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

[Taco Bell Tower]

I think it slowed down because it's not members only anymore 

[benji]

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/s/7QtPzW9AM6

gistya
•
53m ago
The roommate is collaborating with the investigation. Also being trans doesn't make someone a leftist.

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

we're all joining the DSA right y'all? let's make our community better. 

[Rendle]

A real leftist would get themself arrested for a crime they had nothing to do with, fucking coward.

[D3RANG3D]

I bought many a n64 game that were like sixty or seventy bucks!

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

MK Trilogy was 80 bucks...should have just bought the PS1 version instead but I didn't own a PS1 until much later...

[benji]

I searched for something and came across this from 2022 instead:

A minority are alt-right, but they are allowed to exist as such because the majority of nerd fandoms are composed primarily of white men who, let's be honest, do not give a shit about housekeeping because alt-right rhetoric doesn't affect them. They let these nutters run around and poison fandoms instead of making active attempts to get rid of them.

What would be an attempt to get rid of them?

Using reports and moderation tools to get them deplatformed from social media. Making sure they cannot show up to convention spaces. Boycotting any attempts by other content creators to partner with them. Simultaneously elevating minority voices in the community as people to watch and support.

I agree, my only problem though is people already do call this shit out but they hide in there little subsects of sites or sites like twitter don't adequately moderate that shit, it feels a bit bad blaming a whole community for that vocal minority the community can't even do anything about to shut them the fuck up. A lot of that is out of control of the majority to be able to clean house, thought i wish we could.

It is not out of the majority's control to make their fandom spaces openly hostile to alt-right forces, and indeed we should be asking the question of why these fuckers feel comfortable even being here out in the open.

I mean people do that already and they still exist,

Most people don't do that though. That's why these people are happily in the open.

We do not have to live in a world with Nazism. We've simply decided that they're fringe enough to be acceptable.

Okay and I dont see how you're gonna blame specific fandoms for the fact society at large doesnt act in a uniform manner.

The only way to achieve complete societal aliantion on the scale you speak about would probably require a level of control that would essentially be fascism in an of itself.

I'm not talking about society, generally. I'm talking about fandoms. There are reasons that certain fandoms are considered to be more sexist or racist than others, and it isn't because those affected in question just don't like the property and are picking on it. It comes back to, again, the lack of willingness for these larger fandoms to clean house of the shitlords that feel comfortable nesting in them, and a lot of that unwillingness comes down to attitudes like yours. "People already do x, y, and z and the Nazis are still here." "Well, you're asking for a complete societal shift and that's never gonna happen."

lol you might've opened a can of worms here Nep :P

It's not my fault Furries actually make their Nazis lives a living hell lol.

They have to, their world/groups aren't so big that they can be lost in the fray and noise.

That's the thing, they don't have to. There's nothing illegal about Nazism in America.

Furries choose to clean house simply because there's a higher concentration of minorities within the fandom than in others, and there's less tolerance of the stupid shit. There's also no entry fee for being in the fandom. There's nothing to buy. Being a Furry is entirely built on self-declaration and there's little judgement on how an individual participates and expresses themselves so long as they are doing so positively. It is the closest I've seen to an Anarchic fandom, per se, even if there are content creators in the fandom making fucking bank.

Engaging in Cape and Star Wars shit is just basic-ass capitalism. You have to at least watch the movies, or read the comics and books, to know what you're talking about, to be in the know, and be in fan, which at some point requires buying shit. And capitalism and supremacist modes of operation are ultimately two sides of the same coin. The properties these fandoms are built are never actually going to be able to serve in the interests of the most vulnerable even if some of their themes are "woke," because at the end of the day the point is to make as much money as possible with as little effort as possible, and what is more effortless than placating conservative white boys and men?

Furry spaces have been massively queer in a very white, very cis male sense (and you know good and well that our participation, presence, or even our excellence, in a particular space doesn't mean our acknowledgement). Especially online in the 00s.

Nazi furs were every god damn where without all that much pushback to the point that I, someone who was not a furry but spent a lot of time in various corners of the web with the anonymity that 2000s internet afforded me, was keenly aware of their presence.

They've mostly dried up, moved to MLP circles and are being squeezed out of there now. But let's not pretend the furry community was always staunchly, actively anti-fascist. I was there, back in the day. I saw that shit firsthand.

I don't know why you're talking to me like I, a queer Black person who has always been aware of the fandom and is actually in it, and who was recently involved in a decently-sized Twitter row regarding representation of Indigenous culture in Furry art, am acting like the Furry fandom is a utopic dream.

The Nazi Furs were not everywhere, but they were notable, and pushback has grown over time as the fandom has grown. However, they just recently had (albeit a small and hilarious failure of) a convention, so they're not actually dried up in the sense that you're thinking. It's also in question of if they're still running deep in MLP circles considering the hardcore Brony fandom petered down a lot with Gen 4's ending. Who knows where the fuck they are now, and honestly who cares?

Regardless, my point in bringing them up was not to say that they're perfect. My point was to say that the fact that they've even run them out to the degree that they have is a bar that certain, larger, and more financially capable fandoms have yet to meet.

Here's some other problem solving:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

I imagine for us to have a serious chance at fighting climate change and just working towards a better world we would have to A.) actually start decolonizing the Global South and returning autonomy to Indigenous and Black peoples (we cannot fundamentally address climate change until we do this, honestly; everything else has to follow) and B.) subsequently turn to these Indigenous, African, and other decentralized philosophical and political systems for that to work that focus more on consensus building, community building, and proper treatment of the land. Seems like as far as sheer impact on the Earth's climate and biomes goes, humanity was doing just fine until the industrial revolution and capitalism reared their heads. Now because of it we're on the road to self-destruction after only a few hundred years of this shit out of our 200,000 year existence? Great job us.

