Comparing communists to liberals

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Thanks for pointing it out, I didn't notice it. But yes, I am well aware of libertarians, I actually came to libertarian meetings a few years ago.



I was actually thinking that "neither" liberalism "nor" libertarianism can be combined with communism. Rather, I liked both communists and libertarians simply for being third parties, since I don't like two party system. But now that you mentioned combining the two, can you elaborate as to why you think communism is more easily combined with libertarianism than with liberalism?



But now that we "can" use the word "anarchist" without government persecution, do you think those two words are synonyms, or do you think they evolved in such a way that there is a difference between the two?



I think the issue is terminology: you seem to view anarchism as a form of communism and I don't. I view communism as mainly marxism-leninism. In this context, the fact that marxism-leninism is rare nowdays would imply that communism as a whole is rare -- while marxism-leninism would remain its most prominent kind. But I guess you use those words differently. Could it be a cultural thing? I mean in Russia when you say either "socialism" or "communism" you almost always mean Marxism/Leninism.



By "changing social relations" do you mean improving morality of people in such a way that they wouldn't "want" to commit crime -- even if there is no government stopping them from doing so? If thats the case, then yes it matches communist idea pretty well. So what is libertarian plan on how to go about it?

Rushking - What’s the difference between anarcho-capitalism and anarcho-communism?
In my mind (and using dictionary definitions) communism requires a central power/authority.

Are you in Russia?

It's a myth that people don't work because of handouts. In fact you don't get much at all when you are given a handout. You don't have much money, you can't just buy what you want to have, you can't go on nice trips or even travel out of state, flying is too expensive. Plus it's very embarrassing to be poor so no one in their right mind would want to be poor because you have lack of freedom. Plus you can't just go and get a new phone or computer if it breaks or every time you need an upgrade to keep on playing a game without it crashing. And always needing to borrow money to pay your bills is no fun either and then always owing money when you first get paid because you can't afford a credit card. And lot of people who get handouts do work and some even work multiple jobs to make a living. Not everyone can stop being poor. I am one of these people who still can't climb up the ladder and make a higher income on my own so I have resorted to having an only fans account for some extra money which isn't much and someone buys photos from me because he has a trash fetish and wants to see photos of my trash can and my trash bag I am taking out. I once mailed him a bag of trash because he wanted a bag of it from me. Now I need more of these people but then it would be overwhelming because I have a hard time with organization and will start losing track of who got what photo and how many they got from me so far.

And I am not going to touch that racist comment.

I don't understand the obsession some people have with work...why should work be the point of life? We should strive for a society where people can work less and have more enjoyment. I mean the whole idea of just working hard and working hard and working hard then maybe when you're too old to work you can retire and then enjoy life seems counterproductive to me.

I don't see anything wrong with balancing it out...like you can work and have leisure, in fact workers who get more leisure time tend to be more productive on the job. Turns out having a good quality of life actually makes people more motivated and productive.

Also what makes you think minority people don't work hard? I certainly have not seen evidence of that. Also, even if slavery ended over 100 years ago, the discrimination didn't stop then.

QFT - Libertarians believe in government support of personal/private property rights. Libertarians believe in punishing murder, theft, etc.

Anarchy would be this amazing ideal world where the libertarian world is going along strong and people say say “hey, we can get on like this, fire government, and have zero taxes and 100% true freedom and hopefully result in the same, or even less violence.”

It’s a beautiful view, albeit unrealistic in the times we live in.

Well, the issue is that if enough people won't work, then the rate of consumption of resources will exceed the rate at which the resources are produced -- and this implies that, on the long run, they would no longer be able to have a quality time that you are speaking of.

As far as combining work with leisure, its different: and most people "do" combine the two. But when I look at low income people that just sit there and beg, their lifestyle doesn't strike me as fun.

Incidentally, soviet communists were very big on making people work -- they considered not working as a crime that one can go to jail for (they called it "tuniyadstvo") so that is another difference between them and liberals.



I don't know where you live at, but here at Albuquerque I see a bunch of homeless people just by walking down the street, and they don't look hard working: most of them are on drugs. Although in Albuquerque they are mostly Mexican, not so much black. But in Berkeley its usually blacks that do that. I am not sure as to why there is such a demographic difference but in any case the concept is the same.



Actually to me it seems like today there is a "reverse racism". Back in the 90-s my father told me about one of his relatives who, correctly, put that he was White, and couldn't get a promotion. Then he decided to lie and change his race to black, and he got promotion really quickly. Now, he didn't have any black in him at all, so that was straight out lie. But you get my point.

