The unwillingness to support your stances only makes that fact apply to a longer period of history.

The only real restraint on these communes is the taxes they pay and certain basic laws they still have to follow. Which is basically just protection money. In a world without nation States you would be tasked with funding your own protection. That's why armies exist. As soon as people discovered the ability to make a surplus, they subsequently discovered the need to pay armed soliders to protect it.

I'm not necessarily against socialism. I'm against anarchism. In my view govts are a necessary evil.

Forgive my disbelief but I gave you a link and you didn't bat an eye

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon....,200_QL40_.jpg

This is a good read.

jwb, the love it or leave it argument is pretty tired

it’s not that clever

That’s not true.

But anyway, hate America? Join a commune! Maybe I should join a cult. Or the klan. Or ISIS. Or set up a tent in the woods. Or walk across India begging for alms. Or starve myself in protest.

I'm different in that while I don't have faith in anarchism I view force and economic coercion as inherently dehumanizing in a way that makes human life a form of misery. If my boss can tell me what to do on threat of economic hardship and my only recourse is to turn to some other boss who hopefully threatens me with lesser economic hardship or to become a boss who threatens someone else with economic hardship then that is amoral and should be fought. The alternative is accepting psychological slavery.

I am batting an eye honestly. I just didn't see that group when I was honestly looking. They might be better than the alternatives I saw that amounted to "We're just starting a group" or "We're a squat hoping to not collapse in the next year." I'll give them a look and hope that they look good and that my antipathy is moved.

Do you have a more informed view of the problems facing communes? I'd like for you to say something other than nuh uh.

I didn't just tell you to get out cause you hate America. I was asking why, if things like punching a clock are so unbearable to you, you don't maybe consider some available alternatives. It's not meant to be original or clever. It's just a basic question you dodge cause your political beliefs are probably more of a fashion statement than anything else.


well I could be wrong. What did I leave out?

****, call me crazy but some force is needed. For as long as their have been surpluses, there have been bands of raiders trying to take it.

Society is built on the security provided by men with weapons monopolizing force.

And personally I'm not trying to go gazelle hunting to avoid this.

For me? It's ****ing hard. Just falling into a job and normal **** sucks but it's super easy because that is a "service" provided to me that I don't have to expend all that much effort to "achieve". I just have to apply for a job (which is a pretty miserable and mentally exhausting thing for me to do tbh) and then go to that job until they fire me. Alternatives are not provided for and I would have to go well out of my way to achieve them and there is absolutely no guarantee those alternatives won't at best fail or be straight up stomped out by society as it tries to leave me with only the "alternative" to fall in line. The entire reason I want an alternative is because I am easily wearied and introverted and want nothing to do with all of this rat race ****. To escape it I essentially must perform rate race squared and have faith that the alternatives are even viable. I am at war with society just to not be a member of it and society will expend whatever energy it needs to wear me down to the point that I just accept a job and stop trying.

Well that's an honest ****ing answer bruh

But you need to take on a little adversity instead of shying away from it imo. You've just been stuck in the same place so long you're complacent. It's 100 times more fulfilling in the long run to try something out, fail, and learn some **** in the process than it is to stay stagnate.

It goes all the way back to westward expansion and the economic system that grew around it. Any efforts to exist outside that framework is going to be marginalized. The zine I linked to talks about that. Plus books about people who’ve tried to live that way.

If you think you’re going to be allowed to use quality soil to fund an alternative without constant harassment and meddling you’re kidding yourself. You’re going up against the entire capitalist power structure and America doesn’t take kindly to even tiny perceived threats.

Like I said at the get-go it cannot exist in conjunction with private property. The very nature of ownership forbids that sort of democracy. Since I already stated that the rest of the conversation is void. You might as well be asking why I don’t colonize Venus.

How come some other people seem to be making it work well enough to eek out a reasonable existence?

Because they’re exploiting people who are like me and batlord except gullible enough to actually try it. That’s the nature of capitalism. Why do I call it capitalism? It’s on private property. How do I know that? It’s in America.

That's the entirety of the human ****ing race. I'm not trying to pick on you but you work **** jobs and have been a drug addict who accomplished nothing over your life, right (more or less the same for me just to be fair)? This idea that you do something fulfilling with your life by striving and fighting isn't a useful idea whereby to drive the moral trajectory of humanity and you of all people are not fit to decide that this should be.

Again, I'm not trying to pick on you but I've known many people like you in this mindset and I think it's more about the potential (generally masculine) ego you'd gain if you actually do manage to succeed in the current system than it is any workable potential system that functions in the real world. At the end of the day it's just a means for the already powerful to convince the weak to buy a lottery ticket and hope they win.

@ OH

So you're saying what... Someone at the top of benefitting from the workers? Based on nothing, I presume.

What is stopping you and a bunch of like minded individuals from starting a commune where you share the wealth? Specifically what would get in your way and how, if you had let's say 50 people you knew and trusted who all held the same convictions as you?

just reread what I already wrote

Yes well I was in part speaking from experience. Cause I've had the same tendency to fall into complacency.

You can say I've accomplished nothing so my opinion is meaningless. All I know is that I was living on the street a year or two ago and now I'm not. I was addicted to drugs and now I'm not. I stopped being complacent with certain aspects of my life and started making incremental improvements.

Am I all good to go now? Nah, lol. I owe the state thousands. Truth be told, I don't even know there's not a warrant for my arrest in certain counties. You think you're telling me something when you say **** gets overwhelming? Please.

Bottom line is I feel better now that I've started to move in the right direction. I stayed complacent for years, letting my life spiral out of control.

Tldr if you don't have any goals then you have nothing to live for.

