Union of Soviet Socialist Ran's Board Threads

[Lord Mord]

Datepalm,

I'm very glad to hear about your convictions.

I suppose there is something of a limit to the utility of critiquing uses of "it is" versus "I believe it is." Still, to the extent that one's position rests on knowledge, rather than belief, then a comment like TM's is perfectly reasonable: without consensus on definitions, then knowledge ceases to be exchangeable. In the sense of what is, in the typical western fashion thought of as "good rule," it therefore ceases to be a tool by which we can rule, being indistinguishable from fiat. As long as fiat isn't a problem for you, then the original point I was supporting becomes irrelevant and I think we've no arguments with each other.

[kiko]

i hereby protest the new board commie fad as an expropriation of revolutionary motifs and slogans for the purposes of bourgeois posturing, competitive witticism, and sexual politicking.

i am therefore forming an anti-communist neo-mccarthyist board faction, accepting all comers, until such time as the revolution is restored to its rightful place beyond the margins of respectable opinion.

I like the way you think, comrade. Make sure the membership lists are complete. I suggest small monetary incentivesfor the recruitment of other likeminded boarders.

Venceremos! :commie:

[slim da reaper]

The whole aim of socialism is to create a just and equal society. Thats it, thats my undying principle. It has a couple of derivatives that are pretty hard to dodge, like actually believing that all human being are inherently equal and that human nature isn't inherently capitalist and so on.

There's an assumption here, that there's such a thing as a universal infinitely malleable human nature, (the blank slate also assumes the same, that there is human nature but what we are is blank at the start for each particular person.) This is where we run into serious problems. If we have power structures, people making life defining decisions for others, because people actually vary massively in their dispositions (some are born that way and can not be changed), some people will want to be at the top making decisions that define how other people live. I agree that we are malleable to an extent, but some people are not in certain ways, and the God complex (Descartes "I"), is one of them in some people. And if we don't have a problem with one or even a thousand people with the power to define how millions of others live then we have a problem with imagination. Or even more interesting, if we had millions and they decided how one person should live.

No-one has the right to harm another, this is the base from which everything should come from, and applies to everyone and everything.

Edited for clarity, because it needed and probably still needs alot of it hehe

[Ser Aardvark]

corporatist kleptocracies aren't capitalism, and you're no true scotsman

there's a reasonable debate about whether capitalist economics(roughly defined as private ownership of the means of production + free market competition + wage labor) inexorably leads to cartelization, monopolization, corruption of the political process in a number of ways that i can lay out on request, and other uncontestably undesirable items, just as there's a reasonable debate as to whether socialist economics (roughly defined as state ownership of the means of production + non-compeition + wage labor) leads to stalinism or maoism or some other uncontested undesirable outcome.

i don't think it's a no true scotsman fallacy, though, to engage these debates. after all, we don't believe north korea when it designates itself as the dmeocratic people's republic.

Ah, but is anarcho-capitalism a contradiction in terms?