My parents have an Alexa and I have no choice in whether they install one in our house or not. I doubt they would be convinced by my pleas about privacy. So unfortunately and reduction in whatever privacy that was left is a shame.

i’m sure they will appreciate your BSD 2 Clause contributions at Microsoft HQ

explaining the difference between a Toyota and a Honda

Sitting around and waiting for a revolution from a small group of people with one idea of how to run things is a bad idea

This is just a strawman of vanguardism . The bolshevik revolution was only possible with the overwhelming support of the peasants and proletariat class. A revolution is literally not possible without huge numbers of soldiers turning on the government.

DS9 has

Religion Apologia (Bajoran Prophets)

War Crimes Apologia (Siskos multiple war crimes)

CIA Apologia (Glamorization of Section 31)

Nationalist War Glamorization (Dominion Federation War)

The entire last two seasons are nothing but glamorizing a traditional “good vs evil” war with the Federation basically serving the role of a nationalist hegemonic superpower.

I like Deep Space Nine, but to act like it’s anything but the degeneration of Star Trek into its most base capitalist apologia spacewar elements is a stretch.

So everything that happens right now is capitalist in nature? Wouldn’t that imply everything that follows is also capitalism?

No. Capitalism is wage-labor, and generalized commodity production. This is the mode of production. The human action under this mode of production are products of it. Nationalism is a tool the ruling class uses to divide the proletariat. Same with racism, patriarchy, and all forms of division other then class. Nationalism does not exist in a vacuum, it is given to us by our education, and the institutions of power. Capitalism is what drives this.

I’ll try to illustrate this. Nationalism IS capitalism, because what nationalism is, is the creation of a “national identity”, the institutions of the nation-state, and the subjugation of the national proletariat to its respective national bourgeoisie, ergo, the division of the global working class.

Do you think “freedom of association” is a value worth maintaining in society?

I don’t know what that means.

does the individual owe a collective anything at all?

No

Is it not pleasurable for the vast majority of people to feel “free” (even if its an illusion) and thus “in their best interest” to feel free?

Yes.

Including feeling free from even joining a collective in order to pursue a competing position?

Yes

Property in at least some form is necessary for a lot of intrinsically emotionally pleasurable things.

Possessions that are respected by the rest of society is more or less the most rudimentary form. Even if its not “real”, life is not worth living without possessions, thus property.

I have no problem with possessions, I have a problem with creating a metaphysical fantasy of the idea of the “ownership” of things, property. I view property as the idea of the metaphysical “right” of ownership of an object or land. I reject that this really exists.

I could be made more accepting of that assuming the insurrection was engineered to be as bloodless as possible. I should clarify, on the anarchist vs authoritarian scale I merely lean anarchist. I’d not be that uncomfortable with the “statist” label of “Market Socialist” either. I just go with Mutualist because its slightly closer to my inclination to let individuals do what they want.

Why bloodless? When Capitalism is bathed in blood daily?

Agree to disagree, I don’t think that is an inevitability of Mutualism/Market-Socialism. Its an observation and a consistent phenomena of similar systems, but I don’t think its unavoidable with such a system. I view that as meta-narrative and I don’t believe in meta-narratives.

You need to understand the mechanisms of capitalist crisis. It’s not a meta-narrative, we can demonstrate the contradictions of generalized commodity production in mathematical value terms.

I wonder if this doesn’t verge on simply seeing capitalism in everything that can be seen as dysfunctional in the current and previous economic systems. Maybe just turning the term into a economic boogeyman and watering down its more specific definition.

No. Nationalism and racism are products of capitalism. Part of capitalism is the division of the global proletariat, and subjugating them to a respective national bourgeoisie. Part of capitalism is the superexploitation of ethnic minorities and division of communities along ethnic lines to maintain the power of the bourgeoisie. Capitalism is a mode of production, and all that happens under it is part of its effects.

I noticed that edit. We might disagree on what counts as private ownership. Its best we not argue over the definition, but I think it might be valuable to ask if you believe in a distinction between “private” and “personal” property?

In truth, no. I think people can be in possession of objects and for one reason or another it’s “theirs”, but I don’t really believe in property, at all. But worker coops in a market system imply the existence of private property even ignoring the personal/private distinction.

I don’t think a violent revolution would meaningfully be any more capable

Some anarchists support insurrection over revolution, if your more palatable to that (considering you’re a mutualist?). But in essence this insurrection has the character of revolution in that, it is a violent rejection of the mode of production established by the state.

Leninism’s case result in state capitalism that is if anything more unlikely to “dissolve” into communism than even Social Democracy.

