Unchecked capitalism evolves into evil. But capitalism itself just a concept. Concepts are not evil.
It might be possible to transfer the dynamics to something that isn’t the economy, my favorite example is “as a game mechanic” or “as a sexual fetish” the big one is that all participants/players consent to it and have the right to stop and retract consent without losing the means to live and survive.
I can argue the same thing with consensual (Mussolini) fascism, which arguably already has an ethical
expression within master/slave bdsm role play.
I mean you only just entered the conversation i recon.
I have spend rather a lot of time today to clarify the philosophical reasoning that in reality “inherent evil” does not exist and borders on religious dogma. Evil is emergent of how people use/act/express and not the tool/systems themselves, which could have undiscovered ethical uses.
You can look trough my comments history if you want. I mainly learned not to debate philosophy in a popular meme community, even if I believe its important and relevant to anarchism.
In a society enslaved by a capitalist mode of production there clearly does not exist any checked capitalism. No chance even.
My best bet is some undiscovered more enlightened aliens. Just because we don’t have it does not mean it can’t exist. Or if you want me to repeat the example from my
tiresom discussion below. The gamemakers who try to sell a story with it, the scientists who try to simulate it to explore the concept academically.
For the record i do not desire or am trying to create “ethical capitalism” so i dont care about who would need to check it. I fucking hate it for all the harm humans have committed trough wrongful expression of it.
But if some day some humans do find a way to incorporate the capitalt concept in some harmless way i will neither be suprised nor call for purging that entire community. Which is what i am getting the feeling some people would do. The devil isn’t real.
That may actually just be how talk. I do read theory and its somewhere in here but it doesn’t replace my actual thoughts.
A problem i have with theory (inspirational as it is) is its rather old and limiting.
It is believed that bigotry was beneficial in very primitive humanoids: If you don’t know germ theory (or any biology tbh), bigotry helps against spread of diseases (while it might lead to incest… so you gotta balance it!)
Your immune system shows signs of heavy bigotry.
Evil is a category. Lion’s survival is “evil” to a gazelle while it is “good” to its offsprings.
How can I make my text better so you see that I’m trying to show that concepts themselves are not evil and only how you use those concepts make them evil to some subset of living beings?
I don’t know, most concepts are only bad when the recipient is human. We do unimaginable things to bacteria but we(including me) don’t see those as atrocities. Murder is bad but sterilization(mass murder of a colony) of a medical tool is ok.
How can I make my text better so you see that I’m trying to show that concepts themselves are not evil and only how you use those concepts make them evil to some subset of living beings?
Your comment sounded like a defense of eugenics, dude.
Eugenics(humans) = Currently everyone(I’m here.) but some cults agree that it’s bad.
Eugenics(animals) = We call it selective breeding/artificial selection and it’s a multimillion dollar industry, which is considered good.
Eugenics(plants) = We call it agriculture, the backbone of any civilization.
edit: Bottomline in case you misunderstand me again: Concepts are not inherently evil, how you use them makes them evil to some living beings (or all in some cases).
Bigotry and general evil as attributes of the bad guy in a tabletop rpg where such settings was communicated beforehand and your right to opt out at any point respected by all players and the dm.
What the F hell, absolutely not! The current dystopia is literally killing me.
I am a genderfluid autist, you think i am ok living in this world that has been harmfull to me non stop?
I just also a philosopher and like to know how reality works and what i discovered is that “evil” is an emergent concept from how humans express themselves in ways that overruled others consent. From being forced to listen to insults by the boss to physical assault.
You could not have judged me more wrong friend(?).
Great point. A dystopia in science fiction is indeed harmless. Because its a game i cant actually be physically harmed so i fully enjoy giving my consent to playing it
Wait you where arguing against me.
Are you saying we should ban violence and evil in games? I know this maybe common in orthodox religions but i can’t agree, media like cyberpunk are proving positive value by how they critique how concepts can be expressed as evil. Thats majorly important for the growth in society.
(Either the religious angle or you completely misunderstood my entire point, context is key. The way and when it is expressed is context)
You knew the context of the thread, and you chose to be like “um ackshully, all concepts are benign” as though the context in which we were speaking encompassed fiction and roleplay instead of actual harm to actual people. It belittled that harm for no reason.
I said the same thing about what was harming you, and now you have a problem.
Not op that you replied to, but i find it funny to read your comments. I distinctly remember as a kid that i was playing with lego and i then realised that things like “justice” and “evil” are just in the eye of the beholder.
The good guy wanted to “protect his people and slay evil” (very hero-ist of the king lol) while the bad guy wanted to “have justice for being exiled and have better living conditions”. I realised they were both, essentially, the same thing. Both involved evil acts ( killing and fighting ).
So reading this chain of comments reminded me of that memory, and how true it is, at its core.
