Yeah. Marx called it formal vs. real freedom. All the people are free to sleep under the bridges or at a five star penthouse. But some are forced to sleep under the bridge and only a few have means to exercise the freedom to enter the penthouse.
Marx misses the point of equality and conflates it with equity. In the ideal u have the freedom to work hard get well educated and make a shitonne of money then have the freedom that grants. Or u can choose to be lazy and not do any of that. It's your choice.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge. And if unit truly isn't then it was ur genetics that denied you the possibility to do better at which point we have to start talking about Charles Darwin.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation
[Citation Needed]
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can't get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn't work hard enough.
It's why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He's a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn't even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can't be overcome by any amount of gumption. (And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?)
My experience and all the people I've spoken to throughout my life. Not 1 single person in a shut scenario didn't have options to negate or escape said scenario.
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can't get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn't work hard enough.
Or they weren't smart enough. Or they where not fit (in the Darwinian sense) enough to get out of it.
It's why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He's a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn't even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
That's an excellent strawman. He went from a middle class situation (similar to thousands of people of people myself included) to the worlds richest man. He was not handed everything he has on a platter. He admittedly started with more than most but he still did infinitely better than anyone else born to similar level of advantage.
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can't be overcome by any amount of gumption.
Their absolutely are structural obstacles just that these obstacles are infinitely less than previous. I mean by your logic we claim claim that the dictatorial control of Iran by the iatola is a structural obstacle and justify trumps actions in Iran hell we can justify the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan or go a step further and justify Hitlers actions as he confiscating property from an entire class of people and redistributed to those with less this still counts as removing structural obstacles regardless of the morality of such actions. Blind adherence to your argument takes us to a very dark place very quickly.
And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?
I want u to go to south Africa on Google street view and scroll back through time just looking at the streets and what u see. Then I want u to think about why the changes ur witnessing have happened and what changed into the period of time for which these changes happened (demographic changes might be a good indicator).
Elon Musk was not middle class. Unbelievably dumb statement. He grew up in one of the largest houses in Pretoria. Don't get jealous though as his father was a child rapist. Like most wealthy people, rotten to the core.
Is that u admitting I was right wrapped in a bad faith personal attack? Perhaps let's try keep to discussing ideas instead of insulting each other like mid witted barbarians.
My experience and all the people I've spoken to throughout my life.
That only shows that SOME of the people who somehow relates to you, have options.
Have you ever wondered why they don't take those options? You might have missed something that prevents them.
Or maybe better: Have you wondered about the people further away from you? I can guarantee you, millions of people literally don't have any good options. If you haven't met any, that only means you have met any.
I've met many people of many different nations of many different levels of wealth and success. Every single one of them in a shit scenario got their by choices they made.
Why don't I take those options? Cos I can read the statistics on everyone before me, I paid attention in school, I realised that drugs, debt, gambling, criminal behaviour etc don't improve my life. I chose an education path and career that make it impossible for me to end up a brokie loser
Almost every single person on this planet has internet access and that can teach u literally anything. And please explain when doing crack is the best of a set of bad options?
Bro, I’ve traveled the world and met people who have traveled and you are not one of them. You have the opinion of a child that has never left 4Chan. I imagine you don’t even get out much in your local area.
OP shared a thought. I pointed this is a formal concept and pointed the name, so they can search for more. The concept describes a real and observable phenomena.
Why are you bringing moral judgement of people here? Even if poor people are guilt of their own poverty (they aren't) like you are implying, it doesn't change they are formally, but not really free. Marx description stills holds up.
OP shared a thought. I pointed this is a formal concept and pointed the name, so they can search for more. The concept describes a real and observable phenomena.
Not attacking you just ensuring my ideas are visible enough to help insure that anyone falling down the rabbit hole has had enough exposure to my ideology that they will accept the propaganda as it gets mainlined into their veins.
Why are you bringing moral judgement of people here? Even if poor people are guilt of their own poverty (they aren't) like you are implying, it doesn't change they are formally, but not really free. Marx description stills holds up.
I can't debate morality about an idea from a philosopher? What has the world come to?
If I tie myself to a pole I'm also not free. Marx excellently diagnosed society yet continuously failed to treat a single one of its ailments. Also are you saying that we should deny people freedom to deny their own freedom seems like a paradox to me.
Your point assumes that everyone putting the same amount of effort gets to the same place. That there's no golden youth and no kids have to work since the early age to support their parents. That everyone is given equal opportunities regardless of health, connections, and other factors. That industries are not exploitative to either workers or retail clients. Until that is true, there's neither equity nor equality.
Besides, Marx does not object working hard and earning big. He objects robbing others of monetary value they produced to fill up your bank. At that point, you create opportunities for yourself at the expense of someone else, which is antithetical to equality. Or, to frame it in your wording, someone else makes an effort, and you get the money. Or, more commonly, vice versa.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
That really depends on where you live, your health and possibly several points about your parents. Millions and millions of people never get a chance to grab, never get an opportunity to pursue.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge.
Lots of people don't have any better options than to live under a bridge, despite being in an area where that is illegal and not a real option.
I live in the first world nation of Australia where I get free healthcare and practically free education.
U can make changes and make opportunities. Almost everyone has access to the internet or at least a library. If ur born someone that isn't Australia then perhaps try unfucking whatever place you live my ancestors threatened a king to get rights under the magna carta then build the greatest empire this planet has ever seen. Nothing is stopping the bridge dwellers from doing the same except the motivation to do so.
A nation built on stolen land where the better predictor of your class is is you are descendants from the settlers or from tha natives.
Nothing is stopping...
Except the inequal distribution of aducational and work opportunities, that assure the intergenerational inequality reproduction.
a concerned note:
Your comment about some people having fought for rights and others not is borderline racist. With precious comments about Darwin, it's a red flag.
All people fight. Some fights are smashed with unimaginable violence. We are watching a live genocide in Gaza to prove this point. Oceania colonization is built upon a genocide. I'm not assuming you have conscience of how disturbing these comments are for a person like me, in South America, where all attempts to built a decent society where meet with USA interventions. Try to think in more broad terms, not only based on your experience, but trying to encompass the multiple experiences in the world.
A nation built on stolen land where the better predictor of your class is is you are descendants from the settlers or from tha natives.
Does it matter how many times the land was stolen? Cos all of Europe has been stolen by the rest if Europe hundreds of times. Or in Europe do u just call it losing a war? By ur logic I want my Lordship title and land in Prussia back.
Except the inequal distribution of aducational and work opportunities, that assure the intergenerational inequality reproduction.
Australia has very good public education many public schools rank at or near the top of year12 results. Any citizen granted (gives adequate grades) a loan by the government to go to university (which u pay jack shit for cos its just part of the tax system and maxes out at 10%). Ohh and we noe have free Tafe (trades work education). Work opportunities come from the education its highly illegal and well policed to ensure that workplaces don't discriminate based on race, sex, sexual orientation etc etc. Australia has some of the most extreme wealth mobility in the world. Every word u just stated was comolete bullshit.
Your comment about some people having fought for rights and others not is borderline racist. With precious comments about Darwin, it's a red flag.
How is it racist are you saying that certain racial groups are incapable of such things? That's racist as shit my dude. I'm pretty sure I remember history talking about the black Americans successfully fighting for their rights or did u miss that lesson?