I don’t disagree

Power would be more evenly spread which would act as counter balances to running right back into exploitation, imperialism, etc (edit: in the sense of these things being unethical/harmful, not as technical concepts). And achieving a Mutualist market economy would “boil the frog” so to speak and minimize reactionary push back (Something Social Democracy fails at) and weaken/prevent power concentration (something state capitalism fails at).

Your organizational model will fall victim to the contradictions of capitalism as long as you retain capitalism. You can’t avoid that.

I am also a hard incompatibilist. Though I am also sympathetic to Egoism and Absurdism.

I don’t think hard incompatibilitsm is mutually exclusive with Egoism. Maybe absurdism.

To be clear, If hard incompatibilism is true, moral agents simply do not exist.

Moral error theory contradicts itself on a fundamental level: If all moral statements are “false” this implies that truth holds moral value

How does it imply that? Truth simply is, somethings are true, or false. “This apple is red”. Is a truth apt statement. I’m also a normative nihilist, so the sentence “we ought to believe things are true” is false to me.

I don’t think it actually matters if ethics or morality have some kind of moral external proof or external truth to what humans desire in life or society.

Which is compatible with error theory. This brand of error theory is called fictionalism, effectively after accepting all moral truths are false you retain moral discourse because it is convenient. But, I think you are an ethical subjectivist/moral relativist.

The superior alternative to moral error theory is to accept that morality and ethics exists in our minds individually and collectively and is “blurry”.

Which is ethical subjectivism. As a moral error theorist, I don’t think it’s impossible for people to believe in moral facts. “Sam believes murder is wrong.” Can be true or false. “Murder is wrong.” is always false.

Bringing up our self interest is also indicative of a sense of morality or ethics and at least in implication contradicts your belief in moral error theory. If anything it sounds more like you are a Stirnerite Egoist (maybe)

Stirnerite egoists also don’t believe morals exist. Self-interest is simply convenient to me. I don’t think it’s good or bad.

Dividends aren’t paid based on hours. They’re based on revenue minus expenses. Dividends are definitionally not wages.

Dividends are not a meaningful change to the wage labor system, they are simply an obfuscation, a different method of paying wages that appears to be more fair. But surplus value is still extracted in the exact same way, and the True Hourly Wage can be calculated by the amount of dividends paid by the number of hours worked. And with this, you can calculate the amount of surplus value generated for the firm.

I know the term “exploitation” is not intrinsically a moral condemnation but a technical description. But the whole reason worker exploitation is something socialists/communists argue against is because it is harmful.

I do not argue against exploitation. I see it as a reality of Capitalism. Exploitation leads to The Law Of The Tendency Of The Rate of Profit To Fall. This leads to inherent contradictions in the capitalist system and in turn leads to economic crisis.

Nationalism and racism existed before capitalism.

Yes, but the nationalism and racism we see in the forms today are capitalist in nature. In pre-capitalist societies, nationalism and racism took different forms as best to serve the ruling elite, whatever that may be. Pre-capitalist societies also have primitive commodity production and capitalist-esque elements that are similar to the society we have today, which lead to similarities of those nationalism and racisms to what we see today.

Why is it inevitable?

You would need to read Lenin for the gritty details. But in simple terms, as the capitalist crisis is made inevitable by the accumulation of capital, firms seek to solve, but really only temporarily stall, this crisis by finding new markets where the process can begin again.

You describe a system of mandatory worker coops, private ownership of the means of production as reform?

Yes, because it is a modification to the capitalist system, and not a replacement of the capitalist system with a new form.

I’m not sure if you are a leftcom or an accelerationist but I imagine your suggestion is that only violent revolution can succeed?

Only revolution can replace the capitalist system with a new mode of production. If you don’t wish to change the mode of production, no violent revolution is necessary, but as long as capitalism exists, so will it’s contradictions.

I’ve left the meta-ethics for last since it’s not really important to the main discussion.

You believe in good and bad, right and wrong, ethics/morals, or at least some kind. Otherwise you would not bother advocating for or against any particular economic or societal model.

No, I’m a moral error theorist. I think all moral claims evaluate to false. My basis for this is rooted in hard determinism and hard incompatibilism. I explain the contradictions of capitalism and how socialism as a mode of production can solve these contradictions. I advocate for socialism as it’s in my self interest, and I think in other peoples self-interest as well.

It’s proprietary so, no thanks.

That’s assuming they operate on a wage model rather than pure dividends.

Dividends are wage labor. You can calculate the hourly pay rate by dividing the dividends you received by the number of hours worked.

I think the alienation you are describing as stemming from being in a “majoritarian” coop is something we’d run into on a fully

I do think alienation remains in a socialist mode of production, yes, but what I am referring to here is your point about “control of own work”, in a majoritarian coop, you are bound by the decisions of the majority to produce what they tell you.

