You must log in or register to comment.
Gadsen flag has me suspicious. Usually those folks turn around and say “and that’s why we should privatize literally everything”
deleted by creator
(it’s also the goberment)
The government doesn’t care about you, which is why we should elect these particular people and give them total authority to do whatever they want. It’s to protect you from the government!
I typically see people flying these and thin blue line flags side by side
Its at least the humorous variant rather than the original.
The opinion is also technically correct as ‘the government’ is a non-sapient entity that has no will of its own.
Thats why we should do our best to elect people who care about us to run it.
I’m an anarchist. We should do our best to rid ourselves of government and self-manage.
The best protection we have against corporations is stopping government from allowing them and protecting them in the first place
You know how businesses are a collection of people?
And a single person is employed by a business, and has a boss with a boss whith a boss andnao on.
And a consumer is a single person?Those single people trying to “self manage” will always elect to fuck over the people below them.
They just will. Because if they look after the people below them, if they stick up to those that “fuck over the people below”: they wont get a raise. “You increased budget for the same level of output, thats a failure”.So the manager that manages to fuck over the people below them will minimise budget increases while maximising productivity: by fucking over the little guy.
“I just got a budget raise. Instead of hiring enough people, or paying them more to account for their increased skills… i could do just barely enough to meet quota (by fucking over the people below me) and get rewarded with a bonus. i could make everyone work harder, hire 1 person, and say “its just until they settle in to the company”.”. So that “self managed” person is hiding/masking their bullshit enough to say “i saved you 200k, give me a 20k bonus”.
“Self manage” doesnt work unless there are actual rules/laws/regulations that require “groups of people” unable to exploit the individual.
The government.
Making union-busting illegal (allowing a group of people “self managing” to counter anither group of “self managing”) is good government.
Protecting a consumer (who is “self managing”) from exploitation/abuse by a company (a group of “self managing” people) is good government.
Preventing people from handing out bottles of water to people standing in line to vote is bad government.
Blocking laws that requires access to water, toilets, lunch breaks, safe working conditions is bad government.
Allowing an employer to pay employees less than a local average required amount to cover rent/utilities/food/transport is criminal. Less than “raise a family” is just throwing the country under a bus.I would prefer a big government thats immune (highly resilient, and very transparent at least) to bribery, that actually makes and enforces laws that help people who “self manage”.
Someone on minimum wage cant fight a billionaire.
Someone with 10 million (probably even 100 million) cant fight a billionaire.But anarchy is cool, better than right wing bullshit.
Id prefer the “everyone for themselves” over the “everyone in the ‘in group’ against everyone in the ‘out group’”That’s a lot of words to say “I think anarchy is a lack of government without abolishing capitalism or other hierarchies”
Ha. Probably.
Does anarchy also want to get rid of capitalism? And other hierarchies?just adding to rockSlayer’s excellent points, very roughly the word anarchy means without leaders (not necessarily without rules or organisation), just like monarchy roughly means “a single ruler” (mon/mono + archy).
The common understanding of anarchy was largely ruined by propaganda and it’s often conflated with concepts belonging to conservative and far right ideologies like anarcho-capitalism or conservative/free market libertarianism.
Yes. There are various types of anarchy as well, that describe forms of organization though. For example, I’m specifically an anarcho-syndicalist. This means that I believe that the economy should be managed by unions that negotiate tentative agreements between each other for the union members to vote on. There’s a lot more to say about how it’s structured to prevent hierarchy, but that’s the basic idea
Lots of hypotheticals, lots of questions.
If you have some recommended reading, i am interested.
These are more “i dont get it” questions. You dont have to convince me or anything.
Im a bit drunk, and disappointed in a lot what the world is today. But anarchy sounds interestingSo, who enforces the unions agreements?
Medical union demands more steel halfway though the year and witholds medical services until its agreed?
The steel union goes to a different medical union? Thats 500 miles away instead of 50? Maybe that medical union already have a steel supplier, so now the steel union is getting “pennies on the dollar”.
Medicine and medical services are required. Steel could be iron (basic tools), could be obsidian (cutting tools)… even basic care, recognising illnesses, severity of injuries etc doesnt require steel.And maybe the medical union doesnt want raw steel. They want medical tools.
So the steel union treaties with the medical tools union who treaties with the medical union… how are the steel unions need of medical services met?How long do these deals/treaties take?
The steel union is working on a new tentative agreement, they have to hire more workers to produce the results, the agreement relies on more workers being hired before the other union agrees and ratifies the deal.
So the steel union wants to increase the medical union treaty to account for the 200 new workers (why do the new workers not get medical coverage? Why would i work somewhere that doesnt have a locked-in contract to supply, nor has a medical contract to cover my health needs). Lots of chicken/egg or horse/cart scenarios.And what happens if a steel worker loses a leg. Medical union treats them under the contract… but that person is now physically unable to work at the steel foundry. What happens to them?
And then what happens when an outside force attacks to loot and plunder these people that dont have any defensive forces?
How do i go and watch a band perform? Or view some art?
Is the road union responsible for roads on the entire continent? What about a bridge/tunnel to another continent? How does a driver pay for the roads?What kind of union would Einstein join?
Thats a goal we can certainly work towards, but no reason to shoot ourselves in the foot in the mean time.