My comments about Darwin have nothing to do with race and where purely about intelligence. Your insinuation that this is about race is highly racist in itself.
All people fight. Some fights are smashed with unimaginable violence.
Yeah that's how fighting works ether u have more violence and u win or u don't and u lose.
We are watching a live genocide in Gaza to prove this point.
Due to Australia censorship laws I can't comment anything about Israels actions.
Oceania colonization is built upon a genocide.
Same as when the Vikings invaded the British isles? Or when the Romans tried to crush the Germanic tribes. It took my ancestors 800years of oppression to topple the Roman empire but in the end we won and Rome fell.
I'm not assuming you have conscience of how disturbing these comments are for a person like me, in South America, where all attempts to built a decent society where meet with USA interventions.
I don't bring emotions into discussions it distracts from rationality and leads to poor decision making often resulting in the aforementioned case known as losing.
Try to think in more broad terms, not only based on your experience, but trying to encompass the multiple experiences in the world.
Its not my job to unfuck everyone else's countries. U want me to come to some country and make it like Australia? That can be done but turns out this practice tends to be called colonisation and u don't seem to be a fan. My experience is of a prosperous first world nation that is prosperous and first world precisely because of the actions you are fighting against. The options are either unfuck ur own nation by urself or get colonised and have someone unfuck it for you. Insert something something having and/or eating cake.
Bro we live in the world where the 50% of the richest families gained their wealth through inheritance. They represent like .000001% of humanity and control half the world’s wealth.
There’s no working hard and getting rich. Maybe you were born rich in CA and went in college early enough to get in on the tech wave.
The Facebook dev didn’t work harder than a farm laborer. They were born into privilege and got lucky and landed in one of the few viable careers
I see ur disconnect here. Ur from the 3rd world nation known as the unites states I'm from Australia where we have actual equality. And no the Facebook dev didn't work harder he worked smarter
Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.
In this way, Communism is the theory and the practice of bringing about conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. In this way, all communism is successful in so far as it improves the conditions of proletariat against their oppressors and fails in so far as they stop doing that.
The USSR, therefore, was wildly successful and large scale. It ended serfdom entirely. It defeated the Nazis. It ended the centuries-long 4-7 year cycle of famine. It created the second-best-fed society in the world. And then it failed. It fell to revisionism, elevating a liberal class of would be property owners. It created the conditions for the oligarchs, and then it dismantled itself in favor of liberal capitalism and private enrichment.
China, therefore, is wildly successful and large scale. It has so far lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. Grandmothers alive today in China saw their lives go from rice farming at a dollar a month to driving electric cars that respond to hand signals. They ended the centuries-long 2-4 year famine cycle. The ended the serf system. They have developed industrial capacity to such a degree that their massive country has a domestic purchasing power for its citizens equivalent to the greatest empire in the world, with far less inequality
Vietnam, therefore, is wildly successful. It fought against its colonizers (the French) and then successfully fought off the greatest military in the history of the world. Then it rebuilt its destroyed country and fed its people.
North Korea, therefore, is wildly successful. After the world's most powerful military destroyed everything in their country, every single structure, poisoned their land, and made them all to live in caves to avoid the constant napalm strafing, they worked together and rebuilt everything by hand without any ability to trade with the rest of the world except an impoverished China and revisionist USSR. They not only developed a modern agricultural base, electrical grid, technology sector, urban density, education system, and healthcare system, they also developed a strong enough military to deter further attacks on their people by Western oppressors.
Cuba, therefore, is wildly successful. Despite 60 years of embargo, Cuba still has higher literacy, higher life expectancy, greater democratic participation, and stronger community support than the richest empire on the planet. Cuba developed healthcare for its citizens to such a degree that they have a surplus of doctors who can help other nations. They developed a COVID vaccine on the same timeline as the US did without having to spend $4B as an incentive. They invented a vaccine for lung cancer and they give of their life saving openly and freely to liberate their people and others from the oppression of the wealthy who demand profit for health. Americans can't even get access to the lung cancer vaccine because of the embargo. Cuba ended the racial apartheid of the capitalist regime, liberating all people to participate in their own governance.
Perhaps you've got another definition for communism?
Slavery evolved and took on new names, but never disappeared.
How much do you have saved up, that you're willing to tap into so that you can live for yourself and others, and not a paycheck? How long could you just exist before the debt becomes crushing? That's the length of your leash.
Retired people who live comfortably are basically 'off leash' but still confined to the yard. Some people have a 1-2 week 'leash'. Some may have saved up enough to have a 6-12 month 'leash
The rest are the 'i could stop working whenever I want, but refuse to' or 'man I'm so fucking far in debt that I'll never be able to stop fucking working'
Most people will never be able to stop working because I'm a slave based economy, a slave must earn it's food every day, and it's bed every night.
The system is designed so that you must prove your worth every day, and provide more profit than you take in wages, every day. It was designed to exploit you for everything you have to offer.
If you continue to adhere to the same system, your best case scenario is to be 'allowed' a peaceful death after a lifetime of doing everything 'right'.
I often hear that phrase from parents. Its not entirely rich people reinforcing the system. Until everyone has stopped being capitalism-pilled, we're cooked.
Wage slavery. The US is one of the worst offenders. By binding your healthcare to your employer and having next to no worker protection laws, the loss of your job might cause homelessness or death. Is that really a choice? Work or die? And with stagnating wages who has the financial security and time to fight for their rights?
“It is difficult for me to imagine what ‘personal liberty’ is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment. Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread.”
You have stumbled onto one of the most fundamental criticisms of modern capitalism, freedom & plenty for the few. It's better than a hereditary feudal system in that upward class mobility isn't categorically forbidden, but the reality for the vast majority of people is that actually moving up is not possible because the game is still rigged to produce almost exactly the same results as the old system.
The USA you're free to do whatever you like as long as it's these few specific things we believe are economically beneficial to the leaders but not you.
Asterix did a great bit on that. Slaves are freed and put to work for money, but suddenly they owe for food, housing, clothing, infrastructure etc. and are just as much slaves as before. In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don't have to worry anymore.
In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don’t have to worry anymore.
This last bit is Neo-Confederate propaganda. The "slaves were happy to be slaves" myth is wildly apocryphal.
Far more often, the freedmen leave their plantation economies in pursuit of more lucrative work in more industrial and urban regions. Harlem, New York and Detroit, Michigan are testament to the exodus of American colored people northward following the war. Or they strike out to undeveloped territories and form their own municipalities. Large black communities popped up across the Southwest and West coast, as the post-Civil War frontier was subjected to industrial scale genocide of native peoples.
The consequence of this mass migration is a labor shortage at home. One which can only be resolved by (a) raising wages / living standards until people want to stay or (b) re-enslaving the population through other means. In the case of the US South, these "other means" were the Jim Crow laws, which transformed the private plantation economy into a publicly managed (and privately profitable) state prison economy.
Following the end of Reconstruction under Rutherford B. Hayes, southern state governments imposed a suite of laws forbidding "vagrancy" and constricting the right of colored people to travel unattended. Independent communities of black citizens were raided and demolished (The Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 being two notable examples - really all of Red Summer being a major historical turning point for American race relations). Enormous prison compounds were constructed. And the incarceration rate among people of color skyrocketed.