I'm not inherently of the mind that we are duty-bound to head to a European-style communist regime or whatever the fuck white leftists want, nor do I think that anti-capitalist modes of thinking and living always need to be contrasted against capitalism as a "decrease in the standard of living" or a "sacrifice." Bullshit; the amount of sheer nonsense we put up with within capitalism, from the addictive, crappy food that is nearly unavoidable, to the physical and mental anguish of being a worker for some piece-of-shit CEO, to the brain-eating chemicals and plastic we intake various degrees to our crumbling social safety nets to electronic addiction. We've been living with a decreased standard of living for hundreds of years unless you were already at the top of the food chain.

Seriously, how is my life made worse if, in exchange for Nintendo Switches becoming $1000 or whatever because we can't just take minerals from Africa for little to nothing anymore nor can we rely on cheap exploited labor, I get in return a walkable, boisterous, healthier community of neighbors I can rely on, representatives I can actually hold accountable for when they start fucking up, and work that is more meaningful in terms of me reaping the rewards for my labor and production? If this is a "decrease in the standard of living" then sign me up to be a Luddite.

Well, Africa is not really decolonized. A lot of the continent's practices are rooted in European capitalism, and it's now being targeted by China for roughly the same ends. The same issues are going to be apparent in Central and South America and Asia too, for example. Capitalism is the global status quo; there is currently no country that is operating completely divorced from it no matter how much conservatives wanna bitch about Venezuela lol. As a result, there is no country I can point to for a hard example of anything I'm visualizing.

But the things I'm thinking of beyond decolonization are just ways we rethink what is important in society, what is good for society, and healthy ways we can achieve these goals. There's this thread from an Ojibwe tribe member about how their culture interacts with disability, for example. For one, there is no word in the Anishinaabemowin language for "disabled" because there is no need to make the differentiation, because anyone regardless of physical ability can meet the social obligations that the Ojibwe people find important in their community, things such as making sure your local neighbors have what they need and are okay, being available to help for familial and communal events and duties, etc. Capitalist society has to make the distinction because we fundamentally do not place importance on the very existence of disabled people, because they are considered less capable workers than abled people. Capitalism merely accomodates them to various degrees after the fact of building hostile infrastructure and practices, but the fundamental issues remain.

Here's also a video from Andrewism about a consensus democracy, which in short is a way for a group, nation, or country to govern itself with a systemic bottom-up approach of finding the consensus of the most people and making sure everyone's arguments and beliefs are heard, discussed, and accounted for before decisions and laws are made. It works best within more anarchic circles, where there isn't a state with a monopoly of power to force people to follow unpopular laws, and subsequently was a common way for various tribes, groups, and nations to govern themselves well before Athenian democracy. It isn't perfect however; some of the actual tools in consensus democracy, such as blocking, can be used to negative effect, it's difficult to scale upwards perfectly because it's slow and subject to the biases of its practitioners (although this can be combatted with the use of self-similar groups that act as representatives of different factions, as apparently families communities in Chiapas, Mexico use this technique for governance), and of course people can just be domineering assholes in discussion. But it is an alternative form of governance and one that was used to great effect in Indigenous and African circles.

There's also a book I ran across on Wikipedia I forget the name of (when I find it I'll update this post, because I really did want to read it) where the gist of it was that a more hands-off approach to city planning where the locals are allowed to simply build, paint, commerce, and live as they so choose can result in a higher level of community strength and engagement, which helps in general with quality of life and more security, versus what happens when the occupying forces of the state police and gentrification efforts come in to inevitably tear these communities apart.

I come across numerable ideas of ways of governance and management just by way of following Black/African and Indigenous folks around on Twitter and YouTube honestly lol. But I would even go on to further argue that these aren't necessarily the only people capable of thinking of alternative ways of living outside of the arbitrary spectrum between Capitalism and Communism. There's what, 8 billion people on the planet? I'm sure there's plenty of even more ideas out there.

Interesting perspective:

I mean, profit at any stage is inherently exploitative to me. You're pocketing the surplus value of a service that was produced by the workers; simple as. There is not a single time in my life that I recall spending money for the services of the business owner; he's not cooking my food, servicing my health, showing me products, shipping stuff to me, or anything of note that is relevant to my living situation. If anything, it's his myopic decisions that are resulting in inefficiencies whenever I have a problem with a business, because he isn't actually on the ground doing the true labor and doesn't know what's going on. The people who actually keep society afloat have always seen the least financial compensation. It is at that point that it should be considered a feature, not a bug.

In which Nepenthe argues that the corporate form itself is anti-capitalist:

It's not completely detached from reality, as an argument. It also doesn't justify exploitation of workers or plundering of resources. But it does, I believe, acknowledge the very real chance of failure and the potentially very large costs incurred by failure. How are these addressed in non-capitalist systems?

A business can be either publicly or privately owned, ne? In non-capitalist systems by default, the risks of failure are not all on the private owner(s); it's on the collective who owns the business instead, whether that be the government, the workers, or whatever other common entity would be holding the bag in this instance. In such a case, it seems like the business owner actually gets a better cushion from complete destitution if they fuck up because it wasn't all of their money, capital, and collateral going into the venture in the first place (Not that this practically matters after a certain level; Disney will only go out of business when the apocalypse hits). And of couse, again, failure isn't vacuuous. There are social safety nets and societal systems that can be utilized to protect people from impoverishment, and I imagine any society that is formed around consensus and collective ownership is going to deliberate consider the question of what happens to you as an owner if you go out of business.