When we add factors like humans and power things gets vastly more complicated, but the core is the same.
Just like how current AI at its core, is interesting and super cool, but its been twisted and turned into something terrible because of humans, power and money
My autistic secret is i never stopped playing in my head.
The ability to build words from fantasy with my
drive for scientific realism allows me to experiment and study any idea or concept i encounter. I struggled a lot to understand my existence as a kid and it provided much more then school possible could.
But shh, dont tell anyone. People tend to find this weird (although i am getting the perception people are much more open to the action of daydreaming these days)
Huh, interesting. Im autistic myself and whenever i try to imagine a situation or place i kinda generate a world or scene in my head and apply what i know, or try to think of what could happen in that situation. In my day job this helps a lot to detect problems or make designs for things.
But i have never stood still to think that what you linked is like a mature, overpowered version of what kids have. Thats flipping interresting
There’s nothing morally wrong with being greedy by itself. If someone does a good thing for selfish reasons, that’s still a good thing. If I decide to become a doctor because I selfishly want respect, admiration, and social or monetary capital, the world is still better off for me doing so. Sick people will get better.
Greed only becomes bad when you empower people to use violence to keep themselves on top. Most often it is the threat of state violence that forces people into situations where abuse occurs.
No, you can’t disassociate from my factory because I own the patent (says the state), I own the land (says the state), and I own the distribution liscences, (says the state). If you violate my state given rights, the police will come and beat you. I can abuse you, and you can’t leave because the state will punish you if you do. It’s against the principals of the free market.
There are always fools who can be tricked into thinking the new group of tyrants will be different but the results speak for themselves, and much analysis has pointed out the factors in Marx’s ideas that led to these outcomes.
My guess is you where trying to refere to the ridiculous attempts by the soviet union which to my understanding where designed to fail to set an example. (Look it up)
The core issue is that a nation has a centralized government that is always opposes to disbanding itself. Lenins vanguard party was a fascist takeover of marxist decentralized principles. (look it up)
You didn’t list any socialist societies. The first is a group of people who go camping annually together then go back to their real lives(in a capitalist society). Second is an authoritarian society which bans independent media and the third is another group where you vacation in this society until you get tired of it and just leave to your real life so that another can join(they also ban media).
Unless banning types of media is ok now for socialist societies?
None of them are an actual socialist nation. I wouldn’t be thinking of the Soviets, no. There was nothing socialist about them other than an initial. I wasn’t hinking of any in particular because there are not any. I wish there were and I hope for one but there isn’t one yet.
I have no contacts within the latest two but there are absolutely people in the rainbow family who live like that all year round with their entire family.
They are nomadic, have no homeland. There is no leadership, no scarcity (they often have leftovers they don’t know what to do with) its pure anarchistic communism.
Also dont trust to much from what you see online, these communities are aware bad actors and governments dislike them. You need to be invited for actual whereabouts.
This may be a possible reason why the syrian group may democratically ellect against media presence. What i found most interesting about them is that its one of the first Islamic communities i heard of that explicitly calls for equal gender rights.
Sure thing… it’s not like capitalism is fundamentally designed to empower the pathologically greedy or anything, eh?
No i get their point.
Unchecked capitalism evolves into evil. But capitalism itself just a concept. Concepts are not evil.
It might be possible to transfer the dynamics to something that isn’t the economy, my favorite example is “as a game mechanic” or “as a sexual fetish” the big one is that all participants/players consent to it and have the right to stop and retract consent without losing the means to live and survive.
I can argue the same thing with consensual (Mussolini) fascism, which arguably already has an ethical expression within master/slave bdsm role play.
I hate the “unchecked capitalism is bad” bullshit. It’s such a cop out.
It is inherently bad.
sigh
I mean you only just entered the conversation i recon.
I have spend rather a lot of time today to clarify the philosophical reasoning that in reality “inherent evil” does not exist and borders on religious dogma. Evil is emergent of how people use/act/express and not the tool/systems themselves, which could have undiscovered ethical uses.
You can look trough my comments history if you want. I mainly learned not to debate philosophy in a popular meme community, even if I believe its important and relevant to anarchism.
Lol! “Unchecked capitalism,” you say?
Do tell, genius… who is supposed to do the “checking” in a society enslaved by the capitalist mode of production?
In a society enslaved by a capitalist mode of production there clearly does not exist any checked capitalism. No chance even.
My best bet is some undiscovered more enlightened aliens. Just because we don’t have it does not mean it can’t exist. Or if you want me to repeat the example from my tiresom discussion below. The gamemakers who try to sell a story with it, the scientists who try to simulate it to explore the concept academically.
For the record i do not desire or am trying to create “ethical capitalism” so i dont care about who would need to check it. I fucking hate it for all the harm humans have committed trough wrongful expression of it.
