It's ok to be angry about capitalism

Ag3ma

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You're inventing a world full of people to pity, a world full of people with no agency in their lives that are clearly not you or anyone you know, because no reasonable person could think of someone they've met that way.
No, I think many people are fairly reflecting upon ways in which they feel they are constrained or have diminished agency: "no agency" is significantly different from "less agency".

If you insist on debating with unreasonable absolutes ("no agency", "no reasonable person", "is there a single person...") you will not meaningfully engage with other people's thoughts, because it's not a yes/no binary.
 

TheMysteriousGX

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At least I use my own experience, and the experiences of those around me, and of others that I am aware of on which to base my views. You're inventing a world full of people to pity, a world full of people with no agency in their lives that are clearly not you or anyone you know, because no reasonable person could think of someone they've met that way.
Man, there's *lists* of "would you like to buy a version of [product] that doesn't involve slave labor". You shouldn't be bragging about how you value anecdotes over statistics.
Is there a single person you've personally interacted with that you'd be willing to look in the eye and say "you're not free because of capitalism, your work isn't your choice at all"?
Yes. Rural areas don't have a lot of job choice.
 

tstorm823

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No, I think many people are fairly reflecting upon ways in which they feel they are constrained or have diminished agency: "no agency" is significantly different from "less agency".

If you insist on debating with unreasonable absolutes ("no agency", "no reasonable person", "is there a single person...") you will not meaningfully engage with other people's thoughts, because it's not a yes/no binary.
The thing is, that question wasn't for you, or any of the people that answered, so your answers don't matter.

But if you're trying to do a relative vs absolute argument, "constrained or have diminished agency" relative to what? If they are fairly reflecting on how they are constrained or have diminished agency in relative terms only, what counterfactual reality are they comparing to? "I wish things were better", "I wish I had more agency" is still an absolute perspective if you have nothing to compare to.
 

Absent

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relative to what?
Relative to what they were hoping for when they risked everything in a strike only to get their teeth smashed in by the uniformed goons of your nonviolent willingly hierarchical model of society ?
 
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Silvanus

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But if you're trying to do a relative vs absolute argument, "constrained or have diminished agency" relative to what? If they are fairly reflecting on how they are constrained or have diminished agency in relative terms only, what counterfactual reality are they comparing to? "I wish things were better", "I wish I had more agency" is still an absolute perspective if you have nothing to compare to.
Relative to other people-- those who, through luck of inheritance or geography, have vastly improved life prospects and access to resources/opportunities.

Or relative to a counterfactual, but highly plausible, alternative in which society was more open to upward mobility/ less cruel and restrictive to the poor.
 
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tstorm823

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Please do not insult other forum users
How convenient.
I mean, I would not offer you the same line of questioning as Terminal Blue. You couldn't even begin to make sense of it.
Relative to other people
That's not a useful metric when considering how your own life might improve.
Or relative to a counterfactual, but highly plausible, alternative in which society was more open to upward mobility/ less cruel and restrictive to the poor.
Would your upwardly mobile, poor-helping improved society include employment? I'm certainly not trying to claim the world can't be made better, but the discussion we're having is the idea that employment takes away freedom. Would a world with no employment give you more agency?
Relative to what they were hoping for when they risked everything in a strike only to get their teeth smashed in by the uniformed goons of your nonviolent willingly hierarchical model of society ?
You think you've made an argument by stating an extreme possibility, but you're also now just comparing to people's literal imaginations. "I imagined something better, therefore capitalism must be torn down" is not a good argument.
 

Silvanus

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That's not a useful metric when considering how your own life might improve.
Absolute bollocks. It shows you what's possible in our current scenario, and how. Its the only metric anybody on this planet has to see how their life may be improved-- outside of pure, 100% guesswork.

Imagine somebody chronically sick, who sees healthy people and wishes they were healthier. They only know their own situation isn't the ordinary, unavoidable nature of living because other people provide a reference point. This person may support (for instance) research into a medicine or a cure, or policies to allow it to be imported, because they know a healthier and more comfortable life is possible.

Now imagine saying to that person that "other people don't provide a useful metric" for knowing what level of health is possible, so therefore they're not being reasonable in wanting to improve their standard of living.

Would your upwardly mobile, poor-helping improved society include employment? I'm certainly not trying to claim the world can't be made better, but the discussion we're having is the idea that employment takes away freedom. Would a world with no employment give you more agency?
It would indeed include employment-- though nowhere close to the model of employment featured in this one.

To clarify, no, the discussion we were having was not whether employment inherently does that. The discussion we were having was focused on the nature of employment in our current situation, where people have no realistic alternative, and must often accept shitty jobs and shitty pay if they want somewhere to live and something to eat.

As I said before, you've conflated a relatively modest statement about employment as it frequently exists in our society-- unavoidable, restrictive and bleak-- with pure utopianism about abolishing all employment.
 

tstorm823

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As I said before, you've conflated a relatively modest statement about employment as it frequently exists in our society-- unavoidable, restrictive and bleak-- with pure utopianism about abolishing all employment.
The disconnect here isn't that I'm responding to the wrong thing, it's that you're attempting to speak for someone else who has very different beliefs than you. Terminal Blue is not one to make a relatively modest statement about employment.

