Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 2)

[benji]

Okay, I don't think I can find the take a carrot, leave a carrot post and need to stop trying to find it. But from last year:

User Banned (Permanently): Downplaying Genocide and Slavery; Prior Serious Bans for Trolling and Transphobia

It was out of control when it was founded upon wholesale Indigenous genocide, four centuries of African slavery, and aggressive land theft and economic disenfranchisement.

But yeah, now that farm-raised eggs are $6, there's advertisements on top of advertisements, and global warming in general keeps getting worse, the Westerners are finally panicking.

If by out of control you mean lifting billions of people from poverty, saving countless more with advances in science, technology, and medicine, and providing a quality of life to the average person that not even a king could dream of just a few hundred years ago, sure.

But the indigenous people and the slavery. Yeah, that was awful, although not even remotely unique to America or capitalism. History is nothing but conquest, every country is built from it. And we fought a war to do away with slavery. Plenty of other economic and political systems came and went, none dealing with these problems nearly as well.

We will see what happens in the next 100 years, but the previous 100 were unequivocally won by Western capitalists. It would make a hell of a lot more sense to put some tighter guardrails on the current system then tear it down to replace with… what exactly? Eastern authoritarian surveillance state? Finally setting up the socialist utopia, except this time do it right? I believe that.

I thought the last time we talked, I told you not to talk to me. Maybe I didn't; if not, my bad. I'll address this then.

Billions more people have lived and died in poverty than capitalism has actually lifted out. Even today, more people live a substandard existence than live anything resembling a dignified, struggle-free existence like rich Westerners. Subsequently, science, technology, and medicine are not the unique purviews of capitalism; these are just things humans do regardless. What capitalism is good at is is dividing and specializing tasks amongst different people for the sake of production, meaning it is easier to just pump out a bunch of crap compared to systems were you actually have to take into account some level of human dignity. But the shallow whims of Western living are coming at a grave cost of the impoverishment and ravaging of the Global South and the destruction of the very ecosystems we need to even exist in conditions sustainable for human life. The cobalt for your tech shit has to come from somewhere, and if we've gotta kill some Black kids in the Congo to get it, oh well. Some tighter guardrails are not going to fix this. At this rate, in 100 years millions are going to be dead from climate change and resulting resource wars while the progeny of your boy Elon Musk will be happily living on Mars far away from the carnage.

Also, I'm not about to let you downplay history with "we've always had slavery." No. The level of wholesale genocide of Indigenous groups, as well as the brutality, lifetime term, and moral justifications of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and are literally some of the most horrific crimes in recorded human history just by sheer scale. First of all, how many Indigenous people are even in your life? I can literally count on one hand the amount of Indigenous people that I've known on a first name basis. That's not an accident, and neither was the fact that whites took so many people off the African continent that the continental population did not grow for decades during the height of the trade. Indigenous genocide and the slave trade were directly facilitated by capitalism, and as a result it is largely the reason we are dealing with the various social mores and -isms. Roman slavery was not nearly as catastrophic, widespread, systemic, and brutal from what written records we have, and as a result we're not dealing with Roman supremacy fucking up the planet right now. It's white supremacy and European capitalism.

It's also amusing that you think authoritarian surveillance is the purview of Eastern European socialism. You're on the Internet. The government knows everything about you, and we are a hop, skip, and an election away from fascism infecting our government. If the worst comes to worst and they start rounding people up in the camps (as if we don't have camps on the border right now, to say nothing of our jail system), I assume you will be there to explain to the victims how this is the fault of the Soviets.

But ultimately, I can't predict the future, and I make no diagnoses about what system is next. But I can absolutely make a bet that this cannot last. No social, political, or economic system ever has in human history. We're 100,000 years old and capitalism is a comparative blink of an eye built on extremely obvious contradictions. This is not our end. Humans develop themselves whether you like it or not. Either humanity will figure out that we do not have to step on the necks of billions just to enrich thousands using the blind loyalty of millions who are deluded into thinking they will one day be the winners, or global warming will force our hand.

 

Previously discussed: https://thebire.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=3&pid=54426#pid54426

The Transphobia:

User Banned (1 Month): Transphobic concern trolling

If it meant all genders getting equal coverage and paid the same opposed to the discrepancies we have now I'd love that.

Despite what are probably good intentions, the situation you are describing is NOT equality. It's inclusivity masquerading as equality. In your solution woman would basically never win a competitive sporting event again, no matter how hard they trained. How is that equal? How is that fair? It's just an uncomfortable truth... and we have to get past this shame and learn to celebrate our biological differences.

This thread is actually pretty disturbing. I know this is the age of social media, and the sheer volume of bad faith actors out there polluting the space is frustrating and tiresome. It probably sucks to have to retread the same ground over and over to no avail. But this is ERA, not twitter, can we let people talk about this issue without claims of transphobia and bigotry? Not everyone follows this like a hawk and is familiar with all angles of the topic. Sometimes people really are "just asking questions". The cynicism is off the charts.