Chilean activist destroys student debt papers worth $500m

[regexcellent]

It's deeply ironic that c0ckney is the one who sounds like a college freshman halfway through Das Kapital here.

[Hauldren Collider]

If you manage to make it halfway through Das Kapital you deserve some sort of award, possibly just for sheer persistence.

[Elok]

I don't agree with c0ckney, but his argument here would be that our environment (in the broad sense in which he was using it) affects human nature in such a way as to make stable anarchy impossible. In one sense, he's right. If we were inundated by easily accessible abundance, then economics as we know it wouldn't need to exist and people could probably get along just fine.

Nah, there's still power and status to fight over. Most of us are (by world standards) quite well-off, but we still come on here to trade e-punches.

That's kind of my point, Elok.

Yeah, I was just taking issue with "anarchy was the initial state." It was never a state--there was only very limited/local government, of tribes or families.

[Hauldren Collider]

Yeah, I was just taking issue with "anarchy was the initial state." It was never a state--there was only very limited/local government, of tribes or families.

Well no, it's still the "initial state" in the sense that these tribes or whatever have to come to some sort of social structure, and even if you dump 20 people who don't know each other in the middle of the jungle, it takes all of six hours for some sort of structure to form.

[DaShi]

It's deeply ironic that c0ckney is the one who sounds like a college freshman halfway through Das Kapital here.

When other people talk like this to you, do you actually think they are smart or do you see them like the rest of us do?

[Elok]

But those tribes had an established social structure before they were even properly human--it just shifted over time. Our common ancestor with the chimps was bound to have some small group of dominant apes calling the shots. And so on back through more primitive primates. If nothing else, the eldest member of a family would enjoy prominence. You can only say such groups are "not governed" by arbitrarily saying that it's only government once it reaches a certain size or sophistication.

XPost

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Yeah, I was just taking issue with "anarchy was the initial state." It was never a state--there was only very limited/local government, of tribes or families.

You're just proving his point- anarchy is not a stable equilibrium.

[Elok]

Yeah, I know, it's just that the SoN is perhaps the central error of the Enlightenment--the basic assumption holding up the whole notion that human beings are primarily individuals, rather than members of groups. Almost everything we believe about rights, and all that rot, is based on this one misbegotten fantasy from three hundred years ago.

[Lorizael]

Nah, there's still power and status to fight over. Most of us are (by world standards) quite well-off, but we still come on here to trade e-punches.

Our lives, and thus our psychology, are very much shaped by scarcity. We have an entire system devoted to making sure that most of us are pretty well off, but that system has its own effects on us. It's very easy to imagine that one of those effects is a need to come on here and trade e-punches. One quick pop-psych explanation: we're all pretty intelligent people but have probably found at various points during our lives (due to living in a giant system that is very hard to move sometimes) that intelligence doesn't always supply us with everything we need/want. Therefore, being intellectual bullies on an internet forum can help us restore the self-esteem boost we get from our intelligence.

[Kidlicious]

I doubt you've read More's book.

No but I'm sure you have.

[regexcellent]

Arguing about what the world would look like if we didn't have scarcity seems like a massive waste of time.

[Lorizael]

You're on Apolyton, reg.

[Hauldren Collider]

He's got you there.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

Arguing about what the world would look like if we didn't have scarcity seems like a massive waste of time.

Wasting time wouldn't be an issue if we were immortal beings who could effortlessly have entire customized planets fabricated for us.

[regexcellent]

You're on Apolyton, reg.

****.