It's not on her to emotionally labor for what should replace capitalism:

I think the problem with trying to imagine a post-capitalist society is that we have this tendency to try and think up an entirely new system from scratch performing at its peak, where all contingencies are accounted for and all plans and those plans' failsafes are put in place, and I think we do this because we are always arguing on the capitalists' terms. We're asked to "come up with something better," and when we inevitably fail to account for every variable of the future, the answer is "of course you couldn't think of anything better because capitalism is already the best there is."

Of course, this ignores the fact that capitalism did not come on the scene fully fledged and perfect. Remember the robber barons? The lack of food and equipment safety standards? Not having a weekend? Child labor? And on and on and on (ironically, these things are still problems to some degree under capitalism anyway!) Pepperidge Farm remembers lol. Even now people are thinking up new ways to run things better within the system. If I'm remembering correctly, it was Toyota that managed to weather a lot of the supply chain issues that were had with covid because their supply chain philosophies respond better to fluctuating market conditions along with what they actually need to produce their cars, meaning they had enough chips on hand to continue production as normal while everyone else was scrambling.

This is also why I'm not beholden to the idea of a transition of capitalism to communism. For the amount of active global organization to be done to achieve that, we cannot guarantee what ideas will come along in the midst of such a shift that may change course to something we didn't account for, for better or worse. Or maybe an asteroid hits us and throws us into a decades'-long winter and none of this matters. Who knows? This is why I try not to get in the weeds about trying to find this perfect system that we will land ourselves in, and I try to preface my thoughts with not having a perfect solution or vision for anyone who is skeptical to imagine. I can't promise a utopia (and neither do the capitalists, funnily enough; they know for all of this to work there has to be underclasses).

But I don't think my inability to deliver that undermines my desire to shift away from colonialism, and thus capitalism and white supremacy by default, just on basic moral principles of autonomy for peoples who have been stripped of it for the past few centuries. The fact that global warming is being accelerated by these systems is a point in my favor, but it's not the underlying reason why I feel the way I do. Even if we could stripmine the Earth to its literal core- and even go on to mine the core- without endangering its various ecosystems and our own survivability, I would still want the self-determination I'm owed as a human being and I am convinced at this point that I cannot have it in a world that runs on capitalism; simple as.

As for reading suggestions, one book I'm in and out of now is Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative, which discusses the issues with living in a world where, somehow "it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism." It talks about how essentially we have been conditioned both by the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of neoliberalism to subsequently understand capitalism as pretty much the only thing we can do and achieve economically for ourselves; to be unable and unwilling to consider alternatives. If you want primers on what other systems of commerce and governance look like, I would actually suggest finding Indigenous and Black/African philosophers on social media. Andrewism is a good primer for other modes of political thought, such as Black Anarchism and Solarpunk, as well as the general horrors of capitalism and European colonialism.

https://www.youtube.com/@Andrewism/videos
Oh, yep, this is where she got the take a carrot, leave a carrot idea.

edit:
I seriously can't find the take a carrot, leave a carrot post.   

But here's Nepenthe explaining that some alternatives to capitalism are... capitalism? (And nuclear power?)

I'm sorry but what's the alternative to that? Isn't it a centrally planned system that controls even more of people's lives?

I don't get what the solution to any of this is and how any of them would be better than the progress we're slowly having

No. The alternative to capitalism is not a planned economy and I'm not entirely sure why people seem to operate on this weird-ass binary, like "hey, humans can scientifically only organize in two ways, in the same way that we can't grow feathers or hooves"

There are multiple proposed solutions to capitalism (I lean more towards anarchic solutions), but they largely boil down to dismantling systems that concentrate power in a small group of people, because if we go by the capitalist cheerleaders' logic that humans are naturally selfish and greedy at the expense of all other traits (this is unscientific, but let's go with it), it is dumb as fuck to then go on to deliberately create systems that allow any given human or small group of humans to weild outsized levels of control over all others, because you are guaranteeing the rest of us will be screwed over just as a natural consequence.

So small examples: Giving workers equal ownership over the means of production in their workplaces means that it is nearly impossible for a manager or a boss to impose undignified wages and working conditions on the masses of workers. Having healthcare guaranteed by the government and price controls on medication means that you are not only incentivizing citizens to be more active in their healthcare, but you have taken away a big incentive for people to settle for shitty jobs that offer more affordable health and prescription insurance, which for many chronically ill and disabled people is a necessity to simply prevent from dying. Repealing Citizens United means that billionaires cannot influence our politicians as easily anymore with levels of donations that dwarves what the rest of the population can contribute, and you now tilt the scale (minimally) back towards the government actually acting with the will of the people.

Other examples would include outright decolonization and reparations for the Global South so that 1/5 of the planet isn't fucking over the other 4/5s with unfair trade deals, destruction of Indigenous lands, mass hoarding of resources, and manufactured conflicts that result in the deaths of thousands and sometimes millions, dismantling the privitization of our agricultural production and distribution systems so that not only do more people have affordable access to, you know, a necessity for life, but that we actually recycle and reuse the remaining food waste to promote ecological sustainability as well as stop destroying so much land for beef production, paring down our road and highway systems in favor of more walkable/bikeable infrastructure and mass transit which gets more cars off the roads, which means less pollution, less deaths, less control from and time wasted by bosses who want us in traffic to come into the office, the reintroduction of communal spaces, workshops, and libraries of things so that there is simply no need for individuals to consume so much which in turn decreases the need for overall production which in turn decreases carbon emissions, the establishment of nuclear as the primary power source, and on and on and on.

