Just tax the fucking things already. Fuck tax breaks and kick out any administrators who take the bribes and go against the wishes of their constituents.
Because violence tends to either escalate or peter out. Either you run out of people that support you or you eventually force the government to throw all its might at suppressing you. Unless you are very well-prepared, organised and have sufficient and resilient support, it might fail and not achieve much other than provide further pretext for crackdown.
Historically, non-violent resistance has a good track record, if (and only if) it is targeted well and applied with resilience and persistence. It has a potential to galvanise the participants, stir people into action (which helps with recruiting more) and cast the injustice of a violent system into relief.
Mind, non-violently doesn’t mean writing stern letters or standing on the wayside looking pissed. It absolutely includes disrupting, getting in the way, being a nuisance, being impossible to ignore. The Nashville sit-ins, for example, obstructed the business of lunch counters that refused to serve black people by taking up spots reserved for the people that the establishment would actually like to do business with. In our example, people might occupy the offices of the corrupt administrators, asking to talk to them and making them listen to their constituents in the most literal way, refusing to leave until they get results.
It most certainly will be considered some form of unlawful conduct and will possibly be met with force. The police will be called and start making arrests. But a well-organised and patient campaign to coerce the corrupt officials into rescinding their decisions or resigning (at which point their successors will be subjected to the same demand) doesn’t need to hurt people.
It just needs to erode their will until complying with the demands looks like the most bearable option.
It really weirds me out that gratuitous violence as a response to societal injustice is so common on Lemmy, if not across Humanity as a whole. Like let’s say this back-to-basics style of justice comes about in modern society and all the relevant assholes are subjected to it. What then? At least, what would the violence even be in the name of? Retribution? How is that productive in any way?
I realize this is a pretty disproportionate response to a relatively banal comment, but I see sentiments such as this one (either intended as sarcasm or not) so often here that I’m essentially using this as a catch-all spot for my thoughts on it.
I’ll just end this tangent with a quote about this sort of thing from a guy way smarter than me (and I promise I’m not just trying to be pretentious it actually applies.)
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. - My buddy Albert Camus
Maybe it’s because treating these amoral shitheads lightly has led us where we are today. They can’t be rehabilitated. They have no interest in being better people. If they’re eliminated they can’t come back to fuck shit up for everyone else anymore. They’re fundamentally broken human beings and should be discarded.
I don’t disagree, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves by getting rid of them in the name of some abstract value like revenge or justice. It should be a means of getting rid of what essentially amounts to a disease in humanity, nothing more. Pulling the lever in the trolley problem, basically.
We also can’t really say that getting rid of the current one-percent will solve the problem once and for all. As far as human civilization has existed there’s always been a group like that. There needs to be systematic prevention of such a group ever coming about in the first place.
If there’s no immediate resolution that we can all definitively see to the problem of disproportionate distribution of wealth, then nobody will be able to agree on when to stop the correctional acts. I mean, who’s to say when justice has been served? Hardly anyone can agree on what justice even is when it comes down to it, considering how it’s a concept that only really exists in human imagination. The French Revolution was great until the revolutionaries basically went nuts and started killing almost anyone who so much as criticized their methods. That shouldn’t be a possibility.
Of course there needs to be guidelines to to ensure things don’t get out of hand but systematic violence is still violence and violence is still necessary to that extent.
Yeah, the violence would be in the name of justice and retribution!
The chimpanzee method, as you call it, is the best form of justice for those sub-human billionaire and multi-millionaire urchins who kill, rape, and eat children.
Unless, of course, you’re okay with that form of violence? Are you okay with the violence inherent in the capitalist system?
Like where do you draw the line for violence and retribution?
Don’t put words in my mouth, they taste too salty.
To an extent violence is an effective tool: that I can definitely agree with. There’s never been any social progress without blood being shed on some level.
It’s when it turns into a gratuitous means of communal catharsis that it becomes inherently counterintuitive by serving no other practical outcome than creating murderers and dehumanizers out of progressives. And these sub-humans and urchins you speak of are, whether you like it or not, extremely human, and even further than that are direct products of the societies that we’ve been complacent in for our entire lives and, likewise, we are also products of.
So to answer your question clearly, I draw the line at violence when it’s in the name of the abstract: not only because I oppose things like the death penalty as a matter of principle, but because violence for an ideal or ideals is valuable to no one and nothing. No one gains anything material by destroying for the sake of it. It’s just that: destructive. Something I wish we humans learned a long time ago, but I digress.
Just tax the fucking things already. Fuck tax breaks and kick out any administrators who take the bribes and go against the wishes of their constituents.
Woah woah woah, let’s not get hasty. I say we dismember the administrators for taking bribes. Why just kick them out?
