bambamramfan blocked me.
What? I’ve never blocked anyone. So confused.
What is but one little lie if it serves the greater cause of Justice, Comrade, eh? Haha.
No but seriously, I have seen some drama around this user, BB. I wouldn’t necessarily assume they are acting in good faith, or are charitable enough to forgive an internet hiccough.
For the record to third parties, I have argued repeatedly with BB without getting blocked, and haven’t seen any indications of them blocking anyone yet.
There’s a lot of… dialogue about monogamy vs polyamory these days, in our cosmopolitan little bubble. No one wants to tell others which lifestyle you should choose so I wouldn’t call it a debate, but there’s a great deal of defending “how your lifestyle works, and why you’re happy with it” that can’t save itself from becoming discourse about the two main options.
This happens enough that we fail to recognize that no, polyamory just won. We all live in its world now.
Or more accurately, we all live free of monogamous ideology now.
Case in point. I have a friend, and she’s monogamously committed to her boyfriend. Sure, she hangs out with a lot of other boys. She even visits them by herself, and crashes in their bed. She’s generous with hugs and other mild displays of physical affection to men. And she kind of pines after some specific men, wishing for greater emotional attachment. This isn’t even hidden, it’s all openly acknowledged. But, this is the definition of monogamy she and her SO have worked out.
The reaction of people from her social circle, the people from our general social bubble is “fine. Whatever works for the two of you. If that’s what you call monogamy, I have no reason to disagree with you.” There’s no call for us to try to strictly define what monogamy should mean for them.
Let me assure you, this is not how it would work under monogamous ideology. In a society where monogamy was the reigning lifestyle choice, it includes a specific definition of monogamy, and “being too touchy with other men” would definitely violate that. Even with her partner’s consent, she would be found guilty of breaking social taboos. (Which is basically how her non-cosmopolitan co-workers react.)
But none of us (which I assume includes most of my readers) give a fuck. Call yourself polyamorous, monogamish, what the fuck ever. As long as you both are happy what business is it of mine? And that is the true spirit of polyamory - anarchism towards society wide definitions of romantic relationships.
You might individually choose to snuggle with just one person, and hopefully can get that special person to agree. But it’s very different when that’s a private agreement between two people (one which can be altered at any time they want), than when it’s an arrangement coded and enforced by the whole social world. And we just don’t have that in liberal cosmopolitania any more.
After all, one of the main benefits of monogamy was that you don’t have to negotiate shit. You’re together, you’re just dating each other, these are the default rules, and for people who don’t want to process and explicitly lay out their preferences, this is a lot easier. But that’s gone now - any couple does have to figure out whether they are poly or mono, and even if they are mono, where they feel those boundaries lie, because ain’t no one else doing that regulating for them.
I am… really really troubled by the idea that “monogamous ideology” exists. Or that if you don’t have a bad ideology, you have “poly ideology,” even if you have said “FUCK OFF, I’M NOT POLY” more than once.
Anti-poly ideology exists, yes.
But monogamy can mean anything from “I am attracted to one person at a time” to “I want three girlfriends but think God must hate me” to “more just sounds like a brain-breaking logistical nightmarish time suck, I’m good” to “you know, in practice I only ever dated one person at a time.”
The idea that that adds up to an ideology is why I… feel perhaps more suspicious than I should of loud poly people.
I don’t date one person at a time to spite people who don’t. I do it because I don’t like sensory overload.
I feel you did not read this post.
The point is not “be monogamous or be polyamorous.”
The point is that ideology is a society wide phenomenon, and it is not located solely in the individual.
Under monogamous ideology, not only were most people monogamous (at least publicly), but what monogamy meant and enforcement of following this code was a public matter.
If you live in a bubble where polyamory is accepted now, then you also live in a bubble where no one is defining monogamy for you. You can make up the definition of monogamy to fit your relationship. It can include “cuddling other people is ok but no sex”, or hell, it can include “having sex with other people is okay but we still call it monogamy because we want to” and no one is really going to criticize you for that.
Guess what. This freedom is new. It’s a result of living under polyamory, which exists outside just the individual.
(It’s also a burden. It means when you start dating someone, you need to clarify whether your relationship is poly or mono, and if it’s mono what those boundaries are. You can no longer just assume the default rules. Some people understandably loathe this.)
Transitioning from “the rules of my romantic relationship are defined by the social structure around me” to “I get to / must choose the rules” is a big step. But it’s a culture-wide step, and can’t exist solely on the individual level, anymore than “I decide to have private property” is a decision solely by the individual. Both need the social structures that support them.
There’s no escaping this. It’s not saying “polyamory is an ideology yay”, but rather “your society is going to have an ideology about how much freedom people can expect in defining their relationships.” This has always been true, and will be true in the future.
