Hmm, interesting they use the term echo chambers here. Everything here sounds good, but they continue the demonization of “echo chambers”, which personally I find unwarranted. The issue is the spread of hateful content and misinformation, which they do appear to be addressing. Personally I’d like to get rid of algorithmic feeds altogether, for that purpose. But filter bubbles / echo chambers are not inextricably linked to spreading hateful content and misinformation though. A marginalized individual not wanting to interact with those who actively wish them harm shouldn’t be forced to. And hell, I might even be okay with focusing just on misinformation. An explicit threat towards -phobes is always justified imo.

Oh right, I guess I got caught up in recognizing the similarities that I didn’t really process how different the context is.

Although I suspect someone who likes the idea of organizing and decision making this way must surely agree with at least some of the anarchist principles. I wonder if the peoplr who worked on defining sociocracy had personal history or interest with anarchism, and just “de-politicized” this idea to make it more palatable for those who grew up being told anarchism is bad. A cursory Google search into Gerard Endenburg and sociocracy didn’t turn anything up though.

Interestingly enough, the person who first coined it, Auguste Comte, seems to have wanted it applied to politics though (according to natopedia). It seems he influenced some flavors of anarchism but was not anarchist themselves.

Thanks, this was a really thorough response! I really appreciate it. That all makes a lot of sense to me. I think I’m personally on board with rehabilitation facilities operating as you described, but definitely only in cases of repeated offenders of pretty heinous crimes. For the vast majority of crimes, it seems fine to just focus on making the victim whole again and, if applicable, solving whatever conditions led to the crime happening in the first place (e.g. fixing the problem of drunk driving by ensuring there’s convenient and safe transportation available). Definitely agree with the abolitionist idea that punishments for the sake of retribution or deterrence is ineffective and unjust.

I guess, to a certain degree, discussion of how much crime will actually go away in a society all needs are met in is still all theoretical. It’s hard to say just how big of a population there is that would still be “unable or unwilling to prevent themselves from acting criminally”. There’s part of me that still wants to insist that population literally wouldn’t exist, mostly rooted in general skepticism around psychiatry’s current understanding of nuero-atypical people (given its very poor historical track record), but I ultimately don’t know. You adding “or unwilling” makes me significantly more comfortable agreeing it’ll likely always be a non-zero population being discussed here, though.

It’s interesting that you brought up cultural factors as one not being fixed by addressing material conditions and mode of economy. I think that might be more relevant in terms of what must be done immediately to make the current incarceral system more humane, true prison abolition is such a long-term project that I think cultural shifts can be considered part of it. Like, I suspect crimes that occur following someone discovering they’ve been cheated on will likely go away over time, as I feel like constructs like sex, gender, and monogamy will wither away. Once again this is all theoretical, but I wonder if large cultural shifts like that, if they do happen, could make some of the crimes you mentioned as likely to stick around “as long as humanity does” fade away as well.

Once again, thanks for the response. I appreciate your perspective and I believe it’s improved my understanding of prison abolitionism.

In the letter he attached, he concluded with something vague that I think could be hinting at announcing a new third party or him moving to an existing third party. I like that Jason Hickel and Shaun have pointed out this could be the moment to start the difficult fight of replacing dems with a different party, and tbh demsocs might be the ones to do it. I’m obviously not a fan of over , but if the party is (more) resilient to capitalist interests (and the FBI doesn’t stop him) then it could lead to meaningful socialist policy changes.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. I appreciate the explanation.

Thanks for the recommendations, I’ll get started reading them. I just want to make sure its clear, I was not trying to argue materialists must be biological absolutionists or otherwise have rigid views on sex and gender. Even as I was writing it, it just didn’t make sense to me that materialism would argue for objective natural phenomena but also argue its in constant motion, that just really seemed to be what the wiki page described. I know queer liberation is a strict requirement of the leftist movement, and I know everyone here are allies. I’ll gladly go improve my understanding on the subject with the resources you’ve provided, thank you.

Discourse is the de facto standard for what you’re asking for, and has a LOT of customization and plugins community.

Yes, I think I’m definitely in alignment with you and the hexbear community at large on what our goals shold be now.