The campaign to re-enslave the colored population was a central position of the "Dixiecrats" straight into the LBJ administration. And capturing these revanchists was pivotal to the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, even as the taste for segregation soured nationally on the American tongue. All of this was covered up and expunged from US History, following the 1980s Reagan Revolution and the reactionary efforts to undo the Civil Rights Movement. So it's very easy to never know the long dark winter of civil rights in post-Civil War American history.
But "slaves were actually happier to be on the plantation" is textbook Coolidge Era white nationalist revisionism.
That's all well and good, but Asterix is a satirical comic book making a point about wage slavery, not happy slaves. The author is French, the story in France, and the slaves are Roman.
And I might have imagined the re-enslaving, too. I can't find it in plot summaries. Maybe it's in the movie adaptation, but the scene of their "freeing" is pretty clear about its point.
The author is French, the story in France, and the slaves are Roman.
No shortage of French slavery in the New World. Just ask anyone from Louisiana or Haiti.
Maybe it’s in the movie adaptation, but the scene of their “freeing” is pretty clear about its point.
Oh sure. You can find all sorts of period critiques of industrial capitalism as slavery with extra steps.
But the notion that people would volunteer to return to bondage really undersells how hard plantation overseers and state police in slave states had to work to keep them there.
The economy is designed to keep you locked into working for the rest of your life under stress. Freedom is only given to capitalists because that's how the system is designed.
Yup. I remember a friend and I discussing various forms of freedoms: Freedom of speech, religion, privacy, etc. We tried to rank them by importance, and while I cannot remember our conclusions, I remember "Economic freedom" to be among the most important ones.
A person should have disposable income and freedom to spent it how they want.
i like to think it’s not “disposable” income that is spent on things required for life, hunger, house, health. those things should be provided. and those industries not allowed to profit. and be owned by the workers.
its by design, politicians billionaire class intentionally instigated this way so people dont start pondering about politics, rising up against the aristocrats.
People often don't really appreciate how much freedom they have until it's taken away.
But even with no money at all, I have a bike, and I can ride it as far as I care to in any direction I want (well, at least until I hit a border). And that is so much more freedom than I've had at other points in my life.
How would you get food and healthcare? What about people with a chronic condition where if they lose their healthcare they won't physically be able to?
Okay... but what happens when you're hungry and broke at the same time? Just gonna ride your bike until you happen to come across someone handing out free food? The 'ability to bike around the block' isn't the kind of freedom that OP was talking about, it's the freedom to do what you want with your life without being forced to do something else (make money) first
It is difficult for me to imagine what "personal liberty" is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
Everyone here should remember the story of Damocles. One of the things I enjoy about being poor is that I have nothing for people to steal. I don't worry about muggings, carjackings, home invasions, kidnapping. When you have money, a line starts to form to take it from you.
Yes, and this is why old school liberals (i.e. supporters of liberty for all) support social programs. Supporting those that can't comfortably support themselves brings freedom from exploitation.
It is with this premise that I began to formulate a concept of UBI, ranked income, and so forth. People simply can't do stuff if they don't have enough things to support a baseline existence. That baseline should be strong enough to offer education, health, freedom to wait for jobs that aren't abusive, the ability to travel, and so on. Agency is the core to an effective human, and our capitalistic society is designed to confer that agency upon a few.
It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed person, who goes about hungry, and cannot find employment.
Real liberty can exist only where exploitation has been abolished, where there is no oppression of some by others, where there is no unemployment and poverty, where a man is not haunted by the fear of being tomorrow deprived of work, of home and of bread. Only in such a society is real, and not paper, personal and every other liberty possible.
This is part of the idea of “freedom as development”, where development is the expansion of your capabilities! This was put into words by Amartya Sen over the last century. Check out human development!
Sounds a bit extreme. What about all the things you can do for free? Also, the world needs cheap things to keep everyone spending. I’m pretty sure there will always be at least something even the poor can afford.
We lost our freedom when they took away the ability to put together a group of people/solo and go on an expedition/excursion because you had the resources and the want to. now we're slaves
Are we going to have yet another round of "everyone should be free to do whatever they want except set up groups with mutual interests"? People want some magical force in the universe, beyond human conventions, that prevents any person or group from gaining power over another.
That's basically the difference between positive and negative freedom.
Negative freedom is the freedom from restrictions (like nobody prohibiting you from walking) while positive freedom is the ability for you to do something (like being able to walk)
UBI is far more pluralist than democracy, because democracy is corrupt promises with Zionist/CIA and other power supremacist agendas that only has money for those goals. UBI is the freedom to do anything, including cooperating with others on group enterprises where payoff is future success based.
Where government's role is an administrator taking care of pluralist prosperity/needs of its people, instead of a king/power hierarchy that steals prosperity for its "in group", only UBI can provide the function because people can afford to take care of themselves, and prosperity programs fund more UBI. Every single program/war proposal must be compared to an increased cash dividend to people.
Only pure evil that needs hierarchical slavery for their political power, including the left, opposes UBI, and so UBI cannot come from existing political systems, because they are all pure evil power maximizing.
I will also dissent on this. I've been homeless. I've lived in a rural subsistence community in West Africa where everyone lived on $1 a day. Material items and money do not define freedom.
Your premise is based on a wealthy materialist American mindset. Billions of people, every day, grind just to survive, and yet can still find joy in their lives. A lot of times that's through basic human connection. Visit any of the poorest places on the planet, and it doesn't take much to get people to stop and take notice and smile. To experience joy. Joy is free. Freedom is the ability to have your own emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Before you get all up about someone keeping them down to prevent some Marxist paradise, please keep in mind that rain-fed agriculture is a gamble many people play with their lives every day. A large, large number of humans grind against the weather. Not as slaves to anyone else.
And, rest assured, there are wealthy people who are miserable and wear "golden handcuffs" because they are stuck doing something they don't love to maintain an above-average standard of living. Fuck - how many of those stupid Housewives shows are there, filled to overflowing with wealthy people showing you in grotesque detail how money and material trap people in pain and emotional suffering, exploited like an emaciated lion in a zoo.
What can YOU do for free to enjoy your freedom? Here's a fun one, go dumpster diving! You'll find cool shit! Some of it you can sell - that's free money, my guy! You can forage for herbs and food, that's always fun once you know what to look for. Oh, you can make hooch from the stuff you find! You can plant the seeds of rotten tomatoes and start a garden. Go with a friend and you might just enjoy yourself. Or go volunteer at a place that feeds the homeless and talk to the people there and get an idea of how much freedom some of them have exactly because they have changed their mindset. Freedom doesn't mean acceptance by society. It's not 1:1 that you are free and loved or free and appreciated, or free and wealthy or free and even fucking smart. But you can taste freedom and realize that only you can bestow it on yourself.
You and you alone own your actions, thoughts and words. What are you doing with them?
The homeless people I've talked to with broken limbs and teeth who can't afford to get treatment didn't seem happy at all except for the fact that they were getting a slight amount of aid and human connection from the organization I was working with. One of the ones I talked to was on their way to the convenience store to buy alcohol to cope with their injuries.
Driving Uber has been such a sobering exposure to the unfathomable levels of bullshit so many people are dealing with. It's so, so much. Once you lose your footing for half a second, you're going to bounce and drag along the bottom indefinitely.
Yeah, it's not all sunshine and puppy dogs. The point is to get some perspective on one's own life and to not focus on the "woah, that's so fucked up" parts of other people's experiences.
