4 ms·

The masses are asses. We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. Thats called tyranny by the majority.

uoaei 5y ago
I personally believe it'd be great if people like you could completely divest themselves from nation-states. You don't want to contribute to a commonwealth, that's fine, you can rough it over there and live a sad, cold, hungry existence. The vast majority of the comforts of modern life are afforded specifically and only because other people contribute to the common cause. You reject your responsibility to contribute to same but gleefully consume the benefits which are allocated to you. What an ass. Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists. Very few appreciate the level of knowledge and skill needed to do it alone. Even fewer can ever gain all that knowledge and all those skills. There's a reason humans organize into packs: division of labor is nothing less than a paradigm shift in productivity for groups of people. Civilization today is that same basic concept scaled up to support your consumptive ass along with the rest of humanity.
- dismalpedigree 5y ago
  I personally feel it’d be great if people like you could stop thinking that all property is inherently society’s property and that I should be thankful society allows me to reside on it. We are all in it together, but we will all be better off when others stop trying to appropriate everything from me and give it to others just because they want it. I work hard for what I have. I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    - dismalpedigree 5y ago
      You are honestly arguing that the concept of private property is a mistake? Serious question. How do you envision things working when everything is communal? What motivates productivity and overcomes the tragedy of the commons?
      - uoaei 5y ago
        Yes. Many have argued the same. If you wish to be informed, I recommend doing some reading. In particular, there is a difference between personal property and private property, and that difference is expounded in great detail in the literature. Are you saying selfishness motivates productivity today? I think you would be hard-pressed to justify that claim. Are you saying that we do not experience tragedy of the commons today? In today's economy, everyone having the same access to unregulated markets can be seen as a tragedy: this turns people into either suckers or grifters, and nothing in between. Sounds pretty fucked up to me. I see a tragedy of the commons in the ubiquity of the belief that "I own this" and "I don't own that". Everyone believes this to the point it is an ideological underpinning of contemporary society. But it is not true a priori, so I am not really seeing how you justify it in the first place, especially without empirical counterfactuals. And obviously it has some serious drawbacks, such as people dying needlessly. Those people could contribute to your wellbeing but they are dead and can no longer do that. A tragedy, indeed.
      - tmnvix 5y ago
        Think about LVT as the occupier paying the community for the right to exclude them from a common resource. The price of that exclusion is set by the community. The occupier gets most of the benefits of private property rights without actually having private property. This concept can be extended to all natural resources (and in some cases already is to some extent). The radio spectrum, mineral resources, etc. I find this to be an attractive concept because I am philosophically opposed to the current situation where a new life is born into a world where all resources are already 'claimed'. That new life has just as much right to the world's resources as any other that already exists. This doesn't mean that someone can't make use of more resources than anybody else. They just have to do it in a justifiable way.
  - danielheath 5y ago
    > I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity. You continue to derive value in perpetuity (from living in a society where we collectively pitch in to make it nice); why should you not continue to contribute to it? If you want to stop working, save enough to cover your future obligations.
  - wan23 5y ago
    Land cannot actually be personal property. Why should it be? You didn't make it. Is it fair that whoever got there first gets to use this limited resource in perpetuity? Even under feudalism you got to keep your land under certain conditions like sharing some of your crop in taxes and contributing to the common defense. Unless you're strong enough to be a sovereign state, land ownership has always been more like a license than something you actually own.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "you can rough it over there" Over where? Organizations (gov, corp, etc) always grow and want more power. There is no place free of it or opt-in only. "Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists." I think this is a gross misconception. I doubt most people want to be survivalist. It's possible they just want less government telling them what to do, especially in their private life. You could have a minarchist government where people want to contribute to their government/community. We see this to an extent in rural areas.
  - uoaei 5y ago
    "Less government" still has taxes, so I'm not sure how your comment is connected to the one from the previous commenter.
- int_19h 5y ago
  Not OP, but speaking for myself: I want to contribute to a commonwealth, but any modern nation-state is a very perverse construct that doesn't really deserve that word. There's no commonwealth without a true democracy, and voting for people who supposedly represent you every few years isn't that.
uoaei 5y ago
> We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. I actually agree. "Should" is such a terrible word that I don't think we should use it at all. But we do do the things that most people want, because that is by construction the primary desire on a societal scale. You are part of a bigger machine, whether you like it or not. > Thats called tyranny by the majority. Really funny that American neo-con reactionaries have introduced such a concept. Anywhere else, it's just called "democracy".
- CapricornNoble 5y ago
  >>> Thats called tyranny by the majority. >Really funny that American neo-con reactionaries have introduced such a concept. Anywhere else, it's just called "democracy". Your bias is showing... "Neo-con reactionaries" didn't introduce the concept. John Quincy Adams first did in 1788. It was popularized by John Stuart Mill in 1859. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
- kmonsen 5y ago
  Most democracies have some mechanism in place to prevent majorities to change too much at one and prevent abuse of minorities. One example many share is a constitution that needs more than a majority to change.

