Once media (any media) has been digitized and the cost of producing a duplicate is negligible, even in capitalist economists own terms, the price of further copies of the thing should trend towards zero over time. It’s only through extreme greed and state enforcement (which in theory goes against capitalist economics, though we all of course know that to be a lie) that the ability to sell individual digital goods is possible.

In other words, it is more ethical to “pirate” resources that it doesn’t cost anything to produce than it is ethical to prevent people from accessing that media for monetary reasons. If a particular artist feels that someone shouldn’t consume some media they created for some other reason, then I would respect that. But it’s not artists or creators who ever have a problem with that, it’s the production studios that exist to turn art into profit who care, artists themselves tend to be very OK with people accessing their work for free.

Ideally, we would have a system in place (UBI, cultural enrichment programs, etc) which funded art creation directly as a collective effort rather than through individualized personal purchases.

What?

I think a lot of people who you might think would not agree with that statement would actually agree and just say that feminism is bad. They may not say it out loud but they’re a lot more likely to these days

Thanks I didn’t get it at first

How would voters have the chance to “level the playing field”? The whole reason large donations are a problem is because most people don’t have that kind of money and it allows the wealthy few to buy elections?

I’m not looking for a politician to take anything seriously. I am looking for we the people to remake this godforsaken place, and that means implementing our goals directly, which includes dismantling every police station and sheriff’s office.

Seriously the police are kidnapping people at random and you still don’t get that the system is broken?

I’m not so unreasonable to assume that no one who is currently wearing a badge and gun can rehabilitate themselves into productive members of society, but the systems that they work as a part of need shut the fuck down.

To begin to analyze this we have to have clear, simple definitions of the left and right. I think it very easily maps on to authoritarianism vs. freedom. You could take “being racist” as a right-wing position and say “but they want to be free to do that”, but freedom only extends until you’re compromising someone else’s freedom, then it’s power. Whether it’s about being racist, controlling trans people or queer people, or whatever it is, the right worships one thing and that is power.

When you do that, by the very nature, it’s more easy to be organized and disciplined. There’s no one to push back on orders from above no matter how dumb because that’s the goal. If we try to strive for their level of organization and discipline, we become like them. We have to stop, every moment, and make sure that what we’re doing is something being consented to by the wider community. That’s just the nature of the fight.

And I don’t think it will ever end. There will always be this tension between permissiveness and discipline. We’ve just been stuck in the disciplined, authoritarian mode, since the authoritarians gained the upper hand by stealing the Americas.

If you’re looking for more reading along these lines I believe Graeber and Wengrow talk about this in The Dawn of Everything. But I’m also drawing from my own experience and understanding.

“No more police” is a pretty simple idea that seems to have slipped by you so idk

Right wingers don’t give a fuck to conserve anything. They’re fascists, regressives, revolutionary authoritarians

This is very confusing because ACA plans are for profit, so one pays more into them than they get out, even if they’re subsidized. So this is really not a thing that everyday people would would be doing and if anyone were manufacturing fake people to sell insurance to it would be someone high up at insurance companies.

Well, that’s not first-person…