Are you suggesting that no one you met or saw experienced anything positive at all? No one had even a second of joy in their lives?
It's great that you found a way to be happy in the situation you were in. Personally, I wouldn't have been. All the time I don't have to spend worrying about whether I can feed my kids, or give them a roof over their heads, or worrying about them getting sick and me not being able to afford treatment, I use for things that enrich my life. I spend it with friends and family, I read books, every now and then I travel to a place I haven't been to before.
If you consider wanting to feed your kids and spend time with family materialistic, fine. But some folks need such shallow materialistic things to be happy. I'm one of them.
Nope, very much the opposite. But I also know how materialism is defined and not many people in this thread seem to, through will or ignorance, neither would surprise me.
Taking a step back, this thread is tankie catnip for people who only think materialism=capitalism, and capitalism=the only bad thing ever. Sorry that this is how you find out, but socialist governments have been and remain hard materialists as well. More so than capitalists in some ways. The easiest example is that non-material social groups - religions - are generally illegal. Regardless of your personal thoughts on that, science, the "religion of materialism" is permitted. The only non-material fetishization is generally around the Party. Socialism in general is all about not letting people decide their own fates with regard to material goods at all, but having the state command all aspects of production.
If people in a capitalist country can't afford to do anything then they're in an economic prison. We can agree on that, right? But the bars of that prison, short of medical issues, are bars of your own making. If you move to a hippie commune, is that a zoo in a world where everyone is in their own prison? Or is that simply another kind of prison because they might have rules about helping out with time and effort? Those are costs, too.
I understand that believing these things may have helped you cope psychologically with the stress of being homeless, but that doesn't make them any less fucking stupid
You haven't been called stupid for being homeless as a child yet. My previous comment called the rationalizations you used to make yourself feel better about your circumstances as a child stupid. Right now I'm calling you stupid for continuing to cling to them as an adult, and for your poor reading comprehension which is also probably to blame for your lack of enthusiasm for Marx.
So you have an axe to grind and simply won't accept anything other than your brand of groupthink.
Then, my apologies for not realizing you were from a .ml instance earlier.
yet
Um, so I'm threatened with a terrible no good downvote you've already given me, and mean words, unless I conform to your groupthink? lol. Tell me more about who's free and who isn't while expressing how trapped you are mentally, monetarily, and emotionally. You're welcome to call me stupid for choices my parents made as a child, as it only shows how you've tried to apply the label sticky-side out.
Perhaps your reading of Marx was too shallow, as to skip that socialism fetishizes material goods and materialism to the point where it seeks to control all of it. It's every bit as materialist as capitalism, otherwise it wouldn't care at all about who controls the means of production at all.
Indeed, and failed socialist governments proved the point time and again for a century that they were every bit as materialist, in some ways, much more so. Religion is inherently non-material; it's spiritual, yes? That's a pretty easy definition to agree on, that Invisible Sky Daddy is non-corporeal, right? I can attend any temple or church I want and never give them money. Some say I should, and that's between me and Invisible Sky Daddy. Or, even better, I can be a pagan out in the forest praising nature, or a Buddhist. Socialism makes those things illegal exactly because they're non-material and therefore not subject to control of the materialistic state. Music, movies, all media is regulated by the state because it might give you non-material feels about life and hope and joy. That media can only fetishize the materialism of the state and those who lived lives doing so.
Definitely don't change your mind. it's OK, I promise, that hate will burn you up from the inside and give you nothing to show for it.
Lol that's a whole lot of words for someone who clearly doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about, a feat in its own right. You haven't read jack shit, you clearly don't know anything about socialism or capitalism for that matter. The smart and honest thing to do would be to just admit that and then fix it, but you're neither of those.
Freedom isn't the ability to do anything you want, even if you can't afford it, that's a cheesy, shallow capitalist view of freedom.
Freedom is knowing that you have no limitations imposed on you by society or the government. You can literally choose whatever path you'd like. How you follow that path, or afford that path is up to you, but at least your government can't tell you that you aren't allowed to follow that path because they said so, for whatever corrupt rationalization they claim.
I never said we did. I just offered my definition.
And BTW, just because we don't have it now, doesn't mean we should concede it. The Founding Fathers promised us Freedom if we fought against the monarchy/ aristocracy, and we should collect on that promise. We need to let them know that once we get past Trump, it's going to be a brand new America, and we intend to collect on the promises that have been owed to us for 250 years.
But the government has said we can't follow the paths we want, they are a government of the rich that has robbed and murdered the working class and prevented them from doing what is good for them at the risk of death or imprisonment. Within capitalism there is no freedom unless you are the rich, who the proletarian must beg for wages from to live.
If the workers have a better standard of life it is only at the will of the rich, concessions gained from them have only come from different forms of class warfare.
Valid, but that just describes the government that suppresses freedom. That doesn't describe freedom, or contradict what I said about freedom not being connected to money.
Apparently so- according to this guy. You’re lucky to not be charged for all that air too, your welcome dirty socialist xD
/heavily joking /heavy sarcasm
Fr there are human rights and consumerism. It’s ehh how people can be like “having less in life is real freedom” just to cope for being poor and not be able to meet the minimal satisfaction of life.
Actually, just go to the library. Depending on where you live, you'll not just find all kinds of books, there may also be audio book, board games, console games, game consoles and computers you can just use.
There might comfortable furniture and coffee, you can go there just for the mood or the peace.
Got kids? There might be a whole section just for kids. It may include toys or even a play-area.
There might a whole wall of post from people who wants your attention on something. There's probably a few about free activities you could join.
You realize money is required for more than material goods, right? Experiences take money. Museums, live events, transportation, lodging (even if just a tent), all need money. In some places, accessing parks and beaches require money. None of these things are desires for material goods, but desires for experiences - experiences that make life more fulfilling. Experiences that can enrich the spirit, or provide opportunities for bonding with others.
I can get behind anti-consumerism, but to be unable to partake in enjoying nature or exploring our culture, just because we’re poor, is to deny us access to a crucial part of our humanity.
Yeah. Marx called it formal vs. real freedom. All the people are free to sleep under the bridges or at a five star penthouse. But some are forced to sleep under the bridge and only a few have means to exercise the freedom to enter the penthouse.
Marx misses the point of equality and conflates it with equity. In the ideal u have the freedom to work hard get well educated and make a shitonne of money then have the freedom that grants. Or u can choose to be lazy and not do any of that. It's your choice.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge. And if unit truly isn't then it was ur genetics that denied you the possibility to do better at which point we have to start talking about Charles Darwin.
[Citation Needed]
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can't get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn't work hard enough.
It's why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He's a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn't even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can't be overcome by any amount of gumption. (And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?)
My experience and all the people I've spoken to throughout my life. Not 1 single person in a shut scenario didn't have options to negate or escape said scenario.
Or they weren't smart enough. Or they where not fit (in the Darwinian sense) enough to get out of it.
That's an excellent strawman. He went from a middle class situation (similar to thousands of people of people myself included) to the worlds richest man. He was not handed everything he has on a platter. He admittedly started with more than most but he still did infinitely better than anyone else born to similar level of advantage.
