Author Topic: DM9 Preventing Further Suffering  (Read 5935 times)

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Offline Daen

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DM9 Preventing Further Suffering
« on: December 21, 2021, 04:35:08 AM »
Daen's Musings #9 Preventing Further Suffering

There's suffering all over the world. People of all walks of life, in situations of any kind, suffer. Removing poverty would massively reduce that suffering, but it wouldn't get rid of it completely. We suffer because we're human. As some people have said, we know we're alive because we're hurting.

So I described the primary cause of suffering in my opinion: poverty. Then I explained how poverty isn't just a byproduct of capitalism, but it's necessary to the function of capitalism. Because for one person to have so much more, a great many other people have to have less.

I talked about how worker co-ops function, and how differently they'd be run from the capitalist model. Converting to them would be quick and easy, and would benefit far more people than what we're doing now.

But how do we prevent future suffering? How do we make sure it goes away and stays away? You know, as much as we can. Hoo boy. Now I'm really getting into it with the socialist ideals. Maybe you should stop reading here, if that stuff makes you angry.

At its most basic level, think of the difference between capitalism and socialism as the difference between a vertical line and a horizontal one, on a grid of wealth over population. Over time, a capitalist society will collect all the wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands. By the same token a socialist society will eventually spread wealth and power out more and more evenly. On the capitalist grid, a triangle will form, and get thinner and thinner until it's just a vertical line. On the socialist one, a triangle will form and get shorter and shorter until it's just a horizontal one.

But isn't that the same model when it comes to governments themselves? In a tyranny, the tyrant collects all the money and power into their own hands, by design. The same is true for oligarchies, monarchies, empires, and a bunch of others. By comparison, a society based on total equality would spread that power out evenly.

At its core, the difference between capitalism and socialism, or between tyranny and total democracy, is just the difference between hierarchy and anarchy.

Now there's a loaded word. When I say anarchy most people instinctively think of chaos, looting, blood and death in the streets, that sort of thing. Bear with me, please. Let's look at how these words are built. Etymology is really cool, and has been an interest of mine for a long time.

Hierarchy is a combination of hier (basically approving of or condoning), and arch, which is literally one thing above everything else. Look at the monument in St. Louis, for a prominent American example.

Anarchy is the same, except instead it's 'an', which is short for anti. As in, opposed to the arch instead of in favor of it. One wants the arch, or authority in which one person puts themselves above others, and the other wants no authority, with everyone at an equal level.

"But wait," the hecklers might say. "We've all seen it on tv. Anarchy is chaos. People running around killing people willy-nilly. The strong preying on the weak because there's no authority to keep them in line. No one wants that, do they?"

Of course not. But how is that any different than what we have now? We have a government, sure, but its response to disasters ranging from covid to the Afghanistan withdrawal to climate change itself has been nothing short of chaos. A million moving parts all moving in different directions, with nothing getting done. We have people running around killing other people when they feel like it. We just excuse them because they happen to be wearing a police uniform, and the laws are in place to make sure that the police are rarely if ever held accountable for their actions. We already have the strong preying on the weak, in the form of the rich and powerful manipulating the system to make sure that the poor and powerless stay that way. We already live in this theoretical hellscape! We're just told a thousand times a day that it's not happening, by a media infrastructure built to keep us as passive as possible!

I say if we have to live in hell, we should do it on our own terms.

Another big heckler argument is: "People are naturally lazy. If we just give them the basic necessities of life, they won't do anything! They'll just sit there and play video games all day or whatever."

Sure, some people would behave that way. With a large enough sample size, you're gonna get the full range of human behavior. But I ask you this: do you think panhandlers like begging for money on street corners? Do you think the homeless man sleeping under a bridge wouldn't be sleeping in a house if he had one? Do most welfare recipients enjoy getting their check, rather than feel the pride of earning their way?

Again, of course not. These people have no other options! They're dependent on the social safety net to survive, not because they like it. And because they're dependent, they're called 'leeches' or 'lazy' or 'criminals'. I remind you: not all crime is bad. MLK junior was a criminal, because protesting for civil rights was illegal at the time. We can't blame homeless people for being locked up for vagrancy if they don't have a choice!

There's an economic argument to be made for getting people off the streets, but I'm not going to make it. I'm gonna make the moral one. We should help people because it's the right thing to do. We should trust that they'll take the chance we're giving them and make a better life for themselves, not because it's a financial investment we're making in them, but because it's supposed to be basic human decency.

I follow anarchic ideals because I firmly believe that all of us, on equal footing, are less morally fallible than a small group or just one of us. As equals we can hold each other accountable, while in a hierarchy the people in charge can do whatever they want without any consequences.

Take a look at America's government. We have a democracy, or so we tell ourselves. We can cast a vote for our president or governor or mayor, but we only have two realistic options, and we certainly didn't choose them! How often have we ever been able to cast a vote for someone we actually liked, instead of someone we merely hated less than the alternative? (See also ranked-choice or instant runoff voting. It's far superior to our current method.)

We have laws that are written with no mention of race, but how equally are they enforced? We punish lawbreakers if they're average citizens, but how often do we punish rich and powerful ones?

Let's face it: in the same way that the USSR botched communism, we've botched democracy. We let our capitalism destroy it. It's time to start over- to come up with a new way of governing ourselves. The hat I'm throwing into the ring is labeled 'true, fully-equal socialism'.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2022, 05:27:52 AM by Daen »