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OwlFancier posted:Within the state system taxes are a "good" thing in that they represent the enforcement of the social contract on the wealthy. My objection is really more that the state system doesn't do a very good job of not letting rich people avoid paying them and tends to spend them on lovely things The base assumption of taxation schemes is that there will be accumulations of wealth from which to skim enough marginal value back to the control of the state that it can operate its basic services and military and so on. But the assumption is also that economic control of the society does not rest either with the people or the state, that the real decision-makers are the rich, that they decide when and how to deploy the resources of the community and that the people and the state are poor debtors begging for just enough to keep the whole grift from collapsing or being kicked over.
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Sep 28, 2020 23:49
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Yeah like it doesn't work very well in practice, but if you operate under the assumption that the state actually is some sort of check on capital then taxes are good. I would take issue with that assumption's reality though 
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Sep 29, 2020 00:18
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OwlFancier posted:Yeah like it doesn't work very well in practice, but if you operate under the assumption that the state actually is some sort of check on capital then taxes are good. I would take issue with that assumption's reality though Should say everything that needs to be said that there are infinite mechanisms for different parts and members of the government, both political and bureaucratic, to hamstring and obstruct each other to great effect and yet that every effective method devised to reduce the influence of private wealth on governmental and political processes has ultimately been found to be illegal.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:37
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That would be the ideal, but it's not really how most of America's taxes are designed to work. Or at the very least, there isn't that amount of societal planning to really reach that grand principle so far as I know. Our tax system was mainly designed to pragmatically harvest wealth to fuel the government from wherever they thought they could get it, and then the bulk of that chipped away over a century. I don't really know what the full breakdown is, but here's the big ones I know:
Back when it existed, the antitrust movement was more directly about breaking up piles of wealth. Corporate wealth. Both marketshare and the control over resources involved in an industry in the cases of vertical integration. But y'know, the antitrust movement is functionally dead. Some guy convinced most of the judicial system involved in the process of fighting monopolies to think about monopolies in terms of their direct damage to consumers, and it's harder to directly prove from that perspective because the damage to consumers is mainly lost potential that it's hard to definitively proved existed. There's definitely severe problems, but there's also clear solutions to those problems that could be quickly implemented.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:56
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I don't think anyone was arguing that taxation functionally serves as a check on capital. At best, it's a least-resistance method for getting enough dollars into the public purse to fill potholes and repair the sewer system at the expense of the people profiting the most. More usually, it's those same things but done at the expense of the poor. And at its absolute worst, it's a patriarchal instrument of social control where the rich punish the poor for their vices and blame them for their problems while simultaneously denying them access to good food, clean water, medical care, and housing. There are very few remaining instances of taxation being used as a tool of political power by the people at large to constrain the wealthy.
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Sep 29, 2020 07:48
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It is probably a failure of imagination on some level on my part, but I don't quite see how we can do without some form of measure of wealth and still maintain the level of civilization we do now. Even if we get rid of denominations entirely, I don't think we'll quite escape the need for some universally agreed upon measure of the worth of labor. Or we'll end up quarreling about how many chickens that bespoke roomba-OS is worth, or whatever. For the same reason, I can't escape the need for some form of central organization dedicated to respond to natural disasters or the like that are beyond the scope of local communities. With the best will in the world, I can't see how the towns ravaged by the California wildfires, even if they confederated and came together for the duration of the crisis, could have avoided the necessity of outside support. Support that would have to be centrally coordinated somehow to ensure it got there in a timely manner.
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Sep 29, 2020 15:56
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TLM3101 posted:It is probably a failure of imagination on some level on my part, but I don't quite see how we can do without some form of measure of wealth and still maintain the level of civilization we do now. Even if we get rid of denominations entirely, I don't think we'll quite escape the need for some universally agreed upon measure of the worth of labor. Or we'll end up quarreling about how many chickens that bespoke roomba-OS is worth, or whatever. I am of the mind that anarchism is the refuge of the mentally battered. Local governments know how to coordinate on these things, we non zero amount of time planning how to do so. Usually in spite of electeds.
