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we must maintain the status quo
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
To anyone who supports capitalism or otherwise opposes socialism:
Do you support the idea that one man can accumulate enough wealth to own all land of this Earth, making everyone born in his empire under his rule as long as he can kill to defend it? What prevents capitalism from accomplishing this in law? What law exists that limits the borders of nations?
Why, then, must we endure a system where a single man owning the Earth and enslave it is a feature, not a bug?
https://dice.camp/@sean/114698774200264413
I just wanna know what people think. Why must this be maintained? Why is any opposition to capping wealth just the end of the world when it probably would save it, just logically thinking it through?
People using violence to gather resources and power to themselves has always been the state of humanity. Capitalism is just a present day version of that.
Power is never relinquished willingly. Only through the threat of violence, or by actual violence.
I highly recommend you read up on history. For most of humanity's existence we lived in small relatively egalitarian groups were people depended on each other for survival.
Your "always" is a very recent state of afairs and also not universally true even today.
Not only is it recent, it can also flip back relatively easily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Paradise_Built_in_Hell
This looks really cool! Thanks.
Reminds me of the books by Rutger Breghman like Humankind
Thanks for the link to that book, it looks super interesting.
No.
No and fuck you
Has been, could be, but won't be here. No.
Let's put it this way:
If someone held a gun to your head and told you to shut the fuck up, you would shut the fuck up.
This has happened to me before. I did not shut the fuck up.
I dunno if i would today. Small calibur? Probably. Large calibur? No clue.
How does that apply, though?
Sure, tough guy, because caliber matters.
There have always been people who are willing to use violence (or the real theat of violence) to collect resources and power. Always. Many of those people throughout history have wielded huge amounts of power over large numbers of people, because most people reject violence. And once violent people have extended their power enough, they don't have to do the violence anymore, because the threat is so deeply ingrained.
So, if someone held a gun to your head and told you to shut the fuck up, you would shut the fuck up, either because you ceded control to the violent person, or because you were dead. Any other result means that it was an empty threat. Violence, or the real threat of violence works. It always works, and the only way to defeat it is greater violence turned on that aggressor.
This is why the people "in charge" are usually horrible, awful, exploitative people. Because being horrible, awful, and exploitative is necessary to concentrate power. The United States is a propsperous nation because Europeans showed up and stole most of a continent from the dwindling number of people who already lived there, after having been mostly killed off by disease, much of the rest being finished off by - wait for it - state-sponsored violence.
Right or wrong, the people who are willing to use violence as a means to their ends succeed.
Yeah, surviving would suck. A really small bullet is survivable, maybe, if it hits the bone. Which it would, because head. Brain injuries suck.
Nope. Read a book to find out why! Davids Graeber&Wengrow, anthropologist and archaeologist respectively, had a good one on early humanity 'the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity', but they're not the only ones. Base your arguments on facts, not 'i just assume' bullshit people extrapolated with zero evidence, based on what seemed sensible to them with their experience of only ever living in authoritarianism, then let drift into 'common sense'.
Yeah, again, i have been in that situation. Both sides, I'm ashamed to say. You have not. You're trying to logic your way through just-so stories, and humans are way messier than that. In my case, i was pretty actively suicidal at the time. Broke the script. The asshole didn't know what to do, gave me a wedge to talk. Maybe it would go differently with who i am today. Maybe it wouldn't.
Maybe, if i don't see a way out of the situation, i just go down talking shit, you know?
No. Fear works. Violence is staggeringly inefficient to actually apply. It's messy and expensive and hard and rarely gets you what you want. My stepdad's wife used to hit me to get me to do chores, used to try and physically move my hands, and it was so much harder than just doing shit herself. Plus she earned my hate, and i undid it all the moment she looked away. Even if she had killed me, she would've had a rotting corpse on her hands. If she had needed me to grow her food or something, bitch would've been so fucked.
You write like you've never been exposed to actual violence. Only to the threat of it. Your experience of oppression exists in your head. It has been inflated and strengthened by your ego, by your interests, by your long held habit. You have surrendered your future in panic again and again and again.
You have forged your chains.
But they are your chains. Not mine. Not anyone else's. So you can fuck right off with those.
(Unless you're asking for help out)
you didn't ask about my gun pointed at his head as well? why must only he have the gun?
You could be the "someone" being referred to. In the case you are not, nothing I said excludes you from participating.
if we both pointed guns at each others head, he would be pointing a gun at my head like you stated, but I'd also be pointing a gun at his. Why would either of us shut up in this equally threatening situation where neither are obviously in control? This is literally MAD theory btw. You are arguing countries with nukes would rather nuke each other than talk it out if you think two humans would rather kill each other over whatever made up scenario you invented to make your point on violence than try to resolve it without dying. I'm sorry, but people don't just kill because they're hungry. They'll beg first. They'll steal. Murder is often a last resort man, and any case that you may dream of, I'm sorry but capitalism isn't a better solution to it any more than an honest attempt at democratic socialism.
Maybe you're misunderstanding me, though I did say
There will always be people who are willing to break every rule and social contract to concentrate power to themselves. If violence is the last resort against them, they will succeed until it becomes the only option.
in capitalism, there are zero limitations on property. Human slavery is labor capital in capitalism (private prisons, 13th amendment). You can own people and their labor in capitalism. By you, I mean you mr nougat, with enough capital, can own immigrants today to sell their indentured servitude right this very second in these united states of america and capitalism will not only let you do it, it will reward you with government protection in the form of profit, and the cops and guards and laws to protect YOUR humans.
Or are you saying thats not feasible within the framework of capitalism and I am just not getting it?
If you are not getting it, maybe you are too poor and lower class to realize how little capital you have in capitalism that you cannot fathom how much capital means power in a capitalist society, a society in which capital is authority.
I’m not sure why you can’t read what I wrote. So I’ll be crystal clear.
Capitalism is the same as every other system that’s gone before: a few people hold the capital, and wield it as a bludgeon over the many.
I’m not sure why you think I fucking like capitalism. Nothing I’ve said suggests that at all.
Capitalism does not enforce a minimum amount of population holding capital, so it can be reduced to 1. Feature, not a bug.
Every other system? How many systems do you think we have observed in all of human history? What do you believe to be the earliest system ever devised?
No other system ever increased the minimum amount of people owning capital to be higher than a few?
Okay, you just want to argue with someone, and for some reason you picked me today, even though we substantially agree.
I fundamentally disagree that capitalism is like every other system ever done before, that is all I am saying. I need evidence that capitalism being the same as every other system is true, and I lack it. This is part of why I posed my original question. Why are people seemingly not be able to fathom a single system that can replace capitalism?