"Someone needs to be forced to do the work", "people work because they have to, not because working is actually rewarding", " Everyone, by nature, is in charge of themselves. Taking away that control requires effort, which is why it's easy to see."

Those are not modest statements on employment. In this estimation, not only do people work out of necessity, they are forced to, by efforts that are allegedly easily seen. You may personally think "we should support people so that they don't feel coerced by businesses that mistreat them." Terminal is talking about the dissolution of capitalism.
 

Silvanus

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The disconnect here isn't that I'm responding to the wrong thing, it's that you're attempting to speak for someone else who has very different beliefs than you. Terminal Blue is not one to make a relatively modest statement about employment.

"Someone needs to be forced to do the work", "people work because they have to, not because working is actually rewarding", " Everyone, by nature, is in charge of themselves. Taking away that control requires effort, which is why it's easy to see."

Those are not modest statements on employment. In this estimation, not only do people work out of necessity, they are forced to, by efforts that are allegedly easily seen. You may personally think "we should support people so that they don't feel coerced by businesses that mistreat them." Terminal is talking about the dissolution of capitalism.
None of those statements actually mean what you've ascribed to them. The dissolution of capitalism doesn't entail the end of all work, for goodness' sake, even according to those who advocate it.

It may be "radical" in the sense of a radical overhaul of the role of work and employment in our society-- a role which currently is coercive, and greatly limiting to freedom. It is only "modest" in comparison with the ridiculous interpretation you've ascribed.

You don't understand what socialists believe, and you're also categorically unwilling to listen to them.
 

Terminal Blue

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You're inventing a world full of people to pity, a world full of people with no agency in their lives that are clearly not you or anyone you know, because no reasonable person could think of someone they've met that way.
You know, I could tell you all kinds of things about my life or the lives of people I know, but let's cut straight to the basic misunderstanding. This isn't how agency works. A person doesn't just "have" or "not have" agency. Agency is mediated. It's like a tabletop RPG. You can make decisions about what your character does, but you're still bound by the rules of the game and sometimes what you want will come up against what the GM wants. Your ability to act is limited, but that's what makes it fun.

In fact, it's more complicated than that, because in an RPG you get to make your character. You decide what kind of person they are, how they feel and react to different situations, you can pick whatever childhood you want for them and decide for yourself how it impacted them. In real life, you don't decide any of those things.

The question of freedom is not whether someone does or doesn't have agency in some absolute sense, but how much agency they have and, in particular, how much agency they have relative to everyone else. When I say that most people aren't free, I don't mean they are literally slaves, and even if they were literally slaves, they would still have a degree of agency. They could resist, they could run away, they could (and in some cases did) face incredible risk and hardship in order to escape slavery. A very cynical and morally bankrupt person who bears no relation to any real person on this forum could use this fact to argue that slaves who didn't resist were choosing to be slaves, and that they must have been happy to be slaves. After all, no reasonable person could think that slaves don't have any agency.

Everyone has choices in their lives, choices that would denote agency, but most people's choices are limited by the position they are in. If your ability to live is dependent on working, then the choice not to work is somewhat academic even if it exists. Again, it doesn't actually matter if you hate your job, you still have to do it. You don't have a choice, not really.

And that isn't intrinsically bad, except that some people do have a choice. Some people don't ever face the risk of not having enough food or of being homeless. Some people are born into or stumble into such fabulous, incomprehensible wealth that their descendants will never have to work for thousands of years. Worse, those people are effectively monopolizing the ability to choose. Their wealth comes from the ability to strip others of any choice save working for their benefit or facing destitution.
 