Pass

That is exactly not what I'm ****ing saying and I think that you interpreting it that way is exactly what I'm saying. You interpret accomplishments as social ammo to decide what is and what is not but I am saying that your lack of accomplishments is evidence that the current order does not necessarily reflect how you should go about accomplishing anything because you have not accomplished anything under it. The current order is not acting in accordance with how you operate as a person and you defending the current order shows that you are subverting your own interpretation of yourself to side with current stereotypes of how a person should operate because it is easy and safe to side with those stereotypes rather than doing the hard work of considering how those stereotypes should be redefined.

You’re still in early recovery. Addictions are lifelong afflictions.

Man, I wrote you a nice heart felt essay and you respond to one sentence?

You're full of ****, first of all. I interpreted you correctly. You brought up that I was homeless and on drugs and that " you if all people aren't worthy to decide" that you can do something worth while by trying. I'm not offended, just cut the ****. That's exactly what you said.

And you say I should recognize that cause my life is ****ed it's the system that ****ed me and that I shouldn't be "defending" it by trying to offer some hopeful advice.. Maybe me and you are different but I can't really say I can defend the choices I've made in life. So I can't yet rule out that making better ones might not make my life better.

I think you're abstracting this all to Oblivion to avoid the uncomfortable fact that you may just have some power to improve your life but are either too lazy, too brainwashed or too cowardly to do so.

I think you're still misinterpreting what I'm saying because we're on different wavelengths because that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that you're defending ideas that failed you because you want them to work for you because you're emotionally attached to the traditional social advancement associated with those supposed achievements.

Like, if medicine became a field that stopped truly being about saving lives you'd still want to be a doctor because having the "Dr." in front of your name would give you the social benefits of being a doctor even if the field stopped having any real meaning.

No. I've already agreed the system is far from perfect. The bottom line is the choices you make help determine your place in it. Everything I've seen this far strengthens this view, and quite frankly I doubt you've ever even tried to put it to the test.

Yeah see this is my point. I think you're still emotionally attached to the social positions gained by meeting the standards of the current system and so any criticisms you have of the current system are going to be irrelevant because any idea that challenges the positions you'd gain by being a member of the current system you'll fight not by virtue of the idea but by virtue of threatening a position you covet.

You want to "make something of yourself". You want to be respectable. You want to have some version of two and a half children and a picket fence. And anything that threatens that world you'll disagree with in whatever way works for you.

Uh.. Lol

Tbh dude this all started cause I asked what would stop you from joining a commune

I tried to give basic, pragmatic advice and encouragement

So this is basically my thoughts on how to improve your life with in this system, not a defense of said system.

See the problem is most likely, this system isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And personally I'm not waiting on socialist Jesus to come and save me.

So construing my arguments as some sort of deranged Stockholm syndrome to the system that oppresses me is yet another way for you to avoid hard, pragmatic, real life questions about what you might do differently to improve your own lot.

What’s your top achievement jwb?

Getting my ass off the street and avoiding prison

Where's my medal????

Bruh you tried to pigeonhole me as complacent and tell me how trying hard will make me happier, and I'm telling you that your ideas are complacent and lack any kind of self awareness. And now that I've argued against your ideas you're claiming that you didn't really mean anything in the first place and I'm overthinking things.

Don't be a dip****.

I didn't say I didn't mean anything. I said it wasn't a statement on how great the system is. It's a statement on complacency. On being afraid to leave your comfort zone and thus never progressing. Which I know all too well.

No offense but... Have you ever lived on your own? Staying with your mom is the ultimate sort of complacency. You have to actually face some risks to feel any motivation.

No wonder you consider yourself such a capable self help guru.

Don’t be a fool, bat. His resume speaks for itself.

It's funny cause I was reaching out cause I feel I experienced something similar, not cause I was a guru.

If he was depressed and I had gone through depression and tried to offer some helpful advice, I'm
sure you would demand to see where I got my psych degree.

Bottom line is you resent what I'm saying cause anything that doesn't place 100% of the blame on "the system" doesn't serve your agenda

And what's your top achievement OH.. is it when those black kid's said you seemed like you were black :laughing:

Yeah see in the end your argument devolves into dickwaving cause that's all it ever was about in the first place.

Nah the quote to you wasn't dick waving. It's a legit question. I think that staying at home becomes just enabling after a while.

I'm not condemning you for it man. I'm saying consider a change might actually make you feel better and more willing to take on life's little struggles cause it's on your terms.

The OH diss was dick waving. But he started it. And my dick doesn't need Cialis

Actually, I am proud of that.

And you’re making unfair assumptions about bat.

One thing I don’t think he likes to say is that one reason he’s there is he helps his mom make ends meet not just vice versa.

Nah I think your entire basis for being concerned with how you're concerned with this **** is based on you wanting to have a dick to wave cause being someone with no dick to wave is unendurable for you.

I think that's an unfair assumption of my intentions. I don't know if she'd be better off with me or without me monetarily. I do wonder if she'd be a crazy cat lady without me but I don't know about a money issue.

:drummer:

Bat, I remember certain things you posted

I’m pretty sure there’s more nobility to how you live your life than you let on

nah I think that once again you are shutting out what I say to avoid thinking about your own life choices

Think about where this started. All I was saying was to take more chances, don't be complacent. This was after you posted something that reeked of complacency.

I honestly didn't expect that to escalate to this point. The idea I was just seeing a dick waving competition all along is laughable. Frankly I've wasted way more time on this than I should have and as a result am up past my bedtime.

:beer:

this is great

Or just go live on a farm with your comrades. Don't see what's so bad about that if that's the lifestyle you prefer.

But nah you're right just keep punching the clock and posting about anarchy in your spare time. #fightthepower