You can say “FUCK OFF I’M NOT POLY” all you want, but I bet if your partner cheats on you none of your friends are going to immediately tell you (at least, as compared to how likely they were to under monogamy), because that’s now your business and not theirs to enforce. This is the anarchy I am talking about.
(And obviously, the current polyamory acceptance only exists in a few very specific bubbles, and monogamous ideology holds sway in most of America and the world still.)
I can and will tell anyone if I find their partner cheating. I can and will ostracize people from my social groups for cheating. I can and will abandon anyone that knows if my partner is cheating and fails to inform me. Fuck the ideology. I’m physically instantiating my own reality, whether they want me to or not.
The people behind this shift have no idea what it is that they’re unleashing.
Wrapping up this weekend of posts talking about the future, I’d like to ask a question.
A few weeks ago someone pointed out that the anti-SJW crowd is so cavalier towards Trump because they can’t really imagine our country ending up anywhere to the right of where we currently are. There might be some policy change in the tax rate, but fundamentally, campus activists will be arguing for corporations and the US government to stop oppressing numerous identities, and corps and the gov will condescendingly humor them.
Which sounded accurate (especially as rightists would argue I was wrong about things, but not actually deny that particular mindset,) but it raised a broader question - can any of us imagine a significantly different future than now?
Think about the strangeness of today’s situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global [liberal democratic capitalism] is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it’s much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in [liberal democratic capitalism] . - Zizek
So what does everyone reading this think things will look like ten, twenty, or thirty years from now? Yes we can joke a lot about potential disaster scenarios (apocalypse, Big Brother, fast takeoff, the Social Justice Internationale) but uh, seriously, what do you think that will look like? What would living in it be like?
Do you think a fascist takeover no-for-real is likely? Will there be an underground? What will happen to the internet? Will we go backwards on racial justice and if so in what ways?
On the other side, does anyone think the forces of progressivism can win? Not just keep their head above water, but actually establish enough equality to make racism and sexism less pressing issues? What the hell does that look like?
Or even if your a techno-utopian who thinks some of these life changing developments (immortality, super AI, brain upload) will happen within 30 years, what will that uptake practically look like? Will everyone in the world get it on day 1? If not, how will it be distributed? How long will it take before more than the 10% richest people in the world benefit from it? 50%? Everyone? In the interim what does a world with radically powerful technologies in only the hand of a few look like to you?
I want to be more imaginative, and have at least some idea of what a medium-term future is that isn’t just more “Democrats and Republicans without progress fight and young people whine about it on the internet.” But do we even have the capability to take it seriously?
If you like, I could brainstorm some more exotic alternate futures.
In practical terms, however, I think the tech won’t be addressed until it is closer and looms in the public imagination. Same with lots of other issues.
Sorry if I was unclear (to @wirehead-wannabe too.) I mean what do you really think is a likely possibility for the 10-30 year timeframe.
A lot of decisions to pursue the normal career path don’t really make sense if you think within 20 years the world will look like a crapsack. And if you think fascism is really coming, writing easily search criticism of it is also a bad idea (same for if you really believed the Left was going to be sending enemies to the gulag.) Investing in retirement vehicles or long term assets would be absurd.
But most people don’t, and they act as if they are preparing for a life of perpetual liberal capitalism. I guess I can only think of survivalists or MIRI not fitting that, but I’m sure there are plenty of other groups putting their money where there mouth is.
What are non-liberal futures you see that you think might really happen, enough to consider life choices around?
Actually, as a combination of technological developments, lack of resource shortages so far, and the election of Trump, my estimates of the risks of global nuclear war and total collapse have gone down, even though my estimates of necessity of geoengineering have gone up. I was wanting to increase my level of survivability, and I still do to a degree, but less so now.
Which is basically the opposite of the Left’s reaction to him. But I’m a Nationalist (though I did not vote for Trump), and Trump’s election felt unreal - the Establishment was freaking out about him, even on the Right. So that meant it actually is possible to break out of the Establishment and its goals, possibly even lower the amount of unnecessary war, maybe.
If he is successful, Trump may shift the Republicans into a sort of Populist party that cares less about wedge social issues and less about raw exploitation and exporting all of the nation’s intellectual property/capital for short-term gains now. We’re seeing movement on the H1B issue, which was something big business desperately wanted, so while my estimate of environmental risks has gone down, my estimate of indestructible corporate oligarchy has also gone down (even as it went up for most leftists).
Don’t discount the possibility that Trump will be somewhat successful. His immigration plan is going to tighten the labor market, and non-citizen immigrants don’t get to vote. He also isn’t fundamentally committed to hard right capitalist policies economically.
