Mastodawn

I would never describe myself as a "capitalist" but I do kinda understand the structure and function of markets a little bit, and it's sometimes frustrating chatting with leftists whose entire experience of markets has been watching the enormous trash-fire of post-2008 dysfunctional crime-based capitalism destroy the possibility of them ever owning a home. Like if you really liked trains but lived in a town where 3/4 of the population had been killed by a chemical supply train derailment

"We should have better public transit!"

"Transit, what do you mean?"

"Like… you know… trains"

"Trains? Those machines that kill your entire family in wracking pain with clouds of poison from a realm beyond nightmares? Why do you want more of those?"

"Yeah but not like that"

hard to ask someone whose whole body is covered in chemical burn scars to just imagine, for a moment, a train carrying a *different* thing, like maybe some people going to have a good time at a restaurant downtown, instead of the caustic hellfire that they see every time they close their eyes

and yet… the fact remains… this town really _could_ use a subway

for those of you stuck on the word “capitalism” here rather than the experience I was trying to relate, you can have the same experience with “leftism” (communism, socialism, or even just any policy vaguely left of center) by trying to have a conversation with an emigrant from a repressive communist regime, i.e. any survivor of the cultural revolution, an experience I have also had, albeit less frequently

“we should really increase the marginal corporate tax rate to account for the broad array of unadjudicated externalities that profit-seeking inherently inflicts“

“they killed my brother in the street for teaching physics”

“I’m … sorry? I am not sure what that has to do with tax policy.”

“It’s a slippery slope! They beat me so badly my left arm is a centimeter shorter than my right, to this day”

Carlton Gibson Mar 8

@glyph ah, yes, the “But Stalin” argument against Social Democracy.

jonathankoren™Mar 8

@carlton @glyph

«So why is America's "win the future" administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism's aim is the modification of (other people's) behavior.»

Trains are a communist plot. Living rent free in my head since 2011.

https://www.newsweek.com/will-why-liberals-love-trains-68597

Will: Why Liberals Love Trains

Why liberals love trains.

Newsweek

@jonathankoren @carlton “hah that headline is so dumb it sounds like something William F Buckley or George Will would say” as I click through

@jonathankoren @carlton “modification of other people’s behavior” they sneer, before their daily prayer which always begins, “people respond to incentives”

Neil Kandalgaonkar Mar 8

@carlton @glyph I see this more frequently with people from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Southeast Asia, especially from the generation that came from 1970-1990. It’s not so absurd as someone being against Stalin, which today they’d have to get from a history book

@neilk @carlton yep. although stalin did have a pretty impressive body count and we do still have a *few* tankies here and there, a return to hardline stalinism does not seem to be a pressing concern for the modern polity

@neilk @carlton I should also add: it's a very different experience, personally and emotionally, to get the "but Stalin" thing from some clueless college Republican flack, as it is to get this kind of ideological rigidity by someone who has been personally, physically harmed by people wielding "socialist utopia" as a rationalization for doing so

ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ Mar 8

@glyph somehow nobody complains about repressive anarchism though

@deshipu I do! 😊 https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm

The Tyranny of Stuctureless

The Tyranny of Stuctureless by Jo Freeman

ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ Mar 8

@glyph And where did you have the opportunity to be raised in this horrible regime? Or is it like your ideals of markets, purely hypothetical? The article you link doesn't seem to be talking about anarchism as a socio-economic system, but rather as a strategy of organizing small groups, which you have to admit is fundamentally different from capitalism or communism?

@deshipu the answer was somewhat tongue in cheek. Have there been any times or places where anarchism flourished? I can't really say any "anarchist nations" for obvious reasons but as far as I know there aren't any repressive anarchist regimes because there aren't any anarchist regimes to speak of. The closest I can think of is Rojava?

ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ Mar 8

@glyph Yes, that was the joke. It seems that every time we are threatened with anarchism, there appears some glorious heroic leader and leads us safely towards whatever other regime is in fashion at the moment.

If you are interested in historical examples of anarchism, there was some of that with the Malagasy and Carribean pirates. David Graeber wrote a book about the former. Obviously a pirate colony has a somewhat skewed economic system, and the records are a bit scarce, though.

Dźwiedziu Mar 8

@glyph
A tram wolud be better.

/me runs away

@glyph it's a good analogy, and in this analogy, regulating poison trains is much more important than introducing public transport.

Markets can be a useful tool in some circumstances. But capitalism is about _free_ markets, and markets _free from guardrails_ are like unregulated railroads: killing machines.

That's why I think it's not useful to discuss details of markets without first establishing external ethical boundaries.

That's why I think traumatized lefties are rightly #antiCapitalist

@iwein @glyph Capital creates power and power enables accumulating more capital. Unless there are good mechanisms in places to counteract this feedback cycle this leads to a concentration of power, and most of the mechanisms that were in place have been dismantled since the 70s.
I agree that markets can help with allocating resources, but we need to accept a certain amount of inefficiency to not end up with a democracy-threatening concentration of power.

@uncanny_static @iwein yep, my feeling exactly. you can see my replies elsethread for more details about my own specific policy hopes but the mechanisms we had before the 70s were already insufficient and the mess we are currently in is a totally untenable death spiral.

Ian.Burnette Mar 8

Fun fact I'm paraphrasing from @pluralistic, Free market originally meant "free from distorting external interference" (like that of lords/kings)

Having safeguard regulations to prevent oligarchs from rigging markets so that heads they win, tails you lose is actually delivering "free markets" as they were originally described.

