Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Give me a boring Social Democrat over a revolutionary Communist any day of the week.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@zvaigzdelasas

“surplus value” is critiqued within capitalism not because it’s a priori bad to create more of something than you need to fill your own needs, but because capitalists by definition appropriate that surplus for themselves without having done anything which creates value in and of itself. This is what “profit” means within capitalism; not just more of something, but an exploitative impersonal relation which drives destructiveness and sickness.

This isn’t a fully-accurate picture, as it completely ignores the existence of the risk undertaken by capital in funding potentially bad ventures.  Many businesses fail.

Is it all a risk premium?  No, there is also rent-seeking, the ability of larger players to even enter the market in the first place, etc.  I’m not a True Capitalist.

However, if you didn’t realize there is a risk in there that’s being compensated, then you aren’t suitable to run the Economic Planning Office, since under a planned economy the State does the same.

I’d rather just tax it.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@bambamramfan

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.

[bambamramfan]

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.

[whitemarbleblock]

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). 

[mitigatedchaos]

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.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[mitigatedchaos]

@bambamramfan

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.

[bambamramfan]

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.

[mitigatedchaos]

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.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

reddit.com

Why does Zizek appear to believe in the Death Penalty? • /r/zizek

His jokes aside (that the death penalty is there for people like Sam Harris and Bernard-Henri Lévy etc.), is it after Hegel's belief in capital...

[bambamramfan]

If you are a Christian trying to respect the dehumanized subject, then locking them up for 60 years and forgetting about them is not an ethical way to go about it. This makes disavowal easy, which is the heart of liberal ideology.

At least with the death penalty, society has to make a conscious choice about what to do with this person. We should choose rehabilitation and redemption much more often than we usually do of course, but it’s better to decide between rehabilitation vs death, than blithe imprisonment where we get to pretend we are respecting human rights but don’t ever have to deal with the murderer’s inhuman excess.

(that’s from me, not Zizek.)

A reminder because of the Dylan Roof case.

(demonesss’s comment is also good and she’s a good user to follow on reddit if you want to understand more Zizek)

[mugasofer]

Empirically, I don’t think abolishing the death penalty does lead to harsher sentences and de-emphasising reformative justice. 

If anything, the opposite seems to be true.

---

Frankly, if you force “society” (i.e. people) to “decide between rehabilitation vs death” in specific cases rather than the general case, they will say “the guy murdered nine people in order to start a race war, fry him”. 

Deliberately forcing people to focus on the specific, abhorrent crimes of an individual - rather than the abstract question of whether mercy is good, the fact that the death penalty ensures innocent people will be killed, what kind of society we want to be etc. - makes it easier for them to argue “some people are an exception to the general rule that killing is bad, fry the fucker.”

[bambamramfan]

Well we can use today’s example. We are talking about Dylan Roof. The various recent shooters who just got jailtime, the media is not discussing. And yet, if you throw them away for decades, then we are committing social death to them. I do not feel hugely morally superior for “suffer the rest of your life behind bars” than I do for “the body dies immediately.” I honestly don’t know which one I would choose personally, but both sound utterly terrible. And I’m glad we are at least talking about one convict this week. Death forces us to confront the choices of our justice system. (Much like the argument for, say, using soldiers over drones.)

Mostly though, a lot of the liberal arguments against the death penalty, especially the more principled ones, don’t really hold weight. Some people justify it with “the government shouldn’t hold power over life and death,” but that sounds like avoiding the fact that the government does hold power over life and death. The idea “well if it’s a mistake then you can still fix it” should be weighed against “and how many mistakes do we ever catch? How many lives does that save?” And is a life really not ruined after years behind bars, even if you fix the mistake?

I distrust our desire not to take the full account of our actions. Events that make us say “Do we really want to do this, as a people?” seem like good discussions to have.

[mitigatedchaos]

You might not know whether to pick death or life imprisonment, but I suspect many others would pick life imprisonment with a slim possibility of release over death.  I certainly would.  

Death is extremely final.  There are no libraries in death.  There are no thoughts, no dreams - nothing.  There is a very large difference between life in prison and death.  Calling it “social death” obscures the issue.

I agree that forcing the issue - by say, eliminating prison sentences beyond 20 years and replacing them with death - would tend to reduce empathy for prisoners rather than increase it.  There are a lot of people that people just won’t feel safe around, so now they’re going to be coming up with excuses to dehumanize criminals so they can justify executing them.  It’s not going to suddenly make them reason more clearly about the side effects.

I’m not so sure this idea that forcing people to confront things will actually change their behavior the way you want, rather than causing them to double down.  Is there any evidence for it working previously?

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@bambamramfan

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.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[the-future-now]

US Army wants bullets that turn into plants over time

The US military may not seem like the greenest of organizations, but if rising seas and temperatures produce worldwide chaos, they’re the ones that have to deal with that shit.

[marsdidthething]

aww now they get to slaughter people while planting trees, how considerate

[dykewithadick]

Especially ironic considering the US military is one of the biggest polluters in the world and joining it is a great way to get you and your family filled with all sorts of weird cancers

[konkeydongcountry]

banksy is gonna have a field day with this shit

[maxiesatanofficial]

“if rising seas and temperatures produce worldwide chaos, they’re the ones that have to deal with that shit.”

they literally aren’t. there’s no reason the u.s. army “has to deal with that shit.” they are quite possibly the worst-equipped organization in the world to “deal with that shit.” jesus fucking christ.

