eh, both sides are as nuts and bad as each other frankly, horseshoe theory looks better everyday.

if either side had their way authoritarianism would flourish (both sides require it to achieve their goals, one side wants to force people into the future and the other the past. they should just leave people alone)

not to mention the fact both sides have identical economics (ignoring commies and LiBeRtArIaNs)

and? Newton killed himself by eating mercury ffs.

coming up with one good idea in no way means the rest are worth shit.

depends on what your temptations are.

i do what i want when i want to, its caused homelessness, addiction and a whole lot of experiences i wouldnt change for the world.

and yet im not stagnant or sad, ive lived with over 80 people in 4 different states (im Australian) ive done jobs across a dozen industries. now im 31 with no debts and im 57kg at 183cm and work my own business gardening (and literally no support at all, i dont talk to family).

ibe done all this by not resisting but by doing what i want (what i actually want to, not what society wants me to want. when i was young i wanted simple base pleasures, as ive gotten older my wants have changed to security and stability, skilled hobbies etc).

>; he says the most people feel as if their current self-image is how they will be forever, despite the multitude of changes that they went through up to that point

how?

doesnt make any sense to me, obviously we are all different at different points in our lives, an unchanging person is effectively a dead person.

as someone with few inconsistencies and poor ability to resist temptations i disagree.

i fail to resist temptations because why should i resist them? if i want to drink, smoke, eat, fuck then i do.

ive been an addict, there was no inconsistencies there either ie i had no internal problem with the actions i was performing, no 'i shouldnt do this but i will' more ''i know this is 'bad' but i do not care, everything is 'bad' after all''

as to avoiding temptations theres no need, if i dont feel like doing x i will not (its how ive quit before, got over it so i stopped).

then again maybe im just better at self-control then most, i have no debts at 31 and im 57kg at 183cm.

its a shame that in a such a small scale scenario the problem would never even develop (gonna have a hell of a time convincing those 10 people that you somehow dont have all the food once they all start talking) yet once you hit a large enough population you have enough abstraction that the man with 90% of everything can just convince half the population that other half have taken it all.

people decry China's media as being controlled and dominated but how is US media being owned by 3 people who are wealthier than entire nations any better?

this, cant have people realise its a lack of being willing to share thats the problem, its different people!

the promotion of hyper-individualism is the entire problem here, that only you matter and the rest are just in your lifes way as obstacles to overcome or use.

the fact that you are heavily encouraged to screw over pretty much anyone in your path and minimize any and all social and financial obligations coupled with media worship of the people that do is destroying us.

>he whole point of democracy is that we can't have a sole political stance that everyone agrees on, it's inevitable that different groups will form each with it's own opinion on which is the optimal path forward for society.

tell that to people who support one of the majors.

from what ive seen Democracy seems to devolve into 2 barely different parties who do everything they can to prevent other parties from ever gaining power and their supporters are rabid and believe anyone who opposes their party is the enemy.

its why ive never had a 'side' none of them represent me or even close to it (i have no interest in social issues, want poverty eradicated by redistributing wealth via a return to keynesianism and the eventual replacement of the current capitalist model with something new not something as old as electricty. too bad none of those are a priority for anyone)

>Humans definitely have the "my team vs your team" mentality. Studies show that having a rival or hatred towards another group (political party, sports team, etc) it actually stimulates the same parts of the brain one would have when they achieve something purposeful in their lives.

urgh i have noticed this.

try pointing out that on economic issues both parties in most western nations are near-identical (pro-corporate neo-liberals) and you see it immediately.

and? short term thinking plagues humanity, from election cycles to 70% people eating enough to be overweight to drug dealers killing their customers by cutting products (hell major corporation do it ffs, just slower)

these people are just humans in the end, they want more money tomorrow and so do their investors (not to mention half will be dead by the time it gets bad anyway).

they are not uniquely smart or skilled, every society in human history has had a class like this and every single time they have chosen short term profit (be that financial or power/control based) to the point of destroying the society they are in.

what is happening now is what happened to every major society in history, those with power have enough to run us into the ground trying to get more and so they will.

class solidarity.

no conspiracy needed at all. like how most people on welfare vote for higher payments and most of the middle class vote for tax cuts most of the wealthy 'donate' to both parties for favorable treatment (where do you think Trump got his billion or Biden got his 950 million for their respective campaigns?)

taken in aggregate it means that as a class the wealthy do indeed form what is effectively a single bloc on certain issues ie lower taxes, more corporate rights and power, more subsidies, access to captive markets like healthcare, energy, housing etc.

the easiest way to make more money as a billionaire is not innovation or invention its bribing both parties for favorable treatment (its why the list of the people who own 50% of global wealth gets shorter every year, they fight each other but they tag-team the people).

there is no conspiracy, these people are not friends or a cabal they just have massive power and influence and at that level the easiest ways to get more happen to be pretty much the same.

>If you don't wish to call what I just described Capitalism, call it something else then and I shall agree, because it's that system that has brought us out of the dark ages and given us everything.

how? it didnt reduce global poverty by 1 billion, fucking China did using the money we paid them.

did capitalism achieve that? if it did then it has also achieved the highest death toll of any system, belief or ideology in human history.