I also heard, during a Green Tortois bus trip, a story about some black guy whom his job owner promised that he would get promoted if he could simply come to work on time. He couldn't do even that. So eventually he got fired for not coming to work -- yet he blamed it on racism.

Now, I am not saying all blacks are like that. I remember a black physics student, back when I was undergrad, who was very smart and actually one of the best students in class. But the point is that I can't imagine someone like her being discriminated in todays society. The blacks that have problems are more similar to the kind I would see on the street than to her. And this would make me ask: is it really a discrimination or is it rather them being lazy since they know they have their excuse.

QFT - You should travel more. Houselessness (I refuse to use the word homeless) is something that exists in all races and cultures. To see it as a race specific situation just shows that you haven’t been exposed enough. A stroll through Santa Cruz, CA is all you need.

I had some pretty rigid views in my 20’s, that once conquered opened up my mind quite a bit. It will also help with relationships.

Sweetleaf - I enjoy your point on working being overly important. I’d go a step further to say that people working is the largest factor in ruining our environment.
We have nice tv’s, cars, phones. I’m all for calling it good and reducing production to food and calling it a day, and life, and healthy society.

But the point remains: if "people" (whoever they happened to be) are given government handouts for low income, then those "people" would be encouraged not to work, hence the rate of production of goods would be lower than the rate of consumption, hence we will run into problem. Even if its not race-related, what I just said would still be true.

And, even though liberals "do" favor blacks over Whites, they also have -- quite independently of that -- a policy that favors "all" low income people, which encourages not working in general, which is a bad idea.



Can you elaborate as to what you were referring to when you said it would help with relationships?



I am surprised that you, as a libertarian, are in favor of not working: I thought helping low income people is a liberal thing rather than libertarian thing. In the libertarian context, people who don't work will basically starve since nobody is "forced" to help them -- and this would, in turn, encourage people to work. Or am I missing something?

Those who I am in favor of not working are the rich because they have so much money, they don't need to work and most people would just quit their jobs if they could. But we all can't so we work. I work because it allows my kids to go to a better school, it allows us to have more freedom, I used to even work full time but that was before I had kids and I lived in my own apartment so I didn't have all that extra stuff to do to take care of my home. Sure I could just quit my job and only live on disability benefits but I don't want that and it would give us less freedom and I would become a burden to my parents. I already mentioned what other extra money I get on my own which isn't very much.

It's not logical to assume people would want to be poor and choose to be homeless. Most homeless people have mental illnesses and don't have family support and many of them resort to drugs and alcohol to cope with the stress. The homeless people out there we don't see are the ones who still have money and jobs and supportive friends and families so they still have shelter and they can afford a storage unit until they find a place to live again. People can become homeless for different reasons like being laid off, house fire, having to move out of their rental home because the owner decided to sell it, or they sold their house and now they are between houses.

Then its not relevant to what we were talking about. The issue was about Liberals helping certain people not to work. But as far as rich people not working you don't need liberals for that. The free market economy, which conservatives are trying to promote, would allow rich people to quit their jobs. The people that need liberals in order not to work are the poor.

Now I am not saying that rich are more deserving of leisure than the poor (maybe they are rich just cause they inherited lots of money). What I am trying to say is that, if rich aren't going to work anyway, you don't want to "increase" the number of people who don't work by "adding" the poor to them.

Me personally, I think the most discriminated group of people is the middle class, since they neither have free help from the liberal government nor do they have their riches to fall back on.



Actually, as crazy as it sounds, I heard of some people that do. Like one thing I heard is that some homeless choose to live on the street rather than in homeless shelter since it gives them a sense of freedom. Also the reason there are so much more homeless in Albuquerque than elsewhere is that the winters are warm so they can afford it.



Yes this is a problem too. So I guess there is no simple solution. But the trick is not to go to one extreme or the other. It seems like liberal politics is to accommodate people that are lazy in order to cover the people that have real issues. Maybe there should be something more focused on mental illness, like back in the 60-s they were hospitalized. But then again I am against treatment of mental illness against the persons will, so maybe just put them in the hospital "without" forcing any treatment or something like that?

By the way, back in the Soviet Union they didn't have homeless altogether. This was because they were giving appartments for free. But on a flip side you had to work in order to get an appartment since it was your boss who would decide what appartment to give you. So I guess, whatever it is they done, they did a pretty good job at making people work.

Incidentally, the reason I am back at school is that I really want to be a theoretical physicist and I can't find a job. Well, if I was in a soviet union, then they had a policy that I *should* work on my profession a certain number of years after I graduate from the university -- and what htat meant is that hte government would simply hand me a job. Now, that doesn't mean that its the job I would like: like I might not like its location or whatever -- which is why after taht number of years are over people would quit. But in my case I want to be a theoretical physicist at any cost -- so if I were in Soviet Union and was handed a job like that, I would gladly keep it.