Their absolutely are structural obstacles just that these obstacles are infinitely less than previous. I mean by your logic we claim claim that the dictatorial control of Iran by the iatola is a structural obstacle and justify trumps actions in Iran hell we can justify the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan or go a step further and justify Hitlers actions as he confiscating property from an entire class of people and redistributed to those with less this still counts as removing structural obstacles regardless of the morality of such actions. Blind adherence to your argument takes us to a very dark place very quickly.
I want u to go to south Africa on Google street view and scroll back through time just looking at the streets and what u see. Then I want u to think about why the changes ur witnessing have happened and what changed into the period of time for which these changes happened (demographic changes might be a good indicator).
Elon Musk was not middle class. Unbelievably dumb statement. He grew up in one of the largest houses in Pretoria. Don't get jealous though as his father was a child rapist. Like most wealthy people, rotten to the core.
I did some googling and I would say comfortably upper middle class. I guess ur definition and mine are different.
Glad you did the right thing and looked it up instead of talking out your ass.
Is that u admitting I was right wrapped in a bad faith personal attack? Perhaps let's try keep to discussing ideas instead of insulting each other like mid witted barbarians.
That only shows that SOME of the people who somehow relates to you, have options.
Have you ever wondered why they don't take those options? You might have missed something that prevents them.
Or maybe better: Have you wondered about the people further away from you? I can guarantee you, millions of people literally don't have any good options. If you haven't met any, that only means you have met any.
I've met many people of many different nations of many different levels of wealth and success. Every single one of them in a shit scenario got their by choices they made.
Why don't I take those options? Cos I can read the statistics on everyone before me, I paid attention in school, I realised that drugs, debt, gambling, criminal behaviour etc don't improve my life. I chose an education path and career that make it impossible for me to end up a brokie loser
Lots of people don't have access to any of the information sources you had, or the ability to take any of the options you did.
You had plenty of good options, and you chose from those. Some people only have bad options. They pick bad options, because that's all they have.
Almost every single person on this planet has internet access and that can teach u literally anything. And please explain when doing crack is the best of a set of bad options?
Bro, I’ve traveled the world and met people who have traveled and you are not one of them. You have the opinion of a child that has never left 4Chan. I imagine you don’t even get out much in your local area.
OP shared a thought. I pointed this is a formal concept and pointed the name, so they can search for more. The concept describes a real and observable phenomena.
Why are you bringing moral judgement of people here? Even if poor people are guilt of their own poverty (they aren't) like you are implying, it doesn't change they are formally, but not really free. Marx description stills holds up.
Not to mention that his argument started swaying a little too close to Eugenics in that last sentence
Had to nuke the profile on my instance. The modlog tells the crocodile is toning down their true opinions to appear less egregious.
Not attacking you just ensuring my ideas are visible enough to help insure that anyone falling down the rabbit hole has had enough exposure to my ideology that they will accept the propaganda as it gets mainlined into their veins.
I can't debate morality about an idea from a philosopher? What has the world come to?
If I tie myself to a pole I'm also not free. Marx excellently diagnosed society yet continuously failed to treat a single one of its ailments. Also are you saying that we should deny people freedom to deny their own freedom seems like a paradox to me.
Your point assumes that everyone putting the same amount of effort gets to the same place. That there's no golden youth and no kids have to work since the early age to support their parents. That everyone is given equal opportunities regardless of health, connections, and other factors. That industries are not exploitative to either workers or retail clients. Until that is true, there's neither equity nor equality.
Besides, Marx does not object working hard and earning big. He objects robbing others of monetary value they produced to fill up your bank. At that point, you create opportunities for yourself at the expense of someone else, which is antithetical to equality. Or, to frame it in your wording, someone else makes an effort, and you get the money. Or, more commonly, vice versa.
That really depends on where you live, your health and possibly several points about your parents. Millions and millions of people never get a chance to grab, never get an opportunity to pursue.
Lots of people don't have any better options than to live under a bridge, despite being in an area where that is illegal and not a real option.
I live in the first world nation of Australia where I get free healthcare and practically free education.
U can make changes and make opportunities. Almost everyone has access to the internet or at least a library. If ur born someone that isn't Australia then perhaps try unfucking whatever place you live my ancestors threatened a king to get rights under the magna carta then build the greatest empire this planet has ever seen. Nothing is stopping the bridge dwellers from doing the same except the motivation to do so.
A nation built on stolen land where the better predictor of your class is is you are descendants from the settlers or from tha natives.
Except the inequal distribution of aducational and work opportunities, that assure the intergenerational inequality reproduction.
a concerned note:
Your comment about some people having fought for rights and others not is borderline racist. With precious comments about Darwin, it's a red flag.
All people fight. Some fights are smashed with unimaginable violence. We are watching a live genocide in Gaza to prove this point. Oceania colonization is built upon a genocide. I'm not assuming you have conscience of how disturbing these comments are for a person like me, in South America, where all attempts to built a decent society where meet with USA interventions. Try to think in more broad terms, not only based on your experience, but trying to encompass the multiple experiences in the world.
Does it matter how many times the land was stolen? Cos all of Europe has been stolen by the rest if Europe hundreds of times. Or in Europe do u just call it losing a war? By ur logic I want my Lordship title and land in Prussia back.
Australia has very good public education many public schools rank at or near the top of year12 results. Any citizen granted (gives adequate grades) a loan by the government to go to university (which u pay jack shit for cos its just part of the tax system and maxes out at 10%). Ohh and we noe have free Tafe (trades work education). Work opportunities come from the education its highly illegal and well policed to ensure that workplaces don't discriminate based on race, sex, sexual orientation etc etc. Australia has some of the most extreme wealth mobility in the world. Every word u just stated was comolete bullshit.
How is it racist are you saying that certain racial groups are incapable of such things? That's racist as shit my dude. I'm pretty sure I remember history talking about the black Americans successfully fighting for their rights or did u miss that lesson?
My comments about Darwin have nothing to do with race and where purely about intelligence. Your insinuation that this is about race is highly racist in itself.
Yeah that's how fighting works ether u have more violence and u win or u don't and u lose.
Due to Australia censorship laws I can't comment anything about Israels actions.
Same as when the Vikings invaded the British isles? Or when the Romans tried to crush the Germanic tribes. It took my ancestors 800years of oppression to topple the Roman empire but in the end we won and Rome fell.
I don't bring emotions into discussions it distracts from rationality and leads to poor decision making often resulting in the aforementioned case known as losing.
Its not my job to unfuck everyone else's countries. U want me to come to some country and make it like Australia? That can be done but turns out this practice tends to be called colonisation and u don't seem to be a fan. My experience is of a prosperous first world nation that is prosperous and first world precisely because of the actions you are fighting against. The options are either unfuck ur own nation by urself or get colonised and have someone unfuck it for you. Insert something something having and/or eating cake.
Bro we live in the world where the 50% of the richest families gained their wealth through inheritance. They represent like .000001% of humanity and control half the world’s wealth.
There’s no working hard and getting rich. Maybe you were born rich in CA and went in college early enough to get in on the tech wave.
The Facebook dev didn’t work harder than a farm laborer. They were born into privilege and got lucky and landed in one of the few viable careers
I see ur disconnect here. Ur from the 3rd world nation known as the unites states I'm from Australia where we have actual equality. And no the Facebook dev didn't work harder he worked smarter
Welcome to the resistance, comrade
Lenin/Stalin/Mao or real communism?
