OwlFancier posted:

There ultimately aren't any elements of the nation that the left can co-opt without diluting its own message because its message is fundamentally anti-nationalist, and if it tries to be nationalist it stops being leftist in the sense that it stops being able to address the problems in people's lives, because many of those are caused by nationalism. Particularly if you're trying to claim previous nationalist efforts as your own, you run into the problem that when you get down to it they weren't really that concerned with people's welfare either.

And further if you feed that kind of thinking you set yourself up for the right to do it better, because they really can go all in on nationalism.

Infinite Karma posted:

Destroy the elite vs. fantasize about being the elite.

OwlFancier posted:

If you think that you have the capability to fight people with more power than you repeatedly and bend them to the law, it seems weird to me that you think that's preferable to just... making it so they don't keep appearing.

Like the idea that you can keep fighting the people in charge and winning and that's good and sensible, but making it so you don't need to keep doing that is not even conceivable, that's pretty silly if you ask me. Because I would suggest the latter is by far the easier option.

OwlFancier posted:

Like instead of having this weird class of ultra rich sex weirds in charge, we just... don't?

And I don't know how to get there but then I'm not the one claiming that we can keep them as ultra rich sex weirds but use the law to make them... good ultra rich sex weirds?

OwlFancier posted:

All modern societies do because they are all built on turning people into productive tools to serve the interests of those who are in charge, often to the detriment of the people being used that way, yes. In no small part because this form of society is particularly adept at killing other forms of society (and at the rate we're going, itself)

Cerebral Bore posted:

The literal point of the "checks and balances" in the US constitution was to make it impossible for the popular will to seriously threaten the interests of the upper classes and that anybody is still holding that poo poo up as some kind of gold standard is farcical.

OwlFancier posted:

That may in fact be a necessary component of a just and sustainable society, yes. I would like for it not to be but I do think that the ability of people to cooperate in a humane fashion degrades over large distances and in large numbers. Technology can help with it to a degree but whether or not it's possible to have a large scale society which doesn't degrade into barbarism or not remains to be seen.

You'd have to ask a cyberneticist about it.

unwantedplatypus posted:

I think the thing that people care about when they use the term "elites" is a (perceived) lack of accountability to "non-elites." Einstein was undoubtedly an intellectual elite, and had far more sway in the scientific community than most others, but that didn't translate into political power or dominion over other people's lives.

unwantedplatypus posted:

Nice that you add "actually functioning societies" so that you don't have to think about non-white people in your human nature argument

edit: To clarify, I'm assuming that basically just means "has a state"

unwantedplatypus posted:

That is a lot of words you are putting in my mouth. What system are you describing? Because the power that the coordinator of jumbo jet production has depends entirely on the system he or she is operating within. Is money a thing? How much do they have? Is it possible to use this money to gain an advantage in the justice system? Were they appointed to their position by a "higher" authority or were they elected by the workers of that organization? What is the process for removal of someone in their position? How much unilateral power do they have?

Of course someone who is baiscally comrade CEO will have the same power as a CEO, but it is incredibly uncharitable of you to assume that is what I'm talking about.

Orange Devil posted:

JustJeff88 posted:

It comes back to "who owns the means of production?", but anyone who thinks that society can "hold accountable" those who have the power & money (which are synonymous) to write their own rules is utterly daft.

Orange Devil posted:

This isn't the first and won't be the last time that good business strategy has gotten people killed in preventable ways. What does that tell you about the compatibility of business strategies that optimize for a capitalist mode of production and general human wellbeing?

unwantedplatypus posted:

Then you don't understand the point I was trying to make by talking about food surpluses

Yeowch!!! My Balls!!! posted:

why were those people killed again

OwlFancier posted:

I think it's slightly funny that you'd view the idea that non-hierarchical modes of organization can't do some things as well as hierarchical ones can, as a bad thing.

Because as I already pointed out, what hierarchies are particularly good at is murder, direct, systemic, or via externalities. Aviation is a good example of all three of those

So I'm not personally too bothered by the suggestion that non hierarchical structures would be worse at some things because I think most of the things they'd be worse at are things we shouldn't be doing anyway.

Not that I actually think aviation is one of those things alas, while generally bad I don't really see it as a thing that couldn't be done collectively.

unwantedplatypus posted:

I'm not talking about hierarchies within an organization. I'm talking about social and political hierarchies that reproduce themselves. You can have hierarchy within a specific organization without that hierarchy translating into disproportionate political or economic power outside of that organization. When transportation and communication are not particularly technologically developed, and when there is no formal schooling system, it makes sense that skills and knowledge would be passed down through families, and this system would calcify into a class system.

You can have a factory "hierarchy" without the presence of a socio-economic class hierarchy surrounding it. I'm talking about the later more so than the former, because the latter is the actual reason hierarchies have such power in our society.

OwlFancier posted:

OwlFancier posted:

My appeal is that you're not even willing to consider the idea that the way of organizing society you're advocating for is responsible for the problems you're trying to solve with it.

Like take climate change, why is that a problem? Is it because we live in a society that, in pursuit of productivity, has handed off its large scale control systems, such as they are, to people who are, by virtue of their position in the hierarchy, disincentivized to actually use those systems to plan ahead or even to provide people with the information that they might all loving die if someone doesn't start planning ahead?

You're looking at the way things are and just saying "well we can't change the structure of any of this so we just need to make it work" which utterly refuses to consider that it is working exactly as you would expect something built the way it's built, to work.

How do you make the society we have work? Because I do not see a way. I certainly don't think that the idea that it can just be managed better or whatever is remotely credible, again it's the philosopher king idea, that we just need the people in charge to be better without considering that the structure of hierarchy itself means they cannot be, consistently.

unwantedplatypus posted:

The reason that we currently and historically have a class of elites, and what makes this a socio-economic class, is that their position and power is reproduced across time and individuals; and their position in society gives them a shared interest. There is no intrinsic reason that the head factory coordinator has a shared interest with a residential building administrator. Their jobs have little to do with each other, and neither commands respect in the others line of work. However, if both of those positions personally profit from exploiting the labor and resources of others, suddenly they have a shared interest in keeping an underclass of people to exploit for their own benefit. A CEO's exploitation of workers is intrinsic to a model of social labor for personal profit, and thus is preserved across generations and persons. In addition, when the unequal distribution of resources and power is abstracted into the accumulation of money, it can be passed down via family inheritance. However, this perpetuation of class is only possible through the model of social labor for private profit.