There is a shitload of not just literature but practical and applicable solutions out there with regards to anticapitalism that we could all be working towards inevitable solutions right now. Or we could sit here and let capitalists convince us that we can continue having infinite GDP growth on a planet with finite resources.

More in that vein:

Capitalism is a system wherein the means of production (land, factories, data centers, etc.) are privately owned by individuals- capitalists- for the sole purpose of forcing the larger masses- the workers, proletariat, slaves, what have you- into either working or operating these means, or otherwise selling their time, body, and skills in other ways to produce value and wealth for these owners. It is basically just feudalism+.

Making money is not exclusive to capitalism as humans have been using money as a medium of equivalent exchange for far longer than capitalism as an economic system has existed. Subsequently, making money doesn't actually make you a capitalist; it is necessary for workers to make money so as to literally not die. Owning the means of production makes you a capitalist.

So, I don't view Hwang Dong-hyuk as a capitalist. He's a worker. He labors for Netflix to create entertainment that increases their revenue. The fact that the entertainment is thematically anti-capitalist is irrelevant, because under capitalism everything is capable of being commodified (objectified in order to be sold for generating value), including our very identities, and certainly including anti-capitalist artwork.

The rejection of capitalism can come in many forms: socialism (where the means of production are owned by the workers instead of the owners), communism (where the means of production are owned by the state), communalism (where the means of production are accessible to all in an egalitarian way by the people, like air) and possibly other systems that I'm not knowledgeable enough to espouse. These in turn can have various hierarchical flavors, ranging from totalitarianism to anarchism (which means "without hierarchy" aka "without authority," and not "no rules lol").

The continuation of productivity is a non-issue in a post-capitalist world. Humans have always been productive and creative. There was no financial incentive to create agriculture, the domestication of animals, the wheel, levers, the harnessing of fire, art and storytelling. Even now humans create and curate things in their own time without being paid. Look at Wikipedia editing, game modding, fan works, etc.. Creation and productivity are just natural inclinations of humans as a species, to me at least.

I'd also argue that constant productivity is not essential and, indeed, is detrimental to human and ecological well-being. You should not always be hustling and grinding and "creating value." You should be hanging out with friends, calling your parents, going to parties, helping your neighbors out, cooking, taking road trips, engaging romantically and sexually if that's your thing, drawing dumb memes, listening to an album, making an album, dancing, singing. You should be living.

Ultimately though, I'm not smart enough to predict the future and what a post-capitalist society will look like. I am confident that it's an inevitability though because of what I gauge as a statistical certainly. Humans are over 100,000 years old as a species and capitalism, at most, is like 400 years old (and about to irreparably fuck up our ecosystems, what a speedrun!); we've lived under this system in a comparative blink of an eye. If the contradictions inherent in capitalism do not influence us to willingly dismantle it, climate change probably will. xP

[benji]

Here's some essay she wrote: https://www.resetera.com/threads/analysis-with-paralysis-the-uselessness-of-online-white-progressivism-to-black-and-indigenous-folks-and-what-we-can-do-to-fix-it.525798/

[benji]

oh my god i found it, the post where they were going to kill the Middle Eastern guy with capoeira

[Taco Bell Tower]

It's not my fault Furries actually make their Nazis lives a living hell lol.

[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.

[benji]

holy shit

The money that exists in the current system is finite. This means if there are a few holding very large amounts of capital, there will be many that hold small amounts of capital. Those with small amounts of capital often cannot afford basic necessities. This means holding large amounts of capital is morally wrong.

But this is, again, not the case. There is no finite creation of value. There might be a finite supply of, say, physical currency, but that's not the same thing. Becoming wealthy on the basis of investing deprives no one of anything. You say "if I accept it as true", but I don't, because it's not.

Yeah, there's a finite supply of physical currency that can exist at any given time in an economic system, and a shrinking amount of capital on Earth in general (hi global warming, can't wait for you to hit), which are both literally necessary to perpetuate value in a practical sense. No one can say their start up or investment is worth "infinite" value. It can only be worth x amount of value, x being a measurable amount. X amount can fluctuate up or down based on fickle, even stupid-ass shit, and thus it is theoretically infinite, but in a practical sense physical currency and capital, and subsequently the value that is derived from those things, have like, actual ceilings. Everyone on Earth cannot be rich just by mathematical design, even if we don't get into the fact that the hoarding of wealth and the attainment of a billion dollars' worth of value is, like, a conscious choice that these people do. They don't just fall into it; you have to aggressively pursue that shit no matter the actual human cost of your decisions.

It is also a fucking useless choice. Because value has practical limits, so is the marginal utility of any dollar you have access to also limited. The more of it you have, the less any individual dollar even matters to your well being. The moment your needs and wants can all be comfortably met, what the fuck are you even doing hoarding several thousands of times more for? Why is that worth congratulating? What is the point?

This is all just a glorified dick waving contest that has no actual fucking benefit to society at large. If every billionaire just disappeared simultaneously right now, hell, the planet might actually be somewhat better off.

    

Okay I'm done trying to find it for real.

[benji]

I tried to find a better post to quote for this but this will have to do:

ERA loves getting people fired from jobs based on their posts online. They have been the biggest supporters and proponents of that tactic. So it's a bit funny how they're pearl-clutching over the last few days when the right exercise the tactic they pioneered. Did they not think it would be used against them and/or people they like? I'm not excusing the right's hypocrisy in doing this, but did ERA never think the shoe would someday be on the other foot?

