this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2025

134 points (94.7% liked)

Asklemmy

45308 readers

1498 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

134

What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

508 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (3 children)

I'm mostly an anarchist. But.

I think that there needs to be some degree of authoritarian, arbitrary power. Mostly because I've been in anarchist groups in the past, and when everyone has input into a decision, shit gets bogged down really fast. Not everyone understands a given issue and will be able to make an informed choice, and letting opinionated-and-ignorant people make choices that affect the whole group is... Not good.

The problem is, I don't know how to balance these competing interests, or exactly where authoritarian power should stop. It's easy to say, well, I should get to make choices about myself, but what about when those individual choices end up impacting other people? For instance, I eat meat, and yet I'm also aware that the cattle industry is a significant source of CO2; my choice, in that case, contributes to climate change, which affects everyone. ...And once you start going down that path, it's really easy to arrive at totalitarianism as the solution.

I also don't know how to handle the issue of trade and commerce, and at what point it crosses the line into capitalism.

[–] cynar 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I help with a social group. We jokingly refer to it as anarchism under a lazy iron fist.

Day to day decisions are made in a fairly ad-hoc manner, by those involved. If there is a disagreement that can't be resolved, or if it will have large repercussions (e.g. changing the fabric of the building) it gets raised to the committee and chairman.

The chairman is the sort who is only there because no one better wanted the role. He has no interest in micromanaging, but will resolve issues to get them to go away.

It's a remarkably effective system. Unfortunately it's a bit unstable in large groups. Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don't want with that power. No one has yet solved the issue however. How the f@#£ do you keep the troublemakers out, when they are also the ones most willing to work towards getting the role?

The other problem with anarchism is that the natural self policing systems break down by the Dunbar limit. Parasitical or cancerous behaviours tend to become crippling, forcing people to adopt other unofficial power structures.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

I def. agree with the issues in re: Dunbar's number. Anarchism can, and does, work pretty well in small groups and communes. But scaling it to the size of a country... Well, that's the hard part. But if you don't, then authoritarian countries will eat you alive.

Those who want the role are also those you REALLY don’t want with that power.

That unfortunately seems to be the case with most cops as well; the ones that want to do it out of a sense of civic responsibility seem to get pushed out pretty quickly by the ones that should never have been cops in the first place. And--looping back around to anarchism--cops are a necessary evil because otherwise you quickly end up with vigilante groups that enforce a capricious set of morality and ethics.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You might be interested in the essay The Tyranny of Structurelessness, which goes over the same concept you speak of with requiring some degree of formalization of structure in order to prevent unaccountable structure from forming. I'm not an Anarchist, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago

I'll give it a read.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

My main argument in favour of totalitarianism is the tragedy of the commons. Particularly in these areas: environmentalism, violence, and existential risks (whatever you think those are).

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think I've ever seen a self-identifying "totalitarian," plus the "tragedy of the commons" isn't really a thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Can you explain what you mean about tragedy of the commons not being a thing? It seems inherently obvious. Like do you think it's not applicable politically, or even in thought experiments like cows in a meadow it still doesn't apply? In my mind, tragedy of the commons perfectly explains why large corporations pollute instead of respect the environment.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

More often than not it's a thought-terminating cliché. Large corporations polluting isn't a "tragedy of the commons" issue either, the tragedy of the commons refers to everyone having unmanaged and unfettered access to a resource or tool. That's a private corporation taking the shortest path to profit.

"Totalitarianism" is not and never will be necessary. Authority is, as revolution, for example, is an authoritarian act against the bourgeoisie. However, the theory of "Totalitarianism" from Arendt is mostly liberal bogus.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

Okay fine fine. I'm more of a self-described authoritarian really.

That’s a private corporation taking the shortest path to profit.

Well for instance, if there was only one singular mega-corporation with no competition, I don't think it would destroy the environment, at least not in a way that would reduce its future profits. My observation is that corporations tend to be more forward-thinking about their own profits than I tend to expect from the way they're structured. But you can get an advantage over other corporations in the short-term if throw environmentalism to the wayside. In other words, the shortest path to profit and the tragedy of the commons are exactly linked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't know what a "self-described authoritarian" is, either. That isn't a political stance.

If there was one singular megacorp, governing all of industry, there would be no competition as you said, and therefore Capitalism would die. The death of Capitalism is inevitable, but reaching such a point would see revolution immediately.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It sounds like you're basically saying competition is the problem. But competition has benefits and downsides; one of the downsides is tragedy of the commons, which I think is bad enough it warrants eliminating capitalism all by itself. You haven't really provided a good argument that tragedy of the commons isn't a real concern.

I don't believe the death of capitalism is inevitable -- that's why we need to work hard to end it. (Edit: I guess we essentially agree, the difference is fatalism?)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I think the biggest issue here is that we aren't really speaking on common ground. I'm a Marxist-Leninist, and can offer theory to show what that means but will put that aside for now.

The "tragedy of the commons" is not what you are using it to mean. You are referring to a lack of regulation as "tragedy of the commons," which is not the correct usage of it.

Secondly, Capitalism erases its own foundations, it naturally centralizes and erases profit and competition, ergo it inevitably produces crisis and its own erasure.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I am correctly using tragedy of the commons. A well-understood solution to the tragedy of the commons is regulation. This is equivalent to saying a lack of regulation can cause the tragedy of the commons.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

The tragedy of the commons is about random people misusing public goods, not corporations practicing unsafe dumping.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

The tragedy of the commons is a general-purpose game theory concept. It applies any time there is a communal resource exploitable by multiple participants. In the abstract: any time you can do something for personal gain but for the detriment of everyone overall. Admittedly, in the case of unsafe dumping, the resource must be unintuitively defined as the cleanliness of the river or something like that, but the same principle applies as in the more clear-cut (heh) example of foresting.

(Wikipedia claims pollution is a "negative commons"; the theory still applies, but the resource is defined strangely.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago (2 children)

I feel we are getting into the weeds about something that doesn't matter, ultimately, I still don't know what identifying as an "authoritarian" or "totalitarian" even means.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

What no reading does to a mf

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 hour ago

Yea lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

I don't really use those words tbh. I just think anarchism doesn't account for how to solve the tragedy of the commons, so a global authority is needed.

load more comments