But if some day some humans do find a way to incorporate the capitalt concept in some harmless way i will neither be suprised nor call for purging that entire community. Which is what i am getting the feeling some people would do. The devil isn’t real.
Bro, read some theory. This is borderline stream of consciousness.
That may actually just be how talk. I do read theory and its somewhere in here but it doesn’t replace my actual thoughts. A problem i have with theory (inspirational as it is) is its rather old and limiting.
Old is fine. I started with the Communist Manifesto like most people. But Conquest of Bread by Peter Kropotkin is “required” reading now.
If you hate reading old stuff that much https://mander.xyz/post/38822770 join the dbzer0 reading group.
I don’t hate it, its just lacking sometimes.
I will give this one a go, thanks for the resource.
I second Kropotkin. Mutual Aid is worth reading as well.
Bigotry is a concept. Evil itself is a concept.
It is believed that bigotry was beneficial in very primitive humanoids: If you don’t know germ theory (or any biology tbh), bigotry helps against spread of diseases (while it might lead to incest… so you gotta balance it!)
Your immune system shows signs of heavy bigotry.
Evil is a category. Lion’s survival is “evil” to a gazelle while it is “good” to its offsprings.
Look at this guy defending bigotry.
How can I make my text better so you see that I’m trying to show that concepts themselves are not evil and only how you use those concepts make them evil to some subset of living beings?
I thought making fun of incest was enough.
We see what you’re trying to do, you’re just failing to convince anyone. There are some objectively bad concepts.
I don’t know, most concepts are only bad when the recipient is human. We do unimaginable things to bacteria but we(including me) don’t see those as atrocities. Murder is bad but sterilization(mass murder of a colony) of a medical tool is ok.
Your comment sounded like a defense of eugenics, dude.
Eugenics(humans) = Currently everyone(I’m here.) but some cults agree that it’s bad.
Eugenics(animals) = We call it selective breeding/artificial selection and it’s a multimillion dollar industry, which is considered good.
Eugenics(plants) = We call it agriculture, the backbone of any civilization.
edit: Bottomline in case you misunderstand me again: Concepts are not inherently evil, how you use them makes them evil to some living beings (or all in some cases).
Bigotry and general evil as attributes of the bad guy in a tabletop rpg where such settings was communicated beforehand and your right to opt out at any point respected by all players and the dm.
I’m sure you consider bigotry and evil just fine in all contexts just like you do the worst of capitalism.
What the F hell, absolutely not! The current dystopia is literally killing me.
I am a genderfluid autist, you think i am ok living in this world that has been harmfull to me non stop?
I just also a philosopher and like to know how reality works and what i discovered is that “evil” is an emergent concept from how humans express themselves in ways that overruled others consent. From being forced to listen to insults by the boss to physical assault.
You could not have judged me more wrong friend(?).
Dystopia exists in cyberpunk fiction, therefore it is harmless and you’re fine.
Great point. A dystopia in science fiction is indeed harmless. Because its a game i cant actually be physically harmed so i fully enjoy giving my consent to playing it
Wait you where arguing against me. Are you saying we should ban violence and evil in games? I know this maybe common in orthodox religions but i can’t agree, media like cyberpunk are proving positive value by how they critique how concepts can be expressed as evil. Thats majorly important for the growth in society.
(Either the religious angle or you completely misunderstood my entire point, context is key. The way and when it is expressed is context)
You knew the context of the thread, and you chose to be like “um ackshully, all concepts are benign” as though the context in which we were speaking encompassed fiction and roleplay instead of actual harm to actual people. It belittled that harm for no reason.
I said the same thing about what was harming you, and now you have a problem.
Not op that you replied to, but i find it funny to read your comments. I distinctly remember as a kid that i was playing with lego and i then realised that things like “justice” and “evil” are just in the eye of the beholder.
The good guy wanted to “protect his people and slay evil” (very hero-ist of the king lol) while the bad guy wanted to “have justice for being exiled and have better living conditions”. I realised they were both, essentially, the same thing. Both involved evil acts ( killing and fighting ).
So reading this chain of comments reminded me of that memory, and how true it is, at its core.
When we add factors like humans and power things gets vastly more complicated, but the core is the same.
Just like how current AI at its core, is interesting and super cool, but its been twisted and turned into something terrible because of humans, power and money
My autistic secret is i never stopped playing in my head. The ability to build words from fantasy with my drive for scientific realism allows me to experiment and study any idea or concept i encounter. I struggled a lot to understand my existence as a kid and it provided much more then school possible could.
But shh, dont tell anyone. People tend to find this weird (although i am getting the perception people are much more open to the action of daydreaming these days)
Huh, interesting. Im autistic myself and whenever i try to imagine a situation or place i kinda generate a world or scene in my head and apply what i know, or try to think of what could happen in that situation. In my day job this helps a lot to detect problems or make designs for things.
