- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
Do you really want government provided housing? The ones I am aware of are places like the projects and were the worst place to live (unless you were a drug dealer).
When imagining that the government do more can you not imagine that it do better?
Yes Americans have a shit government, they also don’t have a socialist government.
You’re pointing to the corrupt right wing hellscape you currently live in to deny that another way would be better.
What is one definitive thing the government does better? I want a 100% solid thing, and not just a thing that they have a monopoly on.
I’m not sure what you mean by “the government” but why not look at the medical system in the US compared to any other similarly developed nation?
Is your thesis that profit motive and competition the only way that any good or service should be produced?
Would you prefer to pay a toll on every privately owned road you take? How should mercenaries be paid in order to guarantee they won’t mind living in a nuclear sub for months? If the weather service can’t raise enough capital by selling stock how should we collect weather data?
The medical field is one of the most regulated things in america.
My thesis is that the government structurally cant do things efficiently.
I dont want zero government, but I want smaller government. RIght now the US has the biggest government(s) in the history of the world, why not make it a bunch smaller? The government is the direct cause of why things are so expensive, would you like to have cheaper housing and in exchange less government involvement in your life?
As someone who considers my ideal society to be one that’s left-anarchist I can sympathize with that point. However that’s not something that can be done overnight and requires building parallel power structures and communities.
However, given the realities of today. A State that serves people interests rather than profit interests is the next best thing.
Every statement you’re making and your entire way of looking at this problem are rooted in existing capitalist frameworks. I’m not going to convince you that there are better ways, but putting aside my online persona for a minute I encourage you to learn about what other ways MIGHT be.
You are only thinking of the state as its current neoliberal incarnation. Your critiques of the state are local in time and geography to today and where you live.
Humans have come up with wildly different ways, and there are many more that might only be enabled now in what’s effectively a post scarcity economy with respect to our basic needs. We are overproducing and wasting every single thing a human needs: shelter, clothing, food. Yet people still don’t have those things. Is this an efficient economy?
You don’t owe me anything, but maybe you’ll find it interesting to think about these things and learn about wildly different ways that things could be working so that you can broaden your imagination. A skim of the topics in here might inspire https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/peter-gelderloos-anarchy-works
The problem is that the state will not ever serve the peoples interest, that power will be taken by the powerful and directed where they want.
I think your biggest problem is that your dream includes taking away my rights to interact with people as I wish. I want you to have freedom, but you want to take away my freedom. We can run down the various reasons why socialism/communism dont work even in theory, but I dont think that will help you see what the end result would be.
As I said my dream is anarchism, which has free association as part of its core. I’m separating that from my idea of how a state should function because states are something we have to live under today.
Anarchism is compatible with (to put it mildly) communism and socialism. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find anarchists who aren’t those things. And it does not require anyone to be forced into anything.
You said left anarchism which is the communist side of things. The libertarian side has a lot of anarchists, and those are the most famous ones. See Dave Smith and Michael Malice. Communism is the biggest form of government in the end, you have to use force to get people like me to do what you want.