I honestly don’t know if Americans have what it takes to change the path we’re headed down. I haven’t really got much faith left in our society. We’re pretty pathetic.
Hope I’m wrong.
With all the uneducated, divisive disinformation, and faith-based worldviews out there it’s hard to even get people to agree that a problem exists, and therefore even harder to convince the electorate how to appropriately address it. Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism for some stupid reason.
Public medicine would fix this problem like it has in the rest of the world yet still many Americans believe it’s Marxism
for some stupid reason.…because a group of politicians who need campaign funding to stay elected tell them “government bad” at every opportunity.
There is one party to blame here. Republicans. They made up the death panels bullshit. They made it so Lieberman could filibuster for the big insurance companies and keep them rich. They made it a goal to “own the libs.”
Democrats deserve criticism for their Neo Liberal bullshit too, but this wouldn’t have been pushed this far without the Republican propaganda and lies.
I think at this point it’s clear that there are problems to most people. The difficulty is more about agreeing on a) what the problems are and b) why they are problems, and c) how to fix them.
With the added difficulty that a decent portion of people have taken the “it’s hard to prove anything definitively” stance and for some reason decided that means they should believe alternative sources rather than the more logical “be skeptical of everything but also be rational about it”. If someone is able to get disinformation into official sources, they’ll have an even easier time getting it into alternative sources.
The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.
All we can do it keep moving forward and try to take care of each other as we go.
By donating to each others GoFundMes for hospital bills.
We’re pretty pathetic.
I’m not some flag saluting, Lee Greenwood asshole, but you couldn’t be more wrong. You are on Earth and the truth is 5 billion light years from you wondering about your existence. Americans may not all have the best education. They may be apathetic at the polls due to distrust in the system. However, Americans are NOT pathetic. The media may have you convinced that we are divided on the left and the right, but we are divided up and down. You start to take away things and I’m sure you will find out how strong they can be. Americans have fought and will fight tooth and nail for what they believe in.
Americans are NOT pathetic
Buddy, we just RE-ELECTED a convicted felon and rapist who instigated an insurrection and illegally attempted to overturn an election AFTER we already fired him for massively failing, including in regards to the biggest crisis America has experienced since WW2. A guy that has openly stated he is anti-union and worker rights. We can’t even get on the same page about healthcare, despite having examples from other first world countries across the globe showing what we could do to better our situation. We targeted black people (still are), then gay people (still are), and now we’ve moved on to targeting trans people. Wealth disparity is increasing by the year. Billionaires OWN our politics top to bottom.
We’re categorically fucking pathetic.
I don’t think this speaks to how pathetic Americans are, but instead to how much the rich have us under their thumb.
We need to start working against atomization if we want things to get better, and I think this is/was a really good way to bring people together. Talk to the uninformed people in your life, be the healthy opposition to their beliefs that many people dont have. Make them understand who their real enemies are.
It is in the upper classes best interest that we close ourselves off, entering echochambers as we talk about how evil it is for someone to disagree with our own beliefs.
US politics are a ship. They don’t turn on a dime. We are headed in a better direction in the grand scheme. Short downturns happen. When Bush was president everyone thought the government was going to become a Christofacist regime. The end of times are not near. If you truly believe there is no hope, then why aren’t you taking to the streets with violence? I think THAT’S pathetic. You think the end is coming and you just sit and bitch online and do nothing.
You watched the news even once in the last ten years? What the fuck do you think the BLM and Antifa movements were about, planting daisies?
So we are in agreement, right? America isn’t full of pathetic do-nothings.
I went through your comment history to see if you are a gun owner, and I think you are not. So this makes you part of the problem you just posed in your comment here, since you have no means to commit to peaceful but aggressive armed protesting.
That’s not the right way to encourage people to arm themselves.
I don’t have anydesire to encourage people to do anything.
There are people out there who will always be useless bitches that passively complain all day other people aren’t doing things when they themselves don’t bother to make any effort themselves to try to change shit.
I’m the audience you’re talking too. I’m 32 and just got my first rifle. It was awkward for me at first, and attitudes like yours contributed to that.
So fuck you man.
Good stuff. Be sure to regularly train with it, or you might as well wrap a bow on it and give it to the people who will be trying to take it away from you.
