Post AWZ8ynUc5p6fOhbMWW by goo@dobbs.town
(DIR) More posts by goo@dobbs.town
(DIR) Post #AWXx9jrMY1NkhtjWim by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:47Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
I have a cat that freaking loves to chase the laser pointer dot. Just bonkers for it. Up and down the stairs, around corners, leaping many times his height to try to catch it.In doing so, he mimics the act of hunting, on which cats naturally depend for their food. So when he plays at hunting with the laser pointer, does this imply he experiences that as work?Or do cats experience hunting as play?1/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9ktWhShtutkljU by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:48Z
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I have been blessed with the chance to watch my own kids play, and let me tell you: a lot of child’s play would be, under other circumstances, be absolutely indistinguishable from the most unappealing manual labor.I’ve seen them use shovels to fill buckets with rocks and haul them up a jungle gym with pulleys and dump the rocks elsewhere like they’re little corvée conscripts forced to build Mesopotamian city walls. And they love it. Just over and over, hauling rocks around. 2/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9lctyl0GBcz0SW by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:48Z
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Human beings have engaged in productive activity—ie, “labored”—from the very first moment of our species, without compulsion.Did they experience that activity as *fun* the same way my cat plays at hunting and my kids play at construction? I don’t know! But I have a hunch.We are encouraged to think of labor and leisure as separate categories, but this becomes difficult when you consider how little distinguishes the substance of the activities that fall into these categories.3/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9mOP8906YxCwV6 by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:49Z
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Some people fish for work and some people fish for fun. Some people toil as mechanics and others lovingly restore cars for fun. Some people train until their bodies are breaking to be professional athletes and others play sports for the joy of it. Farming is backbreaking work but I grow my own vegetables in my allotment garden for some reason. Some people take on manual labor because they have no choice but my kids choose to do it for free.Have you ever seen a Tough Mudder or another extreme obstacle course? They look like a torturous boot camp course for military conscripts. These are allegedly “leisure.”4/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9n60W1sYkBblSq by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:49Z
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“Leisure” is a pernicious idea that evolved as a direct consequence of *compulsory* labor. In his book “Human Action,” the pro-fascist “libertarian” Ludwig von Mises* argued that leisure is separate from labor, and that labor, being unpleasant, is something we do only in order to acquire leisure:“We can express this fact also in calling the attainment of leisure an end of purposeful activity, or an economic good of the first order. In employing this somewhat sophisticated terminology, we must view leisure as any other economic good from the aspect of marginal utility.”5/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9ntdXVZtE6pOoy by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:50Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
But this is nonsensical if you imagined, say, a fisherman who labored in order to be able to afford a leisurely fishing trip as a consumer good. Leisure and labor activities do not vary based on the content of the activity. A cat hunts for food and plays at hunting. A person might toil manually, hauling rocks to build structures, while my kids do this for fun. We must then consider what else varies between these activities: compulsion and supervision. I sincerely doubt my kids would enjoy hauling rocks if I told them they had to in order to receive permission to eat, or if I insisted on directing and monitoring their efforts.6/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9owrczkmUPLUUS by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:51Z
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In contrast to Mises’ definition of leisure as the antithesis of labor, I prefer David Graeber’s take on fun:“To exercise one’s capacities to their fullest extent is to take pleasure in one’s own existence, and with sociable creatures, such pleasures are proportionally magnified when performed in company. From the Russian perspective, this does not need to be explained. It is simply what life is. We don’t have to explain why creatures desire to be alive. Life is an end in itself. And if what being alive actually consists of is having powers—to run, jump, fight, fly through the air—then surely the exercise of such powers as an end in itself does not have to be explained either. It’s just an extension of the same principle.”7/11https://thebaffler.com/salvos/whats-the-point-if-we-cant-have-fun
