Authoritarianism and anti-authoritarianism: do they exist?

[rotting bones]

But you yourself expressed support for the Soviet Union forcing "psychiatric treatment" on their opponents on the basis that their opponents were "insane".

No. I do not:

I'm only saying humans are stupid and crazy.

[Travis B.]

The Soviet Union was right to think these people need psychiatric treatment.

Did you not say this?

[rotting bones]

The Soviet Union was right to think these people need psychiatric treatment.

Did you not say this?

I said the Soviet Union was right to say these people are crazy. I say it too. They were wrong to force people into psychiatric treatment over a difference of opinions. I do not support that.

[Travis B.]

The Soviet Union was right to think these people need psychiatric treatment.

Did you not say this?

I said the Soviet Union was right to say these people are crazy. I say it too. They were wrong to force people into psychiatric treatment over a difference of opinions. I do not support that.

I personally don't think that people are crazy just because they support capitalism. If anything, from the perspective of the capitalist class, they are simply acting in their own self-interest, which is perfectly sane. As for supporters of capitalism who are not members of the capitalist class, they may be misguided (as, after all, they are acting against their own self-interest), but being misguided and being crazy are not the same thing.

[rotting bones]

Did you not say this?

I said the Soviet Union was right to say these people are crazy. I say it too. They were wrong to force people into psychiatric treatment over a difference of opinions. I do not support that.

I personally don't think that people are crazy just because they support capitalism. If anything, from the perspective of the capitalist class, they are simply acting in their own self-interest, which is perfectly sane. As for supporters of capitalism who are not members of the capitalist class, they may be misguided (as, after all, they are acting against their own self-interest), but being misguided and being crazy are not the same thing.

They are not crazy to pursue their self-interest. They are crazy to think anyone will accept the self-interest of the rich as the self-interest of the poor. I have seen these people trying to teach the poor the self-interest of the rich as if these are wise life lessons they are imparting. This level of delusion is pathological.

[Travis B.]

I said the Soviet Union was right to say these people are crazy. I say it too. They were wrong to force people into psychiatric treatment over a difference of opinions. I do not support that.

I personally don't think that people are crazy just because they support capitalism. If anything, from the perspective of the capitalist class, they are simply acting in their own self-interest, which is perfectly sane. As for supporters of capitalism who are not members of the capitalist class, they may be misguided (as, after all, they are acting against their own self-interest), but being misguided and being crazy are not the same thing.

They are not crazy to pursue their self-interest. They are crazy to think anyone will accept the self-interest of the rich as the self-interest of the poor. I have seen these people trying to teach the poor the self-interest of the rich as if these are wise life lessons they are imparting. This level of delusion is pathological.

It serves the self-interest of the rich to attempt to make the poor think that their self-interest is the same as the self-interest of the rich. This is not delusion at all.

[rotting bones]

I personally don't think that people are crazy just because they support capitalism. If anything, from the perspective of the capitalist class, they are simply acting in their own self-interest, which is perfectly sane. As for supporters of capitalism who are not members of the capitalist class, they may be misguided (as, after all, they are acting against their own self-interest), but being misguided and being crazy are not the same thing.

They are not crazy to pursue their self-interest. They are crazy to think anyone will accept the self-interest of the rich as the self-interest of the poor. I have seen these people trying to teach the poor the self-interest of the rich as if these are wise life lessons they are imparting. This level of delusion is pathological.

It serves the self-interest of the rich to attempt to make the poor think that their self-interest is the same as the self-interest of the rich. This is not delusion at all.

If they thought this, they would be clever about it, but they are not. They express endless frustration that obvious truths are being rejected by wayward children.

Regarding pathological delusion, I'm with Foucault in that mental illness should be rehabilitated as normal and perhaps holy. I certainly do not support 20th century clinical treatments.

[rotting bones]

I suggest treating mainstream economists as fools for the market like the fools for Jesus. Maybe we can rub their heads for good luck.

[Travis B.]

They are not crazy to pursue their self-interest. They are crazy to think anyone will accept the self-interest of the rich as the self-interest of the poor. I have seen these people trying to teach the poor the self-interest of the rich as if these are wise life lessons they are imparting. This level of delusion is pathological.