Well, what you just said still confirms that resorting to drugs and alcohol is a "choice": you simply mentioned the "reason" why they made that choice. Now, if they knew that they wouldn't be getting any handouts from the government, then "choosing" to do drugs would have far more serious implications -- which means that they would have think twice before making such choice.

Because libertarianism originally meant anarchism. And contemporary political scientists still place the anti-authoritarian left under the umbrella of libertarianism.

I disagree, more metrics:

The largest libertarian communist on YouTube; Peter Coffin has 258,000 subscribers.

The largest marxist-lenninist on YouTube; Jason Unruhe only has 39,000 subscribers.

Historically anarcho-communism is a development that came into fruition within the original anarchist movement of the 19th century.

"Anarcho"-capitalism doesn't really share the same legacy. It began with a guy named Rothbard who
claimed he got his ideas from Benjamin Tucker, who wasn't a capitalist.

Anarcho-communism can be roughly summarized as a society without a state, where communities have democratic control over means of production and subsistence. Where goods and services are distributed from each according to ability to each according to need.

"Anarcho"-capitalism is private property as the government. Private courts, militaries, police, etc. Neo-feudalism

I suspect since there were more marxist-leninnist revolutions in the 20th century than there were others, dictionaries have a tendency to reduce communism to marxist-leninnism. Dictionaries have their limitations.

Yes they do fall between the cracks. They make too much to get help but don't make enough to make a comfortable living so therefore they cannot afford healthcare or to keep food on the table or to be able to pay all their bills. They would need to rely on family for it or make a split living where they all live together and they split living costs. That is how me and my parents and husband do it.




Some people are not capable of getting help when they need it and they also fall in between the cracks. They are too sick to get help by themselves but not sick enough to have it forced on them by the state. My schizophrenic aunt was one of them. She had to get too sick before the state could force treatment on her and before my grandparents could hospitalize her. Now she lives in a group home. She would probably be better off today if she got the help she needed when she was younger and she was hard to be medicated because she also has Bipolar and she would also stop taking her meds thinking she didn't need them anymore because she was doing better. Because she was too sick to get help when she needed it, she wasn't sick enough to be hospitalize against her will. Sadly some mentally ill people do slip in between the cracks because of this new law that is meant to protect mentally ill people. Back then you could just put anyone in the hospital against their will and they were fine people and didn't need to be hospitalize so that is why a new law was imposed.

I honestly think institutions should be brought back and before anyone jumps down on me, Dorothea Dix had this happen in the 1800's to keep them out of jails and since we had started to deinstitutionalize in the 1950's and Ronald Reagan finishing it off in the 1980's, mental illness behind bars have gone up and now prisons have become mental hospitals and mental institutions.

Bring them back but make them better for these people and the prison population will go down.







Some jobs do that here too like my dad had a car he drove when I was a baby his business gave him. Sometimes business provide things for you but when you quit or get fired, you have to give it back because it is their property. Like if you are a teacher, you are provided classroom furniture and computer and desk, textbooks, but the rest you buy for your own classroom like children books, other furniture, other classroom supplies. Only way to be provided a home is if you join the military or something. Then you and your whole family is given a house to live in they own.



This proves exactly my point why we should provide for people in need. Not everyone is lazy or poor by choice. People need to get out of their heads that everyone just wants a handout so they wouldn't have to work. I find it hard to believe any liberal out there wants to provide for lazy people. We just want to help the unlucky ones and those who are disabled and will never climb up the social ladder.

I can tell you someone who I knew that was truly lazy was my ex because all he wanted to do was play computer games and didn't want to work and would rather work the only jobs that interest him, than work any job he can do and that he can find. After finding out he had undiagnosed schizophrenia, I wonder if that was why he was "lazy." With schizophrenia, they have what they call negative symptoms and one of them is lack of motivation in life like self help care, daily living, working a job, chores and they can appear very lazy because of their mental illness. That negative symptom can also be mistaken as depression. He also thought everything should be handed out to everyone and that included game systems and everything he wanted and thought we should have no money. I totally disagreed with him and told him this wouldn't work and look at what happened to Cuba and Russia. I don't know any liberal who would also think this is a great idea my ex had. But that could have been part of his illness too.

I am not suggesting people just refuse to work altogether, that would be problematic...I am just talking about working less. Also with technology a lot of production could be done with robots and AI, so eventually the need for human labor if such technology grows will be reduced anyways.

