I keep thinking back to a particular passage in Joseph Tainter’s "The Collapse of Complex Societies." In this book, he argues that complex systems, and especially extractive and hierarchical systems like ours, tend to collapse when they reach a point of diminishing marginal returns on additional complexity. As elites exhaust the people who produce wealth for them, they have to invest in yet more mechanisms of control to squeeze more from them, which require yet more resources, which prompt yet more discontent, which require yet more mechanisms of control, in a vicious feedback loop. At a certain point, so many resources are being poured into maintaining the status quo that the system can't confront any new challenges. We tend to experience this, subjectively, as a kind of social exhaustion, a feeling that a society has reached an old age approaching an inevitable death. Nothing works anymore, even though we keep paying higher and higher prices. Sound familiar?"I do not wish to suggest that leadership is immaterial, only that it is of much less importance than many believe. Complex societies do not evolve on the whims of individuals. Circumstance-induced perception is likely to be of greater consequence: rulers look good when the marginal return on investment in complexity is rising, for in such a situation almost anything a leader does is overshadowed by the large payoff to society-wide investment. Conversely, when marginal returns are declining there is usually very little that leadership can do in the short term to arrest this trend, and so anything that is tried is bound to appear incompetent."8/10

I’m going to say something that’s apparently pretty controversial but here goes nothing:Using violence, including lethal violence, in self-defense against fascist aggression is perfectly legitimate and morally justified. I say this as an anarchist who rejects hierarchies enforced by violence and threats of violence, and prioritizes non-violent consensus-building as a means of resolving disputes.

@HeavenlyPossum @sashin @[email protected] in some states they wanted to claim that new citizens aren’t eligible also

So, who today is newly interested in learning more about #anarchism, a philosophy that opposes the existence of vast institutions of global power which can be seized by fascists?

People will be like “we should abolish billionaires!” and their solution is for the state to coercively tax some of their wealth away.If you’re going to invoke the state, why bother letting the state first coercively empower billionaires only to compel the state to claw some of that wealth back (for its own use)? Just abolish state coercion and you’ll have no billionaires.

@HeavenlyPossum

@HeavenlyPossum ... and we haven't even started on the monarchy...

In the US, slavery was perfectly legal and escaping from enslavement or liberating enslaved people were criminal. The mass internment of Japanese Americans was legal. The genocide of indigenous Americans was and is perfectly legal. Murder and theft by the police are routine and, again, completely legal, thanks to the doctrine of qualified immunity.In the US, the president is immune from prosecution for any acts committed in an official capacity and thus cannot act illegally as president. Should secure a second term as president, Donald Trump would be free to do literally anything without legal consequence.

“Rule of Law” is ultimately a contradiction in terms that masks rule by other people.Law cannot execute itself. It is written, codified, and ultimately enforced by people. And which people? Certainly not “all people.” If there is consensus, then no law is needed, and the rule is guaranteed by individuals, alone or in mutual cooperation. And if there’s not consensus, then someone is making and imposing rule on someone else.Law comes into being when *some people* seek to impose their will over *other people.*

You can look at this situation and conclude that this is somehow our nature—to be greedy, extractive, violent, cruel. But that is both empirically false and deeply reactionary, a condemnation of *other* people as needing to be controlled, or reshaped in your desired image, or culled. What people need in reality is to be free. Free people do not inevitably make “good” choices. Every one of us has the capacity and instinct to be cruel, violent, and greedy. But we also have the capacity and instinct to care for each other and—most importantly—to be pro-social. We need each other. Self-interest alone can explain why free people tend to make pro-social choices—those of us who want to survive and flourish need each other, regardless of whether we are “good” at heart or not.

@cyronimose Ok, let’s break this down a bit.First, nothing justifies this kind of forced natalism.Second, population tends to decline when elites have made life intolerable for people, such that they die early, leave, and/or decline to have children. Not the other way around—population declines are symptoms rather than causes of these problems.Third, we have plenty of people; there is no shortage. “Who is going to take care of our elderly?” is premised on racist exclusion of immigrants and coercive enforcement of borders. Fourth, we have plenty of resources, they’re just wildly misallocated. “Who will take care of our elderly?” is also premised on a system that ensures the vast amount of production is hoarded by our elites, leaving us with scraps to do everything else, including caring for each other.

“Most people wouldn't lift a finger to save someone's life if it meant being mildly inconvenienced,” said someone who is only alive because countless generations before them cooperated voluntarily to sustain each other.

@[email protected] @[email protected] ... or since he's a communist, "BRING US OUR STORM"

Kamala Harris announcing that she plans to appoint Republicans to her cabinet and as advisors—after warning that Republicans pose an existential threat to the US!—is a great illustration of the way US politics work.In Iraq, they call it the muhasasa, or quota, system—the guarantee that all factions of elites will get a share of the political system, regardless of the outcome of elections. In the US, they call it “bipartisanship.”