If one can dream and not make dreams your master.
Because violence tends to either escalate or peter out. Either you run out of people that support you or you eventually force the government to throw all its might at suppressing you. Unless you are very well-prepared, organised and have sufficient and resilient support, it might fail and not achieve much other than provide further pretext for crackdown.
Historically, non-violent resistance has a good track record, if (and only if) it is targeted well and applied with resilience and persistence. It has a potential to galvanise the participants, stir people into action (which helps with recruiting more) and cast the injustice of a violent system into relief.
Mind, non-violently doesn’t mean writing stern letters or standing on the wayside looking pissed. It absolutely includes disrupting, getting in the way, being a nuisance, being impossible to ignore. The Nashville sit-ins, for example, obstructed the business of lunch counters that refused to serve black people by taking up spots reserved for the people that the establishment would actually like to do business with. In our example, people might occupy the offices of the corrupt administrators, asking to talk to them and making them listen to their constituents in the most literal way, refusing to leave until they get results.
It most certainly will be considered some form of unlawful conduct and will possibly be met with force. The police will be called and start making arrests. But a well-organised and patient campaign to coerce the corrupt officials into rescinding their decisions or resigning (at which point their successors will be subjected to the same demand) doesn’t need to hurt people.
It just needs to erode their will until complying with the demands looks like the most bearable option.
Why wouldn’t you do that to the board of directors of the companies bribing the officials? When removing weeds you need to pull out the roots.
Everyone involved should be flayed.
When did they say not to?
Ah, the chimpanzee method.
It really weirds me out that gratuitous violence as a response to societal injustice is so common on Lemmy, if not across Humanity as a whole. Like let’s say this back-to-basics style of justice comes about in modern society and all the relevant assholes are subjected to it. What then? At least, what would the violence even be in the name of? Retribution? How is that productive in any way?
I realize this is a pretty disproportionate response to a relatively banal comment, but I see sentiments such as this one (either intended as sarcasm or not) so often here that I’m essentially using this as a catch-all spot for my thoughts on it.
I’ll just end this tangent with a quote about this sort of thing from a guy way smarter than me (and I promise I’m not just trying to be pretentious it actually applies.)
Maybe it’s because treating these amoral shitheads lightly has led us where we are today. They can’t be rehabilitated. They have no interest in being better people. If they’re eliminated they can’t come back to fuck shit up for everyone else anymore. They’re fundamentally broken human beings and should be discarded.
I don’t disagree, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves by getting rid of them in the name of some abstract value like revenge or justice. It should be a means of getting rid of what essentially amounts to a disease in humanity, nothing more. Pulling the lever in the trolley problem, basically.
We also can’t really say that getting rid of the current one-percent will solve the problem once and for all. As far as human civilization has existed there’s always been a group like that. There needs to be systematic prevention of such a group ever coming about in the first place.
If there’s no immediate resolution that we can all definitively see to the problem of disproportionate distribution of wealth, then nobody will be able to agree on when to stop the correctional acts. I mean, who’s to say when justice has been served? Hardly anyone can agree on what justice even is when it comes down to it, considering how it’s a concept that only really exists in human imagination. The French Revolution was great until the revolutionaries basically went nuts and started killing almost anyone who so much as criticized their methods. That shouldn’t be a possibility.
Of course there needs to be guidelines to to ensure things don’t get out of hand but systematic violence is still violence and violence is still necessary to that extent.
I think you are just seeing the pot boil over more and more.
It wasn’t like this 2 years ago.
Yeah, the violence would be in the name of justice and retribution!
The chimpanzee method, as you call it, is the best form of justice for those sub-human billionaire and multi-millionaire urchins who kill, rape, and eat children.
Unless, of course, you’re okay with that form of violence? Are you okay with the violence inherent in the capitalist system?
Like where do you draw the line for violence and retribution?
Don’t put words in my mouth, they taste too salty.
To an extent violence is an effective tool: that I can definitely agree with. There’s never been any social progress without blood being shed on some level.
It’s when it turns into a gratuitous means of communal catharsis that it becomes inherently counterintuitive by serving no other practical outcome than creating murderers and dehumanizers out of progressives. And these sub-humans and urchins you speak of are, whether you like it or not, extremely human, and even further than that are direct products of the societies that we’ve been complacent in for our entire lives and, likewise, we are also products of.
So to answer your question clearly, I draw the line at violence when it’s in the name of the abstract: not only because I oppose things like the death penalty as a matter of principle, but because violence for an ideal or ideals is valuable to no one and nothing. No one gains anything material by destroying for the sake of it. It’s just that: destructive. Something I wish we humans learned a long time ago, but I digress.
https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too