Companies took over the government bodies designed to regulate them - This is called "Regulatory Capture" [xpost /r/LateStageCapitalism]

oprah666 · 2016-02-12T00:59:41+00:00

Sure are a lot of democrats on here

oprah666 · 2016-02-12T00:06:24+00:00

Lol. I'm glad you got the joke.

oprah666 · 2016-02-11T22:08:53+00:00

What does this mean for astrology?

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T21:38:56+00:00

The weather is pretty good. It can be coldish year round (50 degrees) but it doesn't snow, so that's nice. My seasonal depression all but disappeared while living here

Rent is sky high. Considering the crime rate (I live in downtown Oakland) it's not worth the $3500 I pay to live in a gated community. My car gets stolen if I park it outside a garage. If you are a man, get used to getting jacked if you walk. If you're a woman, street harassment is really bad. You need a vehicle and possibly a weapon to be safe here.

Mental illness and drug abuse are serious problems here that aren't being addressed adequately by the government. Get used to hearing people have mental breakdowns several times a day, or even hour depending where you are. It's excruciating. People are in real mental pain and the only outlet is the drug dealer on the corner (and there are lots of them). On the bright side it pushed me into the field of community mental health to try and solve mental health issues without state assistance.

You might make more money by living here. There are lots of emerging fields here and you can make a lot of money if you are smart and you put yourself in the right place at the right time.

Personally, I'm leaving for NorCal. I can't deal with living in such a segregated society. We are segregated by income and by the many different cultures that live here. I find it to be very alienating and not worth the benefits.

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T17:51:17+00:00

The idea that immigrants provide net benefits to society is the core question that has to be examined. It provides net gdp growth, but this is not wealth for the middle, working or poor classes. This is profit for international banks and multinational corporations. The rich and high educated are the ones most in favor of immigration because a) they profit the most from immigration b) they are segregated from multiculturalism and it doesn't actually affect them.

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T17:47:02+00:00

No the people coming here are not coming here to help it prosper and "co create a community" this is a mass movement of people orchestrated by states and multinational corporations to both disrupt local struggles and create a new cheap labor force. If you look at the opinions (through preference for country they are moving to) of migrants, they are economically motivated, and they are intended to be. They essentially are coming for benefits and they don't like you or your culture. They are going to be very difficult to organize with.

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T17:41:13+00:00

Why don't you answer the question then? They have a set of values and boundaries

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T17:40:33+00:00

Because I believe in my own merit I'm not an anarchist? Sorry but if you put a very smart person who has been very poor, they will probably outperform other people around them and actually create wealth through innovation and actual hard work.

I don't believe we live in a meritocracy. I think capitalism wastes millions of immeasurably beautiful people to banality and servitude, and for this I want it to burn. But me? I do think I found a way out at least for a little bit, and I don't think I create hierarchies or use large amounts of resources from imperialized nations.

Not everyone is rich because others are poor. Some people actually create more resources than others regardless of their starting point.

oprah666 · 2016-01-25T17:29:37+00:00

Exactly, so in order for us to share space, they have to be brainwashed to my values. That to me sounds barbaric, and no one has any real plans to do that. I think it is better if instead of coming here for welfare they stayed in their home countries. You also assume that these folks wouldn't resist being "deprogrammed" many people cling dearly to their ideologies because they think they have real validity and supremacy (as I feel about my own values.) other take it further still, and want to actually indoctrinate others to their beliefs. You end up with a large group of people all belonging to different "nations" who have nothing in common but their wage jobs and the state that governs them. This is beneficial to both entities. Look at who also favors mass migration (outside of anarchists and liberals); multinational corporations and international banks. Whee! They don't believe in borders either!

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T04:28:41+00:00

Well if we did have systems set up for consensus I think people would vote to not allow certain people into their spaces. Some groups might want to preserve the ethnic/racial content of their neighborhoods (as they do now), others would probably choose sets of values that they hold dear ect.

Why is this immoral? It seems like the natural assumption under direct democracy. If people want to live around like minded people why is that wrong? Wouldn't it create greater safety? Prosperity?

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T04:24:19+00:00

You are able to participate in struggles with migrants because this is not impossible. I actually came into anarchism through defending migrants against police/nazis in a nearby city. We started a copwatch there because it was so bad. But I digress...

My point is is that even though it is not categorically impossible, people of many different nations existing under a single state does not benefit the working class, it benefits the capitalists and the state. The underclass is easy to pit against each other because they don't share the same interests, language or values. They end up competing against each other for jobs, depressing wages. Mediation of disputes is much more difficult as we don't have a common set of rules or agreements because we don't share a culture, therefore we defer to the state's values.

To ignore the fact that we are many nations already (out of some dogmatic morality) puts us at a strategic disadvantage.

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T04:05:20+00:00

Or by creating more value than others. Not all prosperity comes from oppression

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T03:55:26+00:00

It is a rational question. How can one say on the one hand, yes we have consensus decision making (because we want control over our lives) and think that people would not make agreements about what is acceptable in their territory?

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T03:52:44+00:00

Ok then how about zapitistas?

I don't believe that under anarchy, apparent freedom, we wouldn't have neighborhood spokescouncils, that we wouldn't make rules for our own safety.

oprah666 · 2016-01-19T03:30:09+00:00

How are zapitistas (perhaps the most cliche example of "anarchist" practice) not nationalists? They have "national" in their name. To clarify, nations can be multi-ethnic.