You’re such a jackass dude
He is 100% a jackass but in this particular point he is right. Please learn and practice with your rifle. Untrained gun owners are a huge danger to themselves and others and they usually don’t realize it. And owning a gun doesn’t do you any good if it gets taken out of your hands in the first 5 seconds of an altercation.
For your safety and others this is actually legitimately good advice.
… or maybe they’re not reveling every aspect of their lives on a public forum for personal safety reasons.
Armed protesting, by definition, is not peaceful.
I am not a gun owner.
I have never fired a gun in my life. I have terrible hand-eye coordination. I know from just playing video games with guns and carnival “shoot the target with BBs” things how bad my aim is.
Also, I’m a coward and I know I could never kill anyone.
I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands. You would be more likely to be shot by me accidentally.
This is really important knowledge to know about yourself. I wish more people were this self aware.
But a war requires a lot more than just soldiers. Even if we end up in a hot shooting Civil War 2 there are still many things you and other nonviolent folks could do for your fellows to keep them safe. Safe shelter and food mean even more than guns and bullets in a conflict like that.
I hope with every bit of my heart that we don’t have to go there. But if we do, you are not useless. Soldiers may fight a war, but logistics wins one. And in this hypothetical situation a lot of us are going to be very charged up with hot tempers and someone with a cooler head and an aversion to violence will be important to keep things from falling to chaos.
Don’t sell yourself short, Squid. A coward with a good head on them is a good person to have on your side in a fight. A coward knows how to prevent that fight that might not have been otherwise necessary.
I’m not selling myself short. I said, “I would be of no benefit of you in the glorious revolution with a gun in my hands.” I agree, there are other things that need doing.
You are wrong.
You just have to realize it.
I’ve always said this but got chased out of the room (downvoted to hell), peaceful protest is a bunch of bullshit and won’t do shit. It never will. It’s always just ignored. Rioting and violence IS the only option when protesting peacefully is ignored. I mean look at the George Floyd protests and how they actually made change. Look at the French and their protests…etc. Peaceful protesting is quite literally a bunch of people kidding themselves.
People love to use examples like MLK and Gandhi as the poster children for peaceful protest achieving results, and years ago I’d have naively agreed.
But the reality of it is that they could not have succeeded without the threat of violence from more militant alternatives, such as Malcolm X/The Black Panthers or the Ghadar revolutionaries/Babbar Akali Sikhs.
It’s the carrot-and-stick metaphor. The powers that be will ignore any nonviolent attempts for reform until a violent movement makes the nonviolent alternative more appealing.
Capitalism has long asserted that there are checks in place to protect people. Consumer protection laws, industry regulations, collective bargaining, and voting with your wallet are some of the myths that capitalism says are supposed to stop bad businesses from hurting people. But when we see these systems failing en masse, and the powers that be refuse to do anything about it, what recourse is left?
Both are necessary. The first creates public support. The second “creates government support”
A little direct action can be surprisingly effective
The peaceful protest has a purpose. It is the purpose of due diligence. It is to show an escalation. A point at which other avenues were tried and ignored leaving one with no choice but to try others that are more militant. You try all the avenues. And leave the last resort as a last resort. But historically we know that more often than not real change happens when there is either the threat of violence or the actuality of violence.
People as a whole don’t seem to be invested until it impacts them. It’s hard to impact people enough with peaceful protest to change their minds. That’s why blocking highways or major thoroughfares were threatened with violence. Because the point of protest is twofold. It is to educate. But more importantly it is to inconvenience people. Because without the inconvenience, they do not get invested.
Exactly. It is reaching that point where a lot of people are realizing that peace doesn’t work anymore.
People don’t understand that more than protecting people, social policies such as housing, welfare, and medical aid programs protect the capitalist system itself.
If you take a look at europe, there is plenty of countries who score way better on these issues, and the underlying system is still capitalism. It might not be perfect but if you include a social aspect and regulate in the interest of the population I believe it is the best system we have.
If the political pressure was high enough, political powers would buckle. But see who got voted for president? Its clear that the people chose this themselves sadly
Organized labor can also take some non violent action like general strikes. The important thing is the organization part, once you’re organized you’ve got power whether it’s violent or not.
A smaller less organized population can definitely use violence effectively, but it still takes critical mass to affect permanent change.
Join or create community groups and labour unions
If peaceful protesting worked to affect change, it would be illegal
Thank you!!!
That reminds me of another quote.
