The "who knew rejecting intellectual property was a core anarchist plank???" lib is also pro *gun control* and *mandatory public education*?
HOLY SHIT BURN THEM TO THE GROUND
this is literally everything that goes wrong when you try to tell democrats that they're "already anarchists because anarchy just means respecting people" or some shit
every single one of these people will be outraged we expect them to just serve sentences rather than snitch
I *cannot wait* for all the libs/marxists who just showed up to be all "expecting me to serve solitary confinement for a year rather than answer grand jury questions about other protesters is white supremacist / patriarchal / ableist /etc... why are anarchists jumping me??"
if people are whining about "emotional burdens" from folks telling them to shut up with horrid takes on how torrenting is basically rape you can tell they have absolutely zero spine or willingness to personally sacrifice.
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Let me just say that one of the critiques more humanities inclined folks often trot out of rationalist circles is that they're all arrogant engineers.
Actually their stronger problem -- as someone who's socialized at many events with them -- is *humility*.
Let me explain:
One of the most immediate things you notice at a rationalist social event is how many of them are, for lack of a better description, witless rubes who look up fawningly to anyone they think sounds intelligent and original (in a direction that doesn't challenge them).
Like you'll overhear someone confidently proclaim the most absurd or plainly wrong shit with no real justification besides essentially just trotting out some "I've five math phds" level handwavey qualifications. And a crowd will nod along, looking at them with sparkling eyes.
The best story the closet racist ever told was about a lawyer who is crippled by a fear she left her hairdryer on, constantly returning home/being late to work. Solution: just bring the damn hairdryer with you. Anyway, it's my story now.
The piece this story originates in is a defense of trans folks. It operates in an aside that's basically "sometimes you shouldn't care so much about 'solving' some underlying condition when you can just treat the symptom and save a life." That framing is dismissive, but...
A number of trans friends have positively cited that article as a powerful tool to win respect or even that helped free them to finally transition. The point of the story however is far more general about practicality and I've applied it in many situations.
As with ICE and Homeland Security, there's an astonishing lack of understanding of how RECENT a construction intellectual property mostly is. Copyright laws lagged into creation after the modern surge of creation. Patents, well...
When we say that the framework of intellectual property has literally killed hundreds of millions the examples of pharmaceutical patents is the most go-to example, but there are actually many more IP dynamics with arguably comparable death tolls.
I have basically zero patience when it comes to being expected to explain why racism and intellectual property are fucking evil.
I'll just yell at you and block you on both issues. These are such baselines in anarchism they're not up for debate. But read: dklevine.com/general/intell…
The ONLY justification ever for possession/property is scarcity. Information is not scarce and making it scarce has horrific externalities and philosophical implications. Labor is not an objective good of objective value. Making mud pies doesn't entitle you to compensation.
IP creates massive economic inefficiencies and damage literally measured in the deaths of hundreds of millions. But moreover IP is the logic of censorship and mind control, declaring you have the right to stop folks from ultimately quite arbitrary communication of experiences.
Core to my analysis of power has been -- since about 1998 -- that power is rooted in a cognitive strategy of disengagement (walls, borders, static systems, tradition, etc), whereas freedom is about engagement (networking, vigilance, reflection, empathy, etc).
I discuss this briefly in my piece Two Definitions Of Power (which got reposted in 2009 during a website change, but was first posted in the early 00s) while addressing and rejecting attempts to use "power" with positive valences or other definitions.
This core analytic dichotomy between engagement and disengagement cuts through all my work. It was initially a troubling tension with my involvement in the counter-globalization movement. Eventually it won out in the consent v agency framework debate and became positive freedom.
I keep re-emphasizing that limited time preference is connected to a limited circle of care. To blur our present identity with the agent operating in our body in the future is basically the same as blurring identity with agents operating in different bodies.
Fascism is based in the intensification of limited identity and horizons. It shrinks the circle of care to the nation -- or in the case of some fash, just the "individual."
This is likewise the mistake of liberal statism (which doesn't care to plan coherently for the future).