It serves the self-interest of the rich to attempt to make the poor think that their self-interest is the same as the self-interest of the rich. This is not delusion at all.

If they thought this, they would be clever about it, but they are not. They express endless frustration that obvious truths are being rejected by wayward children.

Except that many people do accept the capitalists' propaganda as a matter of course, unfortunately. Think about how many Americans think of themselves as if they were down-on-their-luck rich people.

Regarding pathological delusion, I'm with Foucault in that mental illness should be rehabilitated as normal and perhaps holy. I certainly do not support 20th century clinical treatments.

To me antipsychiatry is highly destructive because modern psychiatry, when applied properly, allows many people, myself included, to live full lives, when in years past the same people would have been doomed to miserable existences, and antipsychiatry is needlessly going back to how things were in the bad old years. I am glad I live now, when effective treatments for bipolar disorder do very much exist, as untreated or ineffectively treated bipolar disorder is simply awful.

[rotting bones]

Except that many people do accept the capitalists' propaganda as a matter of course, unfortunately. Think about how many Americans think of themselves as if they were down-on-their-luck rich people.

They do, but they don't accept mainstream economic explanations for how things should work. They tend to think they are smart and are being kept down by some kind of conspiracy, whether political, religious, racial, or other.

Crucially: No one thinks going into debt and paying interest on a periodic basis after working hard is the system working as it should. This is precisely what mainstream economists want us to accept.

To me antipsychiatry is highly destructive because modern psychiatry, when applied properly, allows many people, myself included, to live full lives, when in years past the same people would have been doomed to miserable existences, and antipsychiatry is needlessly going back to how things were in the bad old years. I am glad I live now, when effective treatments for bipolar disorder do very much exist, as untreated or ineffectively treated bipolar disorder is simply awful.

I think treatment should be available for those who want it. I would be thrilled if neoclassical economists tried to overcome their efficiency fixation through therapy. Since they usually don't, we must not make them feel excluded.

[Travis B.]

Except that many people do accept the capitalists' propaganda as a matter of course, unfortunately. Think about how many Americans think of themselves as if they were down-on-their-luck rich people.

They do, but they don't accept mainstream economic explanations for how things should work. They tend to think they are smart and are being kept down by some kind of conspiracy, whether political, religious, racial, or other.

Crucially: No one thinks going into debt and paying interest on a periodic basis after working hard is the system working as it should. This is precisely what mainstream economists want us to accept.

It is details like this that people don't accept as mainstream economics goes ─ people simply aren't "Homo economicus" ─ but that does not mean that the population as a whole is really a bunch of people simply ready to accept socialism Any Day Now.

To me antipsychiatry is highly destructive because modern psychiatry, when applied properly, allows many people, myself included, to live full lives, when in years past the same people would have been doomed to miserable existences, and antipsychiatry is needlessly going back to how things were in the bad old years. I am glad I live now, when effective treatments for bipolar disorder do very much exist, as untreated or ineffectively treated bipolar disorder is simply awful.

I think treatment should be available for those who want it. I would be thrilled if neoclassical economists tried to overcome their efficiency fixation through therapy. Since they usually don't, we must not make them feel excluded.

I think treatment should be encouraged because it often enables people to live significantly better lives than otherwise, but sadly many people when they are very symptomatic, when they would benefit the most from treatment, at the same time are the least aware of the fact that they are symptomatic and that something can be done about it that would be to their benefit (or in psychiatric language, they lack insight).

[rotting bones]

It is details like this that people don't accept as mainstream economics goes ─ people simply aren't "Homo economicus" ─ but that does not mean that the population as a whole is really a bunch of people simply ready to accept socialism Any Day Now.

I never said that. I said after voting for the liberals, they will vote for the fascists. This is why leftists should change their tactics and offer something people will actually like. They will vote for the other party at least once regardless of what they offer as the people reject politician after politician, hoping to find someone who will actually help them.

I think treatment should be encouraged because it often enables people to live significantly better lives than otherwise, but sadly many people when they are very symptomatic, when they would benefit the most from treatment, at the same time are the least aware of the fact that they are symptomatic and that something can be done about it that would be to their benefit (or in psychiatric language, they lack insight).

