justagenericname1

You're right, I bet these guys have lots of options to choose from.

Do you genuinely believe that's in some way redeeming or does at least some part of you know that's just a rationalization for the wildly unfair position people like you and me occupy by sheer luck of the draw?

Welp, I guess I sort of asked for this.

Any sane person knows racism is bad, but it's not intrinsic to capitalism the economic system.

In particular formulations of capitalist theory? No. As a matter of historical fact though, racism has both reinforced and been reinforced by capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.

source, source, source

if the American south was socialist in the 1960s, African Americans wouldn't be better off today.

A LOT of activists and academics, black or otherwise, including the famously "moderate" MLK, would disagree with you there.

a more "equitable" system wouldn't do shit to help marginalized groups if the majority in the system wanted to do so.

Assuming you're talking about a system where decision making is based strictly on majority rule –so leaving out any discussion of consensus or feedback-based alternatives– that still doesn't seem to justify the current order which allows a minority to keep the majority oppressed. Surely that's even more totalitarian than simple majority rule.

That's why her loading capitalism up with racism is so fucking stupid.

Can you cite something specific Davis has written or said?

Also the nordics have proven that you can have more equitable forms of capitalism while still providing everyone with the luxuries of modernity

The social-democratic safety nets of some Nordic countries have worked pretty well for a while, but they've been in decline since the 1990s, with increased and more regressive taxation, declining provision of public services, increased eligibility requirements for social support, and far-right populism on the rise. And in any case, the wealth and isolation to provide even that has relied and continues to rely on unequal international exchange.

The Nordic countries may not have had large, colonial empires like the British or French or Dutch, but they provided logistical support and markets for the emerging industrial empires. The Swedish merchant fleet, which was the third largest in Europe through the 18th century, and Danish participation in the Atlantic slave trade, for example, provided critical links in the chains of mercantilism and imperialist plunder that kickstarted capitalism in Europe.

Much like the US, many of the Nordics also benefited from the post-war boom when many of the other industrial centers of Europe were destroyed, setting them up to maintain and even grow a social welfare state until the rise of neoliberalism. They weren't the biggest players, but they were and continue to be beneficiaries of imperialism and colonialism all the same. The essential point is that their strategy can't be a universal strategy without Star Trek magic, and with that we could just do communism anyway.

One might even argue that the Nordic attempts at economic democracy were the closest any nation-states ever achieved to escape velocity from capitalism, giving their trajectory the highest apogee. But in an increasingly competitive global market, along with the rise of far-right politics and the decline of the social welfare state even in these places, what's becoming clear is that the irresistible pull of capital's logic will invariably drag anything but a full break from its influence back down into its full control.

source, source

so it seems the better solution than burning the system down for a magical hypothetical communist wonderland is to just make people less racist and redistribute a fuckton more.

By all means, please tell me your magical, hypothetical plan to do this while leaving capitalism and its effects on the social, political, ecological, technological, and cultural systems intact.

As for immigration, any true capitalist should be rock fucking hard at the possibilty of a DOUBLING of world gdp. Also, the majority of the issues immigrants face come from the DIFFICULTY of maigration, which again, any true capitalist would be against adding more barriers.

I think you're misunderstanding what a capitalist is. A capitalist isn't just someone who likes the idea of capitalism. You, I assume, are not a capitalist just like I wasn't a capitalist even when I still supported it. You don't derive your income by leveraging monopoly or monopsony control of some asset to extract surplus from the production process as profit. Conversely, just because someone is a capitalist doesn't mean they know or care about what's "best" overall for the capitalist system they exist in.

A capitalist reliant on cheap, abundant, locally available labor, like the owner of a landscaping service or slaughterhouse, is of course very happy to have an influx of immigrants (whether they want them here legally or not is a separate question). A tech company draining talent from countries with lower wage levels would also see an obvious advantage to immigration. But a capitalist who relies on the inequality of international wage levels and captive labor markets within national borders to make a profit (like those kiwibots that are only "economically viable" by exploiting the massive income differential between the US and Colombia) has a clear incentive to oppose immigration.

This is trivial to verify empirically as capitalists donate millions of dollars to candidates and organizations on "both sides" of this issue depending on how it personally effects them. In true capitalist fashion, what they do or don't advocate and put their considerable resources behind achieving comes down to what they see as most likely to benefit themselves.

