Reading about FOSS philosophy, degoogling, becoming against corporations, and now a full-blown woke communist (like Linus Torvalds)
Hah what? So you are running from bad corporations to daddy government? Somwhere I took another turn because this journey turned me into a libertarian.
Libertarian cannot work without socialism essentially. You cannot have a free market where the worker doesn’t own the means of production. Power will always pool to select individuals and those who have collected power have shown no remotely reliable track record to serve humanity’s best interest over their own. In fact, it’s regularly shown the exact opposite. Libertarianism is just an excuse to act against the good of society for your own benefit and fuck anyone you step on along the way. I’ve never heard a defense of libertarianism that is actually good for society. It’s basically just dressing up the belief you can’t be forced to do good, so you can’t get in trouble if you do bad.
I think you’re describing right libertarianism (which is what is known as libertarianism in the US, I think), which is influenced mainly by the ideas of Ayn Rand.
But there is also left libertarianism, which is not based on “free market” as per those libertarians. Examples of people on this spectrum I think would be Noam Chomsky (US), Bernie Sanders (US), Jeremy Corbyn (UK)… and historically: Nestor Makhno (Ukraine), National confederation of labor (Spain, fighting against Franco), Iberian Anarchist Federation (Same), and effectively any other left-leaning Anarchism-oriented person, movement or party.
Looking into it, I can see some issues with the idea (I don’t understand how it wouldn’t fall pretty to the tragedy of the commons), plus I definitely don’t think Sanders would fit into there. I don’t see any of his proclaimed positions fitting into any definition of left-libertarian. Plus I don’t see how left-libertarian wouldn’t fall prey to the same problem we have with capitalism now, despite being an anti-capitalist notion. It’s strong sense of individual ownership of anything other than natural resources seems at odds with a lot of other socialist concepts. I will caveat all of this with saying I have a very limited understanding of left-libertarianism, but just reading any given definition just seems to give rise to very clear contradictions. I feel like either it is problematic or no one is really sharing good definitions of it.
In theory it’s great, but have you seen the complete fucking braindead idiots we share this world with?
The problem is: intelligence doesn’t help either. Sure, it lets you grasp problems pretty fast, makes you a good learner but do you have any ideas how many psychopaths are actually gifted?
As an autistic individual, I‘d say the autistic way would be pretty awesome as a government. You have to tell the truth and are not allowed to care how anyone receives it (what could go wrong, right?). I‘m obviously joking, mostly. I‘d explore it though.
I think the current way is the worst (turning more populist every day) because the majority of people is rather unintelligent and does not have a logical concept on life (from an autistic standpoint).
You do realize that some of these idiots have way more power (money) than they should have any right to? Elon Musk, Bobby Kotick, …
In India we have a corporation named AMUL. It is collectively run by 3.6 Million farmers. It has wide variety of dairy products such as milk, yoghurt, ice cream, chocolates etc. If farmers can… Then what’s wrong in believing we can.
Edit, its not 5000, it is 3.6 Million milk producers
That’s assuming that all workers have good intentions and consider the good of all humans before power.
Well, surprise! Workers are humans. And we have seen many times what happens when uncontrolled power has been given to any human group or individual humans.
There should be no power to the government. Only management positions. And those management positions need to be open to all people with abilities regarding those management positions.
Of course this discussion in this form is an oversimplification (e.g. no mention of whether/how to run a police force, a judiciary, or a military), but the point is that not only a “government being run by workers” wouldn’t solve any problem, it would introduce even more, in my opinion. It’s just as bad as effectively letting the corporations or rich people run the government. Looks at the US
Why do so many people think left vs right is government vs no government? It’s fucking baffling. You think leftists just love the government? Just… why?? Who told you that? Why do you believe them?
“So long as the state exists there is no freedom. When there is freedom, there will be no state.”
So much love for state, here…
I’ll tell you something that might shock you. I’m pretty much a communist. I also hate the state. Does that confuse you? It shouldn’t!
I’m sorry I assumed Marxism-Leninism instead of libertarian socialism because of the predominant tankie culture here on lemmy.
Funny is that the same thinking apply to som left groups as well. (like anarchism)
Please tell me I misunderstood, and that you aren’t implying anarchists love the state?
Libertarian? Im not American, so im unfamiliar – isn’t that one just the Republican party with extra pedophilia?
As an American in order to understand our libertarians you must first understand the gilded age of American capitalism. It was an era of extreme wealth disparity, zero regulations, and everything was disgusting and dangerous. Libertarians dislike everything that ended that.
Well, libertarian doesn’t necessarily mean someone in line with the Libertarian Party of the US. If we want to consider the meanings of these terms by referring to how they are understood to in the US, we would be all very confused, since everything in the US seems to have a twisted meaning.
See for example, their Fascist party is called the “Republican Party”… Their Right-center oriented party is often referred to as a “left-leaning” party… and finally there’s another right-wing party with slightly different positions than the fascist party, calling themselves the “Libertarian Party”, because why not! 🤷
You know that Rothbard stole that term from anarcho-communists (libertarian socialists), right?
Edit: Thought you meant right-wing libertarianism. Was confused, since IMHO Marx (without Lenin/Mao/etc.) is actually quite compatible with left-wing libertarianism. Even if he had a personal feud with Bakunin.
I ran from bad corporations to workplace democracy where does that place me?