Think about it from a mainstream economist's perspective. You work your butt off to get into an economics program, you refuse to look at any real world data, you impress your professors with your ruthlessness and frustration with ordinary people who won't try harder to go into debt. After all that, do you really want to come home to find your family having arranged an intervention for you?

No, I think it's best to let people who are doing well be as they are. If they realize that higher education has rendered then unsuitable to help anyone except talking heads on TV put down working class people with strerner authority, then we can drop hints about helping them figure out where they went wrong.

[Travis B.]

It is details like this that people don't accept as mainstream economics goes ─ people simply aren't "Homo economicus" ─ but that does not mean that the population as a whole is really a bunch of people simply ready to accept socialism Any Day Now.

I never said that. I said after voting for the liberals, they will vote for the fascists. This is why leftists should change their tactics and offer something people will actually like. They will vote for the other party at least once regardless of what they offer as the people reject politician after politician, hoping to find someone who will actually help them.

Leftists do have something to offer that people will actually like ─ when people are actually presented with what real socialism stands for, i.e. economic democracy, they very often do like it. The thing, though, is that most people don't have the least clue as to what real socialism stands for, and the capitalists have done their damnedest to make sure things stay that way. Capitalists have convinced people that socialism is about "giving people things", on one hand, and everything bad associated with big-C Communism, on the other hand, rather than people having what is already rightfully theirs by right of possession.

I think treatment should be encouraged because it often enables people to live significantly better lives than otherwise, but sadly many people when they are very symptomatic, when they would benefit the most from treatment, at the same time are the least aware of the fact that they are symptomatic and that something can be done about it that would be to their benefit (or in psychiatric language, they lack insight).

Think about it from a mainstream economist's perspective. You work your butt off to get into an economics program, you refuse to look at any real world data, you impress your professors with your ruthlessness and frustration with ordinary people who won't try harder to go into debt. After all that, do you really want to come home to find your family having arranged an intervention for you?

No, I think it's best to let people who are doing well be as they are. If they realize that higher education has rendered then unsuitable to help anyone except talking heads on TV put down working class people with strerner authority, then we can drop hints about helping them figure out where they went wrong.

Arranging "interventions" is typically very much not how you convince someone to seek treatment ─ it tends to be highly counterproductive, for obvious reasons.

Of course, to me mainstream economics is an ideology, not a mental illness, and there is a definite difference between the two.

[rotting bones]

Leftists do have something to offer that people will actually like ─ when people are actually presented with what real socialism stands for, i.e. economic democracy, they very often do like it. The thing, though, is that most people don't have the least clue as to what real socialism stands for, and the capitalists have done their damnedest to make sure things stay that way. Capitalists have convinced people that socialism is about "giving people things", on one hand, and everything bad associated with big-C Communism, on the other hand, rather than people having what is already rightfully theirs by right of possession.

Yes, I have been trying to explain a proposal for economic democracy.

Arranging "interventions" is typically very much not how you convince someone to seek treatment ─ it tends to be highly counterproductive, for obvious reasons.

Well, we tried everything else on my father who suffered from paranoid delusions at the end of his life. I'm not sure that would have worked either. How do you get someone to seek treatment when they don't want to, by force? Isn't it better to let them live the life they want?

Of course, to me mainstream economics is an ideology, not a mental illness, and there is a definite difference between the two.

What is the difference? Mainstream economists clearly suffer from intrusive thoughts about efficiency at the very least. Their thoughts about how smart and awesome rich people are seem like delusions. Their refusal to be moved by either arguments or data suggests a fixation.

Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. Perhaps, for some people, the idea that we are really ruled by drug-addled fools like Elon Musk is simply too horrible to contemplate. They retreat into the fantasy world of mainstream economics, where everything is as it should be. Is it right to forcibly take this delusion away from them and make them to face the harsh reality confronting us?

[Travis B.]

Leftists do have something to offer that people will actually like ─ when people are actually presented with what real socialism stands for, i.e. economic democracy, they very often do like it. The thing, though, is that most people don't have the least clue as to what real socialism stands for, and the capitalists have done their damnedest to make sure things stay that way. Capitalists have convinced people that socialism is about "giving people things", on one hand, and everything bad associated with big-C Communism, on the other hand, rather than people having what is already rightfully theirs by right of possession.

Yes, I have been trying to explain a proposal for economic democracy.

