Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Wisecrack"
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shill for worker's self-management >"TPP's a good example"
Most libertarians and anarchists disagree with the TPP. Most trade agreements do not benefit the free market, they benefit the people who benefit from it, period.
The "free trade" agreement in Europe destroyed what was left of the PIGS and forced them into economic crisis and austerity. It's not free market when a government is pretty much being bribed to force people to neglect their businesses in return for subsidies.
>"One can make the argument that capitalism is unjustified aggression against others.
No, direct action is a viable way of ending capitalism."
If I sell yams I planted on my backyard that's capitalism. There is not a single shred of aggression used and I am totally justified in doing it.
Funny, because the definition I know of "direct action" is a short duration strike meant to close in and destroy or disable a target. I understand you're speaking politically, but "direct action" is an euphemism for fucking shit up as quickly and violently as possible.
>"What exactly are the "individual rights" that capitalism is supposedly a manifestation of?"
You're the person flying the black and red flags, if anything you know anarchy's history better than I do. If you do not recognize individual rights, and you probably don't as a result of the particular flavour of anarchy you believe in, I cannot possibly change your mind on the subject any better than the actual anarchist writers who started the damned philosophy anyway. I'm not that smart and I'm not that eloquent.
We're not going to have anarchy in our lifetime but if for some miraculous reason we do, I will have capitalism and access to it's perks until some nerds try to stop me. I want to see a bunch of people from my generation pretend they're battle hardened Soviets.
>"Why does aggression immediately equal a monopoly on violence?"
If you don't have a monopoly on violence then you get a shotgun blast to the chest from the first person you try to subjugate with your "aggression".
>"An anarchist militia cannot function without the support of the people behind it"
Pretty sure people have taken over power vacuums without popular support.
If the anarchist militia has monopoly on violence, it works independently of the people because it can just gun the populace down. If it doesn't have, it's just a bunch of nerds with Che shirts getting beat up.
>"Are you forgetting that the only way to enforce property rights is violence?"
The only way to take away property is violence as well. You'd think that's the first time I heard that argument, there's a thousand more people who thought the same.
>"And if someone has the clout, they can use their capital to amass an army of disadvantaged people in an anarcho-capitalist society with the promise of giving them privileges, and have them seize property from others or force others into coercive agreements"
First, if that's plausible in an anarcho-capitalist world, it's also plausible in an anarcho-whatever world. You think I can't promise people goodies if they attack the ancoms, the anarcho-syndicalists and all the other communes?
Second, that would be the perfect business opportunity for me as I could start a private security company that would defend your property from these equally implausible marauders. For a fee, I would make my contractors wear GoPros and send you the footage of your attackers biting more than they could chew.
>"I was trying to be civil with you, but once you start implying that left-libertarianism is impossible"
I didn't say it was impossible, I said that calling it libertarianism is an oxymoron because there's no complete access to liberty.
Anti-capitalism is inherently authoritarian because it forces people into an economic theory they may not like, and last time I checked in anarchy it's not okay to force people into things they don't like without their consent.
If you're going to leave people alone feel free to call it whatever you want, but if you're going to stop people from living the way they want there's no libertarianism involved.
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shill for worker's self-management >""Private ownership" does not constitute all we see in what is capitalism. If it did, that would mean that feudalism is capitalism.""
Except that feudalism in Europe (don't know much about it outside Europe) originated in a time where markets collapsed, production was down so people could barely feed themselves, let alone trade, and property rights were shoddy at best since there was barely any bureaucracy or record keeping.
Everything was derived from the divine right of kings and brute force, not trade, not wages, not property rights.
>"If you took five seconds on the god damn Wikipedia article you'd find a whole host of non-violent examples."
I was just saying, to me RPG will always mean Rocket Propelled Grenade and not Role Playing Game. Same thing here, when I see Direct Action I think about the military term, not the political term.
It's just funny, and I pointed out that I was aware of the multiple definitions of Direct Action.
