierarchies of decision-making power, even supposedly self-appointed ones, will always corrupt.

Under capitalism, capital will always accumulate into the hands of the shareholders. Those with the capital will always find a way to influence politicians into deregulating, no matter how many anti-corruption measures you put in place. We’ve seen this happen over and over for as long as capitalism has existed.

We need a fundamental change in the system that prevents capital from accumulating. That change would be socialism, where the workers collectively own the means of production, rather than it being owned privately by the shareholders.

Agreed, that’s why I put it in quotes. The way I should have worded it is that evolution has incentivized living things to act in a way that prioritizes their own survival over the survival of others. This is known as the survival instinct, or self-preservation, and is well established scientifically. This is a more appropriate argument against hierarchies of decision-making power than “human nature”.

That’s a good explanation of generational poverty and why it’s so expensive to be poor, but if Vimes is looking for the real reason the rich are so rich, he should read about surplus labor value. He seems to have ignored the broader class dynamics at play under capitalism.

Or maybe things are different on Discworld, I haven’t actually read the books.

Fair enough, but in a more just system, class would not exist, at all.

FTFY :P

I think they were specifically referring to Marxism-Leninism. It is “human nature” to act in your own self interest, so any system with hierarchies of decision-making power will eventually become corrupt. We just have to take a non-hierarchical path towards communism.

I recommend you check out the YouTube channel PBS Space Time. They have some excellent videos explaining the holographic principle and all the background knowledge needed to understand it.

I have a work profile for my work stuff. All my personal stuff is on Owner.

Do you say that you’re “boring as a person” because you don’t have any interests or hobbies, or because your interests and hobbies are so niche that you doubt anyone else would find them interesting, so you never end up talking about them?

I pretty much just use 1337x.

Communism without a dictatorship is yet to be seen at large scale. That would be interesting to compare.

It has actually been seen, and currently exists today. See the autonomous region of Rojava in Syria and the Zapatista territories in Mexico. Both were founded on anarchist principles.

Additionally, by definition, communism cannot exist under a dictatorship. That’s why all of the “communist” dictatorships actually say they are socialist, and claim to be working towards a communist future, which is obviously bullshit. All nations founded on Marxist-Leninist principles inevitably become one-party dictatorships because they don’t go all in on communism. You must immediately abolish the state for communism to ever work.

I came to this thread to mention that I love editing OpenStreetMap, but then again, it really isn’t all that niche. It just isn’t talked about much.

I focus on the system rather than on individual people because I believe people ultimately act in their own best interests, and that the system is what defines those interests. If we replaced every politician with someone else, but left the system the same, I don’t think any long-term change would occur.

Here’s an excellent YouTube video explaining this in more detail. This YouTuber has a whole playlist on political theory and anthropology that I cannot recommend enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2LRn9LM4jY

Before about 12,000 years ago, humans primarily lived as immediate return hunter-gatherers. There was no way to accumulate wealth, so this problem didn’t exist. There was no financial burden involved in leaving a relationship.

I am not advocating for a return to hunting and gathering, but I believe we can design a new system, based on equality of decision-making power, that avoids the pitfalls of our more recent hierarchy-based systems.

This is disgusting and entirely predictable. The US has bipartisan consensus on pedophilia. Neither party will release the files because both parties are involved in raping children.

Do you have reason to believe that this problem is currently caused by something other than capitalism?