What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
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I don't know what a "self-described authoritarian" is, either. That isn't a political stance.
If there was one singular megacorp, governing all of industry, there would be no competition as you said, and therefore Capitalism would die.
It sounds like you're basically saying competition is the problem. But competition has benefits and downsides; one of the downsides is tragedy of the commons, which I think is bad enough it warrants eliminating capitalism all by itself.
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Is that an uncommon stance among Anarchists?
hmm, it's kinda 50/50 in my experience, I've met a lot who think that the union, community, or whatever organised groups of people you have should enforce some kind of gun controll, especially true for people in countries without at least some gun culture
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Are you saying you disagree with Trots on these matters, or that you agree with Trots despite their unique positions among Marxists in general?
I don't think anyone would disagree with you regarding parties needing to be democratic, so I assume you are referring to a specific type of democracy.
As for Permanent Revolution, I think that was kind of "debunked" when the peasantry showed itself to be a genuine ally of the proletariat. Abandoning building Socialism because a revolution in Germany never appeared and instead focusing your efforts on exporting revolution ultimately would have led to a lack of developed industry, and a loss in World War II for the Soviets. Communism still requires global revolution, but it makes more sense to build up Socialism domestically and use that to fuel revolution globally than it does to focus almost entirely on the idea of a global revolution.
i think that in most communist movements around the world, we fourthists are minority. hence i tend to disagree on some points with the majority (mostly m-l's). but we mostly agree on marx's method for analyzing society and economy.
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I get not being able to find a magical hard line between A person and a rock. I do think there is actually a clear distinction: computation. Rocks are not computing anything; brains and arguably bacteria are computing things. I think consciousness is more like computation than matter -- this fits with my intuition that you could upload someone's mind onto a computer (one neuron at a time, maintaining continuity), and that simulation of you is still you.
I agree with you on experience is computation. To me any interaction/change is computation. A ball rolling down a hill is a complex interaction with computation. Humans are a very specific and interesting reaction that feel in cool ways.
To me more matter could be worth more if more matter meant more interactions. Yet if matter is infinitely devisable then the amount of possible interactions is infinite. If matter is continuous rather than discrete then I don't know enough about the math of infinities to compare organisms. My rudimentary knowledge says they are equivalent infinities but I'm not confident.
However, if more interactions means more worthy, then at near any scale that would benefit those with resources and those in an environment that already suits them. It would favor heat over cold. Change over stability. Anxiety over calm. Psychedelics over alcohol. Those with access to more calories. It gets really weird when applied at different scales IMO.
So in summary: I don't think we can compare how much two systems compute. If we could, then using that comparison to assign moral worth still has a ton of very odd outputs.
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i think that in most communist movements around the world, we fourthists are minority. hence i tend to disagree on some points with the majority (mostly m-l's). but we mostly agree on marx's method for analyzing society and economy.
Gotcha, I don't agree with you but your comment makes sense if you are comparing yourself to the broader Marxist movement, and not just within your tendency.
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hmm, it's kinda 50/50 in my experience, I've met a lot who think that the union, community, or whatever organised groups of people you have should enforce some kind of gun controll, especially true for people in countries without at least some gun culture
Anarchism requires revolution, so at minimum guns are necessary for that.
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It sounds like you're basically saying competition is the problem. But competition has benefits and downsides; one of the downsides is tragedy of the commons, which I think is bad enough it warrants eliminating capitalism all by itself.
I think the biggest issue here is that we aren't really speaking on common ground. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, and can offer theory to show what that means but will put that aside for now.
The "tragedy of the commons" is not what you are using it to mean. You are referring to a lack of regulation as "tragedy of the commons," which is not the correct usage of it.
Secondly, Capitalism erases its own foundations, it naturally centralizes and erases profit and competition, ergo it inevitably produces crisis and its own erasure.
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I agree with you on experience is computation. To me any interaction/change is computation. A ball rolling down a hill is a complex interaction with computation. Humans are a very specific and interesting reaction that feel in cool ways.