Try harder
What real communism would you point to? Castro? Ho? Kim?
If the only communism you believe in is imaginary, perhaps you have a problem with reality.
There has never been a successful large scale communism in history.
Maybe sweden in the seventies comes closest.
What do you mean with "try harder"?
Sweden is does not come close, no.
Try harder means do more work. What is communism?
Engels wrote:
In this way, Communism is the theory and the practice of bringing about conditions of the liberation of the proletariat. In this way, all communism is successful in so far as it improves the conditions of proletariat against their oppressors and fails in so far as they stop doing that.
The USSR, therefore, was wildly successful and large scale. It ended serfdom entirely. It defeated the Nazis. It ended the centuries-long 4-7 year cycle of famine. It created the second-best-fed society in the world. And then it failed. It fell to revisionism, elevating a liberal class of would be property owners. It created the conditions for the oligarchs, and then it dismantled itself in favor of liberal capitalism and private enrichment.
China, therefore, is wildly successful and large scale. It has so far lifted 800 million people out of abject poverty. Grandmothers alive today in China saw their lives go from rice farming at a dollar a month to driving electric cars that respond to hand signals. They ended the centuries-long 2-4 year famine cycle. The ended the serf system. They have developed industrial capacity to such a degree that their massive country has a domestic purchasing power for its citizens equivalent to the greatest empire in the world, with far less inequality
Vietnam, therefore, is wildly successful. It fought against its colonizers (the French) and then successfully fought off the greatest military in the history of the world. Then it rebuilt its destroyed country and fed its people.
North Korea, therefore, is wildly successful. After the world's most powerful military destroyed everything in their country, every single structure, poisoned their land, and made them all to live in caves to avoid the constant napalm strafing, they worked together and rebuilt everything by hand without any ability to trade with the rest of the world except an impoverished China and revisionist USSR. They not only developed a modern agricultural base, electrical grid, technology sector, urban density, education system, and healthcare system, they also developed a strong enough military to deter further attacks on their people by Western oppressors.
Cuba, therefore, is wildly successful. Despite 60 years of embargo, Cuba still has higher literacy, higher life expectancy, greater democratic participation, and stronger community support than the richest empire on the planet. Cuba developed healthcare for its citizens to such a degree that they have a surplus of doctors who can help other nations. They developed a COVID vaccine on the same timeline as the US did without having to spend $4B as an incentive. They invented a vaccine for lung cancer and they give of their life saving openly and freely to liberate their people and others from the oppression of the wealthy who demand profit for health. Americans can't even get access to the lung cancer vaccine because of the embargo. Cuba ended the racial apartheid of the capitalist regime, liberating all people to participate in their own governance.
Perhaps you've got another definition for communism?
Slavery evolved and took on new names, but never disappeared.
How much do you have saved up, that you're willing to tap into so that you can live for yourself and others, and not a paycheck? How long could you just exist before the debt becomes crushing? That's the length of your leash.
Retired people who live comfortably are basically 'off leash' but still confined to the yard. Some people have a 1-2 week 'leash'. Some may have saved up enough to have a 6-12 month 'leash The rest are the 'i could stop working whenever I want, but refuse to' or 'man I'm so fucking far in debt that I'll never be able to stop fucking working'
Most people will never be able to stop working because I'm a slave based economy, a slave must earn it's food every day, and it's bed every night.
The idea that you have to earn a living means you dont deserve to live.
I get what you're saying, but I think it'd be better phrased as 'the system' (rich people) don't want you to live.
The system is designed so that you must prove your worth every day, and provide more profit than you take in wages, every day. It was designed to exploit you for everything you have to offer.
If you continue to adhere to the same system, your best case scenario is to be 'allowed' a peaceful death after a lifetime of doing everything 'right'.
I often hear that phrase from parents. Its not entirely rich people reinforcing the system. Until everyone has stopped being capitalism-pilled, we're cooked.
Voluntary debt slavery.
Wage slavery. The US is one of the worst offenders. By binding your healthcare to your employer and having next to no worker protection laws, the loss of your job might cause homelessness or death. Is that really a choice? Work or die? And with stagnating wages who has the financial security and time to fight for their rights?
This is of course by design.
Kropotkin?
You have stumbled onto one of the most fundamental criticisms of modern capitalism, freedom & plenty for the few. It's better than a hereditary feudal system in that upward class mobility isn't categorically forbidden, but the reality for the vast majority of people is that actually moving up is not possible because the game is still rigged to produce almost exactly the same results as the old system.
Unironically what natives of the Great Lakes region have been saying about the "civilized" western way of life for centuries.
The USA you're free to do whatever you like as long as it's these few specific things we believe are economically beneficial to the leaders but not you.
Asterix did a great bit on that. Slaves are freed and put to work for money, but suddenly they owe for food, housing, clothing, infrastructure etc. and are just as much slaves as before. In fact, they go back to being slaves because then they don't have to worry anymore.
This last bit is Neo-Confederate propaganda. The "slaves were happy to be slaves" myth is wildly apocryphal.
Far more often, the freedmen leave their plantation economies in pursuit of more lucrative work in more industrial and urban regions. Harlem, New York and Detroit, Michigan are testament to the exodus of American colored people northward following the war. Or they strike out to undeveloped territories and form their own municipalities. Large black communities popped up across the Southwest and West coast, as the post-Civil War frontier was subjected to industrial scale genocide of native peoples.
The consequence of this mass migration is a labor shortage at home. One which can only be resolved by (a) raising wages / living standards until people want to stay or (b) re-enslaving the population through other means. In the case of the US South, these "other means" were the Jim Crow laws, which transformed the private plantation economy into a publicly managed (and privately profitable) state prison economy.
Following the end of Reconstruction under Rutherford B. Hayes, southern state governments imposed a suite of laws forbidding "vagrancy" and constricting the right of colored people to travel unattended. Independent communities of black citizens were raided and demolished (The Wilmington Massacre of 1898, the Tulsa Massacre of 1921 being two notable examples - really all of Red Summer being a major historical turning point for American race relations). Enormous prison compounds were constructed. And the incarceration rate among people of color skyrocketed.
The campaign to re-enslave the colored population was a central position of the "Dixiecrats" straight into the LBJ administration. And capturing these revanchists was pivotal to the Nixon and Reagan campaigns, even as the taste for segregation soured nationally on the American tongue. All of this was covered up and expunged from US History, following the 1980s Reagan Revolution and the reactionary efforts to undo the Civil Rights Movement. So it's very easy to never know the long dark winter of civil rights in post-Civil War American history.
But "slaves were actually happier to be on the plantation" is textbook Coolidge Era white nationalist revisionism.
That's all well and good, but Asterix is a satirical comic book making a point about wage slavery, not happy slaves. The author is French, the story in France, and the slaves are Roman.
And I might have imagined the re-enslaving, too. I can't find it in plot summaries. Maybe it's in the movie adaptation, but the scene of their "freeing" is pretty clear about its point.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hLmniv6RNPs
No shortage of French slavery in the New World. Just ask anyone from Louisiana or Haiti.
Oh sure. You can find all sorts of period critiques of industrial capitalism as slavery with extra steps.
But the notion that people would volunteer to return to bondage really undersells how hard plantation overseers and state police in slave states had to work to keep them there.
Which is why I plan to fuck off to a mountain, and play dead.