I’m not totally sure I fall in the realm of anarchist, because I typically still want voting and some form of organizing, I just don’t like the power structure and needless abstraction of representatives. I typically describe an ideal form of society as one composed of many small communities, that are sufficiently small for consensus democracies to be effective. That is, every rule is workshopped until it has unanimous support. So there are still rules, but through discussion and compromise, everyone supports every rule they follow. Travel and migration should be freely allowed, so people can find communities they are politically compatible with (perhaps by finding someone to trade houses with or asking to move in with someone). For projects that require scale to be reasonable, such as a form of currency for trading or a rail line or something, these communities can form coalitions, where decisions still require unanimity from a larger amount of people now, but only on the policies relevant to the coalition.

The point is, the above still follows what I think the spirit of anarchism is: spreading power as thinly as possible, treating individuals as equals and preventing them from being subjugated by another.

I don’t think that what I described would be allowed to exist today due to imperialism, but I see it as an ideal that can be achieved eventually, as the contradictions of capital inevitably lead to a more equal and just society. That is, since socialism/communism are more stable than capitalism, eventually a society such as I described shouldn’t have to be strong enough (militaristically nor controlling information) to defend itself against imperialism, and can then just peacefully exist.

I think he’s had enough bad takes to be worth avoiding. Tbh I feel like all YT commentary channels are worth culling

Back in the GG days I was following various anti-woke sources/creators (read kotakuinaction, watched JP, shoe, Chris ray gun, etc.). Since then I’ve obviously left that whole sphere (I mainly attribute this to innuendo studios tbh), but it’s interesting to see that Brianna Wu has made just everyone dislike her. I hope she sees the light someday, because honestly it feels pretty weird to still be disliking one of the people GG attacked.

Edit: other notable figures in my radicalization are Hasan and second thought, and my wife and I have had a bit of a radicalizing feedback loop. Then I discovered lemmy during the API thing, found out about hexbear because of everyone talking about how scary it is, and choosing to check it out myself and finding it incredible based.

Besides the technical question of mastodon and lemmy interacting, I thought hexbear was a whitelist system anyways

Got some bad news for you bud

I’m not sure how the FMLA slipped my mind. I’ll have to discuss this with the SO to determine how long we can handle being unpaid. Thank you so much.

No worries, I know I’m extremely privileged to be in the position where I can even have these complaints. Ultimately we’re all working class and have solidarity through that though. I hope both our situations improve.

We’re actually the size of a startup, where you’d think each one of us would be important enough to have some level of job security. But the CEO will just as quickly get rid of someone who just moved here for this job a few months ago as someone who has been with the company since before it was even successful. If even 2 people acted collectively it should be an insane amount of negotiation power, but I honestly don’t trust the CEO to be affected by that at all.

I have a trans friend who lives in Italy and they are very very right leaning and transphobic over there. The friend herself spouts some pretty conservative takes every so often, like when she told my wife, who doesn’t have a job, that she thinks those without jobs don’t deserve housing or health care… Which was especially insulting because we’d been letting her stay with us for free as well.

Point is, I don’t think Americans escaping to Italy makes sense

I’m not sure how it would happen to an entire country like the US - obviously no amount of “vote harder” will make that happen - but figured it’s already being experimented with on more local levels.

I think theoretically the whole voluntary association part of anarchism would handle the issue of “forcing” (via authority) anarchism on others. Of course, that’s easier said then done in a world where just picking up your life and moving somewhere else is so non trivial.

Side note, but it really feels like online communities can do anarchism much better, since the voluntary association bit is so much more feasible online. I could see a nice lemmy instance or something that’s run by charging each member a tiny amount, enough to pay for hosting (I can’t imagine it’d be more than a few cents per person), and the policies of the instance would be fully democratically decided on. Bans would be decided by the community, etc.

I consider myself pretty anti-authoritarian myself, and thought that’s what anarchism was as well. The whole point in my mind of anarchy is to find small communities that can typically mostly agree on issues, and they then vote democratically (either direct democracy or something like consensus democracy to help against majority rule). So there’s still rules, just no power structure. Is that an accurate representation of anarchism? And how would that compare to anti-authoritarianism?

I would not advise connecting without a VPN, for obvious reasons. The slow down is expected and the magnitude of it will be dependent on the server you’re connecting to.

What I’d recommend is configuring the torrent client specifically to use the VPN, assuming it supports it (I personally use transmission inside a docker container so I don’t know how you’ll want to set it up with qbittottent)