(DIR) Post #AWXx9pzjjne5jbhIbg by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:51Z
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We might consider, then, joy in voluntary activity to be the default, rather than the end product of labor. Consider this description of hunter-gatherer society from Karl Widerquist and Grant McCall’s “Prehistoric Myths in Modern Political Philosophy”:“This economic mobility is apparent in ethnographic descriptions. Woodburn (Woodburn 1968a: 52) writes, ‘Hunting is not a coordinated activity. Men hunt individually and decide for themselves where and when they will go hunting.’ According to Harris (1977: 69), band members, ‘decided for themselves how long they would work on a particular day, what they would work at—or if they would work at all…Neither rent, taxes, nor tribute kept people from doing what they wanted to do.’“8/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9quoJbIcacOsZE by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:52Z
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Is hunting for the hunter-gatherer fun? Is it leisure? Mises would call it “work,” a means to the end of engaging in non-work. But it seems to me that Mises was wrong, in a trivially obvious sense, which one could readily see if one accounted for all the people in capitalist countries who *hunt animals for recreational sport.*The fact that hunter-gatherers hunt to eat doesn’t seem particularly relevant; nature does not engage in compulsion. Many of our entertainments satisfy our bodily needs. The key distinction is whether someone else is compelling the activity, under threat of violence, and whether someone else is directing the activity.To be alive is to revel in the exercise of our faculties. Fun, leisure, play: these are not what we labor towards but rather the default of being alive. 9/11
(DIR) Post #AWXx9s1aBuJK1uZnlI by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:52Z
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In capitalist countries, there is an allegedly mysterious decline in leisure going on. Despite all the material wealth our labor produces, we’re able to consume less leisure as a consumer good, to use Mises’ framing.This is not a mystery! We do not lack for the means to have fun. Kids haul rocks for fun. What we lack is *permission.* Our lives are circumscribed by the state and property. We toil not to buy leisure but to keep the capital class in leisure; every aspect of our lives is hemmed in, directed, monitored, managed, inspected. We do not grudgingly engage in work so we can afford to joyfully engage in leisure. These are false distinctions. *Life doesn’t have to be this way.*10/11https://www.ft.com/content/9df289b9-d425-49e6-899f-c963b458625f
(DIR) Post #AWXx9t1yRwDZ9Pld0i by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T09:47:53Z
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* As an addendum, here’s another excerpt from Mises’ work:“The expenditure of labor is deemed painful. Not to work is considered a state of affairs more satisfactory than working. Leisure is, other things being equal, preferred to travail. People work only when they value the return of labor higher than the decrease in satisfaction brought about by the curtailment of leisure. To work involves disutility.Psychology and physiology may try to explain this fact. There is no need for praxeology to investigate whether or not they can succeed in such endeavors. For praxeology it is a datum that men are eager to enjoy leisure and therefore look upon their own capacity to bring about effects with feelings different from those with which they look upon the capacity of material factors of production. Man in considering an expenditure of his own labor investigates not only whether there is no more desirable end for the employment of the quantity of labor in question, but no less whether it would not be more desirable to abstain from any further expenditure of labor.”I absolutely love this. Mises declares labor and leisure to be opposing economic categories and asserts this is a priori true. He doesn’t have to explain this; *it just is true.* A great mind at work here, people. Except that this distinction is trivially easy to disregard! “Labor is painful and people avoid it except when they do literally the same exact activity for fun, without reference to the material output of the activity.” What an absolute clown.11/11
(DIR) Post #AWY9HugVNrOk2wJqrI by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-06-10T13:34:15Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
@HeavenlyPossumInteresting thread.Cc: @goo @lain @sj_zeroBut I don't see how that addendum means Mises was "pro-fascist".
(DIR) Post #AWYBVhNlpzVskkG1Ds by lain@lain.com
2023-06-10T13:57:57.508510Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
@Hyolobrika @HeavenlyPossum @goo @sj_zero nice bait for me, no time for now but maybe later...