(using the highest possible figures ie including the nazis the ussr killed communism killed 100 million, capitalism has it beaten by several times over easily)

>I mean, I'm not sure that your own examples don't disprove your point. McDonald's has plenty of competion - even within the fast food subset of restaurants. So does Coke. Even Google has a solid list of alternatives you can quickly find by using Google.

you realise that half those examples own the competition right? the companies that own coke also own some 50% of global beverages (the other global player being the owners of suntory).

all markets tend toward monopoly, its the entire inevitable end point of capitalistic growth. all wealthy people want more wealth and the easiest way to get it is not innovation or competition but bribery, nepotism and corruption. as a class they bribe gov (hence why its so slow and inefficient, its paid to be) to give them access to captive markets and grant them regulatory capture to crush actual competition.

wealth is less produced and grown and more gamified and almost purely speculative (massive growth in the most captive markets ie food, housing, healthcare, energy and gov keeps letting the wealthy have more and more of it because both sides work for the investment class)

operate at a loss? no the boss just pays themself the same amount as they pay their employees.

its how i run my business, im not doing any extra work and im not the one risking homelessness so why i do i deserve all the rewards and the employees a pittance?

ever heard of Mondragon? largest worker coop is fucking Huawei, you dont need a traditional top-down ruled corporate structure to succeed, at all (as much as the Americans here would like to claim otherwise, they routinely try to claim huawei isnt a worker owned coop cause 'muh ccp')

>if free will means you can do what you want, then we must ask why you want the things you want. Well, some prior causes presumably made you want those choices. Is it really free will if all your choices are caused by wants resulting from prior states of affairs? And what would free will even mean then?

yes that is free will.

those things are 'you', the prior causes being memories, culture, experience and/or neurons, genes and chemistry.

why do you all try so hard to divorce yourselves from yourselves?

the free willers think we have souls and the determinists believe the body and mind are separate.

this entire debate is pointless when both sides require what is effectively magic in order for their beliefs to function.

the most rational position is that the universe is deterministic and we make our own choices.

this, both sides really, really try hard to deny what makes up 'you'.

i make all my own choices by definition as 'i' am the sum of my memories, neurons, genes, culture etc the free willers think we have souls and the determinists believe the body and mind are separate.

whats wrong with it?

we are puppets, puppets who pull their own strings. what he stated is not nihilism, nihilism would go on to claim that due to being puppets we should not pull our own strings (big difference between ''theres no meaning'' and ''theres no point in making your own meaning'')

>If so, would one not be more than a pre-programmed robot following a pre-determined path?

its still 'you' making those choices, whether or not 'you' could choose differently is irrelevant.

even if no one could have possibly chosen differently they still chose.

to me it seems like determinists believe in souls by necessity ('you' are your genes and neurons so even if 'you' cant actively control them they are still 'you')

>But upon further inspection, this view seems pretty hollow, and meaningless.

why?

'you' are just neurons, genes, memories, environment, culture etc therefore by definition you make all your own choices.

what magical 'you' is there that could make choices outside yourself? and how does the universe being deterministic mean that you do not make choices? (as i already stated genes and neurons and culture and memories are you, so you cannot tell me that choices cant happen due to determinism, it makes no rational sense at all)

>No "choices" really exist, except in our imagination. If possessing a mental image of imagined options is "free will" then free will means very little I think

why?

why do you dismiss yourself? i have literally no idea how it can possibly make sense to think that due our choices are constrained by ourselves we have no choice?

that is what you are saying, that due to the fact 'you' are made up of genes, neurons, culture, memories, environment, preferences, trauma and due to these parts of 'you' limiting choice that somehow magically 'you' make no choices at all.

its an entirely nonsensical position to hold in the first place (if we deleted your memories, culture, preferences and trauma then 'you' would not be able to even hold the opinion you do, those things are the very foundation of the person who is claiming to not have free will).

emergent behavior and properties may not be fun or special but they sure as shit make more sense then Determinism trying to pretend it doesnt require souls (or the free will believers thinking we do)

thats the entire free will v determinism debate in a nutshell.

both sides just hand wave compatibilism away when it not only makes sense but works. both sides of the debate have a deepseated need for humans to be special, one side thinks we have a soul and thus libertarian free will and the other believes we are mere passengers along for a ride. both require dismissing reality to believe (the focus on magic free will is pointless in the extreme, may as well debate the afterlife for all the practical effect either side would ultimately have).

so what happens when someone decides not to?

if i choose 'no' and happen to be the largest producer of food for x region i can simply dominate. offer food to enough people to form my own militia and then only give food to those who do what i want.

you have no answer to this that isnt itself facing the same issue (the defence force is the easiest way to get your own militia, even if you didnt bribe them what if they did the same thing? were up to minor civil war now).

how do you prevent someone with resources using those resources to slowly gain control?

anarchy and libertarianism both rely on far too much hippy BS to ever function (no system ever conceived has survived the wealthy, ever)

>Systems of governance create the conditions which consolidate wealth and power in some hands, and strip wealth and power from others. An anarchist society is not one without structures of governance, but one which radically distributes wealth and power to the individual by critiquing and eliminating unjustified forms of dominance.

in what possible way?

how does anarchy prevent or even limit this? if you have no state at all then all it takes is a charismatic individual with resources to slowly take over, if you do have some form of state then all it takes is an individual with enough resources to co-opt whatever 'state' or institution/s.

again anarchy and libertarianism rely on fantasy versions of human behavior, where people will magically not submit to rule by others despite all of human history disagreeing (pre-agricultural humanity is utterly irrelevant, its like saying we should look to chimps for advice on structuring society).

if the whole point is to just try and never give up then no system is any better or worse than any other, literally all of them have utopian visions for someone.

personally im on the point that short of annihilating the concept of property its not possible to avoid those who have the most resources using said resources to control others (the wealthy have dismantled literally every system ever implemented, just look at what people define 'capitalism' to be vs what it actually is)

whats to stop the local defence council from simply taking over and becoming a defacto government?

never seen any actual mechanism to prevent strongmen/warlords or the inevitable return of some form of hierarchical state, just some nebulous BS about how the 'people' would stop it.