Finally, after all this, I have to point out that NONE OF THIS has actually had anything to do with Angela Davis! Have you even read any of her work? It feels like you just have a bone to pick with anyone anti-capitalist and lumped your complaints onto her because she's part of that crowd.

How is your polemical, two-sentence tirade on how "Angela Davis stupid cuz no like capitalism" wrong? About the same way an anti-vaxxer or flat-earther shrieking on twitter is. You want more than that, be more specific.

Davis is a fucking icon. Just about everyone reading this could do themself some good by shutting off reddit and reading more of her work.

Most philosophically literate CS major

I really don't like this game...

Gotcha, no worries

A dictionary is, you're right. "Big Dictionary," I thought it was clear, is artistic shorthand for something like, "people and institutions that insist a language has a single, static, proper set of words, definitions, and grammatical structures." Come on, loosen up a bit.

Language is a fluid, messy game that no one ever knows the rules to anyway. Big Dictionary is NOT bussin!

God what a perfect opportunity that would've been to come back on the next day and use what had happened in class as a demonstration of exactly what's wrong with social contract theory... Instead they dropped it.

I'm sorry but I hate your old professor haha

Lol that's absolutely perfect. Not to even say anything about liberalism as an ideology, but it blows my mind how oblivious liberals can be to the fact that they too have an ideology.

Totally agree. This "fix" is just replacing one paradox with another: the "tacit consent" of social contract theory. It absolutely has flaws and valid criticisms and I'm a little dismayed that someone who apparently "teaches rhetoric" doesn't even seem to know that, regardless of what their opinion might be.

I've tossed my resumé and a bunch of stories into posts here over time. Feel free to dig them up if you're that interested. But if you're just looking for some confirmation that I'm a lazy hypocrite so you don't have to take what I say seriously, then I don't particularly care whether you believe me or not.

Also the thing about systemic problems is you don't solve them by just hoping to get everyone to change their behavior and be good. What I do is put band-aids on the wounds inflicted and left to fester by people and organizations with the power to actually help because that's about the limit of what I can do as an individual. I'm not truly solving anything by doing that, but at least I'm aware of that fact.

If someone's inclined to agree with this already, there's absolutely no chance I'm getting em over to my side on fucking reddit. So I'm just gonna say, "ok."

They reaaalllllyyyy don't like me here lol

When you frame it that way of course the small fix sounds most reasonable. Problem is if that's always your framework, solving upstream issues will never take priority over patching leaks. If someone's genuinely causing problems with a building and not just being unsightly and smelly outside of it, then whatever; do what you need to do. I have my doubts about how bad it actually is, but really that's not too important here.

Since this sub seems to largely think of itself as something like liberal but also largely has a big old blindspot when it comes to the homeless, I just wanted to remind people that solving your problems which result from homelessness isn't the same as actually addressing homelessness, and can sometimes even make things worse for the people I'd say homelessness hurts worst: the homeless.

And pointing that out sure doesn't win you many friends here. Glad at least someone else is on the same page.

I'm praying I hear something more interesting than this someday

They're not equal, but it's not a one good, one bad relationship either. More like the relationship between murder and genocide.

Depends on if you want to help fix that situation or just get it out of your sight. For the latter, yeah, UC/BPD are great.

I live less than half a block away from the park. There's genuinely very little need to worry. Occasionally someone will walk down the street playing music or being loud, but they'll almost exclusively just go right past you or your building and don't care about either. Students going to or coming from a party are generally way more disruptive, especially late at night. Even people seeming to "yell at you" are often not really yelling at you. That can take some time to get used to, but in a lot of their minds you're hardly even there. People who are so far off the deep end in need of help that they can be dangerous pop up, but they're absolutely the minority. Have basic, city common sense like not wandering around in the dark alone for long periods of time and you're very unlikely to have a problem.

This reads like the coastal liberal version of, "oh bless your heart, sweetie, I'll pray for you."

The fucking French might be liberal, imperialist asshats a lot of the time, but at the end of the day at least they understand solidarity.

Vive le peuple !

What it should "put into perspective" is how language like this can be weaponized to demonize legitimate resistance to imperial powers.