(DIR) Post #AWYT3YKzfe7RlegfNw by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-10T17:15:42.111351Z
4 likes, 3 repeats
Many people who worked from home would agree that virtually the same action can be work or play depending on a few factors. During the pandemic, it was amusing to me that I'd put away the laptop of play and take out the laptop of work. I'd be sitting in the same exact position, doing materially similar things, but one is relaxing and the other is stressful.At first glance, one of the things that makes it work is that you're choosing to do it rather than being forced to do it.It isn't just about being forced, though. It's about there being pressure doing it. I like doing stuff with my hands and working on projects. My feed has all kinds of things I've done for fun. But if I fail at those things (and it happens a lot), It doesn't really matter. There's no negative consequence if I fail on my projects, or if I drop them entirely either temporarily or permanently.The play circuit in our brains depends on there being low real-world stakes to the game. You can get two mice in the lab, and they can play fight and they love to do that and will constantly seek it out, but get another two mice in the lab who are fighting over resources or a mate and they hate to do that -- they'll do it for their core drives of survival and replication, but they don't seek it out for its own benefit. The difference between a fight where you're going to die or otherwise suffer if you lose, and a fight where your friend goes "you lose haha lets go eat some lunch" if you lose is the core of the difference between work and play.One mistake people make is assuming that people have to work because of capitalism. That's an anti-reality stance. In a hunter gatherer society you might not have a boss pointing and yelling at you to increase company profit, but you've got the specter of death -- if you don't hunt or forage, you're going to die. If you don't build shelter, you're going to die. If you don't gather something for a fire, then you're going to die. If you don't build the fire, you're going to die. With that sort of pressure, is hunting and gathering and building stuff work? You bet it is!Let's say the toilet breaks right now. Guess what? I'm going to spend a chunk of my weekend fixing the toilet. And I need to fix that toilet or there won't be a functioning toilet. I have to do it because not having a working toilet in my house isn't a reasonable option. And there's some pressure because I have to succeed, and I can't just drop it. It's not paid work, but it is work, and once I'm done with it I'll go out and do something fun.Should I blame capitalism for my broken toilet, then? Of course not. Reality is that regardless of the economic system I lived under, the toilet would be broken and I need to fix it. Under every economic system, at some point I'm going to need to take a dump.We can see this with people whose job is something we'd consider "play" in any other circumstance -- Streamers play video games, but playing video games on stream because you need to is stressful since like the hunter gatherer hunting or gathering, their survival depends on it. Other streamers just end up hanging out and talking with a chat, and in any other situation that'd be considered leisure activity but for those streamers it's work.In the case of the streamer, they're fully in control of their schedule. They can start streaming when they want, they can stop when they want, they can choose what to talk about and what to play on stream. But despite that, it's still work. And many of them express that their jobs can be stressful and they need time off.This is why one of the core boomer philosophies of "find work doing something you love" is flat-out wrong. By making something you love to do into work, there's a chance you actually destroy that thing you enjoyed by adding the stress of having to make a survival with it.One thing that's also anti-reality is saying that our modern world doesn't have leisure. Compared to any moment in the history of the world, there's more opportunities for leisure than ever before. Most households have multiple televisions, multiple computers, multiple smart phones. People spend hours on these devices. The fact that the leisure time isn't particularly fulfilling is a different problem.Often times, people point to today and they point to feudal times and say that in feudal times people had much more free time because they didn't spend as much time on the farm. This disregards that life took more work back then. Today we have washers and dryers, back then you'd need to wash your clothes by hand. Today we have premanufactured clothes, back then you'd need to make and repair your own clothes. Today we have premade foods and refrigerators, back then you'd need to preserve and store food for the winter. Today our homes heat themselves via electricity or gas and thermostats, back then you'd need to maintain a hearth, and that also speaks to the work that would go into cooking food. So we work at jobs so we can afford these modern luxuries, and in so doing don't need to do the backbreaking labor of maintaining a household. Moreover, it was common for people under feudalism to work 12 or 16 hours, which does happen sometimes today but is uncommon -- meaning that while our work days are rough, they're quite short (assuming you have a full time job) compared to the past.If anything, I'd argue that one of our biggest problems today isn't that people lack meaningful leisure, it's that they lack meaningful work. Yes, people do work jobs to get money to pay for their lives, but for many jobs there isn't a sense that you're contributing to anything meaningful. Particularly if you're a real cog in the machine, you can't see the benefits to the customers below you, and you're not a part of the benefits of the owners above you, you're like a horse with blinders on, just following orders. Then you get home and you can have a very nice lifestyle historically speaking with very little actual work, so all you have left to do is play. It doesn't feel earned, however, so while having more play than most people in the history of the world you feel unfulfilled, and without a philosophical framework to suggest that perhaps to be fulfilled you need to go out and do meaningful work, you assume it's because you don't have enough play.(6000 characters.... I wonder how much this even federates?)