>"I asked you which individual rights capitalism is supposedly a manifestation of, and you decided to take that as me saying that I don't believe in individual rights. So I ask again: What individual rights is capitalism supposedly a manifestation of?"
I don't know, man, all I know is that within capitalism I can do what I want but in communism I can't because if I tried people would call me capitalist and try to kill me.
Or have sit ins, which are annoying.
>"it would have a monopoly on violence to some degree, but it would also be created in such a way that it destroys itself over time. A direct democracy is a good way to do that."
1. It has never destroyed itself, hence Stalinism and Maoism.
2. Direct democracy is fucking bullshit because what will you do if 51% of the country says they'd rather have Trump as president? Would you respect their decision and go home?
>"right, in an era of mass media that would be very practical to do."
All it takes is someone with a monopoly on violence, gun down every dissident and you can seize power with a militia during a period of statelessness.
See: Somalia.
>"When I'm talking about anarchist militias, these would be militias made of pro-anarchists during the transition period, not necessarily in an anarchist society."
Then how do you perform counter-revolutionary duties?
>"Thank god no one is proposing that anarchism be implemented straight away, so your point here goes against nothing I've already established. If all property is abolished, left-anarchism prevails."
That's not the point. You told me that property can only be maintained by aggression, but my counter is that property can only be taken away by initiating aggression. Any victim is entitled to use aggression against the aggressor, which means that property isn't a feedback loop of aggression like you claim.
>"Not really, no."
Says you. All it takes is someone with enough guns and desperate people with the will to survive.
Saying that you are living in left-anarchy will not deter attackers who don't believe in your system, nor will it erase the concept of stealing and murdering for gain.
>"Where the fuck are you going to get the goodies to promise, if not from the anarcho-syndicalists? Why would they let you destroy their system? What? Why, if every resource someone needed was already available to them through participating in the anarchist system, would they suddenly turn away? There would be no reason for them to do that."
Your mistake is assuming that humans stop when they meet their needs. You think unscrupulous and violent people are just normal people who haven't had their needs met? Well, I'm sure that we can go back to their childhoods and find patterns of abuse or other factors such as low level lead poisoning during brain development impairing their decision making, but the fact is that if I broke into a jail and gave the dangerous prisoners guns to join my gang, you wouldn't stop them by fulfilling their needs.
Another mistake is assuming that you can produce enough locally for everyone. Imagine trying to feed a city like New York or Los Angeles during a period of transition. Backyard gardens wouldn't fill the void created by the lack of interstate commerce.
>"And now you have a monopoly on violence inside anarchist society"
No, I don't. If I had a monopoly on violence my services wouldn't need to exist.
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>"With anarcho-commnism, no one can have a monopoly on violence within the society. They might have the capacity to seize property from others, but people outside of an anarcho-communist society are, well, outside of it."
Not only is the lack of in-fighting unrealistic, but the cop out that people outside an anarchist commune don't count is terrible.
The equivalent would be me saying that feudalism or gangs of marauders are not part of the free market so I don't have to propose a solution to those issues.
>"A state is specifically defined as "having a monopoly on legitimate use of force WITHIN it's borders. If the presence of the militia relies on volunteering from the communes they fight for what incentive would they have to turn against them? And if they have no way of surviving without the militias, and if the militias are made up of the people from these very communes, why the fuck would they suddenly kill people?"
1. It has happened, it's easy to turn people on each other.
2. If you can defend your commune from outsiders, that's because they're breaching your borders. Directing aggression towards "outsiders" doesn't mean you don't have a monopoly on violence.
>"That just doesn't make sense. There is no incentive for anyone to act that way. Humans are egocentric, capitalism suppresses that egocentrism by allowing some to indulge and some to starve, whereas all forms of left-anarchism encourage egocentrism by giving everyone everything they need and allowing them to pursue whatever they want. Capitalism thrives off ego conflict and communism thrives off ego cooperation."
