3 ms·

> The latter is ostensibly democratic, but in practice, representative democracy at best just gives voters the opportunity to back one elite group against the o

> The latter is ostensibly democratic, but in practice, representative democracy at best just gives voters the opportunity to back one elite group against the other - so on matters where they're all in agreement (e.g. that elites should have all the effective political and economic power), it doesn't really solve anything. I agree with you here. > A lone guy with a gun doesn't have a monopoly on violence. A lone guy with enough capital to subsidize a private army might, but that's not possible in a society where capital can't be accumulated indefinitely. This is where I disagree. He already accumulated plenty of capital and that's exactly the problem. Nothing stopping him from hiring an army with his amazon bucks. In order to switch to this decentralized society, we need to reset hierarchies, like ones based on capital accumulation first. The only entity I see that would possibly be strong enough to do so is the state. Now getting it to do so is the tricky part. I'm not sure anything short of a vanguard revolution would do the trick, but vanguards have the unfortunate property of trying to hold on to power after the revolution is done.

int_19h 5y ago
This seems to have worked pretty well for the Zapatistas so far, and more recently in Rojava: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power#Strategy_and_ideological_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power#Strategy_and_ideolo... (Note that crypto meshes really well with this paradigm.) I will also add that "resetting" accumulation of capital doesn't require any physical acts of violence, either. The only reason why e.g. Bezos owns as much as he does, is because he says so, the government confirms it, and we all collectively accept it as a society. But take that last part away, and it all falls down like a house of cards. And you can't pay for an army with wealth that you don't actually control. OTOH if you try to "reset the hierarchy" through centralization of power, it just replaces one set of elites with another. Worse yet, the new elites get more tools at their disposal to maintain their dominant position - all while talking about how they're really doing it for the sake of public good etc.

int_19h 5y ago

This seems to have worked pretty well for the Zapatistas so far, and more recently in Rojava: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power#Strategy_and_ideological_concepts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_power#Strategy_and_ideolo... (Note that crypto meshes really well with this paradigm.) I will also add that "resetting" accumulation of capital doesn't require any physical acts of violence, either. The only reason why e.g. Bezos owns as much as he does, is because he says so, the government confirms it, and we all collectively accept it as a society. But take that last part away, and it all falls down like a house of cards. And you can't pay for an army with wealth that you don't actually control. OTOH if you try to "reset the hierarchy" through centralization of power, it just replaces one set of elites with another. Worse yet, the new elites get more tools at their disposal to maintain their dominant position - all while talking about how they're really doing it for the sake of public good etc.