cacheson

And shaming those that leech off the commons for profit without contributing back is a time-honored tradition.

Meanwhile, corpos scrambling to take down their "we ❤️ [profiting from] open source" banners.

Admittedly, reforming the current system would be hard, but theoretically it wouldn't have to be bloody.

Yeah, hopefully. If you're effective enough at pushing for change though, those that are threatened by that change are likely to attack you with whatever resources they can muster, and you'll need to successfully defend your movement. Landlords and big corporate shareholders aren't going to be real keen on having their money spigot turned off.

I've often wondered what effect it would have on homelessness if there were land in cities where everybody was allowed to live if they wanted. I imagine it would basically end up as a favela. Not great, but probably better than homelessness.

Not having their camps bulldozed and all of their possessions confiscated and destroyed by the government every few months would definitely be an improvement for homeless folks. Being able to have a rigid structure with a locking door would be even better. But yeah, leaving it at that still isn't ideal.

If we could bring wealth inequality down significantly, that would mean fewer people going homeless in the first place, and also society's altruistic resources wouldn't be stretched as thin. That might be enough to get everyone into better housing, at least out of safety hazard territory.

Yeah, that's fair. I think it's important to promote anarchism too, but it is a harder sell.

Overall, I think we just need to remind people that political and economic hierarchies are mutually reinforcing, and keep pushing things in a libertarian-ish direction.

I prefer mutualism to Georgism, but I prefer either to capitalism. ¯\(ツ)/¯

I call it mutualism.

The "still sounds like capitalism to me" part is the reason that I think it's the most practical way forward. It makes a radically beneficial structural change, while still being easily understood by anyone that's used to capitalism.

Socialists, generally speaking, want people to have ownership of their homes and workplaces. State socialists (think USSR-style) want this to be indirect, with the state owning everything on the behalf of the workers. Anarchists and other libertarian varieties of socialist want people to have this ownership directly, without the state as an intermediary. It's in this sense that mutualism is a form of socialism.

I included land in the absentee ownership prohibition because it's important for everyone to have somewhere they can exist without having to get permission. Whether one thinks of it as part of capitalism or not, the threat of homelessness (since all land is already owned) is part of what enforces our current economic hierarchy.

Sure, let's "regulate" capitalism by outlawing absentee ownership of land and capital.

I would say that wouldn't be capitalism anymore, but you can call it what you want.

Doesn't need to be perfect, just needs to be better.

"But hey guys, there's this other kind of social order that was also bad!"

I mean, yes? Maybe we should try to build a society that minimizes the amount of work that needs to be done. In order to do that, we have to recognize that capitalists would fight against our efforts, because they profit off of our labor.

And yes, the rulers of a USSR-style authoritarian socialist society would also fight against that kind of change, so maybe let's not go that route.

People will also say "benevolent dictatorship is the best form of government" without a hint of irony. ._.

When someone profits from your labor, it's in their interests to make sure that you labor as much as possible.

In a politically and economically egalitarian society, not only do you need to work fewer hours to meet your basic needs, but society as a whole will be much more interested in "the asymptotic abolition of work", through investment in automation technology and other means.

Under capitalism there is significant conflict over automation (see the current discourse over AI, for example), since the benefits go primarily to the capitalists, who are willing to let everyone else starve if they can get away with it.

Even if you're a die-hard capitalist, you shouldn't use "tankie" as a broad label for anti-capitalists. Diluting it as a term just helps the actual tankies (authoritarian communists).