I was never disagreeing with you out of ideological difference. I simply disagreed with the logic. Granted this discussion is over text and there are a lot of different ways for both of us to misunderstand the other. I did not go into this trying to win a fight, and never intended it to go in that direction. I feel it is best to end it with “agree to disagree” as I feel one or both of us is misunderstanding each other because of the communication barrier that comes with text.
Yeah it is generally higher population density means more progressive. Maine is just weird. Even historically. Historically very pro-abolition, also pretty pro-women’s suffrage, also very pro-prohibition. However the state also didn’t start voting democrat till around the 60s or 70s. Fairly early legalizers of marijuana and also fairly quick for gay marriage.
I’m not saying money is the source of evil, but it is a tool used by it. It heavily centralizes value making it easier to hoard. The other part of that being positions of power. Without money someone would have to hoard a valued resource like foods. What would allow someone to hoard enough food to affect others is authority. Anarchy tries to address both these issues. Some versions like Mutualism do keep money, and even anarcho-communists have used money through an anarchist market socialism to transition to a moneyless society. Anarchy does not mean no rules and no organization. It means consentual and horizontal organization. Rules that the community consent to, not forced upon them. And I think it is naive of you to think your position isn’t idealogically influenced. We both want an ethical way to run an economy and there are ethical and unethical ways of doing that. The difference between us is what we view as an ethical and possible economic system. If you are interested in reaching an understanding of each others views I do not mind continuing this conversation. But if you are just trying to win a fight, I am not interested in continuing this.
It really isn’t, Maine is rural af. We’re called the South of the North for a reason. However we are weirdly progressive for how rural we are
Same feeling I had. Was a little off put by how stiff the animation could be, particularly the faces. However I am a Warhammer 40k fan so I am used to it lol. The story, MS fights, everything was awesome. Also I got Gouf Custom representation. Genuinely Gouf Custom is my favorite mobile suit hands down and loved how it looked in this show. 10/10 just for having Gouf Custom
If a natural disaster hits other communities can aid. We already have that, look at when Haiti was devastated by hurricanes and earth quakes, look at Florida. People send aid to help till they can help themselves. And in the cases where things aren’t able to be produced enough for everyone like say cars. There are more economical solutions like the various means of public transportation. I am not suggesting everyone gets the finest things, but that their needs are met one way or another. Let the producers and consumers work together to solve problems, not letting an arbitrary market or corporate stouges decide what peoples needs are and how to meet them
I aint suggesting everyone gets a lamborghini, and $5000 computer, etc. That is just unimaginitive to think thats what I mean. People can problem solve. We don’t have enough supplies to create a car for everyone? Then create a decent public transport system so not everyone needs a car. The simple solution is if you don’t have enough for everyone, create an alternative everyone can share. And another thing is we over produce so much. How many cars sit on car lots because no one can afford them? How many homes are left empty cause no one can afford them? Look at how much food waste is produced every year. Its a simple fact that we over prpduce almost everything already, but money is what prevents people from ever getting it. And money incentivizes things like over production of cars and under funding of public transport, cause a car is more profitable. I ain’t saying we just haphazardly produce everything. I’m saying let people manage things themselves. A community sit down and address transportation problems. How many cars can we produce without exhausting resources? Not enough? Then who really needs a car and who can settle on public transport? I hold the belief that when people’s basic needs (food, water, shelter, healthcare, community) are met, and they are given equal agency with their peers, people will act rationally. The issue is our economic system, our government, and thus our society do not make for conditions that encourage rationality or care for your neighbor because it is hyper competitive, indovidualiatic, and authoritarian.
Trust me I know. I’m saying voting in the primaries wouldn’t change anything. The only fix is to destroy the systems that let this happen in the first place. Capitalism and government
An issue though is governments will inevitably get corrupted, there is no way to ensure positions of power don’t fall into the wrong hands. So to combat this, I feel the only decent solution is anarchist means of organization. The issue now is that because the economy is still controlled by money, there is inentive and thus risk of hoarding money which would create hierarchy and thus bring us back to systems of unconsentual government. And as I said, abolition of money would remove that. I ain’t suggesting we just go ham with unregulated production and thus create scarcities, like you say. But the solution is to have people solve that themselves, not relying on money and government to regulate it. Kroptkin talks about much of this in Conquest of Bread. If you’re interested, I would encourage a read, but I ain’t gonna just say “read theory” and drop it cause I know that accomplishes nothing in reaching understandings. Its in the end, to me, an issue of money will always create inequality, and governments will always become corrupt. So what do you do?
That doesn’t sound like a very democratic process to begin with cause all the power is in the delegates who can just choose whoever they want and not follow the desires of the voters. Which is how pretty much the whole system works to begin with, so its pretty rotten even at the very bottom
What is something that meets that criteria? I am not interested in debating hypotheticals unless they have some basis in reality. What is something that has a higher demand than there is supply and also can’t be fixed by simply increasing production or developing an alternative that can be produced?