I’ll just paste this here
I was shooting heroin and reading “The Fountainhead” in the front seat of my privately owned police cruiser when a call came in. I put a quarter in the radio to activate it. It was the chief.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm. “What kind of monster would do something like that? Bitcoins are the ultimate currency: virtual, anonymous, stateless. They represent true economic freedom, not subject to arbitrary manipulation by any government. Do we have any leads?”
“Not yet. But mark my words: we’re going to figure out who did this and we’re going to take them down … provided someone pays us a fair market rate to do so.”
“Easy, chief,” I said. “Any rate the market offers is, by definition, fair.”
He laughed. “That’s why you’re the best I got, Lisowski. Now you get out there and find those bitcoins.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m on it.”
I put a quarter in the siren. Ten minutes later, I was on the scene. It was a normal office building, strangled on all sides by public sidewalks. I hopped over them and went inside.
“Home Depot™ Presents the Police!®” I said, flashing my badge and my gun and a small picture of Ron Paul. “Nobody move unless you want to!” They didn’t.
“Now, which one of you punks is going to pay me to investigate this crime?” No one spoke up.
“Come on,” I said. “Don’t you all understand that the protection of private property is the foundation of all personal liberty?”
It didn’t seem like they did.
“Seriously, guys. Without a strong economic motivator, I’m just going to stand here and not solve this case. Cash is fine, but I prefer being paid in gold bullion or autographed Penn Jillette posters.”
Nothing. These people were stonewalling me. It almost seemed like they didn’t care that a fortune in computer money invented to buy drugs was missing.
I figured I could wait them out. I lit several cigarettes indoors. A pregnant lady coughed, and I told her that secondhand smoke is a myth. Just then, a man in glasses made a break for it.
“Subway™ Eat Fresh and Freeze, Scumbag!®” I yelled.
Too late. He was already out the front door. I went after him.
“Stop right there!” I yelled as I ran. He was faster than me because I always try to avoid stepping on public sidewalks. Our country needs a private-sidewalk voucher system, but, thanks to the incestuous interplay between our corrupt federal government and the public-sidewalk lobby, it will never happen.
I was losing him. “Listen, I’ll pay you to stop!” I yelled. “What would you consider an appropriate price point for stopping? I’ll offer you a thirteenth of an ounce of gold and a gently worn ‘Bob Barr ‘08’ extra-large long-sleeved men’s T-shirt!”
He turned. In his hand was a revolver that the Constitution said he had every right to own. He fired at me and missed. I pulled my own gun, put a quarter in it, and fired back. The bullet lodged in a U.S.P.S. mailbox less than a foot from his head. I shot the mailbox again, on purpose.
“All right, all right!” the man yelled, throwing down his weapon. “I give up, cop! I confess: I took the bitcoins.”
“Why’d you do it?” I asked, as I slapped a pair of Oikos™ Greek Yogurt Presents Handcuffs® on the guy.
“Because I was afraid.”
“Afraid?”
“Afraid of an economic future free from the pernicious meddling of central bankers,” he said. “I’m a central banker.”
I wanted to coldcock the guy. Years ago, a central banker killed my partner. Instead, I shook my head.
“Let this be a message to all your central-banker friends out on the street,” I said. “No matter how many bitcoins you steal, you’ll never take away the dream of an open society based on the principles of personal and economic freedom.”
He nodded, because he knew I was right. Then he swiped his credit card to pay me for arresting him.*
This is fucking hilarious. Where is this from?
I think I remember seeing it as a greentext years ago, it’s a classic
What’s the info worth to you? ;)
Tom O’Donnell wrote it for The Newyorker in 2014
Government doesn’t care about you, so cede control of everything to corporations. Unchecked profit motive will definitely not kill us all!
/s
Tbf both seem to care just as much. But don’t worry, once we get a different middle manager he’ll get us pepperoni for our Corporate Family Fun Pizza Parties™ that we’ll be getting instead of healthcare.
Gadsen flag means they want to have no taxes but don’t mind fees. Simple minded folk.
Government is made by the people FOR the people. Government is there to be helpful and was before our parents warped it into a nightmare factory that eats rights and spits out incarcerated parolees.
The former Berlin businessman I referred to earlier told me that he blamed his own group, people with the time and the money and the opportunity to know better, for what happened to Germany. “We ignored Hitler,” he said. “We considered him an unimportant fellow, not quite a gentleman, not of our own class. We considered it just a little bit vulgar to bother with him, to bother with politics at all.”
They thought of the government as “They.” The only possible route to a clear conscience in politics is to accept political responsibility, either as an active member of the party in power or as an equally active member of the loyal opposition.
Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
Don’t tread on Trogdor the Burninator?
Of course it doesn’t, as a social construct it has no emotions, only the collective agreement that gives it intellectual existence.
Yeah but it’s only a true fact if a left-winger says it
Government does actually care about people, that’s what social security is. And policing really, there’s a lot of bad apple incidents but they also stop people stealing stuff and hurting other people, which is in fact caring about people.
You know what doesn’t care about people? Corporations. Or markets in general.
Yeah, and also the government!
No, terrible take.
As they say, the scariest nine words in the English language: “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
- Ronald Reagan
And he was a known defender of the average person, right?
Look into that “they” and what they propose instead, and you might start to think it’s roughly equivalent to rich people like the “they” in question saying “I don’t like paying taxes or having the government tell me I can’t do things.”
Imagine unironically quoting Ronald Reagan in 2026. On Lemmy of all places.
That was made up by people who lacked the imagination to conceive of a scarier situation, as in “I’m a billionaire and I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m a billionaire, pull yourself up by your bootstraps.”