[Taco Bell Tower]

"Take a carrot, leave a carrot" is not a standard phrase on ResetEra or elsewhere, and the search results do not show it as a commonly used expression. It appears to be a misunderstanding or a variation of a different, more common idiom.

Here are a few possibilities for what might have been intended:

A garbled version of the "carrot and stick" idiom: The "carrot and stick" is a well-known metaphor for a motivation system using both reward ("carrot") and punishment ("stick"). Someone may have misremembered or confused the phrase.

A play on words related to sharing: It's possible the user was making a joke or a play on words related to taking something and leaving something else, but applied it oddly to carrots.

A one-off post or typo: The phrase may have appeared in a specific ResetEra thread as a typo or a post that was not widely adopted, which is why it doesn't appear in the top search results for the forum. A ResetEra thread about peeling carrots did appear in search results, showing that carrots have been discussed there, but the specific phrase was not mentioned.

A farming or gardening context: Search results did contain discussions about saving carrot seeds and using carrot tops, so the user could have been referring to farming practices, where you would "take a carrot" to eat, but "leave a carrot" in the ground to go to seed.

Thanks, Google AI 

[benji]

Thanks for posting all that benji, very enlightening wow

sounds about white

[benji]

[Taco Bell Tower]

She supported Trump by not voting for Kamala 

Edited: Wait, you said she voted right?

[Potato]

Why the fuck Nintendo want me to buy a shit plastic accessory just to play Virtual Boy games.  

In a service already pay for.

Don't buy it then


Nobody bought it first time around. Why would anyone buy it this time?

[Potato]

holy shit
[quote=Nepenthe, https://www.resetera.com/threads/lebron-james-becomes-a-billionaire-first-active-nba-player-to-do-so.590304/page-4#post-87649902]

*Benji's search for the holy grail carrot*

    

Okay I'm done trying to find it for real.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/%E2%80%9Cfuck-capitalism%E2%80%9D-ok-cool-i-agree-too-but-what-are-the-legitimate-alternatives-that-wouldn%E2%80%99t-ruin-the-world-more-than-it-already-is.655698/page-13#post-96795699

Pretty sure it's in this thread somewhere. 

I'm still searching for it, but this is possibly one of the greatest threads to ever exist on Resetera. Just full on unhinged Nep lunacy.

EDIT: I think this is it and we summarised it into a carrot

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance.

As usual, Nepenthe take 60 words to say what can be said better in 6.

EDIT 2: Yep, I found the original post where this was discovered.

http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=48241.msg3074789#msg3074789

Kudos to Snoopycat for the original find. 

Also credit to Jansen for being first to find the thread.

 for first using the "Take a book, leave a book" phrase.

EDIT 3: First reference to carrots was haughtyfrank

http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=48241.msg3074862#msg3074862

EDIT 4: Propagandhim with the first use of "Take a carrot, leave a carrot"!!!!!!!
http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=48241.msg3074870#msg3074870

[Daffy Duck]

Lmao

"Family values" is just dogwhistle for traditional heteronormative patriarchy. So you can read it as anti-LGBT, anti-feminist at the very least if not going further (anti-abortion, pro-traditional class structures and everything that encompasses). It's this plausable deniability shit that lets them get away with saying it.

Good lord. A Trumpy bar in a nearby town is holding a vigil for for him tomorrow and someone I know from work going 🙄

The moral rot in our country runs deep

These cunts are so fucking stupid, they think everyone holds the same view as them…

Pro tip: there are people out there that don’t think like you and hold opposing views, I know that shocks you and shakes your world to its foundations but it’s true, and it’s fine

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sucker-punch-developer-apparently-fired-after-celebrating-charlie-kirk%E2%80%98s-death.1295385/page-11#post-145041624

 User banned (3 weeks): Extremely inappropriate commentary. Antagonizing another member.

My wife and daughter is all i care in this world, and they depend on me to have a job to live, i would never put that to risk, i work really hard trying to keep my job, i would never tweet anything knowing that i can lose my job cuz of it, its common sense.

Hopefully your daughter grows up to have more empathy than you.

[Rendle]

I wish I could assassinate a far-right political figure too but in Australia there's no-one even worth killing, you guys don't even know how lucky you are

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/september-9-2025-israeli-military-attacks-doha-qatar-says-target-was-hamas-leadership.1292517/page-2#post-144899718

 User Banned (2 Weeks): Conspiracy Theorizing

Qatar, by the way, almost certainly gave the green light to this. They have an amazing air defence system in place. Unless the Israelis used an F35 to attack, then it's highly likely they would have been seen.
Also, the Americans apparently told the Qataris to get their people out.

[HaughtyFrank]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/sucker-punch-developer-apparently-fired-after-celebrating-charlie-kirk%E2%80%98s-death.1295385/page-11#post-145041624

 User banned (3 weeks): Extremely inappropriate commentary. Antagonizing another member.

My wife and daughter is all i care in this world, and they depend on me to have a job to live, i would never put that to risk, i work really hard trying to keep my job, i would never tweet anything knowing that i can lose my job cuz of it, its common sense.

Hopefully your daughter grows up to have more empathy than you.

The empathy to... make a joke on social media?

[Potato]

I wish I could assassinate a far-right political figure too but in Australia there's no-one even worth killing, you guys don't even know how lucky you are

Pauline could do with a bullet.