The most probable non-liberal outcome for the United States is a military coup after some combination of factors. Leftists lack the power to conduct a violent overthrow of the government, and the power of the US military is immense. I don’t think it would be a civil war. I also wouldn’t expect the coup forces to be hard right or to be sympathetic to hard racism - rather to just continue to let racial problems go unresolved. Likewise, they wouldn’t be Communist, but probably some kind of Capitalist economic Nationalists with some eventual level of corruption. The coup would lower economic output, but probably not wipe out all savings.
(Edit: I think the coup forces might target Muslims, but I think other groups such as Hindus and Buddhists would be left alone. (People worry about Islam spreading and undermining all of society, but only worry about Hindus as competition for jobs, which is way less pressure.) One of the groups at risk are Chinese immigrants, depending on the actions of the PRC and if it becomes way more dangerous than it currently is, instead of starting to succumb to the problems it has allowed to build up. Gays probably wouldn’t be pushed on too hard since they’re already in the military, and might even be used as a justification to exclude Muslims. They are even some transgender veterans, though they would be at higher risk.)
It’s also possible that California may leave the Union for real - the difference in values is increasing. If they do, I think they’ll be let go, and maybe the rest of the West coast will follow them. In this case, the US will start to be split into multiple countries and will shift right politically without the heavy blue weight of California.
Like, seriously the only way that I can ever be okay with being recorded 24/7 every time I’m in public is if I can manage to never be obligated to go out in public for the rest of my life. People don’t get to record my weird stims, or my awkward pacing, or my no reason boners, or my subvocalized suicidal ideation. How the fuck do people not think of this as a problem.
@rosetintedkaleidoscope @the-real-seebs @vastderpIs being recorded that much worse than being seen?
Being recorded creates hard physical evidence
Which is a big deal if anyone needs to accuse you of a crime but kind of irrelevant if there’s terabytes of the stuff no one ever looks at.
Believe me, if I had the option of not being watched I would absolutely take it
I feel like this is somewhat related to the Big Other conversation I’ve been having with bambamramfan.
I genuinely don’t understand why people don’t want to be observed. I don’t feel the threat of being observed. But there are a few different components to this:
Basically agreed with @jadagul. I did not want to intercede because I respected @wirehead-wannabe ‘s emotions on the matter, and it did not seem like a good time to contradict.
The people arguing for “why they need public recordings” were giving terrible explanations of course. It was basically the panopticon “but for our morality”. There’s so many reasons to mistrust that. And anyone would feel only further alienated under that.
However privacy itself is not a solution to feeling afraid of the judgment of the Big Other. What would help is actual acceptance.
Let us use “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” as an example. LGBTQ were not allowed to serve in the military. So they requested privacy laws to protect them, a stop gap solution. But even with that, you’d always be afraid that somehow your privacy was being violated. This just breeds paranoia. No one can ever really trust that others will follow the liberal right (privacy in this case), so everyone is looking over their shoulder.
The actual solution was to… accept gay people, and not expect them to hide behind a shield they can’t fully count on. So eventually we repealed DADT and just made being gay in the military fine.
Basically every other concern about privacy seems like that? The actual solution is for you to not be judged for your stimming and other actions, and for you to not be afraid of the judgment of Big Other. Until then privacy is a stop gap, but it’s a stop gap that will cause significant emotional distress (because you can’t deep down really believe people will respect the privacy.)
I respect WW’s desire for it of course, but like, it’s not a coincidence that the people most relying on respect for privacy are miserable.
They’re never going to accept everything. Everyone will always fight for social status, and recording enables many-to-one bullying on a scale not previously feasible. The slim majority doing the bullying will support it right up until the moment they’re in the crosshairs, because they think they have nothing to fear, because many of them are pretty vanilla, so MAD won’t work.
That’s why privacy is so important.
Edit: Privacy allows people to shrink their social attack surfaces. I need it. Plus, legal system issues - legal systems don’t always secure people enough. The lists go on and on.
I accept everything.
tumblr shows me these two posts of yours in a row.
If you believe one, then it follows you would believe the other.
I disagree with both, by the same logic.
I want to escape Hell.
I’d be more convinced by the people who want social technology that makes Hell more tolerable, if they did not seem so incredibly miserable trying to hang onto it.
Privacy is dying. Almost every pretense we have at liberal atomism is failing. I’m not saying it’s a good thing but you can’t turn back the clock. There are other, better solutions instead. Support the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
I’m going to have to go with @mitigatedchaos on both the above points, I think. I don’t seriously think escape is possible, so I’m not inclined to take long bets on utopia.
Practically speaking, though, privacy is eroding very rapidly without any specific effort, that much is also true. Given that, an all-directions radical panopticon might be the best option just because it would make the problem visible and costly to the largest possible number of people. which would be more equitable and would spur a strong interest in countermeasures. But since that’s the “burn your town to deny it to the enemy” option, it seems like a bad idea to sacrifice existing privacy measures (even those that rely on obscurity alone) in the interests of accelerationism. One day those measures will be gone anyway, but there’s no sense in rushing it.