The economy is designed to keep you locked into working for the rest of your life under stress. Freedom is only given to capitalists because that's how the system is designed.
One loophole is stealing.
I sold drugs, that was real freedom.
Yup. I remember a friend and I discussing various forms of freedoms: Freedom of speech, religion, privacy, etc. We tried to rank them by importance, and while I cannot remember our conclusions, I remember "Economic freedom" to be among the most important ones.
A person should have disposable income and freedom to spent it how they want.
i like to think it’s not “disposable” income that is spent on things required for life, hunger, house, health. those things should be provided. and those industries not allowed to profit. and be owned by the workers.
we must also demand enough free time to enjoy the fruits of our labor.
its by design, politicians billionaire class intentionally instigated this way so people dont start pondering about politics, rising up against the aristocrats.
Eh, yes and no.
People often don't really appreciate how much freedom they have until it's taken away.
But even with no money at all, I have a bike, and I can ride it as far as I care to in any direction I want (well, at least until I hit a border). And that is so much more freedom than I've had at other points in my life.
How would you get food and healthcare? What about people with a chronic condition where if they lose their healthcare they won't physically be able to?
Hint: we don't get healthcare typicaly anyway.
Okay... but what happens when you're hungry and broke at the same time? Just gonna ride your bike until you happen to come across someone handing out free food? The 'ability to bike around the block' isn't the kind of freedom that OP was talking about, it's the freedom to do what you want with your life without being forced to do something else (make money) first
And what I'm talking about is that when you don't have ‘ability to bike around the block’ freedom, that really puts things in perspective for you.
Hard to ride a bike when you don't have your health, sadly.
I would say more to the point if everything in life needs to make a profit then freedom isn't free
It's like having health insurance but you can't afford the copays. Then you don't really have health insurance do you ?
Freedom to toil, freedom to starve, freedom to suffer without medicine or medical care. Freedom to freeze on the cold and bake in the sun.
Slavery is not being denied the ability to earn wages.
Slavery is being denied the ability to save.
Just let me exist in the middle of bumfuck without an adress, with the stuff I aquired (or even without it).
Everyone here should remember the story of Damocles. One of the things I enjoy about being poor is that I have nothing for people to steal. I don't worry about muggings, carjackings, home invasions, kidnapping. When you have money, a line starts to form to take it from you.
This is freedom under capitalism
Yep, for more information on that read Debt: the First 5000 Years, it goes pretty deep into it from both anthropological and political perspectives
Instructions unclear. Im now in debt for 130k
Yes, and this is why old school liberals (i.e. supporters of liberty for all) support social programs. Supporting those that can't comfortably support themselves brings freedom from exploitation.
It is with this premise that I began to formulate a concept of UBI, ranked income, and so forth. People simply can't do stuff if they don't have enough things to support a baseline existence. That baseline should be strong enough to offer education, health, freedom to wait for jobs that aren't abusive, the ability to travel, and so on. Agency is the core to an effective human, and our capitalistic society is designed to confer that agency upon a few.
Maybe freedom as in financial freedom? I feel trapped cause of trauma and stuff but there's layers.
Like an onion
like a cake
They smell?
They make you cry?
– Joey S
This is part of the idea of “freedom as development”, where development is the expansion of your capabilities! This was put into words by Amartya Sen over the last century. Check out human development!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_liberty
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Bill_of_Rights
Freedom to stave.
It is tricky, yes.
If you happen to be able to participate in events that are free however, you have more options.
Sounds a bit extreme. What about all the things you can do for free? Also, the world needs cheap things to keep everyone spending. I’m pretty sure there will always be at least something even the poor can afford.
We lost our freedom when they took away the ability to put together a group of people/solo and go on an expedition/excursion because you had the resources and the want to. now we're slaves
When capitalism ends and we all finally revolt, we will be truly free.
Are we going to have yet another round of "everyone should be free to do whatever they want except set up groups with mutual interests"? People want some magical force in the universe, beyond human conventions, that prevents any person or group from gaining power over another.
Welcome to left libertarianism. Cheers, you can vape in the hot tub but please no glass.
That's basically the difference between positive and negative freedom.
Negative freedom is the freedom from restrictions (like nobody prohibiting you from walking) while positive freedom is the ability for you to do something (like being able to walk)
UBI is far more pluralist than democracy, because democracy is corrupt promises with Zionist/CIA and other power supremacist agendas that only has money for those goals. UBI is the freedom to do anything, including cooperating with others on group enterprises where payoff is future success based.
Where government's role is an administrator taking care of pluralist prosperity/needs of its people, instead of a king/power hierarchy that steals prosperity for its "in group", only UBI can provide the function because people can afford to take care of themselves, and prosperity programs fund more UBI. Every single program/war proposal must be compared to an increased cash dividend to people.
Only pure evil that needs hierarchical slavery for their political power, including the left, opposes UBI, and so UBI cannot come from existing political systems, because they are all pure evil power maximizing.
it's a different kind of freedom.
freedom exists in your mind. ask sartre. i am burdened, but i am radically free.
Sartre is dead.
he died to go kill god directly
I will also dissent on this. I've been homeless. I've lived in a rural subsistence community in West Africa where everyone lived on $1 a day. Material items and money do not define freedom.
Your premise is based on a wealthy materialist American mindset. Billions of people, every day, grind just to survive, and yet can still find joy in their lives. A lot of times that's through basic human connection. Visit any of the poorest places on the planet, and it doesn't take much to get people to stop and take notice and smile. To experience joy. Joy is free. Freedom is the ability to have your own emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Before you get all up about someone keeping them down to prevent some Marxist paradise, please keep in mind that rain-fed agriculture is a gamble many people play with their lives every day. A large, large number of humans grind against the weather. Not as slaves to anyone else.
And, rest assured, there are wealthy people who are miserable and wear "golden handcuffs" because they are stuck doing something they don't love to maintain an above-average standard of living. Fuck - how many of those stupid Housewives shows are there, filled to overflowing with wealthy people showing you in grotesque detail how money and material trap people in pain and emotional suffering, exploited like an emaciated lion in a zoo.
What can YOU do for free to enjoy your freedom? Here's a fun one, go dumpster diving! You'll find cool shit! Some of it you can sell - that's free money, my guy! You can forage for herbs and food, that's always fun once you know what to look for. Oh, you can make hooch from the stuff you find! You can plant the seeds of rotten tomatoes and start a garden. Go with a friend and you might just enjoy yourself. Or go volunteer at a place that feeds the homeless and talk to the people there and get an idea of how much freedom some of them have exactly because they have changed their mindset. Freedom doesn't mean acceptance by society. It's not 1:1 that you are free and loved or free and appreciated, or free and wealthy or free and even fucking smart. But you can taste freedom and realize that only you can bestow it on yourself.
You and you alone own your actions, thoughts and words. What are you doing with them?
The homeless people I've talked to with broken limbs and teeth who can't afford to get treatment didn't seem happy at all except for the fact that they were getting a slight amount of aid and human connection from the organization I was working with. One of the ones I talked to was on their way to the convenience store to buy alcohol to cope with their injuries.
Driving Uber has been such a sobering exposure to the unfathomable levels of bullshit so many people are dealing with. It's so, so much. Once you lose your footing for half a second, you're going to bounce and drag along the bottom indefinitely.
