[danaris]

This kind of absolutist individualist argument just rings more and more hollow as we see the very real consequences of that philosophy for our society.

Who am I to say they're wrong? A human being, that's who. A human being who lives in a modern society that does not have to prioritize the whims of the wealthy few over the needs of the many. We can choose to set stringent requirements on people who have that much money, and therefore power, and that is not evil. Indeed, it is the furthest thing from it.

[mike_hearn]

And what happens when those people don't want to have your requirements "set" on them? Do you force those peaceful people to do your bidding with violence? Would that not make you the evil ones?

Look at the reply from the guy I was questioning. It took just two or three mild questions for him to go full Hitler, talking about how his comrades will have to "discipline" a whole generation of "oligarchs" (i.e. anyone who makes things he doesn't personally prioritize).

Collectivist thinking always leads to violence, and eventually societal failure.

[ElevenLathe]

There's nothing violent about using elections to make the decision to tax rich people so that we can spend (formerly) their money building roads and bridges. The idea that this is the road to Hitlerism is absurd, and thankfully this rhetorical stance no longer rings the slightest bit true to anyone within earshot of the working class.

Also, as I'm sure you're aware, I was using "discipline" as a term of art to mean "withhold our labor until their profits suffer and they are willing to negotiate". This was the strategy employed the last time we seriously dealt with concentrated capital getting high on its own supply. It is also not a form of violence. What's the alternative? Capital using force to require us to work against our will? Would you call that slavery? Or just serfdom? Which do you advocate?

[mike_hearn]

> There's nothing violent about using elections to make the decision to tax rich people so that we can spend (formerly) their money building roads and bridges

The results of votes are enforced on the losers using the police, who will do so violently if required.

You mentioned the Fordist truce. The unions the auto industry dealt with weren't just a bunch of people refusing to work. They were frequently violent, and they also used stealing other people's property as a standard tactic to prevent anyone else from working also. Those were violent times.

[danaris]

> The results of votes are enforced on the losers using the police, who will do so violently if required.

The whims of the dictator are also enforced on the public using police.

All human rules, laws, customs, and edicts are enforced, ultimately, with violence of one sort or another. There is no way to avoid the threat of violence being the bedrock of the power of the state, and in the absence of formal states the strong would use violence to enforce their desires until they became states.

So if you're an anti-statist, just say so. (So we can all dismiss everything you have to say as coming from a place of absolute ignorance of what's needed to live and operate in the real world. If we were to abolish all states tomorrow, and erase the very memory of their existence from every human alive, by Sunday new ones would have arisen to replace them, one way or another, because they are how humans organize themselves.)

[mike_hearn]

This thread started with a false dilemma: do we spend money on datacenters or "real infrastructure". It's only a dilemma if you assume governments should decide the answer, as ElevenLathe did.

Otherwise there's no need to choose between dictatorship or majority rule via democracy: everyone can spend money on the infrastructure they feel is more important, and there doesn't need to be any losers. Which is mostly how we try to do things in reality.

[ElevenLathe]

We can talk about how violent taxing the rich is once we have the first instance ever in history of the police locking up a rich guy for refusing to pay their taxes. Even then, sure, I'm fine with that level of violence. We would live in a utopia if that were the worst kind of state violence we had to deal with.

Go ahead and twist my normal, non-radical politics into whatever shape you want. You're the wing nut, not me. Normal people want normal stuff out of politics: functioning infrastructure, upward mobility, a future. Only the most warped, unreachable paint huffers are willing to throw away all possibility of a normal country for the "freedom" of a few dozen rapacious sociopaths. This means that we will ultimately win. Unfortunately normal people have been asleep at the switch for at least a generation, so you're probably going to be able to drag us through several hellish decades, maybe centuries, until we can right the ship.

I'm sure I'll see you in the camps, so at least we'll have that in common. Have a nice day.

[mike_hearn]

Rich people get jailed for not paying their taxes all the time:

https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/23-celebrities-convicted-of-...

[ElevenLathe]

Falsifying your tax return statements is not the same as a simple refusal to pay. By doing that, you are indicating that you agree to the legitimacy of the taxes in general, but would prefer to lie about whether you should personally pay them or not. These people were also all given their day in court, and convicted of actual crimes in fair trials where they had adequate representation. If this is your idea of "violence", then I don't know what to say.

[danaris]

> Collectivist thinking always leads to violence, and eventually societal failure.

This statement is so blatantly, staggeringly false that I can't even fathom how to begin to discuss this topic with you.