I mean look at the George Floyd protests and how they actually made change
Did they really, though?
Yeah, I agree with their point but I really don’t think this is the example to use
The one time I resorted to violence, it 100% solved my problem. I slapped my bully in class so hard people’s ears rang. We ended up becoming friends later on lol.
I had a guy trying to bully me a long time ago, i got fed up with him pretty quickly.
I turned around, grabbed him by the throat and pushed him up against the wall after which i punched him.
Never bothered me again, his and my own parents both agreed: “he had it coming”.
Now that i’m more mature, i actually feel bad for him because even his own parents didn’t try to defend him. Seeing how he behaved, this was definitely part of the cause.
He needed his parents to be there for him, but they just gave up on him from the start.
Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived.
classic defeat means friendship trope
That looks like something that could have been written on here or reddit a week ago and would have been met with at least modest approval in regards to the oligarchy.
Yeah, still really dumb though.
Dude, read the bhagavad gita. It’s all about inner peace during violence. A soldier not wanting to fight his kin on a battlefield. When you recognize that sometimes the cost of peace is enslavement you can take extreme action without any attachment to the outcome and remain in peace in your heart. I used to abhorrent violence still do, but I will act without attaching and face rip any monkey that is hoarding and hurting my fellows. MFRA… monkey face rip association… even Buddha has stories stating no karma is incurred for some situations of violence. You might be stuck in good vs evil dichtomous thinking. There is no good and evil in nature just nature. We make the definitions and than we suffer them. Cast off your definitions and cultured personality and see the real that exist in many many sahdes.
You’re making a lot of assumptions about where I’m coming from here, so let me clarify a bit why I think it’s dumb: the OP essay inherits the flaws of the Unabomber Manifesto it is signal boosting. It’s hand waving rhetoric and rationalization, right wing extremist flavored. Its only argument that violence will be useful is to bake in an assumption that of course it will, criticize other, independent options, frame the debate as a moral one about whether saving the world justifies violence, and make that argument with name calling.
I recognize that many people respect this type of argument, but they are wrong, it’s bad and stupid.
What’s the alternative? The health insurers are actively killing people by denying claims. I’m curious.
An absence of a clear alternative isn’t a substitute for an argument that slaughtering corporate leaders will help the problem. There are practical differences between the circumstance of a wild animal literally fighting for its survival, and a member of a population being abstractly squeezed to death by systemic problems, in that killing is a clear immediate solution in the former but extremely questionable in the latter. Not bothering to acknowledge this makes it a bad argument. Also, all the other reasons I mentioned why it’s a bad argument. Kind of reads like edgy highschooler cringe bait too, though that’s subjective.
Maybe a better argument could be made, idk. But this one is dumb.
I hear what you’re saying. My issue with your position is that Thompson is not a mere bystander or segment of the ‘machine’ that is killing - or in your words “squeezing” - other humans. Thompson, by his own admission, was actively pursuing mechanisms by which denial of care and ultimately death are effected. Why does he get a pass, I’m curious?
My criticism is of the writing in the OP, and of Kaczynski’s writing, which while contextually relevant, isn’t actually about Thompson or even specifically health insurance.
To answer your question though, I don’t think he gets a pass, ethically. But I also don’t think justice trumps striving for better outcomes in society, and in fact it’s the other way around. This isn’t exactly being contested; the rhetorical focus is on means and results.
This guy gets a free pass on wierd beliefs to me. Sucks that the first ceo assasin was caught though. He really showed how possible it could have been to get away with it though.
Part of him probably wanted to got caught. The guy showed an extreme respect for justice, more than the current US legal system, and he knew what he had done.
He’s a G, honestly.
Let’s see if he contests extradition
Wonder if he’ll be the John Brown of Civil War 2?
So if you read into Kaczynski a bit, in a way he’s kinda history’s first incel too. He went off into the woods because he was upset about getting rejected by a girl and went super nice guy™ on not just her but life too. He blamed technology on his inability to read into a woman and he was too insecure to learn from it.
This guy is doing something else, he attacked the elite not because of technology and their relationship but because of their wealth and direct actions.
history’s first incel
What definition of incel are you using that eliminates the rest of history?
Well fair enough…I’d still call him one thought
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Oh good lord. He kept the gun and the fake ID?
I guess MS in Computer Science doesn’t mean you’re smart.