@ianburnette
Yeah, I know, and that old framing was as disingenuous as the current framing is imho 🙂

Markets are an interesting way to gamify setting a value for something if other options are risky or complicated.

The way they have been historically used primarily to defend and acquire unethical property are disgusting.

@glyph @pluralistic

ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ Mar 8

@glyph Personally I don't really think it's important whether those dangerous chemicals were carried by a train, a lorry, an ox cart, or through a system of giant pipes. I don't really have much attention for listening to the merits of different transportation systems, when my main concern is about avoiding those chemical burns, and that means avoiding and/or protesting any kind of industrial infrastructure, whether it's trains, roads, or pipelines.

@deshipu yep. unaccountable authority is the poison. and it can be conveyed by various means. I do tend to think that although I don't think anarchism "works" (it's incomplete as a system of organization) pretty much every actually-extant system in the world could benefit from the application of anarchist principles

ɗ𐐩ʃƕρʋ Mar 8

@glyph In other words, I think that even the most hostile and authoritarian regime can work well when in the hands of benevolent and rational super-beings, acting with the best intentions and perfect understanding of their actions.

However, in practice, those in power somehow always turn out to be narcissistic selfish assholes with zero care about anything but their own future (and often not even that), and as such I would rather prefer to not give them any powerful tools of control.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@glyph I have to disagree with that comparison. Trains can be useful - capitalism cannot.

I'm perfectly serious & I do understand this shit; anything useful that looks like it's thanks to capitalism is actually thanks to commerce, i.e. the market & not only is capitalism fundamentally not the market - it's anti-market.

Well-regulated commerce can be extremely useful & it's therefore important to un-conflate it from capitalism. The latter has to go for the former to work properly.

@jwcph while I am sure we agree on large swathes of policy, ultimately I don’t feel like this frame is very helpful. “capitalism” is just what we call it when the market (or, for that matter, the state) does things we don’t like. “commerce” is what we call it when it does things we do like.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@glyph This isn't framing or opinion or special pleading - it's fact.

Capitalism = ownership (of the means of value creation).
Commerce = market.
Capitalism = consolidation.
Commerce = trade.

They've been conflated so long most people think it's all the same thing; so did I - but it really, REALLY isn't.

This is also evident in that you can totally have one without the other. Of course capitalism without commerce is robbery & exploitation, but it can happen.

Energetic Nova Mar 8

So… intellectual property is capitalism.

The internet is capitalism… we own the means of production on the internet…

@Energetic_Nova @jwcph @glyph what do you think you own?

@jwcph They are very connected though. (True) public ownership without common ownership/free availability of the products of labour cannot exist, because that property, too, needs to be enforced. And that enforcement creates oppression and something which can be considered a class society again.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@Siroj42 I'm not talking about class society. That's a different topic.

Nicolas Évrard Mar 8

@jwcph @glyph a while ago I realised that free software allow to prevent the capture of the means of production in the software world. Which is kind of funny because it's not at all its original goal.

@jwcph you cannot present facts without framing them. framing is the choice of what to emphasize and what terms to use. c.f.: https://rwu.pressbooks.pub/thinkingrhetorically/chapter/framing/

Framing – Thinking Rhetorically: Writing for Professional and Public Audiences

We tend to think of the purpose of writing as simply transferring information or expressing our opinions. We know, however, that exigencies affect how we…

Thinking Rhetorically: Writing for Professional and Public Audiences

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@glyph Sure - but the framing is unrelated to their status as fact. You said you found the "framing" of separating capitalism & commerce unhelpful, but that's a lot like saying it's "framing" to distinguish between apples & coconuts, for example based on the fact that one is a fruit while the other is a nut, or their appearance or species, as if they're the same because they both grow on tree-like plants.

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@glyph (you'll notice that I'm plenty critical of framing in my posting - it's not like I'm unaware of the potential problems of it or how it works)

@jwcph to be clear, the issue I have with the framing is not to separate "capitalism" and "commerce" (those are indeed separate concepts, and I draw that distinction frequently enough myself) but rather to attempt to present capitalism as monolithic. capitalism is a cluster concept which is both poorly socially defined (a lot of people think that "capitalism" and "democracy" are synonyms, as opposed to "communism" which is a synonym for "authoritarianism") and also poorly theoretically defined

@jwcph just working off wikipedia, in capitalism we've got:

- private property
- profit motive
- capital accumulation
- competitive markets
- commodification
- wage labor
- emphasis on economic growth

various systems mix all these properties to differing degrees to achieve vastly different outcomes, and some of the worst outcomes of "capitalism" occur when one of them is removed (the "competitive" in "competitive markets" is a major annoyance to oligarchs, for example)

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 8

@glyph We agree enough that I don't think it matters much if we disagree a little 😁

@jwcph tbh I am posting about this and not other more pressingly consequential issues because I am attempting to manifest the type of disagreement I want in my life. imagine the world we could have if most political disagreement were good-faith discussion about technique and strategy among sincere people who DIDN’T want their neighbors to die

JWcph, Radicalized By Decency Mar 9

@glyph Imagine that... 💛

@glyph This is dangerously close to sounding like "not all machine learning"

@jwz yeah I get that. It's made even more difficult to talk about my own policy preferences in that every pro-capital-C-Capitalism argument is laundered through a starting-point like the one I think is valid. "But isn't it good if people can have an incentive to dedicate their own resources to infrastructure?" immediately gets a chain of a hundred syllogisms to "and thus, Elon Musk must be able to hunt anyone he pleases for sport anywhere in Australia, which he now exclusively owns".

Alper Çuğun-Gscheidel Mar 8

@glyph With communism it’s also always “not like that”. So same difference?