@discoursedrome
There is privacy, however, in buildings and online.
Privacy will still exist in VR, where we can create and cast off identities and be free.
But I agree, accelerationism will just cause more damage for no net gain. In this case, I believe that we’re actually going to have to make laws to protect people from many-to-one attacks like some sort of Harassment RICO. I don’t particularly like it because I’m worried about side effects, but this problem didn’t exist at this level before.
If there were actually a state I trusted to do it (and there isn’t), I’d use a Great Firewall to yank entire harassment-source videos off the Internet and throw the violating posters in jail.
Believe me, I’m really glad overall acceptance of harmless things is increasing.
Oh yes, by all means let us blow up all of society for a utopia that has never come in the past and may well never exist in the future.
Sorry, that was too uncharitable.
Not everyone has the same degree of Openness as you, and installing that into everyone would require some kind of massive violation - I’m not sure which yet, but I legitimately don’t believe it’s all the result of cultural brainwashing, so the measures that I expect to be required are terrifying.
Which is ironic, since I support removing DADT literally even though I very much don’t support removing it metaphorically.
The point is your planned utopia will not happen, so all that will result is that the shields of people such as myself and @wirehead-wannabe will be removed, and we will be made even more targets for social status gain than we are now. It might be through the existing framework, or it might be through some new inverted exotic alien SJ framework, but we will be targets. There will still be selfish people, there will still be liars, there will still be politics that gives liars reasons to not only lie to others but to themselves. No ideology has ever entirely defeated this.
And to even get that far, you’re going to have to kill religion. And that’s going to require murdering lots and lots of people.
You say I seem miserable, but I have people I love, and people that love me, and I’m safe, and I can think all sorts of strange things and discuss them with people I care about, I just have to control who has access to which facets of my life. Like, if you think I actually want a revolution, then you are massively over-estimating just how miserable I am.
Regarding my disdain for talking about “Contradictions in Capitalism”:
My choice of animals as an example was quite deliberate. The idea that “contradictions” within a system will collapse it is in contrast to how systems are physically realized. This world is chock full of animals that are slowly destroyed by the very same chemical processes that enable them to live and grow in the first place. Some aspects of aging, particularly ones aimed at preventing unregulated cell multiplication, are most likely anti-cancer mechanisms. Cancer itself could be read similarly - the same mechanisms of cell replication we depend on to exist will almost inevitably become corrupted through prolonged use and environmental damage and eventually turn on us.
Other things that are contradictory on the surface may be, at deeper levels, attempts to adapt to physical constraints.
So, to me, talking about “contradictions in capitalism” feels a lot like saying “hah, that elephant is a product of cell replication, but cell replication will eventually destroy him!” It doesn’t feel like any sort of deep insight, and despite the inevitable destruction of the original elephant, elephants continue on anyway.
One might as well talk about “Contradictions in Communism” as applied to mere human beings at that rate. If systems are actually destroyed through internal systematic/philosophical contradictions, then surely it must have them.
(Someone actually ideologically committed to Capitalism on a moral level, rather than someone who considers it an amoral (not immoral) resource allocation algorithm to be cynically used, would be better-suited to fishing out “Contradictions in Communism”. I don’t think in a “Contradictions in X” way about systems generally, so I never bothered to cache such things.)
Any replacement system will still require profit of some kind, since circumstances inevitably vary, and without net profit you’ll have to eventually eat into your capital during tough years, until it is finally depleted.
I think my main response to this, and I do not mean this in a dismissive way, is… okay?
Like if you’re okay with your system being contradictory, I can’t prove you wrong, and I don’t aim to change your opinion. I don’t even know how one could prove someone wrong who was already acknowledged in a state of contradiction. If you’re cool with the system, good, have fun.
I guess my only addition would be that the state of contradiction (and its collapse) is not evenly spread out over everyone. Some people are effected by those impossible demands in two directions much more than other people in the system. My perennial example is the unemployed person who is both unable to find a job, and called lazy for not having a job. But there’s also the mother who runs herself ragged trying to “have it all”. And there’s the Republican who has to explain how we’re “keeping the government’s hands off medicare.” And the early career woman who worries about being too bossy for the sexists in her office, but also not assertive enough to live up to her feminist idols.
A lot of individual people have to deal with contradictory demands, sometimes so hard they break. I have enormous compassion for them, and I really want to tell those people “It’s okay. The contradictory demands you face are impossible and I don’t blame you for failing to meet them.”