[mitigatedchaos]

Cleaning it up?  No.  Getting into wars when it crashes geopolitical stability?  Yes.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[ranma-official]

Something I’ve been thinking towards lately is that the benefits of a free market economy are actually side effects.

For example, the general idea of “competition-driven constant innovation in the form of amazing new products” (ideal outcome) or “marginally improved products at the same prices or the same quality at lower prices”. It appears to me that it’s merely one of the many ways to get market leverage rather than the desired outcome, and at some point it hits diminishing returns pretty hard.

I have a lot of experience dealing with ISPs and saw the mechanism first hand. First we have the amazing benefits of a de facto monopoly who could get away with shit like $100 for dial up speeds in ADSL era being forced to offer cheap fast internet, fast forward a year and we descend into shit like shady under the table deals, dishonest marketing, and guys cutting our fiber to create an impression of unreliable service.

And that’s internet. You can take it or leave it. If you knew what goes on with food you’d never want to eat again.

[mitigatedchaos]

Try applying it to labor and it becomes obvious why politicians have so much trouble “creating jobs”.  Capitalism hates “creating jobs”.  Jobs are a cost.  “Job creators” do not want to “create jobs”.  They want to make money.  The jobs are, to them, an undesirable side effect.

[ranma-official]

I thought that much was obvious from the term “job makers”. The claim that job makers make jobs out of the goodness of their heart implies that they don’t like doing so.

[mitigatedchaos]

I don’t think the people using it (or rather, the target audience of the people using it) really understand the full implications that the jobs aren’t something that’s wanted by the incentives in the system itself.  I think how they understand it is that if only the government would stop punishing these “valuable job creators”, then the job creators would create jobs.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[ranma-official]

Something I’ve been thinking towards lately is that the benefits of a free market economy are actually side effects.

For example, the general idea of “competition-driven constant innovation in the form of amazing new products” (ideal outcome) or “marginally improved products at the same prices or the same quality at lower prices”. It appears to me that it’s merely one of the many ways to get market leverage rather than the desired outcome, and at some point it hits diminishing returns pretty hard.

I have a lot of experience dealing with ISPs and saw the mechanism first hand. First we have the amazing benefits of a de facto monopoly who could get away with shit like $100 for dial up speeds in ADSL era being forced to offer cheap fast internet, fast forward a year and we descend into shit like shady under the table deals, dishonest marketing, and guys cutting our fiber to create an impression of unreliable service.

And that’s internet. You can take it or leave it. If you knew what goes on with food you’d never want to eat again.

[mitigatedchaos]

Try applying it to labor and it becomes obvious why politicians have so much trouble “creating jobs”.  Capitalism hates “creating jobs”.  Jobs are a cost.  “Job creators” do not want to “create jobs”.  They want to make money.  The jobs are, to them, an undesirable side effect.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

extranewsfeed.com

John Brown: How Not to be An Ally

[memecucker]

I just found the stupidest peak white moderate thing ever

[kula]

how to be a white ally: be a useless weak ass bitch who only knows how to ‘check privilege’

[memecucker]

The white moderates are starting to couch their arguments in ‘more SJ than thou’ lingo. They’re evolving

[insurrectionarycompassion]

Uwu violent resistance kills people. You should be killed without fighting back while waiting for the Tides of Progress to set you free. You’re not morally dying otherwise.

[marxandrecreation]

HAHA it was deleted

[statist-shill-cuck]

John Brown, original brocialist, manarchist, Berniebro, privileged white First World leftist,

[ranma-official]

“These men are all talk. What we need is action—action!”

“Excuse u, u don’t speak for all poc”

[mitigatedchaos]

“There is no way that celebrating, or getting excited about, killing people could go wrong. The only reason it ever went wrong in the past is that it was our enemies doing it. We will have complete control over who takes our ideas and decides to kill people. Killing people will also be a highly-effective tool of our resistantance which will not be used as proof by our enemies to undecided people that they were right all along, resulting in a brutal crackdown that hits people that weren’t even involved in our actions. Our killing will also be highly-organized and directly serve our goals. We will never accidentally kill the wrong people, or kill people for other purposes related to our internal politics or because we warped the idea of killing up to kill people who are down.”

I’m not going to go into how to effectively use political violence, but I have no reason to believe most people in this chain would accomplish anything with it rather than, say, killing a few random people and becoming fodder for white nationalist news sites.

You can pay back money. You can fix or rebuild a building. You can let people out of prison. Sometimes, people will even heal from being beaten. But you can’t un-kill someone. There is no making it right if you screw up.

[ranma-official]

There’s a huge difference between arguing about political violence in the times where we have no clear enemies and talking about how John Brown is a problematic white berniebro.

[mitigatedchaos]

I should have been more specific, I was responding to what insurrectionarycompassion said.  (I’m still not 100% used to the Tumblr interface.  I can’t find some obvious way to quote just a chunk of something.)