[HaughtyFrank]

But the things I'm thinking of beyond decolonization are just ways we rethink what is important in society, what is good for society, and healthy ways we can achieve these goals. There's this thread from an Ojibwe tribe member about how their culture interacts with disability, for example. For one, there is no word in the Anishinaabemowin language for "disabled" because there is no need to make the differentiation, because anyone regardless of physical ability can meet the social obligations that the Ojibwe people find important in their community, things such as making sure your local neighbors have what they need and are okay, being available to help for familial and communal events and duties, etc. Capitalist society has to make the distinction because we fundamentally do not place importance on the very existence of disabled people, because they are considered less capable workers than abled people. Capitalism merely accomodates them to various degrees after the fact of building hostile infrastructure and practices, but the fundamental issues remain.

First off, this feels like something worth fact checking, but secondly, if you don't have a word for "disabled" it would also mean you don't have a concept of "accessibility". I wouldn't be surprised at all if the level communal participation of disabled people in that tribe would be considered completely unacceptable when you apply it to a first world country.

[Besticus Maximus]

But the things I'm thinking of beyond decolonization are just ways we rethink what is important in society, what is good for society, and healthy ways we can achieve these goals. There's this thread from an Ojibwe tribe member about how their culture interacts with disability, for example. For one, there is no word in the Anishinaabemowin language for "disabled" because there is no need to make the differentiation, because anyone regardless of physical ability can meet the social obligations that the Ojibwe people find important in their community, things such as making sure your local neighbors have what they need and are okay, being available to help for familial and communal events and duties, etc. Capitalist society has to make the distinction because we fundamentally do not place importance on the very existence of disabled people, because they are considered less capable workers than abled people. Capitalism merely accomodates them to various degrees after the fact of building hostile infrastructure and practices, but the fundamental issues remain.

First off, this feels like something worth fact checking, but secondly, if you don't have a word for "disabled" it would also mean you don't have a concept of "accessibility". I wouldn't be surprised at all if the level communal participation of disabled people in that tribe would be considered completely unacceptable when you apply it to a first world country.

Have you considered that the tribe may have eliminated all genetic diseases through generations of superior breeding and a lack of inferior white genetics causing them to develop disabilities and concepts of industrialised careers

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/%E2%80%9Cfuck-capitalism%E2%80%9D-ok-cool-i-agree-too-but-what-are-the-legitimate-alternatives-that-wouldn%E2%80%99t-ruin-the-world-more-than-it-already-is.655698/page-13#post-96795699

Pretty sure it's in this thread somewhere. 

I'm still searching for it, but this is possibly one of the greatest threads to ever exist on Resetera. Just full on unhinged Nep lunacy.

Yeah, that looked like it but I couldn't find the exact phrase. I do wonder if that's the post and "take a carrot, leave a carrot" was our summary, but I swear she said it.

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Well again, one of the problems I have with socialism is like you said- it's basically capitalism without capitalists. Most people are beholden to growthism and the idea that we need to produce just to produce, so I don't think you're going to get a lot of socialist fantasy that is significantly different from stories of a capitalistic status quo. I also did agree that leftist needs to get better at storytelling and plain language, and allow ourselves to be imaginative rather than sticking within circles that espouse theory as jargon. I actually did start briefly making a personal kind of world-building document for myself about what I would imagine a "post capitalist" society to be, both to have some sort of idea to pitch to people and work towards tangibly in the real world, and as a vehicle to read and learn more about alternative ways and philosophies of living. In many ways, it is like a lot of children's cartoons for the 80s in that it is primarily communal. My basic ideas were as follows:

You don't have a menial job to go to at a certain time anymore, working for a boss, although you are expected to reasonably pitch in towards the maintenance of the utilities and resources you want to access within your community. Ex. You take from a public garden then you better make sure you're putting back what you took for the next person who comes along somehow, either through time spent cultivating it or providing resources for its maintenance. Libraries of the commons would also be a more fundamental public service where you can have access to the tools and items you may need without having to necessarily go and buy them; people donate usable but unwanted "things" (cookware, furniture, lawn equipment, clothing, etc.) and you rent this like you would a book at a library, and bring it back when you're done. Art and culture would still be valuable pursuits too, and indeed, freer expressions of self and culture would be encouraged: city and park demonstrations, more volunteer upkeep of buildings, more public paintings and graffiti, street music, etc. People should be encouraged to be creative and have fun with others. Housing would be more mixed; closer quarters where most amenities (bars and restaurants, clubs, pharmacies, grocery stores, etc.) are within walking or biking distance. And so long as a spot or joint is free and fits your living needs, you can claim it as your home so long as you promise to abide by whatever community and/or local ordinances exist there. Political organization would be expressed through a consensus based form of representation. Everyone is encouraged to participate in local meetings to address grievances, and goals and demands are reached through discussion and consensus and delivered to a higher presiding body by a representative who is voted on by the chosen body. This representative would ideally not always be the same person to temper the inclination of power-tripping. Also, we're fucking off of fossil fuels permanently and our public transporation is robust and strong. Solarpunk reality baby.

I didn't write much more than that, but that was my starting idea for a little fantasy world. You wake up, get yourself together, and essentially go about your day however you choose without the threat of coercive labor forcing you to do shit you don't really want to do. You wanna hang at the local bar with your friends, take a trip into the wilderness, etc. then go for it. Be merry. If you wish to use a public service in society, get groceries and supplies, or anything else, it is simply mandated that you maintain and use it responsibly and return it back for the rest of the community to use too. It's not too horrible, is it?

The idea is in there but the phrase isn't so that's why I was going crazy.

edit: I see you now came to the same conclusion!

There's some other incredibly stupid stuff though:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

It's a false dichotomy that says that everyone's quality of life is definitely going to go down if we are not producing more and more, year after year, and destroying our planet under capitalism. Similar as saying that taking literally anything away from the US military budget to fund other things means the country will definitely be invaded, and who wants an invasion, right?