uoaei 5y ago

I personally believe it'd be great if people like you could completely divest themselves from nation-states. You don't want to contribute to a commonwealth, that's fine, you can rough it over there and live a sad, cold, hungry existence. The vast majority of the comforts of modern life are afforded specifically and only because other people contribute to the common cause. You reject your responsibility to contribute to same but gleefully consume the benefits which are allocated to you. What an ass. Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists. Very few appreciate the level of knowledge and skill needed to do it alone. Even fewer can ever gain all that knowledge and all those skills. There's a reason humans organize into packs: division of labor is nothing less than a paradigm shift in productivity for groups of people. Civilization today is that same basic concept scaled up to support your consumptive ass along with the rest of humanity.

dismalpedigree 5y ago
I personally feel it’d be great if people like you could stop thinking that all property is inherently society’s property and that I should be thankful society allows me to reside on it. We are all in it together, but we will all be better off when others stop trying to appropriate everything from me and give it to others just because they want it. I work hard for what I have. I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity.
- uoaei 5y ago
  - dismalpedigree 5y ago
    You are honestly arguing that the concept of private property is a mistake? Serious question. How do you envision things working when everything is communal? What motivates productivity and overcomes the tragedy of the commons?
    - uoaei 5y ago
      Yes. Many have argued the same. If you wish to be informed, I recommend doing some reading. In particular, there is a difference between personal property and private property, and that difference is expounded in great detail in the literature. Are you saying selfishness motivates productivity today? I think you would be hard-pressed to justify that claim. Are you saying that we do not experience tragedy of the commons today? In today's economy, everyone having the same access to unregulated markets can be seen as a tragedy: this turns people into either suckers or grifters, and nothing in between. Sounds pretty fucked up to me. I see a tragedy of the commons in the ubiquity of the belief that "I own this" and "I don't own that". Everyone believes this to the point it is an ideological underpinning of contemporary society. But it is not true a priori, so I am not really seeing how you justify it in the first place, especially without empirical counterfactuals. And obviously it has some serious drawbacks, such as people dying needlessly. Those people could contribute to your wellbeing but they are dead and can no longer do that. A tragedy, indeed.
    - tmnvix 5y ago
      Think about LVT as the occupier paying the community for the right to exclude them from a common resource. The price of that exclusion is set by the community. The occupier gets most of the benefits of private property rights without actually having private property. This concept can be extended to all natural resources (and in some cases already is to some extent). The radio spectrum, mineral resources, etc. I find this to be an attractive concept because I am philosophically opposed to the current situation where a new life is born into a world where all resources are already 'claimed'. That new life has just as much right to the world's resources as any other that already exists. This doesn't mean that someone can't make use of more resources than anybody else. They just have to do it in a justifiable way.
- danielheath 5y ago
  > I shouldn’t have to have it taken away if I don’t continue to work (add value) into perpetuity. You continue to derive value in perpetuity (from living in a society where we collectively pitch in to make it nice); why should you not continue to contribute to it? If you want to stop working, save enough to cover your future obligations.
- wan23 5y ago
  Land cannot actually be personal property. Why should it be? You didn't make it. Is it fair that whoever got there first gets to use this limited resource in perpetuity? Even under feudalism you got to keep your land under certain conditions like sharing some of your crop in taxes and contributing to the common defense. Unless you're strong enough to be a sovereign state, land ownership has always been more like a license than something you actually own.
giantg2 5y ago
"you can rough it over there" Over where? Organizations (gov, corp, etc) always grow and want more power. There is no place free of it or opt-in only. "Everyone wants to believe they'd be great survivalists." I think this is a gross misconception. I doubt most people want to be survivalist. It's possible they just want less government telling them what to do, especially in their private life. You could have a minarchist government where people want to contribute to their government/community. We see this to an extent in rural areas.
- uoaei 5y ago
  "Less government" still has taxes, so I'm not sure how your comment is connected to the one from the previous commenter.
int_19h 5y ago
Not OP, but speaking for myself: I want to contribute to a commonwealth, but any modern nation-state is a very perverse construct that doesn't really deserve that word. There's no commonwealth without a true democracy, and voting for people who supposedly represent you every few years isn't that.

uoaei 5y ago

> We shouldn’t just do things because the most people want it. I actually agree. "Should" is such a terrible word that I don't think we should use it at all. But we do do the things that most people want, because that is by construction the primary desire on a societal scale. You are part of a bigger machine, whether you like it or not. > Thats called tyranny by the majority. Really funny that American neo-con reactionaries have introduced such a concept. Anywhere else, it's just called "democracy".

CapricornNoble 5y ago
>>> Thats called tyranny by the majority. >Really funny that American neo-con reactionaries have introduced such a concept. Anywhere else, it's just called "democracy". Your bias is showing... "Neo-con reactionaries" didn't introduce the concept. John Quincy Adams first did in 1788. It was popularized by John Stuart Mill in 1859. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority
kmonsen 5y ago
Most democracies have some mechanism in place to prevent majorities to change too much at one and prevent abuse of minorities. One example many share is a constitution that needs more than a majority to change.