To me more matter could be worth more if more matter meant more interactions. Yet if matter is infinitely devisable then the amount of possible interactions is infinite. If matter is continuous rather than discrete then I don't know enough about the math of infinities to compare organisms. My rudimentary knowledge says they are equivalent infinities but I'm not confident.
However, if more interactions means more worthy, then at near any scale that would benefit those with resources and those in an environment that already suits them. It would favor heat over cold. Change over stability. Anxiety over calm. Psychedelics over alcohol. Those with access to more calories. It gets really weird when applied at different scales IMO.
So in summary: I don't think we can compare how much two systems compute. If we could, then using that comparison to assign moral worth still has a ton of very odd outputs.
Measure theory was discovered to be able to say that a rock twice as large as another rock can be accurately described as being twice as large as another rock, even if it's not discrete. (Detractors will point to the paradox that something can be cut up and reassembled to have more measure with a finite number of cuts, but the cuts have to be infinitely complex so it doesn't apply in reality.)
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I think the biggest issue here is that we aren't really speaking on common ground. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, and can offer theory to show what that means but will put that aside for now.
The "tragedy of the commons" is not what you are using it to mean. You are referring to a lack of regulation as "tragedy of the commons," which is not the correct usage of it.
Secondly, Capitalism erases its own foundations, it naturally centralizes and erases profit and competition, ergo it inevitably produces crisis and its own erasure.
I am correctly using tragedy of the commons. A well-understood solution to the tragedy of the commons is regulation. This is equivalent to saying a lack of regulation can cause the tragedy of the commons.
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I am correctly using tragedy of the commons. A well-understood solution to the tragedy of the commons is regulation. This is equivalent to saying a lack of regulation can cause the tragedy of the commons.
The tragedy of the commons is about random people misusing public goods, not corporations practicing unsafe dumping.
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Measure theory was discovered to be able to say that a rock twice as large as another rock can be accurately described as being twice as large as another rock, even if it's not discrete. (Detractors will point to the paradox that something can be cut up and reassembled to have more measure with a finite number of cuts, but the cuts have to be infinitely complex so it doesn't apply in reality.)
I agree a rock can be bigger than another rock. Yet 2 times infinity is not greater than infinity.
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I'm mostly an anarchist. But.
I think that there needs to be some degree of authoritarian, arbitrary power. Mostly because I've been in anarchist groups in the past, and when everyone has input into a decision, shit gets bogged down really fast. Not everyone understand a given issue and will be able to make an informed choice, and letting opinionated-and-ignorant people make choices that affect the whole group is... Not good.
The problem is, I don't know how to balance these competing interests, or exactly where authoritarian power should stop. It's easy to say, well, I should get to make choices about myself, but what about when those individual choices end up impacting other people? For instance, I eat meat, and yet I'm also aware that the cattle industry is a significant source of CO2; my choice, in that case, contributes to climate change, which affects everyone. ...And once you start going down that path, it's really easy to arrive at totalitarianism as the solution.
I also don't know how to hand the issue of trade and commerce, and at what point it crosses the line into capitalism.
I help with a social group. We jokingly refer to it as anarchism under a lazy iron fist.
Day to day decisions are made in a fairly ad-hoc manner, by those involved. If there is a disagreement that can't be resolved, or if it will have large repercussions (e.g. changing the fabric of the building) it gets raised to the committee and chairman.
The chairman is the sort who is only there because no one better wanted the role. He has no interest in micromanaging, but will resolve issues to get them to go away.
It's a remarkably effective system. Unfortunately it's a bit unstable in large groups. Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don't want with that power. No one has yet solved the issue however. How the f@#£ do you keep the troublemakers out, when they are also the ones most willing to work towards getting the role?
The other problem with anarchism is that the natural self policing systems break down by the Dunbar limit. Parasitical or cancerous behaviours tend to become crippling, forcing people to adopt other unofficial power structures.
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I'm working on transitioning to using They/Them pronouns for everyone since they're completely neutral and fit every context. If your preference is Xe/Xem, I respect that—but unfortunately, my brain just doesn't have the bandwidth to keep track of multiple pronouns consistently. You get They/Them.
I agree with the mental bandwidth. I'm fine with he/him, she/her, they/them. I'll also tend to default to appearance, though I will try and correct if asked to do so.