While people here have had issues with your proposal, they appear to be specific to your proposal and not issues with economic democracy as a whole.

Arranging "interventions" is typically very much not how you convince someone to seek treatment ─ it tends to be highly counterproductive, for obvious reasons.

Well, we tried everything else on my father who suffered from paranoid delusions at the end of his life. I'm not sure that would have worked either. How do you get someone to seek treatment when they don't want to, by force? Isn't it better to let them live the life they want?

My guess, from not knowing anything else about your father, is that those paranoid delusions may have been dementia-linked, and paranoid delusions related to dementia are often very hard to treat and to involve very little insight, as opposed to paranoid delusions linked to schizophrenia and mood disorders, which are often quite tractable provided the people in question stay on their meds. (Of course, 'provided' is the key word, as schizophrenia in particular is linked to lack of insight.)

Of course, to me mainstream economics is an ideology, not a mental illness, and there is a definite difference between the two.

What is the difference? Mainstream economists clearly suffer from intrusive thoughts about efficiency at the very least. Their thoughts about how smart and awesome rich people are seem like delusions. Their refusal to be moved by either arguments or data suggests a fixation.

Mental illnesses are clear syndromes of symptoms that normally operate on an individual level and often have a biological basis (even though they may be acquired and there are documented instances of mass mental syndromes such as the infamous Pokemon incident), whereas ideologies are constellations of learned sociopolitical and/or socioeconomic ideas that operate on a social level.

Marx said religion is the opium of the masses. Perhaps, for some people, the idea that we are really ruled by drug-addled fools like Elon Musk is simply too horrible to contemplate. They retreat into the fantasy world of mainstream economics, where everything is as it should be. Is it right to forcibly take this delusion away from them and make them to face the harsh reality confronting us?

I'm personally against diagnosing mainstream economists with sluggishly progressing schizophrenia myself.

[rotting bones]

While people here have had issues with your proposal, they appear to be specific to your proposal and not issues with economic democracy as a whole.

No, I'm saying left-liberal alternatives to my proposal don't address the underlying issues that cause voters to reject contemporary leftist economic solutions. Go back to the beginning of this argument to see what I said:

I don't know what to tell you if you haven't noticed yet that the people hate living in an economy which the left-liberals think is good. After you raise taxes, they are just going to vote for the fascists again. You might enjoy living under the kind of economy that the left-liberals want, but the voters genuinely do not. They hate it so much that they fall prey to all kinds of demagogues who tell them getting rid of the <designated parasites> will make <imaginary entity> great again.

As for my proposal, I have answered all the issues that were raised:

1. Enshrine human rights in the constitution. Uphold the rule of law.

2. Create jobs by popular vote. Expropriate means of production if the people vote for enough essential goods to be produced through the government that the government doesn't have the resources to do it otherwise. Do not expropriate means of production unless necessary. Do not expropriate means of production to let the government produce non-essential goods. The government can produce non-essential goods. It cannot expropriate means of production to do so.

The purpose of this proposal is to free the poor from dependence on the capitalists in various ways: capitalists can't stop creating jobs because line not go up, capitalists can't stop selling essential goods because line not go up, capitalists can't move capital abroad because line not go up, etc.

What it doesn't do is ban buying and selling.

I am not decreeing either salaries or prices. Nowhere do the terms "salary" and "price" occur in my proposal. I am decreeing increased production and sales of goods that the voters say they want more of. If a greater supply is available, the price will naturally fall. This is different from the normal practice under capitalism, which is to stop producing and, depending on whether the capitalist needs to liquidate assets quickly, stop selling goods when the prices fall too far. This possibility is barred under my proposal. No matter how far prices fall, the economy is going to keep producing more until the price of money rockets sky high. When the price of money is high, and the government hands it out by decree, salaries are high. Goods are cheap regardless of the actual denomination of notes being handed out.

"Salary" and "price" are NOT real things. They are second order effects of resources, production, distribution, supply, demand, buying, selling, and similar lower order economic facts. You will not be able to follow what my proposal says if you think in terms of realities that consumers face, which is only the tip of Cthulhu's tentacle.

If you have more, I welcome constructive criticism.