(DIR) Post #AWYUAlcOn8g8wEpekq by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T17:21:03Z
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@goo @Hyolobrika @lain@lain.com @sj_zero I stopped reading when I got to the “capitalism doesn’t coerce you into work, nature coerced you” bit. A tired cliche that entirely misses the point.
(DIR) Post #AWYUAmTva7UrcFsPBo by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-10T17:28:15.260441Z
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“humans breathe oxygen” is also a cliche, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
(DIR) Post #AWYVU1Dn6UUCmq48qe by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-10T17:42:57Z
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@Hyolobrika I will read and reply after sleeping. Nearby 2am here and drinking my moonshine. Thank you for the tag
(DIR) Post #AWYWEIVj9eXjjHWTce by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T17:34:18Z
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@goo @sj_zero @Hyolobrika Yeah another swing and a miss
(DIR) Post #AWYWEJdYy0PBDsCFTU by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-06-10T17:51:17Z
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@HeavenlyPossumHow?@goo @sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AWYWhT4IyqU4s5bcX2 by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-10T17:56:35Z
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@Hyolobrika @HeavenlyPossum @sj_zero Replying as I read. work vs play depends on whether it's done under duress, coercive factors imo. Mostly psychological in the developed world. If you're mentally strange, everything can be play. People with OCD don't clean for fun. My housecats hunt for fun and rarely kill but seem driven by uncontrollable urges nonetheless. Barn cats definitely work - he who does not work shall not eat, as the old testament says
(DIR) Post #AWYX11sXmSosKsQr6e by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T18:00:05Z
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@goo @sj_zero @Hyolobrika Nature is not an actor, it’s a metaphor. Nature does not coerce.Labor under capitalism is the product of coercion by other people, not of voluntary choice. Maybe people would choose wage labor if genuinely free to do so, though the historical record strongly suggests we wouldn’t. In any case, we can’t know because none of us are meaningfully free to choose.Your distant ancestors who lived before mass compulsory wage labor fed and housed themselves by their own effort. They did not go extinct for want of wages. If you declined to rent yourself out, in contrast, you would be starved and unhoused by property owners. That’s the critical difference—effort that we choose for ourselves, to serve our own ends, in circumstances we can choose and modify, or effort at someone else’s direction, to serve their ends, in circumstances they choose, under threat of harm.
(DIR) Post #AWYXGO49ZTlfUZBZNA by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-10T18:02:54Z
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@Hyolobrika @HeavenlyPossum @sj_zero "Man is free to do what he wills, but not will what he wills" is a relevant quote imo. When I play a serious chess game with no stakes, it's play-work as much as my cats chasing cockroaches is play-work. No stakes but there is still a compulsion to push ourselves. Is BDSM work or play? I honestly can't think of anything we do that's not driven by some urge, will, need... I think you raise an interesting question about how to draw the line
(DIR) Post #AWYXbNeIJii0HP6IpU by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-10T18:06:41Z
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@HeavenlyPossum @sj_zero @Hyolobrika despite having some measure of wealth, I've chosen prole jobs for fun before. I worked as hard as my fellow workers, despite knowing I could tell the boss to fuck off and leave at any point without consequences. Maybe the difference between work and play is what we consider to be the fallout if we fail. My coworkers knew housing, health, status were on the line whereas I felt I had nothing to lose if I left, so I considered it play
(DIR) Post #AWYXl4uMqjfZ3IF7p2 by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T18:08:25Z
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@goo @sj_zero @Hyolobrika I might desire to fly to the moon, but my physical inability to do so does not imply I am somehow coerced by nature into not traveling to the moon.I do have to labor for wages everyday, though, or else I will be harmed by property owners who would interfere with my ability to feed and house myself by my own effort, unless I agree to labor according to their demands.