I spend my working life surrounded by PhDs, have done so for ~28 years now, and let me assure you: education and intelligence are orthogonal.
I worked in higher ed computer support at a major research university for 12 years, believe me I know.
I’m guessing he kept it all intentionally. He had the manifesto on him, probably expecting “accidental” suicide by cop in hopes that his message would continue and not be painted over by the media. Yeah, he could have ditched the gun, but again, perhaps he didn’t want there to be any shadow of a doubt that he is guilty. This was an intentional sacrifice in hopes of making a change.
Yeah, I realized about 30 seconds after I wrote that… “he wanted to keep the gun and the ID as proof that he was the guy”.
He escaped clean, and then let himself get caught so he could make his case in court.
Let’s see if he plays the next hand: plead ‘not guilty’, refuse all plea agreements, and demand a jury trial.
To be fair if you’re never caught that’s probably the smartest thing to do.
Someone discovering a gun is 100% gonna call the police and bam they have a good clue.
I can walk 1/2 a mile in any direction and find a body of water or deep woods where it would never be found. Also, I’d field strip it and chunk the parts in different places.
Do you think he had access to those places without looking suspicious?
He was on the run in a town he has no connection too.
There’s water in central park. Would’ve been nothing to chuck the pistol in a pond. Break it down a bit if you’re extra. Slide in one stream, barrel in another, mag, grip, etc until you’ve disposed of it. Or trash cans at various bus stops on the way down to VA. Tbf it’s really easy to back seat something like this. His brain must’ve been running a mile a minute, it’s honestly impressive how well he did
Where should he have deposed with it not being found? If he had multiple IDs its stupid tho he showed the same one as he knew they were after him
I’ve scouered his Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter accounts.
He looks like he’s a tech bro who went to University of Pennsylvania. He had some cool somewhat anti-capitalistic takes, and criticised Elon Musk. But was also following and reposting a couple alt-right accounts like RFK Jr and Joe Rogan. He seems to have been a big consumer of the capitalistic self-improvement type industry.
Here’s his github picture and account
Doesn’t look like the guy to me.
He was caught with the same new jersey fake ID the suspect used and an anti-healthcare manifesto
I mean you can give me all the forensic evidence, and it’s not him.
Ahhhh.
“it can’t have been him, I was in London with him all of last week”
“He couldn’t have been with you in London because he was also with me in Turkey on a Hot Air Balloon ride”
I Am Luigi’s Alibi
ohhh I see.
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Different angle and no hood,.but yeah, somebody else.
It seems likely that within short order his unifying action will be drowned out by any divisive perspectives.
Kinda like universal healthcare.
Sigh. The hope was fun while it lasted. He’s too anti-capitalist for the right and too problematic for the left so no side will claim him, and they’ll just devolve into claiming it was the other side for a bit before not caring anymore. No revolution to be found here, just more sadness.
Makes it better IMHO. He spoke for all of us, we’re all getting sick of this corrupt bullshit.
Some problematic interactions with alt right type stuff
(this gives “traditional family values” vibes)
But also some cool anticapitalist takes
(His last Goodreads review)And some weird ass takes
I appreciate you posting his takes from every side. Idk wtf to think about this fish one.
Edit - oh just saw the date, he was like 16 when he posted that. I posted stupider weird shit at 36 so I’ll give that weird one a pass.
Ohhh I just shared the fish one cuz I thought it was funny and cute and humanising.
My conclusion is he wasn’t a pure ideological leftist like many of us here. But he shared similar critiques of capitalism and grievances.
And on the culture war side of things, he seems to have been more “centrist” ie. taking some points from “both sides”. Which in my opinion is problematic, but also shows we might have more in common with the populist right than we think. A lot of them are deeply critical of heirarchy and inequality similar to us (although they end up supporting billionaires 🤦).
Ya, that’s really giving off woman-are-baby-receptacles vibes without ever addressing women except as their physiology (“pocket pussies”) or sexuality (dancers), which makes it worse. Not to mention it completely misses the point of why people arent procreating.
It seems really weird (and racist) to criticize a culture you aren’t ingrained in with such odd specificity.
agreed
I don’t see how #1 and #2 are problematic. #2 might be, but I’d need to see the video.
Unless your argument is that anything remotely positive about Tucker Carlson or Peter Thiel is automatically bad?