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Sep 29, 2020 16:46
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Idk I think anarchism sounds good and my brain is just fine
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Sep 29, 2020 16:51
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You've eaten ~15 probations in the last 3 months alone. Probably not the most reliable narrator there, champ. e: vvv Keep telling yourself that and maybe one day it will come true! Hello Sailor fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 16:57
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Those probes are mostly for not cheerleading for Biden hard enough to please the mods in the various elections/politics threads E: really the fact that discussion of US politicians is banned from the US politics thread and we have to have two threads for the election alone because libs can't handle people being allowed to disagree with them says it all E2: also the fact that one candidate's history of sexual harassment isn't allowed to be brought up at all anymore lol. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 17:25
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I don't really think having some sort of large scale mutual support system is incompatible with anarchism? You should organize things as locally and directly as you can and if you can't, and the thing is still important to coordinate on, then you organize on a broader scale and if necessary, sacrifice some direct participation. Like the point is to get rid of massive unaccountable structures that don't need to exist, and that can be replaced in their function by more local ones that give people more direct power. If it's something that can't really be done on a local level, such as environmental policy, then you would need a larger organization. You already need a larger organization than the nation state to do that so you need to solve that problem one way or the other.
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Sep 29, 2020 21:03
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It’s a lot simpler than you think. The scale of the problem determines the size of the needed organisation. Sorting out who is breeding chickens and who is planting beans is a local problem that doesn’t need much government. Design, construction and commissioning a mine requires hundreds of people but not 10s of thousands. Putting together the infrastructure to place space based navigation aids into commission needs a organization that can coordinate thousands of people on the back of an industry that requires 10’s of thousands . World climate change probably needs almost the entire world to be coordinated and that’s not going to happen with billy bob and Svetlana having a chat and informal agreement. Saying that, generally an organization performs best when focusing on as few things as possible. successfulll big mining companies don’t own as many more mines as they own much bigger and more complex mines. Lots of little mines generally run better after being divested by the big boy (or government) that would alternate between crazy over capitalisation or complete neglect of its otherwise easily profitable operation. Pushing down accountability and decision making is a thing that works within reason and capitalism for me is mostly a system to drive towards matching the size of organization with the size of task. The profit itself is an efficiency loss but just one amongst many for the big jobs. After all mining companies themselves pay a lot of profit to other vendors instead of trying to save that cost and doing everything themselves. Anarchists are like libertarians in that it’s wishful thinking that an unorganized rabble can feed itself let alone defend itself or their contracts.
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Sep 29, 2020 22:33
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RuanGacho posted:I am of the mind that anarchism is the refuge of the mentally battered. You certainly seem like someone with a rich grasp of anarchist theory.
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Sep 29, 2020 23:00
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I would suggest the wishful thinking part is the belief that capitalism "matches the size of organization to the size of the task" as if "the task" is entirely value neutral and the nature of the organization does not have any bearing on what "the task" might be, or particularly why it consistently ends up being "more money for the people doing the organizing, gently caress the rest of you" Like would you not look at the way stuff is going and at least question whether the hierarchical way of organizing society has anything to do with the trend of just ignoring the needs of the majority of people in favour of short term profit and benefit to the people at the top? That that structure might lend itself to producing people who think like that and putting them in positions of authority? In either government or business? Honestly it's really telling that everyone who goes off on one about this always thinks people are inherently some "unorganized rabble" incapable of the most basic tasks who need to be whipped into line. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 23:09
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Anarchism is unorganized except for when it's not, and nothing is predefined so all theoretical organizational problems can be vaguely rebuffed by insisting that solutions can be developed on the spur of the moment with no prior or long-term planning. Philosophically it sounds like it only works if everybody is already ideologically aligned and will continue to be indefinitely, so it's a good thing that there isn't a natural human tendency to branch and deviate from the group to explore your full possibility space.
