we do not have an economy, we have a league table for comparing wealth, with no parachutes for the relegated.
I wonder who paid the streets, who pays the cops, the teachers, hospitals, medics, nurses, firefighters; who paid the agencies making companies stop polluting the water you drink, the food you eat, the places you go to, and so, so, so many more things I can't even start listing.
@mdione @DGI I could afford private healthcare and private school for my kids if I was not losing almost 2k a month in tax. Still not being able to get a GP appointment, still having roads full of potholes and still living in a country with a high crime rate.
Many countries are in a better state without tax.
I urge you both to explore this thread and see why neither government/state nor private institutions are the answer:
@RD4Anarchy @mdione @DGI I don't believe that it's only a few centuries that it's been like this.
By saying "few centuries" I assume you mean the last 300 years or so. Whereas people were enslaved long before that. Surely this is the most free and safe we have ever been.
Unless by a few centuries you mean a much larger period.
That quote isn't from me, it's from the book "The Prehistory of Private Property" by Karl Widerquist and Grant S. McCall. That particular quote is specifically addressing private property and other institutions that are associated with the last few centuries, but yes you're correct that those institutions are built on foundations that extend further into the past, especially state which goes back 5 or 6 thousand years.
The thread addresses all of that.
For example, here's one of the appendices to the thread:
I used to share that dream. In fact, Karl Widerquist, one of the authors of the book I quoted in the opening post of that thread, has been a huge proponent of UBI, you might be interested in some of his other books about that.
But at this point I am convinced that UBI will never happen as long as capital rules the planet, unless it is a last-ditch effort to prevent a massive uprising, and/or capitalists figure out a way to employ it as another tool of control and exploitation and a way to continue channeling wealth (power) to the elite ruling class.
As for making the transition to a post-capitalist world, I don't have much hope that we can make it happen intentionally at this point, but I also believe it is inevitable due to the unavoidable collapse we are now verging on in many realms. The point of the thread I shared is not so much about how to make that transition as it is an effort to counteract the many deep false narratives that we're all immersed in, to help more people better understand why things are so fucked up and to see that it is not an inevitable result of human nature and that there is vast potential for other ways of being. If we're going to make the transition, whether by our own actions or as a result of collapse happening beyond our control, I think it is important for more people to become aware of the true context of all this and to learn to reject the many lies we've been conditioned with and the toxic systems that have been imposed on us by a tiny minority.
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