That’s a github profile
my bad. keep on mixing the two up.
you mean to tell me he’s a programming nerd too!?
If you’ve never read Ted K, I recommend it. It’s not an easy read, but he wasn’t wrong.
Maybe I’m thinking of a different manifesto, but didn’t ol’ teddy start ranting about elves and stuff towards the end of the document?
Tbh it’s been a while since I read much past the first few sections.
That said, he was MKULTRA’d real hard. I wouldn’t be too surprised if some Terrence McKenna-type weirdness snuck in there.
He wasn’t drugged though…the professor had him “discuss/debate” with another “student” who was really a young prosecutor from Boston with the sole objective arguing fiercely against any perspective Ted presented, to fuck with his perception meter. But no gallons of acid for him.
TIL
Poor Unibomber didn’t get any acid :(
I think the elves must have been someone else. Ted’s manifesto was mostly about technology being the root of society’s problems.
Yeah you’re probably thinking of McKenna. He was real into talking about the elves he met on DMT.
I prefer his “jeweled self-dribbling basketballs” to “elves”.
I’m wondering if you’re confusing Ted K with Terence McKenna? Very dissimilar people but could be a function of reading both around the same time in your life, maybe.
If not and you remember what you’re thinking about, and it’s indeed a manifesto by a criminal ranting about elves, I’d love a name/title if you feel like sharing.
Honestly, I’ve read a lot of manifestos and writings of people without the firmest grasp on reality and they get kinda jumbled up. It might have been McKenna, it might have been the time cube guy (whose name I forget), it could have been a dmt trip report on erowid.
Fair enough. No worries!
No.
I may not agree with everything he says. But it’s quite logical and well argued.
Nothing about elves. More about how technology and capitalism and neo-liberal leftism have ruined the human condition, and the need for revolution.
The mistake you’re making with ol Teddy is thinking he doesn’t know what the difference between a neoliberal and a leftist is.
Bro was nuts and blaming everything on the leeeeeeeffffftttttt in the middle of Reaganism.
Took a few courses on American culture where it was notably absent. I think any course of study that starts with Eisenhower’s farewell address should end with at least a cursory look at Industrial Society - even if it means those last couple of classes are full of very heated, uncomfortable debate.
It’s an important document, regardless of how people feel about the author and what he did.
Is your favorite part where he blames liberals, commies, and academics for everything wrong with Reaganism or the part where he decides it’s the fault of women and diversity?
My favourite part is his position that you can’t restore a person’s inherent autonomy in a meaningful sense while keeping the larger sociotechnological structures that limit it in place.
Take a look at the direction of the U.S. these days, and the significant rollbacks in the limited autonomy afforded liberals, commies, academics, women, and ethnically diverse individuals either actioned or on the horizon as evidence. There’s merit to this position.
I do not agree with all of Ted’s positions - I am a collectivist, ultimately and perhaps foolishly, at heart - but I find quips like yours to be distractions. These comments certainly shouldn’t be ignored, but considered within the larger context.
That said, if these comments are such that you don’t want to engage with the rest of it, that’s your decision and I respect it. And I mean that sincerely (trying to account for Poe’s law here - I really do mean that).
While I am too old to advocate for violence, this line hit me pretty hard:
"Violence never solved anything" is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."I’m of the opinion both violent and nonviolent means are probably necessary and there’s plenty of nonviolent means of engagement. no war has been fought without support from somewhere, whether that’s a national war machine or the supporting element of an insurgency. there’s always logistics, resources, and well organization that has to occur.
I’m in no condition to fight myself, but over the coming decades I’m gonna have to be thinking about how much violence I’m comfortable being around and how much we can support people in the thick of it. violence is definitely present already in day to day life, but it’s more of an orphan-crushing-machine kind of violence that feels more normal.
This is a silly ad hominem argument though, an indication that what he’s arguing against is too valid to refute on its own merits.
Violence solves things. But by the powerless? No, historically speaking that just leads to military action, often followed by mass executions. Fighting fascism with violence is like fighting fire with gasoline. They feed off that shit. Maybe you can argue it worked in Haiti, albeit with a lot of help from yellow fever. But have you been to Haiti?
He’s right that peaceful protests never solve anything. But organizing and acting as a bloc solves a lot. General strikes, civil disobedience, boycotts, even voting as a group has a strong track record of changing things.