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Sep 30, 2020 00:32
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At it's core the argument is that hierarchies are dangerous and prone to becoming detached from the people they exert control over, that the people at the top of them are, through their material disconnection from the people at the bottom, more likely to "explore their full possibility space" into making decisions based on their interests and experiences rather than the interests of the people they are supposed to serve, which again, because they are materially different by virtue of their position in the hierarchy will probably not be capable of properly meeting the needs of the people at the bottom. It is the argument that the structure of a governing system is not divorcable from its values. Which is like, trivially true? You already believe this, you know full well that a failson of a billionaire is going to be a right wing poo poo, you know that you want working class representation in your government and for your governers to actually know what it's like to work a poo poo job and live a precarious life so they can understand what their constituents might want. If you take that argument and extend it properly you end up at anarchism. You end up saying that the structure of our political system is inherently weighted towards the wealthy, that it will never somehow produce a working class majority or govern in the interests of the working class because it is inextricably tied up with the society of the wealthy and pseudo-aristocracy who also control most of the private sector. That wealth cannot be meaningfully separated from power and even if it could, that the political structure we have is fundamentally incapable of enacting it because it's already been captured by the wealthy. That a society where wealth buys the spread of your ideas and that spread determines the outcome of elections and those elections entrench the power of wealth even further, cannot bootstrap itself out of that downward spiral, and even if it could that spiral is the rational, predictable outcome of that mode of organization. Like how do you disagree with the structural critique? Its prescriptions are not absolute, you can believe all that and still understand that hierarchical organization can achieve things, much as Marx correctly observed the phenomenal capacity of capitalism to produce things, but the question is no longer "how do we produce" but rather "how do we stop producing just for the sake of it". The question for society is no longer "how do we hammer millions of people into a loyal productive force to fight wars with other empires" but rather "how do we make sure our productive force is utilized to ensure the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people, with the minmum amount of harm" Society can no longer tolerate great wars, it can no longer tolerate maximal production all the time. Both have the capacity to kill us all. Sometimes that might mean large, hierarchical organizations, but I think it's very, very wrong to say that society could possibly abide the level of hierarchical structure, either corporate or governmental, that we have today. Because that structure is transparently at the root of our political, economic, and ecological dysfunction, because the people making the decisions have no connection to, understanding of, or concern for the majority of people in the world, because they are not living in the same society as the rest of us. They are living in a micro society created out of people who are similarly empowered by hierarchy. Is it any wonder that our lives are a game to them? That they are blind to our needs? What answer is there but not a massive transfer of power to people directly? What better attack on the root of the problem? What better hope for a stable future that doesn't lead us right back to where we are? We might still need, or even benefit from some structures like what we have now, just as we will likely still need factories in the future, or offices, but does everyone need to be working in one? Do we need so many? Does everything need to be centralized and taken out of people's direct control? Does the possibility to do that or to have everybody working as much as possible mean it is a good idea? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:07 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 00:47
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I absolutely understand the need for a balance of power amongst all people and, since money and power are synonymous, it has to be a society of people with an extremely high level of material equality as well. It only takes 1 rich megabastard to ruin the world, and massive inequality is inherent to capitalism - no argument here. However, it is valid at least as a thought experiment to say "Even in a real democracy (unlike the shadow of one that exists today), someone will be chosen to speak for the many or be the final say in matters of importance. However, how do we keep that person from behaving in their self-interest and in the common interest?" Materials equality is vital to that, but it isn't the only thing. Furthermore, the wage slavery of capitalism must be eliminated root and branch, but it also has to be decided how to get everyone to contribute more or less equally when they metaphorically, and yet sometimes literally, do not have the gun to their head of "sell your labour to oligarchs or die". I think that we all have to accept, as a starting point, that hierarchy is as