Fact is, we actually produce more than enough resources to satisfy every human's needs and wants, and we could easily pare down the amount of hours we work without really skipping a beat. The problem is that access to these resources is inherently dictated by capitalists who have no incentive to just give to the poorest among us. In fact, a highly stratified hierarchy of people who have it all and people who are dying because they've been barred from access to basic necessities as a result of the folks at top having it all is literally the point.

Scarcity doesn't exist and also resources are never used up.

I don't want to continue with capitalism, my simple argument is whatever system replaces it cannot rely on lower consumption.

It's literally we decrease consumption or we allow billions to die. There isn't an alternative.

My argument is we should maybe try something- anything- else before millions, potentially billions of us, die, especially since we have the means to organize society however we choose.

We had to kill billions to save them.

But, if we have scarcity, then, we have to make decisions about who gets stuff vs who doesn't, and that's a very dangerous game which will lead to winners and losers.

Ignoring the fact that what you're describing is the status quo now, again, we largely don't have scarcity of necessities. America can not only feed, cloth, and house everyone in the country, but it could physically take in several millions more and do the same. The reason we have scarcity is because some folks have decided that stratifying access to basic needs is a good idea for the human species because it props up a very few powerful people, who then go on to lie to us that we can all stack ourselves at the top of the pyramid too if we "work hard enough" and "follow our dreams" and all that fucking bullshit.

I agree with you. The trick is, if we build a system where everyone has what they need and reasonably want, this will result in more overall resource usage than we have now.

No it won't. You're assuming that people are going without because there isn't enough. I'm telling you there is enough. It just doesn't get to everyone because the arbiters of society decided that it's better to stratify access to resources.

 

I'm responding to your assertion that "there is enough" resources for everyone to get "what they need and can reasonably want" without affecting the climate. Because cutting down significantly in the US and Europe in order to compensate for raising standards in the poorest countries means a standard of living that would be below what many argue the poorest should experience in the US and Europe.

That wasn't my assertion anywhere in this thread. My assertion was that we physically have enough stuff to feed, cloth, and house everyone, and the reasons we don't are for logistical, structural, and philosophical reasons related to capitalism. This was specifically in response to that poster's presumed assertions that we have scarcity because the stuff we need to prevent scarcity doesn't actually exist. Essentially, homeboy said "people go hungry because we don't produce enough food." I responded "We actually produce enough food for everyone to eat; it just doesn't get to everyone who needs it." That's not an assertion about how getting the food to anyone would affecting the climate. So you're saying my rebuttal to that assertion means that I believe we can raise all 8 billion people to have a middle class American standard of living with a zero carbon footprint somehow, even though I've been very clear in this thread and others that I just don't fundamentally agree with a US/EU standard of living anyway considering what we know it's doing to the planet, and that we should indeed cut back significantly everywhere or risk runaway climate change where billions die.

So again, why are you coming at me?

I think you misrepresented the other person's argument and I don't think you've been clear what standard of living is "enough" or "what people need/want."

The only time I ever mentioned a baseline standard of living is when people were assuming that infinite greed is just innate human nature, when instead we know that studies out there say that human happiness caps out at around $75k, or what this calculator says would be $40/hr for a basic 8 hour/5 day week. But you're asking these questions under an assumption that, once again, I think we should raise everyone to a US/EU standard of living under capitalism and that this can definitely be done with a zero or negative carbon footprint or such nonsense I never said. That's impossible, and I've been clear that's impossible because the point of capitalism has always been to concentrate access to resources at the top, and its rampant industrial expansion is the reason the climate is worsening.

Not really though, as you would have a very hard time to find an assortment of workers willing (or able) to fork the first billion for R&D and to build the factory, years before it starts making a profit. There's a reason why most co-ops are very small affairs, or in sectors that are heavily regulated and subsidized, like agriculture.

We already do very expensive R&D through the government as demonstrated by a shitload of scientific and medical research and innovation we're privy to. Finding the money would not necessarily be the problem if there was a demand- civilian side or state side- for electric cars, especially if we had a government that was prone to doing what was best for the people and the planet versus what is best for shareholders.

See, just make everyone dramatically poorer and "enough" is solved!

Like I told you, it's a messaging problem:

I will say though that I agree that liberals and leftists in general need to be better orators and storytellers, and should be able to boil down dense theory to more easily talk with laymen.

Here's a crazy post from a month earlier where she outright says she wants to replace capitalism with subsistence poverty:

I don't imagine a post-capitalist world as a Star Trek utopia. I imagine it as a reduction, of ceasing the need to "progress" for the sake of progress. It's a reclamation and evolution of the communal modes of thinking we had for hundreds of thousands of years on a planet that wasn't imperilled, wherein access to basic necessities and utilities for all is guaranteed, we produce only what we need to sustain ourselves (which means we work far less than what we do now), and any extra excess is sourced more responsibly (aka gaming is gonna be prohibitively expensive for most.)

First way to do that is to convince people to stop treating capitalism as the default, as normal, as the best and thus only way of living. I don't know about you but slaving away for a third of my single lifespan to enrich some fucking white billionaire to stave off the risk of death because colonizers hundreds of years ago decided to tie access to life-sustaining necessities to having money in a system inherently designed to have money flow upwards to a few individuals is not only a stupid-as-fuck system for anything resembling a free and dignified way of living, but it's unfathomably cruel to those stuck on the bottom through no fault of their own.