The other thought is just an empirical one: liberal capitalism is meeting unprecedented challenges. Not from the communism-outside, but from its own polities kicking the outhouse over. You can say some level of contradiction is tolerable for a while, but what do you do when the elephant seems to be finally dying? That again, is an empirical observation and it may be wrong, but you should probably respect that’s how some people feel about the radical polarization of this country and the collapse of trusted liberal institutions.
As I am not only a Communist but also a Transhumanist, I am perfectly within my rights to see your elephant metaphor and raise you a great big fucking “Why yes, this is an excellent example of why we should all upgrade to delicious machine bodies as quickly as possible.”
Also, I don’t think that you understand the meaning of “profit” as it’s being discussed in this context. There are multiple senses of the word, because we are not Reverse Oceania and we do not restrict words to having only one definition so that each word is perfectly, utterly precise.
In Communist thought it is totally plausible for a group of e.g. farmers to grow more grain than is necessary to meet the group’s needs, and then save this for a period of famine. There is a sense of the word “profit” that excludes this case but include’s e.g. ExxonMobil. If you’re reading an essay on Communism that seems to despise the idea of producing surplus in general, then either that’s a very stupid essay and not representative of Communist thought in general or you’re misunderstanding, which in fairness could be attributed to poor writing (in which case I hope that this helps).
As I am not only a Communist but also a Transhumanist, I am perfectly within my rights to see your elephant metaphor and raise you a great big fucking “Why yes, this is an excellent example of why we should all upgrade to delicious machine bodies as quickly as possible.”
I am a Transhumanist, actually. Still, somehow, these mere human bodies have managed to conquer Earth, despite their mortality.
Although of course not all Communists are like this, having seen Transhumanism treated as a topic of “rich white nerd greed” before doesn’t get me excited about prospects for life extension under Communism, since it seems like it would get immediately drowned out by “what about the third world?” (Whether that’s halting research to spend the money on developing nations, or redistributing all resources to the point that it shuts down technological development because “justice”, etc etc.)
Also, I don’t think that you understand the meaning of “profit” as it’s being discussed in this context. There are multiple senses of the word, because we are not Reverse Oceania and we do not restrict words to having only one definition so that each word is perfectly, utterly precise.
In Communist thought it is totally plausible for a group of e.g. farmers to grow more grain than is necessary to meet the group’s needs, and then save this for a period of famine.
Aside from having seen arguments about “use-based economics”, it becomes more challenging as this principle of only buffering is extended to all sectors of the economy. The current prosperity is in many ways a product of never being fully satisfied, continuing to pursue advancement until the entire context is transformed. It’s like the difference between producing enough iron to make plows and horseshoes and swords, and continuously choosing “Produce MORE Iron” until you can build entire buildings out of steel.
If you’ve been enjoying this analysis, and think you enjoy superhero stories with rich themes regarding moral philosophy, you should try Strong Female Protagonist.
Tagline: “What are you going to do, punch poverty in the face?”
Well you could always turn a crank repeatedly for a while.
I’d actually been looking for this comic as I had forgotten to bookmark it and forgot what it was called. Many super powers, however, can be monetized, and then the money distributed through a charitable foundation. Just imagine how much money can be saved on rocket launches for a start. Or freezing an enormous chunk of salt water into ice and then moving it, as superman is able to. Wealthy people would pay handsomely to nearly teleport packages. The question is, since they are distributed randomly, do you get one of these monetizable super powers, or do you get some seemingly useless power like the ability to see cats through walls?
The other issue being, of course, that states need supers to defend against other supers.
We could do many things more efficiently with superpowers. That’s called technology.
The question every generation needs to ask itself, is why are the fruits of this technology not shared equitably among all, like the dreams of the previous generation said they would be?
Keynes on the 15 hour work week that we’d have any day now.
I don’t say this all just to be a socialist troll. I legitimately worry that many people I respect are putting great effort into developing technologies they hope will free everyone from work, and will be heartbroken when they are hoarded and artificially limited from 90% of the population.
If it makes you feel better, as a software developer I generally vote left-wing for this very reason. But you probably gathered that already from my support for wage subsidies/UBI, and self-reports of trying to scare people out of economically right-wing views using the coming robot jobpocalypse. (Not that I think most of the tech is being “artificially” limited in availability.)
Though I do wish they’d quit using identity politics against me, trying to kill Nationalism, giving free passes to foreign religions on contrarianism, and trying to make open borders a reality, among many, many other things.
In fact, I’m growing in confidence that I will be considered “right wing” in ten or twenty years, even though my positions won’t have changed significantly.
Anonymous asked:
sadoeconomist answered:
Well, I’m sure there is but I can’t think of any right now.
It’s a shibboleth for people who are not just anti-capitalist but dialectical materialists, which is the Marxist equivalent of millennarian religion. It’s like hearing someone say that we’re living in the End Times, you know that there’s not going to be a lot of productive dialogue with someone after that.
