chicken
In order to slow the economy down and not wreak havoc, he said, we have to reconfigure our ideas about the entire economic system.
This is how degrowthers envision the process: After a reduction in material and energy consumption, which will constrict the economy, there should also be a redistribution of existing wealth, and a transition from a materialistic society to one in which the values are based on simpler lifestyles and unpaid work and activities.
Sounds good to me. It is a fair point that the basic operation of our society depends on continual growth, but redistribution seems like it would be an effective way of mitigating those problems degrowth might cause. We have more than enough resources to keep everyone alive, we just have to use them.
too real tbh
There is a lot here I agree with. I’ve seen stuff from this channel before and it’s pretty good. Human rights are somewhat arbitrary, and are influenced by what makes a convenient compromise between power interests. However I don’t think that necessarily contradicts what I am saying, because what I am arguing against is not the rejection of civil rights as a concept, but the catastrophe that would come from the dismantlement of this particular one in this particular way given the context of our present society.
From the video:
Let me be clear here: I’m not saying that all these problems will be fixed if we simply stop adhering to the doctrine of human rights. Human rights are an outcome. A symptom of a specific social and political configuration, and you don’t fight the symptom, you fight the disease. If we recognize the problem with human rights, it is the social and political configuration that produces them that we have to change. So long as we live under capitalism and the liberal political paradigm, rights are absolutely necessary.
So, what would need to be done in order to establish a society that no longer produces or depends on the ideology of human rights? It would have to be a society in which the significance of community has been restored.
So removing rights is not by itself a solution, and can do harm. We do not exist in a society where the fabric holding it together is “significance of community”. The spirit of discourse I see from authoritarians is very far from suggesting a way to reorder our world around “significance of community”. Rather on all sides it seems to be rage manifesting as a desire to silence and dominate their enemies, with the consequences only an afterthought, that can or should not be seriously considered. Even while claiming mutual hatred, they pursue this shared objective together, and things like this bill show that they aren’t even very committed to hiding it. The reasons why the success of one means the success of the other in this case are obvious; the loss of the right of Free Speech in this context means the empowerment of people who want to use censorship as a weapon, and weapons don’t discriminate.
It is a mistake to think of a government making choices in the same way an individual might make choices. A government is not a person, and a collection of people is not equivalent to a single individual in its ability to have coherent values and act on them. Instead, some framework for cooperation and compromise must be used. If your framework sucks, if it’s especially wishy-washy and subjective, power seeking assholes will be more able to twist it around and abuse it. Civil rights don’t always work perfectly, but they work better than the alternatives (like hoping a dogmatic ideology will be able to seize absolute power, agree with itself, and maintain sane values all at once).
It seems obvious to me that if free speech protections are eroded in the United States, that opens the door to the right in particular suppressing the sort of speech they clearly want to suppress and are actively trying to suppress. They have control of state governments, they get in power federally and pass laws on a regular basis. Is there any reason to think that wouldn’t happen? This bill seems to be a perfect example: bipartisan legislation giving both sides censorship and intimidation powers.
As for whether the approach works in practice, and can avoid being a bare expression of the power of whoever is in charge at the time, here is a summary of historical supreme court cases related to Free Speech. I don’t think all of these are necessarily for the best, but it seems clear that for the most part (with some notable exceptions) they are not egregious deviations from the principle, and are not expressions of the whims of whoever is in power at the time. It represents an actual restraint on those who would like to exercise power over others.
Here is an overview of how the government’s recommendations changed over time. They were explicitly advising against wearing face masks and saying they don’t work. Ex:
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams tweets that wearing a face mask will not prevent the public from contracting the novel coronavirus.
“Seriously people — STOP BUYING MASKS!” he wrote in a tweet that was later deleted. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus
In general I don’t agree with the sort of broad language policing some people seem to be advocating for here, but this word does seem pretty inseparable from a racist joke. What could rice have to do with computer customization? Even if it’s distanced from the original meaning the word itself implies that racist joke. So yeah probably better avoided and replaced.
Unless you consider that my work is non-consensual because I don’t want to do it if I could just survive without it.
Yeah, pretty much, it’s one of the worst things about our society and needs fixing in general. It’s just potentially extra bad when sex is involved because of its emotional, cultural, etc. significance. I don’t mean to suggest all sex workers are desperate victims, I’m sure some of them are well off, have options, and are doing it because they want to, but they all have a business incentive to try to appear that way, so someone looking to hire them can’t really be confident what they are doing isn’t ultimately exploitation.