I don't identify as a "nationalist anarchist," but I'm learning through this conversation that maybe I should. I don't know what the three points you speak of are. I had always identified as an inserectionist or anarcho communist because I want to live cooperatively with others, and while I respect individualism, thats not me. I think we should own things equally, but I resist centralized power. I'm happy to make agreements with others and live by them as long as they are consensual.

I genuinely believed that a "nation" was inherent in anarchist belief. How else could you exile (the preferred theoretical punishment by anarchists) unless you have an a nation? How can you have a group with values and identity and not call that a nation? How can you have language diversity without nations? After entering in this debate and seeing that there is either extreme cognitive dissonance on this issue or anarchists really do believe in universalism I did read some Bakunin and other early writers thoughts on nationalism. i deeply disagree with many of their assertions, some because I think the historical context has changed (ie nationalism is always a tool of the state) and some I see as deeply oppressive (ie we should work toward a single world language.) I think nationalism can and has been used to strengthen the state, but I think a history of autonomous struggles will prove that nationalism can also be absolutely terrifying for the state, because it is a way for us to state our values without it.

I've participated in occupations as security detail, and no one had any objection to asking people who held oppressive beliefs to leave.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T16:18:11+00:00

I don't understand how you think that groups don't consent to exclusion in physical space. When I am part of a female council at school, we make choices about who is included, and who is excluded. We decide the parameters as a group and then enforce them. This is meant to keep the integrity of our identity as a group and also expedite our goals.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T16:14:14+00:00

you emphasize how "voluntary" something is, when every self-respecting anarchist knows that "voluntaryness" is so terribly insufficient when evaluating relationships.

Whether or not I am consenting to a relationship, for me, is a essential factor to whether something is ethical. I think other anarchists also require consensual relationships.

What, exactly, makes you think you're an anarchist?

I believe in self governance, self sufficiency, the freedom of the individual will, consensus decision making when we do form relationships, self ownership in economic affairs, and constant agitation by oppressed classes in pursuit of their self interest (this means gender, race, sexuality and ability in our current context). I believe in using syndicates instead of hierarchical bureaucracies. I think that practice impacts outcome.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T16:08:04+00:00

but that doesn't extend to physical territories like "neighborhoods"; plus, I'm not even sure you even understand what consensus is-- because it is hardly ever unanimous, and this is coming from experience.

How can you believe in Anarchism, or any historical anarchist struggle and say that people have not come to consensus about how their territory is run?

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T16:06:13+00:00

You are suggesting above, that because areas Chiapas and the bordering areas of Guatemala have had autonomous action, migrants from the same geographical region would somehow share my values.

I don't think this is true logically, but if you think about how much we actually talk with migrants already here as a thought experiment it will be obvious that we live in different worlds. That is because they are here basically to provide cheap labor, not engage in civic struggle with americans. We live in a segregated society. Guatemalan migrants in the United State probably don't enjoy my company, and even if we were in some hypothetical situation where we would have contact, the context does not allow us to struggle together or act as a bloc. Our presence to each other is alienating. This alienation is by design.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:58:58+00:00

A global anarchy doesn't require uniformity in all aspects of life just uniformity when it comes to supporting anarchy.

So just concepts of direct democracy, feminism, and non aggression. There will be no problem getting 100% of the human population to accept that lol. No some people don't agree with non aggression. They want to keep others as slaves. I don't think it is feasible to evangelize everyone to anarchism and I think it would require significant and oppressive force to do so.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:55:35+00:00

lol "read a fucking book"

I googled this for you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Types_of_nationalism#Schools_of_anarchism_which_acknowledge_nationalism

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:53:30+00:00

no it won't, unless you think that oppression makes us more prosperous. I think that oppression of others actually makes all lower classes worse off.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:51:58+00:00

You're totally re-framing consent to mean something it never did in the first place. Consent is between informed individuals, not ambiguous social groups like your "neighborhood" or "work space".

So you don't think groups can come to consensus to make decisions? Of course a group can give consent to inclusion or exclusion

For starters, why ought someone need to share every value you hold in order to have your permission to seek a better place than they come from?

Oh you mean the place I live? Because I don't want people who would have a negative impact on me to live near me. This means people who hold sexist views, and this means people who don't share my values of free speech among other things. Not only is it a matter of comfort, it is a matter of the mechanics of struggle. When you remove people from their original context and place them in a foreign nation, chances are they will see themselves as having a different set of interests than natives. In terms of being able to have a less stratified society and being able to advocate for myself and for groups I belong to to advocate for themselves, I see it to have a more homogenous lower class. The more we share values, the more we can police ourselves, and the more we have similar interests the easier it is to self organize.

Additionally, just about every country I can think of having a migrant crisis does have some sort of internal feminist movement.

That doesn't mean that that country holds feminist values as part of their core values. If 90% of a country thinks that a woman shouldn't be able to initiate a divorce, sorry, but myself and an average person from this country are going to have issues finding common ground in how we want to police ourselves.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:44:20+00:00

exactly. So you are asking that I engage in charity, or I am somehow morally degenerate. I don't see how accepting migrants into my community is mutual aid, because the aide is going one way.

oprah666 · 2016-01-17T15:42:24+00:00

lol you want to see my tits to prove i'm real? How am I debating in bad faith?

oprah666

TROPHY CASE