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Absent

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You think you've made an argument by stating an extreme possibility, but you're also now just comparing to people's literal imaginations. "I imagined something better, therefore capitalism must be torn down" is not a good argument.
It is not an extreme possibility, it is routine "natural hierarchy" in your world. Routine just like women beaten up by their husbands, or raped and victim-blamed for having dared to stroll out at the wrong hour or with the wrong clothing. Just like exiles' homeless people's tents being torn down by cop squads. Like any civil right protesters and minority rights militants who pepper-sprayed or clubbed for your order's preservation. Routine just like institutional violence against people trying to salvage the ecosystem you opted to destroy for profit. Just like the racially profiled people who get harrassed and beaten up by your caste's security service. Just like the asylum seekers who get "pushed back" and drowned while fleeing their countries, so that their sight won't accomodate you. Like those who of them survived only to get destroyed in your concentration camps. Or those who are being hunted like dogs at your borders. Routine like people being thrown out of their houses to appease your bankers after being thrown out of their jobs to appease your shareholders. Just like all the indigeneous people who got slaughtered, acculturated, prostituted, parked into slums, their traditional structures shattered in the name of your god and economy. Just like the slaves of your profit-maximized sweatshops, from whom you expect gratitude. Just like the labouring kids of all the mining companies that you protect in the name of free market and national economy preservation. Just like the carpet bombed villages of your military industry and crypto-colonial endeavours. Like the populations poisoned by the products and the byproducts of the agri-food industry that you shelter from accountability, and whose cognitively manipulative publicists hide behind the notion of "wallet vote". Routine like all the people who don't conform in your obscurantist, imaginary gender categories becoming fair game for murder and psychological annihilation by virtue of not existing for you (just like the states that already implement your desired theocracy torture homosexuals while loudly proclaiming that "there are none" in their countries). Routine like your politicians, industrials and pundits deflecting public frustrations by redirecting them towards whatever vulnerable scapegoat category works best at the time. Routine like populations having to live next to the mountains of waste that your model society dumps at their door. Routine like all the killings by the dictatorships you faithfully support as long as they welcome and protect your most toxic industries. Routine like all the systemic power abuse that women face in the workplace, only to be derided as woke or castrating when they attempt to denounce them. Routine like humans being used, consumed and discarded like cattle, like raw material, by your most glorified heroes. Routine like everything that you hypocritical coward sweep under the rug - just like the ordinary everyday nazis of the 30s avoided wondering about the fate of the jews whose presence was being "solved". Because you don't give a shit about human beings. Heck, you even proudly proclaim in these forums not caring about justice and fairness. And then you want to promote a system in line with your values, expecting what... respect ?

Go. To. Hell.
 
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tstorm823

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And straight to the ad hominem. Stay classy.
It's only ad hominem if it's an attempt at an argument. I was just purely insulting you.
You don't understand what socialists believe, and you're also categorically unwilling to listen to them.
You don't understand the people you think you align with at all. You are philosophically closer to me than Terminal Blue. You are a socialist only in as much as you see it as a useful thing to help people, and any circumstance that it wouldn't you set it aside unhesitantly. That's not a bad thing, that's just being a pragmatist. But you don't seem to notice how little you have in common with the idealists and the contrarians that make up most of this forum.
And that isn't intrinsically bad, except that some people do have a choice.
So your gripe is not people's lack of agency? The issue you see is that anyone gets to not work? Gotta say, I didn't see that one coming. I did not think you would swing to "capitalism is actually bad because some people aren't forced to work. Everyone should be forced to work." If that's your vision of the world, go for it. Everyone working makes the world better. It just seems odd to come from the person who thinks capitalism robs people of agency. Cause like, the truth is that it isn't capitalism making people work to survive, it's reality, it's nature, working to survive is the inescapable human experience (at the societal scale). I expected to be telling you that everyone getting to just choose not to work is a delusional misunderstanding of all of reality, but here we are, somewhere totally different.
Go. To. Hell.
If anyone wants to tl:dr that literal wall of text, I'll give you a free Like. I went crosseyed trying to get through it.

But from what I managed to gather by skimming, you don't understand what the word "routine" means. If you read something in the news, it's categorically not routine. That's what news is.
 

Buyetyen

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It's only ad hominem if it's an attempt at an argument. I was just purely insulting you.
Which is only because you have nothing intelligent to say. Case in point:

You don't understand the people you think you align with at all. You are philosophically closer to me than Terminal Blue. You are a socialist only in as much as you see it as a useful thing to help people, and any circumstance that it wouldn't you set it aside unhesitantly. That's not a bad thing, that's just being a pragmatist. But you don't seem to notice how little you have in common with the idealists and the contrarians that make up most of this forum.
"You don't understand your own opinions and beliefs, so let me explain them to you."

If anyone wants to tl:dr that literal wall of text, I'll give you a free Like. I went crosseyed trying to get through it.
"I have no discipline or patience for any viewpoint that is not my own."

But from what I managed to gather by skimming, you don't understand what the word "routine" means. If you read something in the news, it's categorically not routine. That's what news is.
"You don't understand your own opinions and beliefs, so let me explain them to you."
 

Absent

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. If you read something in the news, it's categorically not routine. That's what news is.
When it's repeated, when it's systemic, it's routine. And none of your avoidance devices will change that. Your denial doesn't redefine reality, it only defines you.

You can only hide from yourself in your biblical fantaisies. You're not hidden from others. We all see you for what you are. An absolute sociopath, incapable of caring for actual humans and reality - and avoiding to have to, by seeking imaginary, pseudo-spiritual, moral referentials instead.
 

tstorm823

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When it's repeated, when it's systemic, it's routine. And none of your avoidance devices will change that. Your denial doesn't redefine reality, it only defines you.

You can only hide from yourself in your biblical fantaisies. You're not hidden from others. We all see you for what you are. An absolute sociopath, incapable of caring for actual humans and reality - and avoiding to have to, by seeking imaginary, pseudo-spiritual, moral referentials instead.
You are shadow boxing your own fantasy villains. Go meet people instead, most of them are kind and lovely, and face none of what you described with any amount of frequency.
"You don't understand your own opinions and beliefs, so let me explain them to you."
It's the other people being misunderstood. Like you. You have nothing in common with either Silvanus or Terminal, you have no beliefs, you don't want the world to be better, you just like to complain and mock things.