5 ms·

Which, in the case of most of the people who currently hold our wealth, turns out to be not very much at all. Are you surprised?

• rboyd 9y ago
  "our wealth"?
  • tjr225 9y ago
    Some of us disagree very strongly with the premise of capitalism.
    • skookumchuck 9y ago
      Under libertarianism, there's no law against communes. You can set one up!
      • alistoriv 9y ago
        And if a hypothetical commune became dominant and an existential threat to the existence of a hypothetical libertarian society? The Communist Party of the Philippines operates as a parallel government in many respects, do you think that should be allowed? The Zapatistas? It's misleading to say that it would be a-ok to start a socialist society in a libertarian society. It (like many aspects of libertarian analysis, in my opinion) ignores the reality of a political situation like the one described.
        • skookumchuck 9y ago
          It's not misleading. Hundreds (thousands?) of communes have been set up in the US. As far as I know, nobody has tried to shut them down. Nobody is stopping you from joining an existing one. You can find them via Google. More to the point, the notion that communes are a threat to libertarianism is flat out false. Libertarianism is about freedom to associate with and do business with people as you please. That includes pooling ones' interests in a commune. What you cannot do under libertarianism is force someone to join, or prevent someone from leaving.
    • gota 9y ago
      The true premise of capitalism is that a person can own the rights to the exploration of natural resources, most commonly land. Everything else is compounded abstraction. I used to think it was more 'artificial' than it really is; but in fact it seems "natural" that people who lived for a long while in a piece of land deserve the right to keep it; and it also seems "natural" that through force you can take and keep land regardless of who 'deserves' its. Not good, maybe, but natural. My point is that if these things are natural, it is likely that we'd reach a similar structure if we started from scratch. I don't really think that the true premise of capitalism is going away until we reach a Star Trek post-scarcity level of wealth. I do think we can - and should - combat the ill-effects that come from the exercise of a capitalist system for billions of people. I think we need to make it better, not a do over
      • tjr225 9y ago
        Agreed. I would like to see more people approach Marxism as a critique of capitalism and move forward trying to improve it(capitalism). Unfortunately, there's still a lot of stigma(in the US).
        • skookumchuck 9y ago
          > a lot of stigma That's because forcible communism's track record is simply horrific. You can create or join a commune as you please, I have no problem with that. But when you try to force people into one, or prevent them from leaving, a lot of people are going to fight you.
          • tjr225 9y ago
            I'm not talking about forcing people into a commune, I'm talking about approaching capitalisms flaws using the tools we have available instead of pretending the free market is a perfect system. That's a crazy false dichotomy and is exactly the kind of stigma I am talking about.
        • dragonwriter 9y ago
          The Marxist critique of capitalism includes critique of the capacity for improvement within capitalism; you seem to want people to approach Marxism as a critique of capitalism and then ignore key parts of that critique.
• skookumchuck 9y ago
  Given that about a third of the country would identify themselves as progressives, it's hard to see if they gave of their own free will, there wouldn't be plenty of help to the disadvantaged. But I rarely (never?) see any rhetoric in DNC politics about party members donating of their own free will to anything other than the Democratic party.
  • tjr225 9y ago
    Agreed on both of your points.
  • andygates 9y ago
    Virtue doesn't scale. Hence taxes for public good stuff because otherwise only the town with a generous Moneybags would have roads or a fire service (and the town with a racist Moneybags would only have a fire service in the white quarter). It's also hard to coordinate - see disaster response.
    • skookumchuck 9y ago
      We're talking simply about charity. There are plenty of wealthy liberals - like Hollywood, Gates, Buffet, Silicon Valley, etc. All the people who donated to Sanders. Plenty of money to give to charity.
  • emodendroket 9y ago
    Resources are unevenly distributed. Like, why don't the homeless all just pool their resources and buy a house?
    • skookumchuck 9y ago
      Seattle votes heavily Democrat. There's only a tiny fraction of them in Seattle that are homeless.
      • emodendroket 9y ago
        It's an extreme illustration of a principle that holds at many different levels.