much engrained in our culture as capitalism is. While the two are inseparable, we have to admit at the same time that, in practical terms, "just imagine them gone" isn't productive to any discussion either. What our current degenerate hypercapitalism and hyper-equal anarchy/communism/whatever have in common is a question of accountability, but that doesn't mean that the answer is the same in both cases. We also have to realise, sadly, that scarce resources is still a major factor in most sectors of production - keep in mind that "scarce" includes "we could have unlimited whatsadoodles, but it would gut the environment" as well. In some areas scarcity is a thing of the past, but it's still present in most sectors of life, so we have the two-fanged problem of accountability and (mostly) scarcity. Capitalism often forces scarcity and has no accountability, but saying that in "post-capitalism" it just goes away isn't helpful either. Scarcity isn't going to go away and accountability isn't going to become unnecessary just because the proles finally got the revolution right. After all, socialism/communism/notthishorriblebullshit is about equality: equal power, equal wealth, but also equal responsibility, equal accountability, equal contribution. JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 01:16 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 01:14
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I think anarchists also have the best suggestion for how to get there, though. We live in a horrifically hierarchical society so it's no wonder people internalize that, as they internalize other dumb poo poo like racism, sexism, homophobia etc. But by creating environments where those things are not indoctrinated into us every waking moment we have the best chance of creating people who think differently. By democratizing our workplaces, our homes, our communities, by transferring power back to us immediately we can have a hope of creating people who are better at those things. I find it hard to look at how lovely a lot of people's politics are and not connect it to them basically being completely disconnected from the actual cause/effect of politics. There are some genuinely vile people out there but I think there are more people who just look at the reality of the world and correctly discern that nothing they do within the system matters and just check out, become antisocial because they know society doesn't give a poo poo about them. They have basically no meaningful choice to make and any choice they do make cannot be connected to a material improvement in their lives. And this can manifest in a lot of ways, either they're politically inactive, politically uninformed, they make decisions based on shits and giggles, they put absolute faith in the system to produce the right outcome without critically examining why it does what it does. Which is why I think the focus on localization of power wherever possible is important, letting people make decisions and having those decisions affect their lives. Responsible decision making is a skill that needs to be exercised and it is one that is, by design, completely and utterly atrophied by our present political system. The wealthy and powerful do not reap the consequences of their decisions and the poor and powerless cannot make them to begin with. Absolutely nobody anywhere in modern politics actually makes a decision and then lives with it, which is insane. What choice, then, but to pursue autonomy for people where possible? Making decisions as close to home and implementing them as personally as possible. We can't do everything that way, but the more things we can do that way I think the better we will all be at making bigger decisions and our interaction with potentially necessary larger systems of government. It might be messy and it might not work but I do not see a saner option. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 01:39
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It just seems to be fundamentally ignoring all the fundamental issues with organizing people to just insist that figuring out organizational structures is pointless. It's a non-answer. It's not something that can be meaningfully implemented on a grand scale. I've seen a lot of the time people taking the idea of anarchism and wheeling it around to say that nothing can ever be implemented on a grand scale. No administrative structure can ever work so it's pointless to try figuring out how to design one to be fair or equitable or whatever because all those attempts are pointless. If you go disassemble all large scale structures, there's no particular reason why mass localized autonomous groups would prioritize worldwide goals, and if you need to reassemble a large scale structure to assure worldwide or large-scale goals get accomplished, then you have the thing that you're supposed to have gotten rid of and all the same sort of power structures will calcify around that all over again unless you go back to all the theories of administration you discarded in the first place, and it's unclear what the people saying that all government is bad government were saying. OwlFancier posted:At it's core the argument is that hierarchies are dangerous Shrug. Like if it's not a fundamental grievance against the idea of organizational structures or administrative systems in general and just an argument that there should be less inequality, then all of a sudden everything becomes vastly more workable, but then you lose the grounding for saying just get rid of everything first.