Also most low income people I know including myself work....many work whilst getting some form of government benefit. It is more homeless people who hold signs asking for change, Also a good majority of these sign holding beggars I see in my area are veterans.

Its very difficult for homeless people to maintain a job even if they aren't abusing any drugs, even if they can get hired which would be difficult with the bad hygiene that comes with homelessness. They don't have a home so any money they make they just have to spend on surviving without adequate shelter so very difficult to get ahead at all. So yeah some resort to begging. Also where I live the majority of people holding signs I see are white, some hispanic but vast majority are white.

As for your fathers relative, it would seem that had more to do with affirmative action, which has good intentions but is rather flawed.

Also sounds like the guy who got fired was an a**hole but I don't think that is an example of anything significant outside of that. Its certainly not a typical thing that happens as far as I know.

Cool. Thanks for that.

I am relying on my mom's money a huge deal. But then again, even though we live in the US, we are originally from Russia, and in Russia families tend to be closer. I was thinking that American families don't like to rely on each others money, and they even go as far as "loaning" money to direct relatives that they have to pay back (which my family doesn't do we have common money). So I am a bit surprised to see your family also shares money. Is it that common where you live? I know American states are different from each other too, like I noticed in the southern states people tend to be a lot closer to their families and go to university more locally whereas in northern states they like to travel across the country to go to school.



But if it is only about mental illness, how do you explain why at least in some parts of the country it is mostly blacks or Mexicans that are homeless? Are you saying that the rate of mental illness among those races is higher? Or are you saying that the rate of mental illness among Whites is just as high, they simply have more access to treatment? I guess if you say its the latter, then you would have to say that half of the country is mentally ill (after all, half of the blacks would be -- which implies that half of the Whites are mentally ill too, they just had it treated). Now, I read the stats that a quarter of population have been diagnosed with "some" mental condition -- but I thought it was because they count really mild stuff like ADHD or personality disorders. If you just focus on schizophrenia you will get much more low statistics: I think its just one or two percents of population that are schizophrenic. And I would also think that having things like ADHD or personality disorder won't make one homeless: only schizophrenia would. So that brings back the question why is the rate of homelessness so high among hispanics and blacks? Lack of access to treatment won't increase schizophrenia rate beyond those one or two percents, since I would assume that people with successfully treated schizophrenia are counted there as well (or are you saying that assumption is wrong)?



I wasn't keeping track of it now, but I remember I was curious about those things back in 1997 and my online research back then seem to say that mentally ill people could still be hospitalized against their will -- it is simply that the number of people towards whom they chose to use that option was much lower than in the 60-s. So is the law you are referring to quite recent? When was it introduced?



Me personally, I would explore the option of "forced hospitalization WITHOUT forced treatment". Because psychiatric treatment leaves permanent brain damage, while simply living in the hospital facility does not. So maybe one can use mental hospital in the same way one uses prison except that they wouldn't have to be around criminals and the living conditions there are much better -- since whatever they did wasn't their fault. I would even go as far as coming up with some programs that would allow people to take classes and get degrees while in the mental hospital. Basically live as normal life as possible, while at the same time protecting the society from them.



Well, in Russia, the people that retire due to their old age still keep their apartments. As far as what happens to people that get fired, I have no idea, I never looked into that.

As far as people being given appartments in America I never heard of this. I mean, my mom works two jobs in America yet she is buying her own house and its a huge struggle. I am sure if being given a free apartment through her jobs was an option she would at least consider it. So are you saying that she simply didn't know about such option even though it exists? Or are you rather saying that only some jobs offer it but not all?



Well, the sentence in bold applies to me too. I want to be a theoretical physicist -- which was my lifetime goal since I was 9 -- so I don't want to have any job thats not related to theoretical physics, since doing so would feel like throwing away my lifetime goal. But I guess its not about "interest" but more about the fact that my self esteem hangs on it. I mean, there are things that might "interest" me other than physics (and, conversely, its possible for me to get so tired of physics I would lose interest at least for a while), but I would still insist on only wanting to work as a physicist.



Well, where do you draw a line between mental condition and laziness. What if we weren't talking about schizophrenia but rather about something mild. Like how to you distinguish a simple introversion from "schizoid personality disorder", or how do you distinguish a simple lack of concentration from ADHD? Or are you saying that in his case he would no longer be lazy once his "episodes" are over? That would make it more obvious.

P.S. I have a cousin who lives in Russia, who is bipolar. So what he did was that he went to a mental hospital just so that he can make his mental illness official and get government help on this basis. I don't know whether American government has similar policies, but this seems to be a solution: instead of helping all low income people indistinguishably, just help the ones whom doctors deem as incapable of work.

Last edited by QFT on 10 Aug 2019, 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.