My guess, from not knowing anything else about your father, is that those paranoid delusions may have been dementia-linked, and paranoid delusions related to dementia are often very hard to treat and to involve very little insight, as opposed to paranoid delusions linked to schizophrenia and mood disorders, which are often quite tractable provided the people in question stay on their meds. (Of course, 'provided' is the key word, as schizophrenia in particular is linked to lack of insight.)

I don't know. We think it involved chemical contamination while working in a lab. He was a microbiologist specializing in bacterial toxins. Since he worked in discovering unknown toxins and their properties, I'm not sure medical science would have known what happened to him. Assuming it was a chemical contamination of some sort.

I'm personally against diagnosing mainstream economists with sluggishly progressing schizophrenia myself.

I suspect the ideology of mainstream economics feeds off a substrate of obsessive personality disorder and associated pathologies.

[Travis B.]

While people here have had issues with your proposal, they appear to be specific to your proposal and not issues with economic democracy as a whole.

No, I'm saying left-liberal alternatives to my proposal don't address the underlying issues that cause voters to reject contemporary leftist economic solutions. Go back to the beginning of this argument to see what I said:

I don't know what to tell you if you haven't noticed yet that the people hate living in an economy which the left-liberals think is good. After you raise taxes, they are just going to vote for the fascists again. You might enjoy living under the kind of economy that the left-liberals want, but the voters genuinely do not. They hate it so much that they fall prey to all kinds of demagogues who tell them getting rid of the <designated parasites> will make <imaginary entity> great again.

As for my proposal, I have answered all the issues that were raised:

1. Enshrine human rights in the constitution. Uphold the rule of law.

2. Create jobs by popular vote. Expropriate means of production if the people vote for enough essential goods to be produced through the government that the government doesn't have the resources to do it otherwise. Do not expropriate means of production unless necessary. Do not expropriate means of production to let the government produce non-essential goods. The government can produce non-essential goods. It cannot expropriate means of production to do so.

The purpose of this proposal is to free the poor from dependence on the capitalists in various ways: capitalists can't stop creating jobs because line not go up, capitalists can't stop selling essential goods because line not go up, capitalists can't move capital abroad because line not go up, etc.

What it doesn't do is ban buying and selling.

I am not decreeing either salaries or prices. Nowhere do the terms "salary" and "price" occur in my proposal. I am decreeing increased production and sales of goods that the voters say they want more of. If a greater supply is available, the price will naturally fall. This is different from the normal practice under capitalism, which is to stop producing and, depending on whether the capitalist needs to liquidate assets quickly, stop selling goods when the prices fall too far. This possibility is barred under my proposal. No matter how far prices fall, the economy is going to keep producing more until the price of money rockets sky high. When the price of money is high, and the government hands it out by decree, salaries are high. Goods are cheap regardless of the actual denomination of notes being handed out.

"Salary" and "price" are NOT real things. They are second order effects of resources, production, distribution, supply, demand, buying, selling, and similar lower order economic facts. You will not be able to follow what my proposal says if you think in terms of realities that consumers face, which is only the tip of Cthulhu's tentacle.

If you have more, I welcome constructive criticism.

My main issue with such democratic central planning by vote is that what people vote for may not accurately reflect their actual needs (you would need something else to act as a proxy for a vote, for instance how many times someone goes to a store and buys a certain product multiplied by the amount of labor that went into making that product), and is only applicable for production of things directly consumed by consumers (whereas much of the economy involves things bought by other companies).

I see this kind of system being primarily useful in determining funding for things such as works with negligible marginal cost, e.g. recorded music, which are consumed by the general public in particular. (E.g. people could have streaming music where their vote goes to individual artists in proportion to how many times they have played that artist out of the total times they have played songs.)

My guess, from not knowing anything else about your father, is that those paranoid delusions may have been dementia-linked, and paranoid delusions related to dementia are often very hard to treat and to involve very little insight, as opposed to paranoid delusions linked to schizophrenia and mood disorders, which are often quite tractable provided the people in question stay on their meds. (Of course, 'provided' is the key word, as schizophrenia in particular is linked to lack of insight.)

I don't know. We think it involved chemical contamination while working in a lab. He was a microbiologist specializing in bacterial toxins. Since he worked in discovering unknown toxins and their properties, I'm not sure medical science would have known what happened to him. Assuming it was a chemical contamination of some sort.