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Sep 30, 2020 02:31
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SlothfulCobra posted:It just seems to be fundamentally ignoring all the fundamental issues with organizing people to just insist that figuring out organizational structures is pointless. It's a non-answer. quote:It's not something that can be meaningfully implemented on a grand scale. I've seen a lot of the time people taking the idea of anarchism and wheeling it around to say that nothing can ever be implemented on a grand scale. No administrative structure can ever work so it's pointless to try figuring out how to design one to be fair or equitable or whatever because all those attempts are pointless. quote:If you go disassemble all large scale structures, quote:there's no particular reason why mass localized autonomous groups would prioritize worldwide goals, quote:and if you need to reassemble a large scale structure to assure worldwide or large-scale goals get accomplished, then you have the thing that you're supposed to have gotten rid of and all the same sort of power structures will calcify around that all over again unless you go back to all the theories of administration you discarded in the first place, and it's unclear what the people saying that all government is bad government were saying. quote:Shrug. Getting rid of things is a means to an end. The problem with incrementalist reform, in a view shared both by revolutionary anarchists and by Marxist-Leninists and other vanguardists, is that the structure you are attempting to reform is a puppet of the people sitting on top of it and they will simply change or cheat the rules (often by killing you) if you're getting close to subverting the structure's value to them. They have already written the rules to advantage them, so smashing the rules and throwing them off the throne is required to reach the end goal. Anarchist thought has also been influenced by the giant pile of dead anarchists in their own history who made the mistake of offering people a horizontal alternative to the authority without being prepared for the inevitable murderous retribution that such an alternative inevitably draws. That said, "a fundamental grievance against the idea of organizational structures" is an absurd misunderstanding outside of anarchoprimitive and ancap dipshits. Anarchists are against hierarchical organizational structures that operate through coercion, usually that coercion being the hierarchy's leaders first appropriating a monopoly on legitimate violence from the people and then proceeding to brutalize or murder them with it whenever they step out of line and forcing them to live under that constant threat to ensure they comply with the demands coming from above. But "being against organization" is not a feature of anarchism. You can go read about the IWW, the Spanish Revolution, or the EZLN if you're actually curious about this.
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Sep 30, 2020 07:21
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SlothfulCobra posted:Shrug. Explosives are dangerous, machines are dangerous, guns are dangerous, with that in mind, you have a think about whether what you want to do necessitates the use of them and whether it's worth doing. You understand that doing dangerous things long term carries costs, it hurts people, it produces unexpected and undesired results, and you think about all that when you think about whether it's worth doing or if there's a better way to do it. We should think about our coercive governing structures this way, rather than thinking "well if we just elected the right people" because at what point does that just sound like "have you tried not having workplace accidents?" The negative outcomes are a product of the process. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 07:32 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 07:30
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OwlFancier posted:I think there are more people who just look at the reality of the world and correctly discern that nothing they do within the system matters and just check out, become antisocial because they know society doesn't give a poo poo about them. You just asked for a system which has mechanisms to require people to be involved to the extent of their ability and resources, to make decisions in their own interest (ie, no one else will do it for you) but through vague means, is tangentially also encourages actions to the benefit of others even if that person does not care, generally without having to be accused by your community of not doing enough. I think you just asked for capitalism. To your comments that asking for organisation is asking for hierarchy is simply a strawman to allow you to wax lyrical about how good it would be if you didn't have less money than someone else assuming that money alone is what confers influence over others. Crew resource management (CRM) in cockpits is a good example where hierarchal control is demonstrably inferior to distributed consensus control, yet it is still highly organised. Countless lives have been saved by structuring cockpits to mitigate the errors that come from one person with all the decision making power and responsibility. Saying that, it is not like three rando's turn up in a cockpit and just know what to do by God's Will. It takes organisational structure to select, train and empower crew members to utilise CRM. Anarchy dreams of a world working like cockpit crew resource management but by God's will (everyone just wants to do the exact thing that's required for success) rather than training, structure and yes, hierarchal requirement to be proficient at CRM to be qualified as a professional pilot. Libertarians want the anarchist way but with bespoke contracts (ignoring that most contracts are simple copy/paste templates with roughly in general the same practical outcome as government legislation). This is not to say that some structures don't deserve being dismantled - Burkina Faso went from net importer to net exporter of food within a decade by upending traditional hierarchal structures. Organisational structures calcify readily and non-genuine actors are always META'ing how to become deadwood in the system. Capitalism cleans out deadwood by paupering companies that don't actively clean it out, the militaries of the world have up or out policies for the same reason. Electoral systems attempt to do that by otherwise arbitrarily changing out leadership just by popular opinion. It turns out none of the systems are perfect and indeed once you settle on a system, that META'ing deadwood is looking for its in and that's where revolution comes in. Before revolution (which is always heinously more expensive than proponents ever dream), a lot of the world has a combination of those systems working to greater or lessor success. If we had anarchy tomorrow, we would have billions less people within a few years and an even more stuffed up environment.
