Decentralized infrastructure can be physical as well, such as microgrids that enable peer-to-peer solar energy sharing.

And sidenote: software engineers are exploited workers like the rest of us, and it’s a respectable profession. The “tech bros” you have to worry about are the wealthy CEOs masquerading as inventors and engineers like Elon Musk.

You’re using an example right now.

I don’t need to present a perfect alternative for my critique of Western Democracy to be valid. Critique is the means by which we can improve upon what already exists. Some short-term solutions could be to overturn citizens united and end legalized corporate lobbying, introduce voting reforms such as abolishing the electoral college and switching from first past the post to ranked choice or star voting, or expanding direct democratic programs like ballot initiatives. All of these have the effect of minimizing the influence of capital and maximizing the influence of people on the political process.

Longer term solutions involve bottom-up organization of things like mutual aid, unions of various types, decentralized infrastructure, community-run libraries (and not just for books), community gardens, etc. These kinds of dual-power structures always start small but have outsized positive effects on the communities they form in. If they were allowed to grow unhindered they would eventually grow together and easily supercede the top-down power structures that pervade our lives today, which is why they end up being suppressed or co-opted by the same.

A good example of how this occurs is how despite the internet providing a way to collect and distribute all the knowledge on earth for free to everyone on earth (the greatest library in all of human history), powerful corporations - with the help of governments around the world - unnecessarily spend vast amounts of wealth and resources to restrict the free exchange of ideas along socioeconomic lines.

No

I believe there are a lot of government orgs that could be forces for good if they weren’t completely at the mercy of powerful corporations.

It points out the contradiction of being in a supposedly free Western Democracy but still being totally at the mercy of others. It isn’t necessarily that Western Democracy is the cause, but that it fails to address these problems.

My paychecks from the CCP must be getting lost in the mail.

That’s some pretty wild conspiratorial thinking, do you actually have proof or just some anecdotes about people disagreeing with you?

I wish for once I could just have a civil conversation about my views without people immediately jumping down my throat and accusing me of being a CCP or Russian shill, or a dirty liberal, or a filthy communist. This is what I’m talking about when I say I just end up getting shit on from all sides. Every unsavory label in the book gets stuck to me before I even get a chance to clarify my views.

The problem I see here is that you perceive this as being anti-democracy when it really isn’t. Criticism of western democracy isn’t equivalent to a total rejection of democracy in general. Capitalism renders democracies ineffectual, which is what I perceived this meme to be pointing out.

Care to elaborate on that?

I don’t reject relationships with other people, but I think they should be between independent individuals who associate with each other only because they both want to. (Violating this principle is sometimes necessary but always undesirable.) You appear to think otherwise, and I suppose that’s a fundamental value difference that can’t be resolved through debate

I also believe in autonomy, but everyone has relationships with people they did not choose to associate with due entirely to unavoidable circumstance. This doesn’t just apply to family, but to everyone on earth to varying degrees. You are just as dependent on community as you are dependent on nature, a complex web of relationships of which you are a small part. Refusing to acknowledge that these relationships exist because you did not choose to enter them is childish, and it enables you to behave selfishly because you do not take responsibility for your externalities. This is the same pitfall that capitalists dive into to justify pollution and all manner of horrible things.

The bunker-building impulse demonstrates what’s wrong with libertarianism very well, an irrational attachment to individualism in all things. Libertarians refuse to acknowledge the positive role of nature and community in their lives, instead focusing on the negatives and spending all their energy fighting the very thing that keeps them alive. How long do you think you can last alone in a bunker without any support?

As an anarchist this is me on a good day. I more often find myself in the middle getting shit on from both directions.

If you too want to get out of the liberal vs communist showdown and smoke weed on the side come to slrpnk.net where only our memes community has liberals and communists fighting in the comments.

Silicon Valley techno-libertarians (a group I identify with)

I hate to break it to you but these are definitely the worst ones. It’s what the Gadsden flag waving canned food and gun hording preppers turn into if they end up with tons of money. These are the morons that build bunkers in New Zealand and try to brainstorm ways to keep their post-apocalyptic security guards loyal to them with remote-detonated bomb collars or holding their families hostage.

The idea of preventing private ownership and rent-seeking of communication platforms is.

Why are you so intent on keeping the conversation about the election? I’m trying to tell you your time and energy is better spent on other things. It’s unproductive to respond to people complaining about how all our candidates support genocide by basically telling them to shut up and choose.

I respect it but if you’re American and trying to take the word back, I’m afraid you’re a little too late. It’s a political party now and they’re all-in on corporatism.

Lemmy is an inherently libertarian platform

This is an interesting perception, because if you mean American libertarianism then this doesn’t really make sense. Lemmy’s creators are communist and intended it to be anti-corporate. It is designed in a decentralized manner specifically to avoid situations where companies can own and profit from it.

The kinds of platforms I would see as being libertarian (in the American sense) are the diaspora of privately owned social media companies.