Capitalism isn't justifiable, nor is it sustainable. Trying to make it justifiable, trying to reform it to be nicer and work for the people, trying to rehabilitate, or venerate, the image of billionaires, the people who are telling you to your face they are about to sacrifice half the planet, is perpetuating that cruelty. We need to shift our perspective first. Capitalism needs to be characterized for what it is- bullshit- in our thinking and the way we talk to others about these issues. The ease at which people say "ACAB" is the bare minimum that needs to be done to capitalism's image. Hatred, mockery, and dismissiveness need to abound.

Increasing the social hostility to capitalism will inevitably widen the environment for exploration, prompting more people with various inclinations and talents to seek out working and philosophical solutions. When you can finally imagine that there is an alternative, that there is another door that can open, you have an avenue of learning and exploration. There's plenty of literature and educational resources for example about Indigenous and African modes of thinking and living not only in harmony in the planet, but with a focus on problem-solving that use consensus and communal foundations of thinking where the most amount of people are actually taken into account and represented. There's no reason more people shouldn't be engaging in these cultures and learning how to apply their principles, especially when we sometimes go to them begging for solutions to ecological problems they already had fucking solved before colonialism.

Once we have the ability to imagine a non-capitalist world, and once we have rearmed ourselves with the methodologies for actually recreating it, we can start putting it into practice by creating systems and organizations that allow communities to live sustainably and outside of the eyes of capitalism. It is at this point that A) We're going to run into a lot of legal hurdles we need to sort out (for example, worker co-ops are just straight illegal in some jurisdictions because the rich write the laws and they want you working for them, not for yourself or your community), and B) We inevitably are going to have to learn and get used to the idea of self-defense from internal and external sabotage. Your cool organization for getting free water to folks or whatever is going to be susceptible to media scandals, legal challenges, espionage, and- in some historical cases- actual physical attacks by law enforcement, because the rich don't want you giving free water to the poor because it cuts into the profit margins of their bottled water. You will inevitably need to learn good PR and how to use a gun. That's the reality of revolutionary thinking.

The good thing about all of this is that the lack of momentum on social change trends in both directions. It's hard to get change going, but when change is here, and people recognize the benefits, it's very, very hard to reverse course. As a better civil rights advocate than me once said: "The Black kids might not have read MLK's autobiography, but you cannot force them to sit in the back of the bus anymore." When people are allowed to experience better ways of living, they're more apt to want to maintain and fight for them even if they don't necessarily understand the theory and mechanisms at play. Establish good environments that people are allowed to thrive in, and they will basically run themselves.

That's my general track of thinking right now. If you want to get rid of capitalism, first you must genuinely believe it can be discarded. From there, you can be open to and start researching alternative ways of societal organization. Once you've done the research, you're now capable of creating systems and operations that suit those ends. I don't have a clear image of such a society in my head, but the assholes during the Enlightenment never foresaw Elon Musk and climate change either. Post-capitalist societies should not have to be upheld to an impossible standard that capitalism is not to be considered.

Real big note: I don't believe any of this is going to happen on a short enough timetable to stave off the worst of climate change. We're going to collectively allow like 100 billionaires to kill billions of people because we simply respect their privilege to kill those people. I just think it's what needs to be done to achieve a slightly less disastrous future, but what should be and what is are two totally different things.

[Potato]

Benji, you already did the work. Rest easy 

http://www.thebore.com/forum/index.php?topic=48241.msg3074893#msg3074893

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/september-10-2025-charlie-kirk-assassinated-at-utah-valley-university-do-not-post-videos-of-incident-up-suspect-in-custody.1294083/page-72#post-144978279

 User Banned (Permanently): Troll Account

The man said many things people didn't like. To see him get murdered over it and have people celebrate it?

What's wrong with you.

Insane to see how some posts here seem to be celebrating and justifying murdering someone for having views they don't agree with it. Horrific action that should be universally condemned. Don't think Nazi/Facists were going to campuses to have a dialogue on ideas, I imagine they were more on the side of assainating them. Hopefully he becomes a martyr for better less violent rhetoric and not an escalation for more violence. Crazy to see.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/september-10-2025-charlie-kirk-assassinated-at-utah-valley-university-do-not-post-videos-of-incident-up-suspect-in-custody.1294083/page-119#post-145001979

 user banned (2 weeks): Conspiracy theories, hostility

People are showing videos of the guys behind Kirk signaling. Crazy conspiracy theory but someone was planted in the crowd to ask the question about trans mass shootings. The shooter was then signaled and took the shot. The gun was then found and conveniently had trans messages on the bullets. Trump then viciously goes after all the trans people out there.

i've seen dissections of the scene just before the shot, yeah, people signaling, kirk even closing his eyes in "anticipation" of a shot. there's a belief they tried to stage an "attempted" killing ala Trump, but it failed spectacularly. Some of it seems plausible! I am not tinfoil hatting, but i can get down with these fucks being absolutely dumb and trying to do shit like this to further an agenda.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/september-10-2025-charlie-kirk-assassinated-at-utah-valley-university-do-not-post-videos-of-incident-up-suspect-in-custody.1294083/page-144#post-145020774

 User banned (2 months): Advocating violence

Bullies and abusers only speak the language of violence so you have to speak it back for them to listen.

There's a reason kids get punished in schools for fighting back and self defense its because they are controlled by right wing groups that dont want to raise a population to think for or defend themselves. They would rather the population fear the consequences and just take whatever beatings may come

The powerful who control this country are violent abusers and need to be dealt with in kind, history will tell you that

[benji]

"But that won't scale for a modern society at modern expectations."
"Just go back to how things were long ago."  

Which when you combine it with her insistence that the West stole all its current wealth from the Global South strongly suggests that she does literally believe there once was a Wakanda.