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Sep 30, 2020 19:05
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Capitalism cleans out deadwood by paupering companies that don't actively clean it out
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Sep 30, 2020 19:41
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Guavanaut posted:David Graeber RIP. I haven't read the Bullshit Jobs book yet, but Debt and his essay on fun are both great reads.
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Sep 30, 2020 20:05
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Hello Sailor posted:RIP.  , guess that should be "made a good argument" now.
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Sep 30, 2020 20:14
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Electric Wrigglies posted:You just asked for a system which has mechanisms to require people to be involved to the extent of their ability and resources, to make decisions in their own interest (ie, no one else will do it for you) but through vague means, is tangentially also encourages actions to the benefit of others even if that person does not care, generally without having to be accused by your community of not doing enough. Quick question, what do you think "Anarchy" actually means
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Sep 30, 2020 20:15
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Anarchy for me means the opposition to formal organisation. Regarding how capitalism is not a panacea... no poo poo. Capitalism not kept on a tight leash and modified as possible and required to achieve broad societal goals is just anarchy with dollars.
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Sep 30, 2020 20:58
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Anarchy for me means the opposition to formal organisation. This is not the definition actual anarchists use, so, you're probably going to find yourself shouting at the void if you keep using it.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:07
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What do you think "capitalism" means?
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Sep 30, 2020 21:08
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Anarchy for me means the opposition to formal organisation. Anarchists famously don't care about or endlessly debate how formal organisation should work Strawman fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 21:09
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Somfin posted:This is not the definition actual anarchists use, so, you're probably going to find yourself shouting at the void if you keep using it. Noted, will read up/refresh my understanding. Honestly, about 20 years ago I used to chat Anarchy with my old man but I had not heard anything in about that long so sort of thought it died a natural death as thoughts have moved on. Saying that, for me formal organisation includes central organisation/consistent systems for tasks that involve the entire organisation and OwlFancier seemed to be arguing from the standpoint that collective organisation is not required to achieve collective goals.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:16
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This feels like when people get in a tizzy over the idea of communism as a stateless society, without understanding Marx's definition of the state.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:16
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Electric Wrigglies posted:Saying that, for me formal organisation includes central organisation/consistent systems for tasks that involve the entire organisation and OwlFancier seemed to be arguing from the standpoint that collective organisation is not required to achieve collective goals. I am arguing literally the opposite, that collective organization, as opposed to dictatorial organization, is the only way you can achieve collective goals, rather than the goals set by whoever is in charge.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:19
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OwlFancier posted:I am arguing literally the opposite, that collective organization, as opposed to dictatorial organization, is the only way you can achieve collective goals, rather than the goals set by whoever is in charge. ok, but collective organisation includes things such as a adversarial court, which specifically has someone in charge even as specific decisions are dispersed (to the defense and prosecuting teams for how to demonstrate a case, the jury to decide upon contested matters of fact, etc), include public listed corporations which depending on the country, has specific roles for management, shareholders and the board, to unions which have organisers, stewards and reps as well as line members. Being opposed to dicatorships, authoritism, royalty or some wanker that was born with a billion dollars (but is otherwise irrelevant to our life say as compared to a student from Hamilton State School) is hardly reason to start a revolution in the US or New Zealand.