I want to believe that peaceful organization like civil disobedience leads to change, but I can’t recall seeing that work in recent history…
How recent is recent? Tunisia, Egypt (well until the population turned out to be too dumb for democracy anyway) are examples.
It hasn’t worked in the US because it’s been too half-assed and the existence of democratic options lowers incentives. Contrast the successful civil disobedience during the civil rights era, where the right to participate in elections was one of the things being denied. But with the increasing signs that democracy is being controlled by a few billionaires, it may see a comeback.
well until the population turned out to be too dumb for democracy anyway
Liberals when
I don’t know if I’ve ever resonated with something so much in my life.
Remember when in the french revolution everyone just asked the nobles pretty please?
The online fundraiser for him has already raised about 19K. Seems to have just started today.
I don’t disagree with a lot of what the Unabomber wrote. I don’t disagree with this person’s hatred of the healthcare system.
But you cannot assassinate your way out of capitalism.
It just does not work that way. You cannot assassinate corporations into putting people over profits when they are legally required to do the opposite and you cannot assassinate your way into a law being changed.
The current system was forged with violence. What so you think is gonna beat it? Thoughts and prayers?
Whether or not it can be resolved with violence, it will not be resolved with targeted assassinations by a handful of people.
There is no example where a capitalist system was toppled with targeted assassinations. There are lots of examples where the security state got a whole hell of a lot more oppressive after them though.
I’m sure that totally won’t happen this time in the U.S. for sure.
That’s such bullshit, security escalation happens either way, they don’t need any excuse, just see the track record. Also, it’s not like anyone is saying this killing solved capitalism, they just know its impact has shaken the ideological foundation a lot more than finger-wagging at people on the internet
People are absolutely saying that this will change everything.
I never implied that, but it’s definetely something that didn’t seem possible in many mines before
The Internet has not changed the ideological foundation in the slightest. It has sparked some calls for reform, but the capitalistic ideology hasn’t been changed at all through this murder.
I said shaken, change takes longer, but things like this are part of it
It doesn’t hurt to remind the ruling class once in a while whose boss.
But yeah. A revolution will take a lot more than a targeted assination of a couple CEOs.
Does it help? Because I’m guessing what will happen here is CEOs will just get big security details and less-discerning copycats will end up killing innocent people.
And rates will continue to rise and not one less person will be denied.
In the short term yes you’re right.
But look at the populist anger this action sparked. These kind of extrajudicial killings that rile up the population, are very much associated with revolutions and changes in power. (Sometimes for good, sometimes for bad).
Dude, America just elected a plutocrat dictator. There’s not going to be socialized medicine any time in the near future and insurance companies will pass the cost of their security teams on to the people forced to pay for their needless existences.
That plutocrat was elected through a manipulation of populist rage.
Check out the policy proposal forums RFK and Trump set up for their supporters. Expanding Medicare has more upvotes than downvotes
Paul Krugmann wrote an interesting piece touching on this yesterday (Gift Article) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/opinion/elites-euro-social-media.html?unlocked_article_code=1.gU4.cSdP.OL0VogKNmVT3&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
What difference does that make now? Why do you think they actually care what their supporters want?
I don’t. But it means that these people may not be so far from the same ideal as us. Which matters in convincing people for a revolution, and elections later on (if they still will be free and fair after Trump).
In fact, polling showed, a substantial number of people in 2016 and 2020 went from Bernie voting in primaries to voting Trump. The people want someone who isn’t scared to criticise neoliberal elitism.
Expanding Medicare has more upvotes than downvotes
You really think this represents US society at large? I think you’ll need a better source than that.
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No security is foolproof, and a security detail has precious little ability to withstand a raging mob. Importantly, there are only so many former spec ops for hire. Most of these psychopaths will have to settle for 3rd rate rentacops.
Anda security detail has previous little ability to withstand a raging mob.
Which, again, is not targeted assassination.
The same method probably won’t work again.
I agree with you.
Imo, we need something besides assasinations/sabotages. We have to educate ourselves and others into trusting each other, working with each other, having empathy and understanding solidarity.
But I don’t see a way out of capitalism without violence, sadly.Violence? Maybe. Targeted assassinations? No way. This will just make insurance premiums go up because the companies will all hire huge security details and pass those costs on to the people forced to pay for insurance.
Not with that attitude you won’t…
Not with any attitude regarding assassinating your way out of capitalism.
