It doesn't matter if they're self-aware. The entire point is that the 'wrong' people must not have the ability to tell the 'right' people what to do.

Reddit x-poster@infosec.pub · 1 year ago

It doesn't matter if they're self-aware. The entire point is that the 'wrong' people must not have the ability to tell the 'right' people what to do.

intensely_human · 1 year ago

Man I wish I weren’t so sleep deprived. These are all good points, though I feel I have a response to them after having wrestled with them for many years.

Just imagine I’m way better at articulating this than I actually am right now. Imagine a well-structured response to that is built around these points:

Yes it really sucks that civilization has covered the world, leaving no opt-out option.
You can’t really just go catch food in nature either because the food doesn’t want to be caught. Snark aside, what I mean is that nature isn’t easy. Despite being unconscious, nature is brutally coercive to everything that lives in it. Basic point is not to compare this life of being stuck in arrangements with a hypothetical life free of that, because it doesn’t exist. The watering hole controls a radius of where you can go. The hyena pack doesn’t let you kill a gazelle and eat it in peace. The sabertooth tiger imprisons you in the cave and forces you into sleep deprivation on threat of death as you stare at it in a miserable standoff you can’t leave no matter how exhausted you are. I’m rambling.

I think I better keep it to one point at a time. Basic thesis here: comparing life of relative bondage under free market to hypothetical life without bondage is unrealistic. No such life exists.

Capitalism produces great wealth. We are free from seeking food. That’s huge.

pinkdrunkenelephants · 1 year ago

Animals are a lot less numerous and a lot easier to deal with than humans in society. A lot of people would genuinely be better off back in nature and out of society.

queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml · edit-2 1 year ago

I don’t disagree - I’m not some anarcho-primitivist that desires a return to hunter/gatherer tribal life. Civilization is good!

My disagreement comes from the hostility to government authority while accepting privatized authority. The government is at least democratic. I get to vote on who runs my city and state and country. I don’t get to vote for my boss or my landlord, making private authority inherently tyrannical.

And before you say the free market gives me the freedom to seek a different boss or landlord, that’s only possible if I uproot my entire life and move to a different area. Imagine if we didn’t get to vote on our government and instead just were expected to flee the country if we don’t like it!

Democracy is good, and capitalism is not democratic. Instead you vote with your wallet, which means us poors don’t get a say.