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.