Acquired paranoid delusions to me almost sounds like heavy metal toxicity or certain sorts of neurotoxic pesticide toxicity, not bacterial toxicity.

[Nortaneous]

Peasants who don't have country estates for whatever reason crowded into the cities to find jobs. This is why urban populations are "progressive".

Partly but also cities are generally more diverse owing to their higher population and density. You can find everything from gay bars to vegan restaurants to Mexican grocery stores on one street. The greater exposure to different ways of life and demographics builds open-mindedness. It's much harder to get that kind of exposure in rural areas.

This is not as true as people think. Boston has a dress code, for instance - I was warned about this when I visited and learned the hard way that they're serious about it. And I didn't find getting yelled at in DC (a place which increasingly resembles the cultural dead zones of the late Ottoman Empire, where the primary distinction between the cultures is which church one selects to color in one's necessary Postel's Law conservatism) by people in strange ethnic costumes for dressing in a manner that's entirely conformant with my culture but wouldn't fly in Riyadh to be the kind of experience that builds open-mindedness.

It is true that in cities one can find a wide range of food. But the idea that culture is just food is, at this point, a markedly provincial one. People who've spent their lives navigating the realities of multiculturalism are aware that culture goes quite a bit deeper than that. Gay bars, for instance, are an extremely anti-multicultural institution - such things are not tolerated in many cultures, and their existence is a sign of a certain cultural ascendancy that many people chafe at. Such as Omar Mateen.

The idea that cities correlated with open-mindedness was truer in past eras, when there was less multiculturalism and less divergence among cultures (sodomy laws were ruled to be unconstitutional in 2003), when there was less purely economic reason to live in cities (meaning that people who were there were likelier to be there for cultural reasons), and when the cost of housing wasn't so high (meaning that people could be there for cultural rather than economic reasons). But I don't think it'll last. San Francisco is too valuable to go uncontested, and eventually the upwardly mobile suburbanites will try to put an end to the Folsom Street Fair, which at any rate the internet has made visible to Oklahoma conservatives who really shouldn't know about it. There are parts of Appalachia with more cultural life and more "open-mindedness" in a certain artistic sense (but certainly not open-mindedness to any old-country conservatism that washes up on its shores; if you want that, you can go on Twitter and search for "groyper") than the major cities of the East Coast.

I respect London for still having Soho (we do not have such things in my country: Dupont Circle is a place for shitty bookstores) but its center increasingly resembles a walkable version of a Northern Virginia suburb - and why shouldn't it? It's the same people: office workers who moved there for their jobs and migrants from countries where a man is to have at least one wife. It's all very Postel's Law, it's all very bourgeois... It's just a reality of the new multicultural experience that it's wise to be conservative in what you emit, and on some level everyone knows it except the provincials who still think it's the 1960s.

I am also an office worker cursed to live in one of the six places in the world that has jobs, but I find life in these conservative environments uncongenial (and don't believe in deterministic teleological development of all human culture toward the endpoint of contemporary white America "cultural liberalism"), and consequently hope to retire early to a country estate in the greater metropolitan area of the kind of backwater college town where the multicultural reality of the lowest common denominator holds less force.

[Travis B.]

The thing to keep in mind is the paradox of tolerance, i.e. that if a tolerant society is to remain tolerant it must not tolerate intolerance, and this goes for multiculturalism -- for a multicultural society to remain tolerantly multicultural it must not tolerate parochial cultural conservatisms. Multiculturalism does not justify, say, conservative Muslim immigrants objecting to the opening of a gay bar, and indeed attempts to foist cultural conservatisms on the community should be rejected and suppressed. However, this does not mean that monocultures are necessarily any less prone to cultural conservatism by any means (take, for instance, the Republic of Ireland for much of the 20th century).

[WeepingElf]

Here is something I had to think of while skimming over this debate:

Voting doesn't make sense everywhere. Scientists don't vote about theories; rather, they discuss them and then test them to see which theory explains the observations best. That may result in the victory of a theory that is initially supported only by a minority. Likewise, voting about prices doesn't make sense. It results in prices that are too low, because in most markets, the customers (who want lower prices) vastly outnumber the producers (who want higher prices), and prices that don't cover the production costs drive producers out of the market and thereby cause shortages.