They’re like a secular version of the Millerites, they keep predicting an apocalypse that never happens. You’ve really got to question what part of their personality draws these folks to a doomsday cult, and you’ve got to question their reasoning ability when their predictions have failed to come true over and over and yet they still stick to their same doctrines.
I honestly thought it was a joke.
It is sometimes used to refer to the kind of capitalism we have right now, where such things as the Laborpocalypse do seem to be looming rather high.
What do you mean by ‘Laborpocalypse’ exactly
I was going to guess you were referring to Tony Blair returning to politics but that’d be a ‘Labourpocalypse’
By “Laborpocalypse”, I mean economic/techological/social developments that collapse labor relations as we know them.
The conventional example would be the appearance of robots that can do enough tasks cheaper than human workers that there is little hope of keeping the unemployment rate under, say, 80%.
Man, I was really hoping you weren’t going to say that, I don’t want to have the Neo-Luddism argument again
If you want my opinion on what’s wrong with that idea send me an ask, otherwise let’s just leave it at ‘I disagree’
I don’t think the term Late Stage Capitalism is about the oncoming labor apocalypse so much as “given decades to feed its own recursive cycle, capitalism looks a lot different now than it did in Marx’s time when industrialization was just coming to fruition.”
Primarily, it’s about the opinion that a lot more wealth production is in finance and sales than in the “making stuff” sectors. It’s also about soaring inequality and anomie, and alieving those are a result of unfettered capitalism for so long.
So in late stage capitalism, a really smart kid… aces their SATs, moves across the country to go to an Ivy League, after graduation moves to working at an investment bank, and spends most of their money on New York rent, ethnic cuisine, and electronic products manufactured in China. Is this an improvement over them staying home and just being an effective manager of the family banana stand chain? Who can say.
man now I want to see the neo-luddism argument
someone needs to make, like, a Museum of Arguments.
Is it not The Worst Mistake In History?
I don’t think that’s the one SE has in mind, though.
I think the one SE has in mind is that you cannot have all three of the set { High Artificial Intelligence, Humans, Capitalism } at once, so you must sacrifice one. Otherwise, Humanity gets washed away by the Robot Jobpocalypse.
For true-blooded Capitalists who view Capitalism as a system tied into morality itself, believing in property rights and free association and the like as being inherent elements of morality rather than purely contingent ones, it’s a fundamental challenge to one’s worldview. Kind of like a very large collective action problem, like climate change, which has a very high payoff for individuals defecting.
Of course, “Neo Luddism” implies sacrificing “Artificial Intelligence” rather than “Capitalism”, which would represent an enormous cost in terms of lost future wealth. You already know my response, which is to slowly sacrifice larger chunks of “Capitalism” over time.
Regarding my disdain for talking about “Contradictions in Capitalism”:
My choice of animals as an example was quite deliberate. The idea that “contradictions” within a system will collapse it is in contrast to how systems are physically realized. This world is chock full of animals that are slowly destroyed by the very same chemical processes that enable them to live and grow in the first place. Some aspects of aging, particularly ones aimed at preventing unregulated cell multiplication, are most likely anti-cancer mechanisms. Cancer itself could be read similarly - the same mechanisms of cell replication we depend on to exist will almost inevitably become corrupted through prolonged use and environmental damage and eventually turn on us.
Other things that are contradictory on the surface may be, at deeper levels, attempts to adapt to physical constraints.
So, to me, talking about “contradictions in capitalism” feels a lot like saying “hah, that elephant is a product of cell replication, but cell replication will eventually destroy him!” It doesn’t feel like any sort of deep insight, and despite the inevitable destruction of the original elephant, elephants continue on anyway.
One might as well talk about “Contradictions in Communism” as applied to mere human beings at that rate. If systems are actually destroyed through internal systematic/philosophical contradictions, then surely it must have them.
(Someone actually ideologically committed to Capitalism on a moral level, rather than someone who considers it an amoral (not immoral) resource allocation algorithm to be cynically used, would be better-suited to fishing out “Contradictions in Communism”. I don’t think in a “Contradictions in X” way about systems generally, so I never bothered to cache such things.)
Any replacement system will still require profit of some kind, since circumstances inevitably vary, and without net profit you’ll have to eventually eat into your capital during tough years, until it is finally depleted.
I think my main response to this, and I do not mean this in a dismissive way, is… okay?
Like if you’re okay with your system being contradictory, I can’t prove you wrong, and I don’t aim to change your opinion. I don’t even know how one could prove someone wrong who was already acknowledged in a state of contradiction. If you’re cool with the system, good, have fun.