But i have never stood still to think that what you linked is like a mature, overpowered version of what kids have. Thats flipping interresting
There’s nothing morally wrong with being greedy by itself. If someone does a good thing for selfish reasons, that’s still a good thing. If I decide to become a doctor because I selfishly want respect, admiration, and social or monetary capital, the world is still better off for me doing so. Sick people will get better.
Greed only becomes bad when you empower people to use violence to keep themselves on top. Most often it is the threat of state violence that forces people into situations where abuse occurs.
No, you can’t disassociate from my factory because I own the patent (says the state), I own the land (says the state), and I own the distribution liscences, (says the state). If you violate my state given rights, the police will come and beat you. I can abuse you, and you can’t leave because the state will punish you if you do. It’s against the principals of the free market.
Says who?
What other mythical things do you believe in, liberal?
The tooth fairy, perhaps?
Self interest is a massive part of the open-source movement which is inherently anti-capitalist.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/self-interest.en.html
https://archive.fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6540-the-selfish-contributor-revisited/
Self interest isn’t greed.
For example, philanthropy is usually done entirely in self interest.
Read about mutual aid. “Survival of the fittest” isn’t the only mode of evolution, even in other animals/organisms in nature.
And you are conflating self-interest with greed because… ?
Do you genuinely not understand the point that @[email protected] and I are making, or are you just wasting everyone’s time Charlie Kirking?
Again - you are conflating self-interest with greed because… ?
How about you define those two terms yourself, and re-read the comment thread.
You’re not having a meaningful discussion by arguing the semantics around “self-interest” and “constructive greed”.
We are. Right now. And backpedalling because you got caught peddling ridiculous bullcrap isn’t going to help you.
So, again - you are conflating self-interest with greed because… ?
Emotions are inherently amoral. You clearly have an excess of them.
Come liberal, don’t be shy… tell me all the magical thinking you engage in on a regular business.
I’m willing to bet the ridiculous idea of a (so-called) “free market” isn’t even the worst one you’ve swallowed.
Cringe.
Are you a flat earther, perhaps?
Howzabout “chemtrails?” You get panic attacks every time an aircraft flies over at high altitude?
Every system of government is designed to empower the shitheads who came up with it.
Marxism is explicitly not designed that way. Like it’s the entire fucking point.
And yes, I’m aware of how attempts at Marxism have gone.
There are always fools who can be tricked into thinking the new group of tyrants will be different but the results speak for themselves, and much analysis has pointed out the factors in Marx’s ideas that led to these outcomes.
So I stand by my statement.
What do the pathologically greedy do in a socialist or communist system? They find a way to gain power except they have almost no competition.
And where’s your proof?
All of history.
I didn’t need to do research because i already knew about these successful societies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Family
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Autonomous_Administration_of_North_and_East_Syria
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_Oaks_Community,_Virginia
My guess is you where trying to refere to the ridiculous attempts by the soviet union which to my understanding where designed to fail to set an example. (Look it up)
The core issue is that a nation has a centralized government that is always opposes to disbanding itself. Lenins vanguard party was a fascist takeover of marxist decentralized principles. (look it up)
You didn’t list any socialist societies. The first is a group of people who go camping annually together then go back to their real lives(in a capitalist society). Second is an authoritarian society which bans independent media and the third is another group where you vacation in this society until you get tired of it and just leave to your real life so that another can join(they also ban media).
Unless banning types of media is ok now for socialist societies?
None of them are an actual socialist nation. I wouldn’t be thinking of the Soviets, no. There was nothing socialist about them other than an initial. I wasn’t hinking of any in particular because there are not any. I wish there were and I hope for one but there isn’t one yet.
I have no contacts within the latest two but there are absolutely people in the rainbow family who live like that all year round with their entire family.
They are nomadic, have no homeland. There is no leadership, no scarcity (they often have leftovers they don’t know what to do with) its pure anarchistic communism.
Also dont trust to much from what you see online, these communities are aware bad actors and governments dislike them. You need to be invited for actual whereabouts.
This may be a possible reason why the syrian group may democratically ellect against media presence. What i found most interesting about them is that its one of the first Islamic communities i heard of that explicitly calls for equal gender rights.
Just downvote the sea lion and move on.
Which parts of history, exactly?
The parts where legitimate attempts at a socialist society has been attempted anywhere in the world…of which all failed for human dickish reasons.
How did the anarchist collectives “[fail] for human dickish reasons”? Is outside pressure from fascists a problem inherent to socialism?
And where would those be?
I will give you the opportunity to search for those instances yourself.
No - you will point out these (supposed) “legitimate attempts at a socialist society” you speak of.