The problem is that you can't provide everything people "need". You make the argument that people are egocentric but then ignore that people might want what is not available, and when you can't provide it for them they become disgruntled.
>"Really, you seem to not understand how humans work. Let's say a farmer feeds me in exchange for protection, and I don't know how to farm. Why would I kill the farmer? That would be killing myself. It's the exact same situation. People don't do things for no reason. Thankfully, an anarcho-communist society would still have a glut of guns left over from capitalism, and people within the society would be able to protect themselves from the militias if they turned on the society for whatever reason, as absurd as that idea is. Humans always take the path of least resistance. Simple as that."
You've just described anarcho-capitalism. You whine that we're different when your examples could be taken from any anarcho-capitalist's mouth.
The only difference between anarcho communism and anarcho capitalism is that ancoms will shoot ancaps for participating in capitalism and ancaps won't interfere with communes.
>""stop people from living the way they want there's no libertarianism involved."
"Libertarianism (Latin: liber, "free") is a political philosophy that upholds liberty as its principal objective. Libertarians seek to maximize autonomy and freedom of choice, emphasizing political freedom, voluntary association, and the primacy of individual judgment."
The only way to ever have the potential of having liberty and freedom is to eliminate social class. If anything, right-"libertariansim" is the oxymoron here."
Voluntary association - anarchocapitalism is literally called "voluntarism", because everything relies on consent.
Ancom principles force people into a system without their consent, involuntarily.
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shill for worker's self-management >"Because your point is nonsensical, seeing that far worse things would be happening in capitalism. My argument here is that significantly fewer bad things would be happening in a left-anarchist society."
It's not nonsensical, it's a cop out. It's a form of whataboutism that ever since the Soviet Union has been used to prop up America or the West as a strawman.
The same exact type of fallacy can be used to deflect all problems in the West because "it's worse in Africa". I guess we can't talk about serious issues and the fact that the world is falling apart because the poor kids in Africa have it way worse. Just drop the "African Child" card on the table and you automatically win every argument.
>"If the workers who control their workplace want it, it gets done. That's the whole point of worker's self management. And trust me, workers would want safety regulations."
Exactly, it gets done. It's not a regulation, it's people making a business decision. If they figure "we can't waste time securing this because we're responsible for feeding the people and if we fail they starve" there's no regulation.
In a market, at least there can be regulation without law because of insurances, liabilities, etc but also because the consumer will prefer a quality product. Without a market, people get whatever is available and the producers must keep producing whatever the costs or society collapses.
>"It's quite stupid and childish of you to posit a system where people can project power outside of itself, but then denounce me for proposing the same thing."
That's the thing. I can murder a dozen people right now, doesn't mean it's legal. I can do whatever I want until someone stops me, that's not a failing of the justice system or the government. Anarcho-capitalism "allows" something in the sense that things can simply exist, such as murderous people or people hungry for power. It doesn't make it right.
However, you need a monopoly on power to implement anarcho communism and to maintain it. You pretended that you're only using force on outsiders, conveniently ignoring in-fighting, dispatching dissidents and the fact that if you're being invaded, you're using force inside the system, not outside it.
>"What would stop that from happening? You're a god damn clown."
Maybe the fact that printed circuit boards and silicon based processors are something most people can't build in their garage?
Maybe the fact that you don't have access to all the raw materials and rare minerals being produced in China.
>"but ultimately worthwhile"
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
>"You could use resource requests to take the role of prices"
That's called "debt".
>"Like I said, this would all happen before anarchism can even be in place, and it's necessary."
Of course it's necessarily, otherwise it won't work.
Your excuse is literally saying that "it's not real anarchism" and conveniently placing anarchism right after the atrocities are committed.
>"When we use the most general sense of imperialism, anything can be imperialism, so you've take the word and devalued it to the point that it's meaningless."
So like fascism? We've come full circle.