I guess my only addition would be that the state of contradiction (and its collapse) is not evenly spread out over everyone. Some people are effected by those impossible demands in two directions much more than other people in the system. My perennial example is the unemployed person who is both unable to find a job, and called lazy for not having a job. But there’s also the mother who runs herself ragged trying to “have it all”. And there’s the Republican who has to explain how we’re “keeping the government’s hands off medicare.” And the early career woman who worries about being too bossy for the sexists in her office, but also not assertive enough to live up to her feminist idols.
A lot of individual people have to deal with contradictory demands, sometimes so hard they break. I have enormous compassion for them, and I really want to tell those people “It’s okay. The contradictory demands you face are impossible and I don’t blame you for failing to meet them.”
The other thought is just an empirical one: liberal capitalism is meeting unprecedented challenges. Not from the communism-outside, but from its own polities kicking the outhouse over. You can say some level of contradiction is tolerable for a while, but what do you do when the elephant seems to be finally dying? That again, is an empirical observation and it may be wrong, but you should probably respect that’s how some people feel about the radical polarization of this country and the collapse of trusted liberal institutions.
Like if you’re okay with your system being contradictory, I can’t prove you wrong, and I don’t aim to change your opinion. I don’t even know how one could prove someone wrong who was already acknowledged in a state of contradiction. If you’re cool with the system, good, have fun.
This is were I think the “moral aspect” factor comes in. It doesn’t really make sense, especially when a lot of the close alternatives will produce worse outcomes, to say “Capitalism is contradictory” unless it’s being used as a moral system.
There are people such as Libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists who do use it as a moral system, as well as various other right-wingers who don’t understand the true power of AI yet. (The latter group I am having mixed success on winning over.) “Your espoused moral system is contradictory” works as a critique for them, certainly. (I’d go so far as to say that the Anarcho-Capitalists are unwitting enemies of humanity.)
But otherwise, it’s like saying “your elephant is mortal”, and like, I know my elephant is mortal, I’ve looked at a number of elephants and this one and its close relatives were the best ones I could find. I’ve heard people claim immortal elephants exist, but I’ve never seen one.
A lot of individual people have to deal with contradictory demands, sometimes so hard they break. I have enormous compassion for them, and I really want to tell those people “It’s okay. The contradictory demands you face are impossible and I don’t blame you for failing to meet them.”
And it’s good to show these people compassion, but I think the presence of contradictory demands is going to be a thing so long as tradeoffs must be made - and thanks to opportunity cost, which still very much exists under Communism, there are always going to be tradeoffs. In other words, I don’t think Capitalism is particularly special in this regard. (Again, unless one is using it as a moral system.)
Certainly, attempts at Communism have resulted in collisions with reality, where someone is subjected to contradictory expectations, which are partially responsible for the black markets and corruption that resulted.
The other thought is just an empirical one: liberal capitalism is meeting unprecedented challenges. Not from the communism-outside, but from its own polities kicking the outhouse over. You can say some level of contradiction is tolerable for a while, but what do you do when the elephant seems to be finally dying?
The problem is, aside from wage subsidies or basic share/income, which are still within the same species of elephant, I don’t really see a better elephant right now.
@rustingbridges wrote
to be fair, our society at present has a deeply confused idea of what marriage is for, and this can be seen as a symptom of that
(I don’t particularly care what marriage is for. Expression of romantic love, or child-having, or some package of legal rights, whichever is fine. I’m just annoyed we can’t pick. Do one thing and do it well, y'kno)
and now for the hot read as: unnecessarily disagreeable take: in a world where the government (and a large tax base) pays the floor healthcare costs of random persons, it’s totally reasonable for them to be interested in banning things that will increase their costs. If these things have sufficiently few supporters and many detractors, guess which way we’re going to go in a democracy?
There’s definitely a legal argument for banning cousin marriage – @mitigatedchaos also touches on that in their reply here, for instance, and they’re not wrong per se. I’m skeptical that this sort of law does enough good to justify the loss of liberty, given that most people have a natural aversion to the behaviour in question and it’s the sort of thing that mainly becomes a problem when a lot of people do it over time, but certainly the state gets up to worse things for worse reasons.
But that doesn’t make a case that it’s less moral than anything with similarly deleterious effects – even from the most interventionist angle it’s, at best, an argument about picking your battles. My objection is that arguments against incest tend to be built around the idea that it’s a unique moral evil in a way that can’t really be supported by arguments from health or genetics. If people want to make pragmatic cost/benefit arguments that’s worth doing, but they need to get down off their high horse on the topic and onto a smaller horse that’s more within their means.
You spend how many hours talking with rationalists and public policy theorists about the nature of morality, evidence based interventions, and not shaming people for having politically unpopular beliefs.
