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this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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politics
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Yep, to move the Overton Window to the right. The left should do this as well. If a group of real leftist put out a political platform it would make Biden look like a Republican.
Stuff like that
Where's the extreme position in that list? oO
(I know, to the average US citizen, most of those seem extremist :( )
That's the only extreme one to me. Higher taxes on billionaires is a reasonable take. Government forcibly seizing private property is not.
Honorable mention:
This would be extreme except it's not even possible, other countries are not interested in paying for their own defense.
Except that billions are never private property - you have to steal from people to accumulate that much wealth. Or inherit stolen wealth. Exception: stars, where people voluntarily spend that much money to listen to them / see them. Not an exception: sports stars who get paid from sponsoring / advertisement revenues which in turn are stolen by slave labour / low wages.
Nevertheless, no one needs billions, so taking all private properties above 1 billion still leaves those people with an obscene amount of money that honest work can not save up in a hundred(!) lifetimes.
As for the military exit: While I agree that it's not possible, I disagree on the reason - a sudden shift of military concentrations (e.g. weakening presence in some area) is unfortunately pretty much guaranteed to encourage someone to start an armed conflict somewhere. But that could be addressed in the form of the multi-lateral peace keeping forces mentioned.
Just one thing. You can't ban lobbying. You can and should highly regulate it. But you'd have to put your representatives in an isolation chamber if lobbying was banned. What we need to do is define anything more than a handshake passing between lobbyist and politician as a bribe. But Congress pulled the FBIs fangs decades ago now.
We could ban lobbying for consideration. (We already have a well-developed body of contract law which spells out the scope of consideration.) A lot of the effectiveness of lobbying comes not from donations, gifts, or other bribe-like transactions, but rather from the scope of their presence. For example, petrochemical lobbyists can show up in person every day of the week, exert direct pressure, and even soft influence like providing consultations or "expert opinion" about bills that come before Congress. The people affected by fracking, on the other hand, have lives to live, and the best that they're capable of is calling and writing letters occasionally.
Ban consideration in exchange for lobbying, instead. If an individual wants to go to D.C. and lobby on behalf of the petrochemical industry for no personal benefit whatsoever (not even covertly), great, that's democracy in action. They'd be on a level playing field with the rest of us.
Interesting... lol
But in all seriousness, I'd say the number of reps we have it wouldn't be impractical for a yearly complete IRS audit for each of them that has real consequences like losing your position, repaying victims fully, and/or going to prison.
Oh absolutely.
You're just describing the DSA
Ya, I wish they were more effective. I'd also like to see more from the less authoritarian side of the left.
Very hard to be authoritarian when you're at the bottom of the economic totem pole. Are you sure you're not just talking about the police, writ large?
I was speaking of the general authoritarian vs libertarian divide in the left. It's not about power excercised, it's about the power some on the left feel entitled to exercise to achieve their goals.
Everyone on the left wants to make the world a better place, eliminate hunger and homelessness, all that good stuff.
--> The terminology is confusing though as different groups use different words or definitions.
On the one side you have your (authoritarian) "socialists", and "communists" those who believe that order must be imposed from above by a powerful government and this government. Good social behavior is coerced by implied threat of force. This government of course is supposed to be and remain benevolent and always controlled by well-meaning socialists to ensure a functional socialist system. The DSA fits in here on the lighter side, "tankies" fit here on the extreme authoritarian end.
On the other side you have your anarchist types (who are also typically non-authoritarian communists), those who feel that any entity powerful enough to control society will inevitably end up controlled by the worst type of people (because this is what's happened in every state/government that has ever existed) and the we should look to non-state and non-coercive solutions.
This reads more like a right-wing interpretation of leftism than any kind of leftist internal critique.
That's an Orwellian critique. But Orwell was a Burmese cop turned UK intelligence official under Churchill. The Animal Farm / 1984 view of left-libertarianism is far more a right-wing propaganda critique intended to discourage any form of organizing or collective action. Hell it might as well be lifted directly from the CIA Guidebook on how to disrupt a meeting rules 1, 7, and 8.
And, in the end, the reflexive flight from any kind of organizational structure demonstrably doesn't work. You can have fully decentralized entirely non-violent organically assembled student protests on college campuses, and you'll still be accused of operating as violent, bigoted, fifth columnist dupes of wicked foreign governments. Meanwhile, you're squaring off against a heavily financed, tightly managed, rigid state hierarchy that can act with impunity in the face of a fractured and easily infiltrated opposition.
The foundation of left-anarchism is the cultivation of networks of trust. Not a reactionary fear of authority. When anarchists trust one another, they can and do form hierarchies and develop party discipline and even form state structures once they've achieved sufficient degrees of success. And its these trust networks that allow a community of anarchists to preserver after decades under siege by militant capitalists.
Ya, this is the response I always get from tankies.
I think you mean Abolish Cars
I don't think it makes sense to completely abolish cars. There will always be transport needs where public transport, trains, or bicycles just don't fit the bill. There will be car and racing enthusiasts for the next century (assume we don't collapse). The car industry needs to be reduced by 99% though, mostly transforming into maintaining existing cars rather than producing new ones.
Some people will want to or need to live or work where public transit systems would be impractical to build. You can't spend 80 million dollars on a transit system out in the sticks and you can't force everyone to live like sardines next to a bus stop.