Yeah, it's not all sunshine and puppy dogs. The point is to get some perspective on one's own life and to not focus on the "woah, that's so fucked up" parts of other people's experiences.
Are you suggesting that no one you met or saw experienced anything positive at all? No one had even a second of joy in their lives?
It's great that you found a way to be happy in the situation you were in. Personally, I wouldn't have been. All the time I don't have to spend worrying about whether I can feed my kids, or give them a roof over their heads, or worrying about them getting sick and me not being able to afford treatment, I use for things that enrich my life. I spend it with friends and family, I read books, every now and then I travel to a place I haven't been to before.
If you consider wanting to feed your kids and spend time with family materialistic, fine. But some folks need such shallow materialistic things to be happy. I'm one of them.
That's 100% not what anyone considers materialistic.
Obviously, feed your children. Feed yourself. That's not materialism, that's surviving. I'm not talking about starving as some moral high ground.
I'm talking about people who stress about not going to brunch or having the latest whatever BS phone. That is materialism.
It sounds like you actually agree with "if people can't afford to do anything, that's not freedom", then.
Nope, very much the opposite. But I also know how materialism is defined and not many people in this thread seem to, through will or ignorance, neither would surprise me.
Taking a step back, this thread is tankie catnip for people who only think materialism=capitalism, and capitalism=the only bad thing ever. Sorry that this is how you find out, but socialist governments have been and remain hard materialists as well. More so than capitalists in some ways. The easiest example is that non-material social groups - religions - are generally illegal. Regardless of your personal thoughts on that, science, the "religion of materialism" is permitted. The only non-material fetishization is generally around the Party. Socialism in general is all about not letting people decide their own fates with regard to material goods at all, but having the state command all aspects of production.
If people in a capitalist country can't afford to do anything then they're in an economic prison. We can agree on that, right? But the bars of that prison, short of medical issues, are bars of your own making. If you move to a hippie commune, is that a zoo in a world where everyone is in their own prison? Or is that simply another kind of prison because they might have rules about helping out with time and effort? Those are costs, too.
I understand that believing these things may have helped you cope psychologically with the stress of being homeless, but that doesn't make them any less fucking stupid
Do you need Marxism to be the only answer?
I've never been called stupid for being homeless as a child before.
You haven't been called stupid for being homeless as a child yet. My previous comment called the rationalizations you used to make yourself feel better about your circumstances as a child stupid. Right now I'm calling you stupid for continuing to cling to them as an adult, and for your poor reading comprehension which is also probably to blame for your lack of enthusiasm for Marx.
You...
So you have an axe to grind and simply won't accept anything other than your brand of groupthink.
Then, my apologies for not realizing you were from a .ml instance earlier.
Um, so I'm threatened with a terrible no good downvote you've already given me, and mean words, unless I conform to your groupthink? lol. Tell me more about who's free and who isn't while expressing how trapped you are mentally, monetarily, and emotionally. You're welcome to call me stupid for choices my parents made as a child, as it only shows how you've tried to apply the label sticky-side out.
Perhaps your reading of Marx was too shallow, as to skip that socialism fetishizes material goods and materialism to the point where it seeks to control all of it. It's every bit as materialist as capitalism, otherwise it wouldn't care at all about who controls the means of production at all.
Indeed, and failed socialist governments proved the point time and again for a century that they were every bit as materialist, in some ways, much more so. Religion is inherently non-material; it's spiritual, yes? That's a pretty easy definition to agree on, that Invisible Sky Daddy is non-corporeal, right? I can attend any temple or church I want and never give them money. Some say I should, and that's between me and Invisible Sky Daddy. Or, even better, I can be a pagan out in the forest praising nature, or a Buddhist. Socialism makes those things illegal exactly because they're non-material and therefore not subject to control of the materialistic state. Music, movies, all media is regulated by the state because it might give you non-material feels about life and hope and joy. That media can only fetishize the materialism of the state and those who lived lives doing so.
Definitely don't change your mind. it's OK, I promise, that hate will burn you up from the inside and give you nothing to show for it.
;D
Lol that's a whole lot of words for someone who clearly doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about, a feat in its own right. You haven't read jack shit, you clearly don't know anything about socialism or capitalism for that matter. The smart and honest thing to do would be to just admit that and then fix it, but you're neither of those.
I can see you also didn't read. Only one word was important and you missed it!
So you had exactly one word you knew was important and you buried it in half a dozen paragraphs? That was really stupid, you're bad at this
Freedom isn't the ability to do anything you want, even if you can't afford it, that's a cheesy, shallow capitalist view of freedom.
Freedom is knowing that you have no limitations imposed on you by society or the government. You can literally choose whatever path you'd like. How you follow that path, or afford that path is up to you, but at least your government can't tell you that you aren't allowed to follow that path because they said so, for whatever corrupt rationalization they claim.
We don't have either
I never said we did. I just offered my definition.
And BTW, just because we don't have it now, doesn't mean we should concede it. The Founding Fathers promised us Freedom if we fought against the monarchy/ aristocracy, and we should collect on that promise. We need to let them know that once we get past Trump, it's going to be a brand new America, and we intend to collect on the promises that have been owed to us for 250 years.
The promise was a lie and the system it birthed is evil by design. We can burn it down and build something new, or we can keep going in circles.
But the government has said we can't follow the paths we want, they are a government of the rich that has robbed and murdered the working class and prevented them from doing what is good for them at the risk of death or imprisonment. Within capitalism there is no freedom unless you are the rich, who the proletarian must beg for wages from to live.
If the workers have a better standard of life it is only at the will of the rich, concessions gained from them have only come from different forms of class warfare.
Valid, but that just describes the government that suppresses freedom. That doesn't describe freedom, or contradict what I said about freedom not being connected to money.
Go to the library and read a book on Zen or something. You can't be free until you renounce material desire.
Is food material desire?
Apparently so- according to this guy. You’re lucky to not be charged for all that air too, your welcome dirty socialist xD /heavily joking /heavy sarcasm
Fr there are human rights and consumerism. It’s ehh how people can be like “having less in life is real freedom” just to cope for being poor and not be able to meet the minimal satisfaction of life.
Actually, just go to the library. Depending on where you live, you'll not just find all kinds of books, there may also be audio book, board games, console games, game consoles and computers you can just use.
There might comfortable furniture and coffee, you can go there just for the mood or the peace.
Got kids? There might be a whole section just for kids. It may include toys or even a play-area.
There might a whole wall of post from people who wants your attention on something. There's probably a few about free activities you could join.
You realize money is required for more than material goods, right? Experiences take money. Museums, live events, transportation, lodging (even if just a tent), all need money. In some places, accessing parks and beaches require money. None of these things are desires for material goods, but desires for experiences - experiences that make life more fulfilling. Experiences that can enrich the spirit, or provide opportunities for bonding with others.
I can get behind anti-consumerism, but to be unable to partake in enjoying nature or exploring our culture, just because we’re poor, is to deny us access to a crucial part of our humanity.
Or, go to the library and read some Marx. You can't avoid material circumstances in your life, they shape it.
Whether you even have the opportunity to go to the library and sit there reading is, in itself, a material circumstance that is subject to change.
Imagine being this late on the pickup.
Imagine being rude to someone making the same journey you did at some point.
The lucky 10 000 of the day
That assumes they just figured this out