Neat little factoid. Thank you for that.
Increase production to meet demand. Build more infrastucture to increase capacity. If demand isn’t being met, do what you have to do to meet demand. If its something urgent, people should discuss how to temporarily ration (in the case of stuff like food) or share (in the case of something reusable like a computer) till they are able to supply enough to meet demand.
Heres the thing though. Areas for distribution of specific goods would still exist. Grocery stores for food, electronic stores, etc. You would still have nodes for distributing goods, you just wouldnt have money to decide who gets to have things and who doesn’t because frankly we don’t need it. You would change production till you meet demand. So people who don’t like you mention wouldn’t have a harder time getting what they need because it would be like how they already get it, just without money in the way.
I still don’t see how this makes an economy based on mutual aid impossible at a large scale. Value is arbitrary anyways. For example, wood in somewhere like New England is easy to come by and therefore wouldnt have the same value that it would in somewhere like Nevada. Which is why I think trying tk track value is an inefficient way to track economics anyways. In a super simple way, mutual aid operates off of need. One community needs wood, so a community with an abundance of wood would give to the community that needs it. Mutual aid operates entirely off of need, as it is in overly simplistic terms charity that goes both ways. You give without expecting something in return and others do the same.
In other words, at a small scale a transaction using mutual aid is basically this. Person A needs salt to make a meal, Person B has salt to spare and so they share with Person A. Maybe at some point down the line Person B ends up needing something, and if Person A can provide they will, or maybe Person C will help. On a large scale you’d simply be replacing Person A with Community A, same with B and C. Trade shouldn’t be about moving value, but about meeting needs. So I do not see why money is needed to facilitate that, as even currently we need to keep track of the specific resources that move, but also the value and money that moves with it. Mutual aid would remove the extra record keeping that comes with needing to also track value and money, as well as remove the unbalanced relationship tracking value brings.
By unbalanced relationship I mean that when value is what you are concerned about you don’t care about meeting needs, you care about matching or profitting off of value. Rather than building your economy to meet peoples needs, you build to distribute something of the highest value and profit, which results in those that struggle financially being ignored. Look at tourist economies. Rather than producing a good, they produce a service, that service only really benefits people from away who have the money to spend on being a tourist. The people who live in these areas then struggle to find housing food, entertainment, etc because the communities money and resources are directed to what is profitable, like tourism.
I would like to also say thank you for not being agressive or rude, I am genuinely trying to understand your point of view and simply sharing mine so you can understand where I am coming from. Correct me if I am misunderstanding anything you said.
Edit: sorry I feel like I didn’t address your points here well. With mutual aid I don’t feel like the water bucket analogy works as it is about meeting need, not moving value. If a bucket stagnates then that means they are self reliant, but don’t produce enough to help others. A sweet spot where they don’t need to take anything in, but aren’t doing well enough to help others. And in the case of making sure you aren’t exporting more than you can handle (Holodomor moment), money doesn’t make handling that easier. Money doesnt distinguish between wheat, wood, and cotton. It lumps the value of it all together. To prevent giving too much it would be simpler without money as you would just track the goods themselves, how much you need compared to how much you produce.
That is genuinely the stupidest argument I have ever seen. “Yes a society where property, money, and class is abolished will become slavery.” The reason why slavery in the US was a thing is because of money, property, and class. What you just argued is like those stupid fucking boomer facebook memes where it shows “this is what communism looks like” while showing a picture of like a tent city in the US. How would slavery happen if property is abolished, money is abolished, and class is abolish? There is no structures to force labor, that is the whole point. There would be nothing for someone to hold over anyone as everything they have, everyone else already has. You are literally just making shit up.
Genuinely how? If everyone owns things communally without the use of money as a middleman, how does that result in what we have now?
Please explain why a “gift economy” or mutual aid wouldn’t work on large scale? If anything it would work better as when connections are made with other communities to share resources it increases the varity and abundance of goods and services in your own community. To me, this would be a major incentive to share resources with other communities. The more that is shared, the more you as an individual get to benefit. Where is money needed in this interaction?
Money will always lead to a desire to hoard it. Money creates that greed and is something that should be abolished. Money simply acts as an unnecessary middle man to the distribution of goods. Money has to be abolished alongside the concept of property. Communal ownership is what would allow money to be done away with. And people would work and contribute because they would get to reap the benefits just as much as anyone else. Thats what mutual aid is. The sharing of resources mutually. I give my goods/services to the community which helps the community, and I get to also reap the benefits of what everyone else puts towards the community. And we have the means to meet everyone’s needs now with the technology and productivity we have now.
I am so making this a sticker