It simply will not work.
And if you think healthcare in America is going to get cheaper or fairer because of this, you know nothing about America.
Is there a historical precedent you can point to that proves your statement here?
Are you serious? How about World War I?
How about it? Literally nothing to do with ending capitalism. The assasination of Franz Ferdinand was done in the name of Serbian nationalism. How does it apply here? You are grasping at straws, try again.
Gavrilio Princip was an anarchist. Despite what libertarians might have you believe, they are not and never have been fans of capitalism. So no, I’m not.
As much as people are disagreeing, you’re right. The systemic pressure is too great to fix it using fear of assassination alone. We need to change the rules if we want to change the game.
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You can’t ‘thoughts and prayers’ your way out of capitalism either.
And you will find that out when your rates go up because all of the insurance companies will hire massive security teams to protect their executives and pass that on to you.
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But you can kill innocent people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Kaczynski#Bombings
Because I don’t know what a computer store owner or a secretary or a graduate student did to deserve having a bomb go off in their hands.
And people here seem increasingly willing to let innocent people get hurt or killed in this new war against CEOs. I find it really, really disturbing.
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Car accident kills innocent people all the time and nobody’s blaming car drivers for it.
What the fuck are you even talking about? What exactly do you think anti-drunk driving laws are about, targeting Chevrolet for their negligence?
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I see you haven’t visited a fuckcars corner of the Internet.
Me too tbh. I really don’t wish to abandon lemmy as I left reddit, since I prefer a federated system to it but all these posts are making me think. I just have this ethical principle where murder in most cases is bad and don’t like seeing violence being advocated.
Except the problem is that humans are cognitively advanced than other animals. We should be able to find some way to reason out our differences, otherwise we’re always going to be stuck in a dark cave of our own making. What’s the fucking point of humanity then?
The problem is that there aren’t effective ways to curtail sociopathic behaviors which come to the surface because of our current economic tool of choice. Tbh, it will not matter what economic tool we use because the greed problem and self-preservation problem will remain. It always does!
We should be working towards developing safeguards and mechanisms to protect humanitarian ideals, and to curtail sociopathic behaviors. I think a big part of this is that people should elect better leaders. If you’re forced to choose “lesser of two evils”, then there should be a mechanism to organize an effective write-in choice.
If someone then comes to kill you for making democratic choices, as happens in autocratic regimes, then self-defense is valid and justified.
Ok but the CEOs are the sociopaths right? Because it appears to me that Luigi was applying irl solutions to the trolley problem
Sociopathic behaviours are always going to be a huge problem in large societies. They’re not even exclusive to humans anyway. Just look at all the parasites in nature.
All of our cognitive and social abilities break down when you get into large groups. We’re evolved to be able to work with extended family units where we have a reasonable ability to build personal relationships and trust networks among all of the people we interact with.
In large societies everyone becomes anonymous and we’re stuck with societal laws and norms which are constantly under attack. Our usual mechanisms for punishing betrayal through reputation damage and ostracism fall apart in an anonymous society. In more recent history we relied on societal institutions (democratic and judicial as well as private societies) and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV news) to cover some of this role but it was imperfect and only applied to the most infamous offenders.
Now we’ve lost even that limited media function due to the post truth revolution (thanks to the internet) and its acceleration of the breakdown of trust in societal institutions and the decline of the media.
All of our cognitive and social abilities break down when you get into large groups. We’re evolved to be able to work with extended family units where we have a reasonable ability to build personal relationships and trust networks among all of the people we interact with.
Our usual mechanisms for punishing betrayal through reputation damage and ostracism fall apart in an anonymous society. In more recent history we relied on societal institutions (democratic and judicial as well as private societies) and the media (newspapers, magazines, TV news) to cover some of this role but it was imperfect and only applied to the most infamous offenders.
Cool and agreed, but the original point holds up that greed and self-preservation always ruin things for groups of people trying to do anything together. Everything you mentioned is a symptom of corporate interests subverting democracies. Look, there’s nothing inherently wrong with corporations having an interest in their success, but govts. need to be able to curtail their worst tendencies because it makes sense to prioritize long-term benefits over short-term gains.
If people really give a fuck about monied interests and their control over democracies, then they should be pushing for higher taxes on the wealthy (like 250K or more per year) like it’s an existential crises. Because it is. Tbf, 250K is pretty normal in a HCOL, so higher taxes should take that into account.