(DIR) Post #AWYY46Uz9yV9UHRW5I by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T18:11:51Z
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@goo @sj_zero @Hyolobrika While you might be free to choose one job over another, a choice of masters does not make one meaningfully free. Absent the choice not to rent yourself for wages at all, it’s also impossible to assess whether you’ve genuinely chosen those jobs “for fun.” Maybe! But just as a fish doesn’t notice the water in which it swims, we can’t disentangle our constrained choices under capitalism.
(DIR) Post #AWYYGbPo2Tqkqdyp6m by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-10T18:14:09Z
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@HeavenlyPossum @sj_zero @Hyolobrika maybe you're psychologically coerced by nature to desire flying to the moon? "Nature" is something vague. I agree completely with your second paragraph. Capitalism prevents us from satisfying our needs in more organic ways. You want land, not only do you need to come to possess it on capitals terms, you need to pay taxes on it.... It's illegal to sleep in most alleyways and beg in many cities, don't you know, often illegal to fish without license
(DIR) Post #AWYiOaDzLftP0uteim by Hyolobrika@berserker.town
2023-06-10T20:07:37Z
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@HeavenlyPossum>I do have to labor for wages everyday, though, or else I will be harmed by property owners who would interfere with my ability to feed and house myself by my own effort, unless I agree to labor according to their demands.What is this referring to exactly?Who are these people who would harm you? Under what legal basis?@goo @sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AWYjO091aqZL4FrSfQ by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-10T20:18:42.644855Z
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it seems to me that land taxes, fishing licenses, and the government deciding what you're allowed to do on government land like roads are the definition of something that is categorically not a specific problem of capitalism, even if it can exist under capitalism.Capitalism is fundamentally the private ownership and control of resources. If you can own a piece of land or a home, if you can own your own labor, if you can own tools, if you can essentially use these how you wish without someone else telling you what you can or cannot do with these things, then it is capitalism. If the government is dictating what you can or cannot do with your labor, your tools, your resources, then that thing is not capitalism but central planning.Taxation and licensure can exist within a capitalist framework, but so can communes and worker cooperatives. The key is that if you're saying "taxation is an example of why capitalism is bad", or "fishing licenses are an example of why capitalism is bad", that's simply definitionally wrong. Both represent something other than private ownership and control of capital. You could own the land surrounding the lake, but the government controls your ability to fish on your lake. This detail would be part of the capitalist ownership of the lake, but itself would not be capitalism, since it is an aspect under which you do not own or control the lake privately.Licensure of resources and taxation are things that can and do exist under virtually every economic system, and would be more prominent rather than less prominent under non capitalist economic systems.Resource licensure would be an explicit requirement of centrally planned economies. "you can use this to do this" would be common because the state gets to choose who gets to have what rather than who wants to pay to own it.Taxation was a central feature of feudalism, which shares features with other economic systems including capitalism, but was explicitly not capitalism, since under capitalism there is private ownership and control of resources, but under feudalism all ownership and control of resources lies with the king, who parcels it out to his nobility who further parcel it out, all of them charging taxes for the privilege.Now, that doesn't mean that injustice can't exist under capitalism. Under Capitalism, those who have more money have more power, and those who have less money have less power. There are a number of unjust ways that someone can end up with more money or less money.The thing is, we have to be careful parceling out the blame because if we don't understand what we have in front of us, we can end up proposing solutions to non-causes of problems. When I was in high school, I didn't like the school. We were on something called the "Quarter System" where classes took 10 weeks and we'd be in specific classes longer, as opposed to the normal Semester system where classes took 20 years. I blamed all the problems in the school on the quarter system, but in reality the root of my problems were with myself and the fact that I was dealing with a nasty divorce of my parents at home, and I didn't have a strong social circle at school to help make life more tolerable for me. Switching from the quarter system to the semester system would have had 0 effect on my enjoyment of the school system.(Ok, I'm done effortposting, honest!)