I've yet to find anyone who wasn't also an arsehole who has an issue with this. That includes places where seeing an obvious male in a dress could equally be someone taking their first steps away from norm, or just a guy that likes wearing dresses. Also, neither was seen as unusual at the event.
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I believe that the stance against nuclear power (specifically, nuclear fission, as opposed to radioisotope power used by spacecraft) by greens undermines the fight to stop global warming, and that many of the purported issues with nuclear power have been solved or were never really issues in the first place.
For instance: the nuclear waste produced by old-gen reactors can be used by newer generations.
I fully agree that nuclear SHOULD have been part of the solution. I disagree that it should now be part of it. We have lost too much knowledge regarding nuclear power to lack of investment. We no longer have time to rebuild that to get it online. Hopefully it can become part of the solution eventually, but 10-20 years is now far too long to wait.
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Protests are definitely meant to be noticed, and should also make you think. Ideally they should also be attractive for others to join, allowing the protest to gain momentum. But being annoying (at least to regular people) seems counter productive to that? Sometimes it is unavoidable, but I don't think it should be desired.
Of course being annoying to the body being protested against is definitely desired.
Protests are not made for other people to join, protests are made to show the government/ruling class that the workers are angry and how much harm they could do to their business. People joining in and becoming interested in the fight is a nice side effect.
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I help with a social group. We jokingly refer to it as anarchism under a lazy iron fist.
Day to day decisions are made in a fairly ad-hoc manner, by those involved. If there is a disagreement that can't be resolved, or if it will have large repercussions (e.g. changing the fabric of the building) it gets raised to the committee and chairman.
The chairman is the sort who is only there because no one better wanted the role. He has no interest in micromanaging, but will resolve issues to get them to go away.
It's a remarkably effective system. Unfortunately it's a bit unstable in large groups. Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don't want with that power. No one has yet solved the issue however. How the f@#£ do you keep the troublemakers out, when they are also the ones most willing to work towards getting the role?
The other problem with anarchism is that the natural self policing systems break down by the Dunbar limit. Parasitical or cancerous behaviours tend to become crippling, forcing people to adopt other unofficial power structures.
I def. agree with the issues in re: Dunbar's number. Anarchism can, and does, work pretty well in small groups and communes. But scaling it to the size of a country... Well, that's the hard part. But if you don't, then authoritarian countries will eat you alive.
Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power.
That unfortunately seems to be the case with most cops as well; the ones that want to do it out of a sense of civic responsibility seem to get pushed out pretty quickly by the ones that should never have been cops in the first place. And--looping back around to anarchism--cops are a necessary evil because otherwise you quickly end up with vigilante groups that enforce a capricious set of morality and ethics.
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I agree a rock can be bigger than another rock. Yet 2 times infinity is not greater than infinity.
Measure theory can still describe the volume of fractal shapes, for instance using squeeze theorem if you can find an iterative upper and lower bound. Just because something's surface area isn't well-defined doesn't mean the volume isn't. Similarly, the coastline problem may preclude meaningfully measuring a country's perimeter, but its (projected) area is still measurable.
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The tragedy of the commons is about random people misusing public goods, not corporations practicing unsafe dumping.
The tragedy of the commons is a general-purpose game theory concept. It applies any time there is a communal resource exploitable by multiple participants. Admittedly, in the case of unsafe dumping, the resource must be unintuitively defined as the cleanliness of the river, but the same principle applies as in the more clear-cut (heh) example of foresting.
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The tragedy of the commons is a general-purpose game theory concept. It applies any time there is a communal resource exploitable by multiple participants. Admittedly, in the case of unsafe dumping, the resource must be unintuitively defined as the cleanliness of the river, but the same principle applies as in the more clear-cut (heh) example of foresting.
I feel we are getting into the weeds about something that doesn't matter, ultimately, I still don't know what identifying as an "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" even means.
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I feel we are getting into the weeds about something that doesn't matter, ultimately, I still don't know what identifying as an "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" even means.
I don't really use those words tbh. I just think anarchism doesn't account for how to solve the tragedy of the commons, so a global authority is needed.