I view governments with the same suspicion that most people around here view corporations. Look at history. The worst atrocities were committed by highly motivated and ideological governments.
When it comes down to it, it’s all just different ways of organizing groups of people and they’re all vulnerable to some of the same problems to do with anonymity, accountability (or lack thereof), and control.
It hasn’t been established that intelligence is a requisite for survival.
If we think of intelligence as goal-directed and adaptive behavior, then natural selection will select for competitive traits, and so whatever ended up losing was less intelligent in some sense, even if it’s a single-cell organism.
Actually, there’s a lot of evidence that points to intelligence being a sexually selected trait rather than naturally selected, so in that sense it may actually negatively correlate with survival. In other words, your big brain is the human equivalent of peacock features; it will get you laid but doesn’t do much good when a tiger comes around.
Think of it this way: to sit around doing math problems all day, you have to have the basic necessities for survival dealt with, which shows you’re a good mate within the current environment. Which is all well and good until times change, the going gets tough, and you need to kill something to put food on the table.
it will get you laid but doesn’t do much good when a tiger comes around.
This is categorically false, sorry
I stopped at “what’s the fucking point of humanity then?”
… Are you under the impression that there’s a point to living? Some grand plan or purpose that drives people?
The only reason I’m not in the ground already is because when I thought about it, my death would cause suffering to people I cared about, so I’d rather take on that suffering myself than put it on them. If everyone I cared about died, I’d petition for medical euthanasia, if that was denied, I’d go find the nearest bride and swan dive into pavement.
The only reason we exist is to have babies so they can exist and have babies. Human life, indeed all life, lives to procreate, and make more of itself. That’s it.
I’ve always questioned why we’re worthy of survival, but all the species we’ve killed off due to climate change, or hunting them to extinction, or destroying their habitat where they die off because they can’t survive in a different habitat, are not worthy of survival.
I’m not convinced that humans should continue to perpetuate themselves long term. Bluntly, I can’t point to anything genuinely good that we’ve done for any creature other than ourselves. We address environmental issues sure, but we caused them. The only thing we go out of our way to do, at all, and with significant disagreement and debate, is fix shit we fucked up. That’s it. Everything else has been a selfish pursuit of greed by humans.
What’s been happening, has not changed my mind on any of this.
I’m not crazy, and I’m not going to try to exterminate anyone because I don’t think humans should continue to exist. I’m still here to bring as much happiness and joy to the people I care about, and I don’t have the mental capacity to feel anything but contempt for everyone screwing everything up. I can’t spare the effort to hate anyone. It’s exhausting.
At this point, I just want everyone to leave me alone so I can live my tiny comfortable life with the people I actually care about, grow old and die… Hopefully in that order.
Sorry you had to write all that just to get downvoted. But what I meant to convey was that by some cosmic accident a cognitively advanced animal appeared, one that can seek to understand fundamental truths about the universe and its reality.
I just hold that cosmic accident in high regard, and think we have a duty as stewards of things we can understand using skills, talents and properties innate to us as a species. This is part of the reason that I think every human life wasted and not supported to its full potential is a failure of society.
Oh, I agree with much of what you say. I’m just not convinced that we as a society are valuable in any way that justifies our continued propagation.
Most of what I wrote was to qualify what I’m saying so that it’s understood. I expect downvotes because I’m basically calling humans as a species, not worthy of existing. Some people who are very ego driven proud homo erectus, can definitely take offense to my statements; so down votes are generally expected.
I suppose that some downvotes would also come from those that believe that humans were created by God, under that pretense, I would be insulting their God by saying we’re not worthy of existing. So yeah.
Between those two, I’m unmoved by the fact that some decided to down vote.
Well ours is the only species which can probe and understand why there is something instead of nothing. There may not be any intrinsic value in anything, but the act of discovery is meaningful.
I just want to point out that ours is the only species that we know of that can do those things.
It’s pure hubris to think that we’re the only ones in billions on billions of stars with potentially more than 10x that many planets in the universe that has sapience sufficient to ask the questions. Statistics says it’s extremely unlikely that humans are the only sapient life in the universe.
Oh there’s still plenty of ways short of violence against people to solve this. This guy 100% echo chambered himself into thinking there was no other way. The spectrum does not jump straight to killing people after peaceful protests are ignored.