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Mudcrab Currency doesn't need enforcement. It's either accepted or it's not. One of the worst things in the world is that governments and central banks print money not tied to a reliable currency (such as gold). The amount of gold in existence depends on the rate of extraction, and it's not easy to extract. The amount of money in existence depends solely on how much they printed, and printing money is much easier than extracting gold, which leads to inflation. Government enforced fiat currency is horrible.
No, actually most people do not accept the fact they lost. Have you heard any thing politicians or talk show hosts say whenever their side is not in power? It's 4 to 8 years of whining. Look, voting is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation because if you don't do it then you have no right to complain, and if you did vote then you don't have a right to complain either because you tacitly accepted the outcome by participating. Just like you are telling us right now, that people have to accept the loss. The fact is that you're left with a ruler which you didn't consent to, and things that go against people's consent are typically bad. In principle, they're pretty much wrong.
>"It's pretty funny to me that the only people that preach anarchism as a valid form of government are people who live in capitalist societies"
You have to be shitting me. Anarcho-capitalism is the fastest growing faction in anarchy because disgruntled right-wing people and libertarians discovered how deep the rabbit hole goes in just a few decades, while other factions of anarchy depend on impressionable teenagers reading Karl Marx.
Anarchy is the truest extent of capitalism because it eliminates the rotten corporatism which uses force of law to benefit the wealthy and protect monopolies.
>"The only people I ever hear extol the virtues of anarchism are young liberal arts majors who never had to work a day in their lives"
I'm a mechanical engineering student, but nice try.
I know anarchists who do everything from working retail to the medical field, from welders to police dispatchers.
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TheWokenSpirit Again, not my fault anything has been "perverted". And I am sorry, but there is no way that 7 billion people can regulate distribution and exchange. Realistically, the "not true socialist" states were almost perfect implementations of socialist theory. Remember the point I made about anarcho-molotov-chomskianism? Yeah, I'm not particularly interested in hearing about a stateless society that is also magically ran by democracy (because that makes fucking sense) but also won't go the way of anarcho-syndicalism like it did in Spain.
For all intents and purposes, it is socialism if it was put in power undemocratically by socialists (because socialism allows for that) or if the state planned economy can be controlled by the people through democratic suffrage.
>"but there are many places in the Europe and america where it's working pretty damn well"
Holy shit. So Venezuela, the USSR, etc are perversions of socialism despite implementing the theory almost perfectly, but European countries which are heavily corporatist and have some of the highest indexes of economic freedom (remember, property rights is the antithesis to the worker's ownership of the means of production) are the best example of socialism working well?
>"you have yet to provide a reason in which modern capitalism is better than and capitalism that is regulated with socialism"
So capitalism regulated by giving the workers ownership of the means of production and control over exchanges? That's not capitalism because it ends property rights, how can a system be capitalist and at the same time allow the seizure of property from the owners/investors/etc?
How high are you?
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Cory Mck >"If you vote for Trump because you agree on some particular issues than you aren't "left""
That's ridiculous. Both Hillary and Trump have horrendous track records, for him the score was tied so gun control was the decisive factor. It wasn't a matter of agreeing with Trump, it was a matter of being impossible to agree with both.
Hillary isn't left either, because the Democrat party isn't left on a "true" political spectrum, it's a relative left. But then we're talking about someone who's atheist and openly anti-theist, pro-choice, thinks healthcare is a human right (ie doesn't subscribe to the positive/negative rights theory), etc which would make him a purely American Democrat, the "relative left". It's the convention that makes sense for America, last time I checked President Obama sat around halfway through the "right" side of the "true" spectrum.
If you mean "left" as in someone whose political opinions are Rage Against The Machine lyrics, the argument stops making sense in America's political landscape.
>"But if you support trumps ideas or support Trump in spite of them, you would not be left wing."