I’m curious if you think syndicalism has the same problem? More or less the in-between. Instead of a market you have a single negotiating table between industries. No market competition but you still would have competing interests.

I don’t really think syndicalism is an economic mode, its an organizing tactic.

Do you think a “firm” of one person self exploits?

A firm of one person is an artisan, petty bourgeoisie. They do not self exploit as all the money they make from their own labor is returned to themselves.

Who is the immoral one in that case, the self exploiter correct?

I don’t believe in morals.

Exploitation is only meaningfully immoral

Exploitation is not a moral term. Exploitation refers to the fact that wage laborers produce more value then they receive in their wages. Marx termed this “exploitation”, it’s not a moral claim.

As for imperialism, I don’t think imperialism stems from only economic exploitation.

It does.

Nationalism, racism, and a rampant growth mindset are generally an aspect if not a requirement.

All of these are products of Capitalism. Capitalism causes, nationalism, racism, and a “rampant growth mindset” which in turn leads to war. It’s called materialism.

Is imperialism possible under a mutualist economic system? Absolutely. I don’t agree that it is inevitable.

It is inevitable as worker coops are bound to seek new markets for their products by the contradictions of capitalism.

The mechanism social democrats describe capitalism dissolving into socialism is through a welfare state, not worker coops.

I was referring to the reformist belief that a better capitalism will lead to socialism.

systemd is an init system and just has not played the same role in the development of GNU/Linux distributions like GNU has. before systemd there was sysvinit, and there are number of alternate init systems. It’s not about system functionality that we name operating systems.

Uh no, it’s not. GNU has been integral to the GNU/Linux project for years. Without GCC, coreutils, glibc, there would be no linux distributions. Systemd has not played the same role.

Debian GNU/Linux has been called Debian GNU/Linux since at least 1997 https://lists.debian.org/debian-announce/1997/msg00013.html

labor and capitalists because of exploitation for profit

Cool. Worker coops have this.

alienation

As worker coops have.

lack of control over laborer’s own work,

As worker coops have. Especially in a majoritarian “democratic” worker coop model.

That said, I find meta-narratives (by any economist or philosopher) fairly wrong headed

No prophetism here.

Worker coops involve:

A worker, going to work, and selling their labor power for a wage. Just with an extra bonus at the end of the year with the profits and maybe some involvement in voting for decisions of the firm. The production of products for exchange value rather than use-value, a commodity. That’s called capitalism. The firm MUST reinvest SOME of the surplus extracted from their workers, into the operation of the firm, or else it could not continue to operate, this is exploitation, and will lead to imperialism, crisis and alienation.

Could it be a more resilient capitalism? Sure. A better Capitalism isn’t socialism though.

I do think that eventually a mutualist market would probably become sort of meaningless eventually and turn into something else.

This is what social democrats think. That eventually the market system will “reform” itself to socialism. Capitalism can’t be reformed, it’s inherently flawed.

The difference is the state does not choose who their opposition is

Are you sure about that?

and you are actually allowed to replace the governing system as a whole in liberal states which was not permitted in the USSR.

What does “replacing the governing system as a whole”, look like, in practice, exactly? How is this different from the USSR?

Profit falling leading to imperialism seems like its because of profit/expansion driven leadership

Leadership is irrelevant. Firms MUST reinvest some surplus value back into the firm. This will lead to the increase of capital in the business, and lead to overaccumlation crises. Firms must find new markets for their goods, or face certain economic despair.

You run an explicitly anti-capitalist community and don’t believe in the TRPF?

Other than the end-state of communism, a stateless, moneyless society, I’m curious as to what you think counts as ‘not capitalist’?

I think socialism requires an explicitly anti-nationalist character and the elimination of the commodity form. This looks like production with quotas (use-value), probably labor vouchers (but its not a requirement) and some form of worker ownership, like workers councils.

Many of the contradictions and crises of Capitalism are still present even under worker coop models in a market economy. Surplus value is still extracted, that money must be reinvested in the business to remain competitive. Meaning the Tendency of The Rate of Profit to Fall Remains, meaning capitalist crises remain. Imperialist incentives remain, and a worker coop nation-state would be equally imperialist as one with private corporations.

“You can vote for the Party Approved candidate or not vote”

I don’t really think its functionally different in the USA (or other liberal states). Democrats and Republicans are quite literally “Party Approved Candidates”. The presence of independents is incidental, and the USSR had independents in its parliament as well. This is why I view both the USA and USSR as “democratic”, but I would view neither as socialist.

That is capitalism