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Sep 30, 2020 21:40
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And what I am suggesting is that if those structures lead to negative outcomes, such as when unions sell out their members because of their focus on the decisions of the leadership group and centralization of their decisions in that group, as well as the desire to be seen as "legitimate" within a heavily restricted legal framework for permissible union activity, perhaps we should consider that a structural failing of that mode of organization and investigate whether we could transfer power back towards the members directly. Or perhaps when courts decide that arbitrary police murder of black people is OK, because the people deciding whether it's OK are not the people the police keep murdering, if you want a topical example. Perhaps that is a failure of the structure of the justice system that it exists to put a veneer of legitimacy on that action, because it does not represent the people being policed. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Sep 30, 2020 |
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Sep 30, 2020 21:45
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Electric Wrigglies posted:ok, but collective organisation includes things such as a adversarial court, which specifically has someone in charge even as specific decisions are dispersed (to the defense and prosecuting teams for how to demonstrate a case, the jury to decide upon contested matters of fact, etc), include public listed corporations which depending on the country, has specific roles for management, shareholders and the board, to unions which have organisers, stewards and reps as well as line members. What? Why? Why do we need an adversarial court system? Like, I'm no anarchist, I just genuinely don't understand this specific statement.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:03
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If the alternative is Louisville where the prosecutors and the accused are on the same side, I’ll take an adversarial system.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:13
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OwlFancier posted:And what I am suggesting is that if those structures lead to negative outcomes, such as when unions sell out their members because of their focus on the decisions of the leadership group and centralization of their decisions in that group, as well as the desire to be seen as "legitimate" within a heavily restricted legal framework for permissible union activity, perhaps we should consider that a structural failing of that mode of organization and investigate whether we could transfer power back towards the members directly. Agreed that there are negative outcomes (but also positive ones but put that aside), which is why sometimes just working within the rules set by parliament is not enough, sometimes (all the time) it is important for your union to provide direction and organisational support to the best path available electorally. This is to change the rules that your union works within so that the consistent message to your fellow members is to work within the rules even as you work on changing the rules. The Australian Public Service itself was as conservative as liberal national during Hawke/Keating but with Union support, a big chunk of Australian companies are now owned by workers (through mandatory super and industry funds that are hilariously better performers than for profit funds - so much so that the conservatives want to reduce it) and that is driving decisions such as the sacking of old boys club mining (Rio Tinto) or wealth management (AMP) corporate leadership for not keeping up with societal expectations on indigenous or harassment matters respectively. The Australian populace going on a revolution in the eighties would have just had the US do a United Fruit Co on them so probably better Australia moved the needle instead of more strident action. Going anarchy throws away the intent to move the needle. A vote for Trump over Biden (or a vote for Biden without following up with more local elections such as senate, governer, mayoral, internal Democrat structural change agitation, etc) while saying you are progressive is throwing the toys out of the cot (admittedly maybe just laziness if you only vote progressive at federal level).
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Sep 30, 2020 22:26
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Proust Malone posted:If the alternative is Louisville where the prosecutors and the accused are on the same side, I’ll take an adversarial system. This is the outcome of an adversarial system. The accusers and enforcers inevitably conspire to their mutual advantage.
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Sep 30, 2020 22:31
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OwlFancier posted:And what I am suggesting is that if those structures lead to negative outcomes, such as when unions sell out their members because of their focus on the decisions of the leadership group and centralization of their decisions in that group, as well as the desire to be seen as "legitimate" within a heavily restricted legal framework for permissible union activity, perhaps we should consider that a structural failing of that mode of organization and investigate whether we could transfer power back towards the members directly. Well obviously if you let the people the police are killing make decisions about whether the police should be killing people, they will be biased
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Sep 30, 2020 22:32
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