How are you defining authority? My understanding is it’s specifically referring to “power over”; via implicit/explicit coercion, threat, manipulation, and so on. I don’t see why opposition to such uses of power, and the desire to build alternative systems which don’t rely on such means, has to be a negative or “naive” or “unrealistic” thing.
Are there no anarchists on hexbear?
Ik it’s only anecdotal, but I played Brawl Stars when it was in beta and witnessed almost all its updates until global launch (and have caught up with some more recent updates here and there). It went from a genuinely fun mobile game with character and potential to a plastic husk primed for whatever monetisation and “engagement” strategies analytics says needs to be shoved into it next.
At the time I couldn’t fathom how all those updates that often made gameplay and progression less fun could ever be more “engaging” (the change from portrait to landscape in particular felt like straight up poor game design, trashing its unique mobile control schemes in favour of digital twin joysticks and “autoaim”), but in hindsight it’s clear what that really meant.
The deregulation march you’re talking about is neoliberalism, and it hasn’t just affected USA. And in a sense neoliberalism is capitalism’s response to regulation.
It’s not that regulation doesn’t work per se, it’s that the (political) hierarchy through which it functions is susceptible to being taken advantage of, and inevitably it will be (*has been) taken advantage of by the capitalist class to protect their economic hierarchy.
For democracy to truly represent the people it’d need to be federated from the ground up through free association. Large scale organisation and cooperation would be ephemeral, existing when/if the need arises and dissolving as soon as projects are concluded (or cancelled). But within the rigidity of the current system(s), where power is consolidated at the ‘top’ through processes we’re lead to believe are necessary for ‘order’ (when their real purpose is of course control), horizontal forms of social organisation seem impossible (I like how Anark calls this - “hierarchical realism”).
Can we please stop pretending “regulation” is all that effective. It’s been tried, and has resulted in corrupt bureaucracy or given way to neoliberalism (and corporate bureaucracy).
What we need is a radically different system where the power truly is in the hands of the people, and not just nominally like in representative democracy (and which is completely lacking anyways in most workplaces). And what this requires is the construction of fundamentally different modes of production and human interrelation that will not resemble what we’ve got now, neither economically nor politically nor socially. Regulating capitalism won’t get us there.
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Extremecapitalism stifles and suffocates innovation and preservation.
It’s an inherent contradiction of capitalist competition. Somehow everyone is supposed to be competitive but noone is supposed to win for capitalism to “work”. Otherwise it’s considered a monopoly and “anti-competitive”.
Ironically this requires collaboration.
Ever heard of libertarian socialism? It’s the OG kind of libertarianism and is great for those who aren’t all that into cognitive dissonance.
Finally a good use for LLMs
Lol sorry I shoulda specified where it was
Capitalism, etc.
When you talk about communism, are you talking about marxist-leninist / socialist states, or communism the idea(l) itself? Also how familiar are you with anarchism?
It seems that in the same way, people in this discussion have defined that communism is the mechanism for being generous and being willing to contribute to society.
You’re not far off, but yes that is more or less all that “communism” is:
a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership, follows the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
There is no prescription for how this may be achieved or how it might operate. Marxist-leninists want to reach it with a vanguard party and a socialist state, and this reflects how they see revolution as an event. Anarcho-communists instead see revolution as a process, and praxis takes the form of grassroots movements, aiming to bring about the necessary social change, building systems of free association from the ground up.
They don’t exist
Of course capitalism operates in a lot of gray areas, it’s how it seems freer than it actually is. “I need food” isn’t always a problem, but it is one often enough to be systemically problematic. Abandoning one’s hopes and dreams because one must be “realistic” is the norm.
Social democracy isn’t really socialist…
Anyways it’s just good to know that FOSS is built upon anarchist principles (of course, this doesn’t mean every FOSS project is anarchist) and is a great example of free association in practice. It helps demystify anarchism and communism.
Also what “delusions” are you talking about? Marxist-leninist ones?
I hope this is a lightbulb moment for you
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police beating stick
Ahhh, the wonderful ambiguities of english grammar
Instructions unclear, am currently chilling in a hot tub with three big hairy men… when do the bears show up?