Then someone brings up a taboo sexual activity, and it’s all “well if they had kids that might be bad so it seems proportionate to say anything romantic or sexual they do should be shamed. I mean just think of the medical bills for their hypothetical kids they never considered having.”
The challenge isn’t getting uninformed people to have good principles, it’s getting even thoughtful people to apply them instead of knee-jerk rationalizations.
This depends heavily on one’s opinion of the general population and their susceptibility to complex memes that depend on a careful analysis of information.
If one is optimistic, switching to the “it’s okay not to taboo this kind of incest socially, even if we will argue to them not to have kids” seems reasonable.
If one is pessimistic, then tearing away the current taboo won’t result in proportionate response, but rather no response.
An optimal political response isn’t actually available, and the odds that someone will be foreveralone if they can’t be with their cousin are pretty low, just leaving the taboo for now seems prudent, with the time limit of the next generation of genetic repair/enhancement technology.
Also we’ve had experiments with “societies that allow cousin marriage”, and it doesn’t look good.
This is an argument that we can’t have nuanced or moderate norms, because people will only listen to extremes.
It’s also an argument that our concern is “someone being forever alone”, and not “having the freedom to choose whatever they want romantically so long as its consensual.”
I’m not particularly invested in defending the rights of cousin-daters, so much as I am utterly flabbergasted at how people would never use this sort of logic in a serious debate, let alone tolerate it from their ideological opponents, but bring it up in taboo situations to justify feelings of ickyness.
It’s the damn Electoral College argument all over again. Yes, you are clever. All of rattumb is very clever. You can come up with nominal arguments against anything. Are they good arguments? Should they be taken as the same weight as the default ethical principles like “the person with more votes wins” and “let people do what they want.”)
Like imagine you wanted to date someone of the same sex, and a conservative was using the arguments of the form presented in this thread, as reasons you can’t. How upset would you be.
You haven’t noticed how opening the floodgates on gender many decades ago is already leading us in this direction? There is no stopping point - which might be okayish once we hit the Transhuman era and most of the negative consequences are removed, but before then there will be consequences and not all of us support atomistic individualism.
At issue is that rightists cannot tell what isn’t a risk and leftists cannot tell what is a risk.
Homosexuality is not contagious and isn’t particularly harmful. It also doesn’t make children. It doesn’t even really alter the dynamics of the straight dating market much. However, it would be a problem if it hit 20-40% of the population because as a species we depend on reproduction. (So if the situation were different then I would have a different opinion. But it isn’t, so gay marriage promotes membership in society, family, etc.)
But I will hold the line on polygamy, which is really the harmful polygyny when normalized, and we can see what happens in countries where it is common. I will hold the line on cousin marriage, which not only increases genetic risks but undermines nations. And of course, the taboo must be held on pedos.
These things have consequences far beyond the individual, and if your response on cousin marriage is “oh we’re going to make it legal but don’t worry, no one will use it anyway”, then why make it legal in the first place?
The ideological tools used to break down the barrier will prevent us from doing anything about it, like banning cousin marriages from producing children. On some level you must know that.
This cartoon, published in The New Yorker, is upsetting men today. The cartoonist is Will McPhail, who is good at capturing the moment.
U mad bro? U mad? Plz? Mad plz?
*reads description to the side of it* “It says here the artist meant X.”
Alternately: “I think/Perhaps it means X.”
Do you get the same response as if you were bloviating? If so, stage exit left.
It’s hilarious because the cartoon by itself reads as an insult to the woman, who is offering bait and switch conversational tactics. It’s super easy to imagine this exact cartoon being written by some anti-feminist, critiquing the conversational traps men have to deal with.
(Not to mention the heuristic that “if only one person is speaking in a cartoon, they are usually the punchline.”)
But, because of the context (a high profile cosmopolitan yet very bland and conformist magazine), audiences assume it must be criticizing the silent male, and that it is also doing so unfairly. So they both presume the nature of the joke, then criticize it for delivering it badly.
Weird.
@youzicha replied to your text post
is it really so weird? As e.g. agoodcartoon illustrates, political cartoons can often be read two ways and you need to use information about where it was published to pin down how many layers of irony it was on. If this one was explicitly targetting the woman, presumably (a different subset of) people would still hate it. Either way, it seems the artist is just trolling us.
I did not mean the cartoon was weird, so much as the reaction, which as you say seems to depend on the idea that the cartoon is “trolling” us.
What’s weird is to see a cartoon, and rather than read the message that is there, to do a two step process whereby you assume there is another message (hating men) and complain that it is delivered badly. (And indeed, it does not read as a convincing denunciation of mansplaining at all.)
Had the joke more effectively critiqued mansplaining (”When I said the picture had multiple possible meanings, I wasn’t asking you to tell me which was the right one,”) then their would have been less offense taken, which is really quite ironic.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