(DIR) Post #AWYkAIhxsTV4XdEdnc by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-10T20:21:52Z
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@goo @sj_zero @Hyolobrika Capitalism is not defined by the private ownership of homes or labor.
(DIR) Post #AWYkAJQzB5VqnGIayO by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-10T20:27:26.191885Z
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You are incorrect, and your statement is in accurate. Private ownership of property, including homes and means of production (which includes labor), is indeed a fundamental characteristic of capitalism.
(DIR) Post #AWZ8ynUc5p6fOhbMWW by goo@dobbs.town
2023-06-11T01:05:31Z
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@sj_zero @Hyolobrika@berserker.town @HeavenlyPossum the radical shift capitalism brought was in granting private bodies the right to own the means of production, wasn't?Gimme some guild socialism, gimme some syndaclism
(DIR) Post #AWZDSlrB8jIWpMhjNI by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T01:55:44Z
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@goo @sj_zero What if we did feudalism, but with markets for lordships and serfs?
(DIR) Post #AWZbPd6tbHuBjR5hdw by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-11T06:24:01.966329Z
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As a certified journeyman I'd be ok with some guild socialism, but not sure it'd be best for all of society.
(DIR) Post #AWaNhTprcMqJylhZyK by RD4Anarchy@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T13:49:22Z
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@sj_zero You do realize that private property *is* a government regulation, right?@Hyolobrika@berserker.town @goo @HeavenlyPossum
(DIR) Post #AWaNhUle9X40ryjj2O by HeavenlyPossum@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T14:35:59Z
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@sj_zero @goo @RD4Anarchy What, you don’t think I could own my own toothbrush without the government?!?
(DIR) Post #AWaNhVOHpryKnooaGW by RD4Anarchy@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T15:19:17Z
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@HeavenlyPossum How many times do I have to tell you: thanks for the offer but I am not interested in renting your personal toothbrush. Ewww.@sj_zero @goo
(DIR) Post #AWbRkDFAgxvVKdDOSG by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T02:20:40Z
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@HeavenlyPossum @goo @sj_zero and with the entire world behind a fence, without even Sherwood Forest left to escape to.
(DIR) Post #AWbRkEI2nlooZpZCZU by haq@kolektiva.social
2023-06-11T08:35:16Z
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@AdrianRiskin Psst... I don't want to spoil your analogy but the point of the legends emphasising Robin Hood hiding in Sherwood Forest was that it was a royal hunting forest, owned and used exclusively by the crown, and he was transgressing boundaries by living there. It was very much "behind a fence" and that was enforced by the government and the military of the time.@HeavenlyPossum @goo @sj_zero
(DIR) Post #AWbRkFC3RWcbNXlvsG by AdrianRiskin@kolektiva.social
2023-06-12T03:40:22Z
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@haq @HeavenlyPossum @goo @sj_zero thanks for the info, I had no idea! This is clearly what I get for learning history from Howard Pyle and Walt Disney...
(DIR) Post #AWbRkFrWxJnZSBB3WS by sj_zero@social.fbxl.net
2023-06-12T03:45:10.096819Z
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For real, separate from any other discussion, the microcosm that is england in that era is fascinating. One reason those forests needed to be established is that there were so many people cutting down forests for fuel with improper management of the land. Eventually they tried to start burning coal despite it being terrible because they needed heat even if it cost everyone their health. It's a remimder of the fragility of our environment and the reasons we're so reliant on the fossil fuel energy subsidy. We can't just go back thoughtlessly to how we lived pre fossil fuels, because we'll just burn down every forest.