But that's a No True Scotsman. If one is able to concilie his islamophobic policies with border security during war, accept that his anti-Mexican views are put in practice by Democrats as well (3.5 million deported during the current administration), etc that's half the arsenal the mainstream media throws at him. His plan to fix healthcare sounds better than Obamacare. It's not hard to agree with Trump.
Almost no politician has a true principled approach, both Democrats and Republicans do not fight for what is right, they fight for what they want. From the standpoint that both sides lack principles, most of what Trump says he's going to do can and has been "translated" by the Democrats so they could apply it. Heck, they took a scheme to line the pockets of insurance companies and passed it off as a bleeding heart socialist healthcare program. That was true right-wing corporatism and they were able to make it look like it was leftist.
>"How did I move the goalpost? I don't understand."
It was about how the left was responsible for Trump's success, and then you made the argument about people switching from the left to Trump's side. Totally different things.
>"Moderates normally exist between liberal and conservative, but that is a technicality. I said I don't believe anyone could be moderate and vote for Trump, but that is based on Trump, not the definition of moderate. Trump is very far right."
But the definition of moderate is very important, because you're taking the absolute "centerpoint" definition of moderate when in real life moderates exist in a spectrum. A republican moderate will side with either (there are conservatives who will be voting Hillary, I have to congratulate her for the internet shilling her campaign has been doing) and there's nothing extraordinary about a moderate republican siding with a republican candidate.
>"And lastly, I still don't see how liberals using facist is the reason that people don't realize Trump fits the definition. Many people are just willing to accept him regardless of his thought, actions, or history."
Did you watch the video? Then don't claim Trump fits the definition.
He wants 11 million hispanics deported - current administration deported 3.5 million. The current administration stood for more war, more imperialism, more warrantless spying, more loss of civil liberties, etc - if Trump fits the definition then everyone does, I mean, economic growth through warfare and expansionism was literally one of the fascist ideals. The Democrats that pretend to be for capitalism and the ones who claim they want to regulate it are in fact just people who are obeying their lobbyists and passing corporatist legislation - just like the Nazis helped out their industrial and banking friends while fucking over the businesses owned by people they didn't like.
Calling everyone a fascist watered down the insult. Calling Trump a fascist when his beliefs are as American as apple pie just doesn't have any effect because people have stopped listening. It's like being called racist by BLM or sexist by a bunch of feminists - the vast majority of people already thinks they're out of their mind and will sympathize with the accused rather than with the accuser.
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Cory Mck >"It wasn't a no true Scotsman argument at all. Society has clearly defined what is considered socially and economically "left v right" wing policies & opinions. I never said 1 was right and the other was wrong."
It is a no true scotsman. For example, like claiming that a true communist wouldn't vote Hillary.
I bet you'll find tons of people, even from the anarchist spectrum, who will waste no time in telling you to vote Hillary solely so that Trump doesn't win.
>"you first comment was about people switching from the left to Trump"
Nope. "_It makes sense, because people have grown tired of their antics and now they've gone full Trump rather than going moderate._"
You were the first to bring that one up.
>"Why are you using the current administration as an argument? It doesn't relate to my comment."
Because reality cannot be denied.
Anything bad Trump has said, the "American left" has done it already. Heck, complain about the patron saint FDR for the Japanese internment camps, and sometimes they'll actually try to justify it. The cognitive dissonance is in all of us.
It does relate to your comment because by your own standards those who voted for Obama or defend the current President are involved with political moves that are very Trump-like. By your own standards, people who voted for a Democrat candidate cannot be on the left because they've supported policies that Trump wants.
>"how are his beliefs American?"
Loud and obnoxious. Can't get more American than that.
>"One of the more diverse modern countries in the world. Fighting for segregation."
You mean like it did before Civil Rights became popular?
>"And most importantly, address my comment or don't comment, I never made any of the arguments that you tried citing me for."
I cited what I cited, if I didn't cite it then I didn't try to cite you for them.
Try saying that three times fast.
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