Funny how you say this, and then a few days later, you jump in my DMs to tell me my memes make me look mentally ill. I guess because you don't like that I'm shit talking authoritarian losers. I'm not sure since you won't even say what makes you think that. That's a pretty fucking judgmental take. Something I said must have really struck a chord. What'd I say that's been living in your head rent free the last few days?

Yeah, I did, after your smug attitude made it clear you thought I was an idiot. I may have said it in plain words first, but don't try to act like I was the only one being insulting. And again, all you've explained is what fiat allows them to do, not how that means this is anything other than capitalism. Your inability to do so suggests you don't know what you're talking about.

That's a rather lofty way to cop out instead of admitting you can't explain it

Lmao you're a joke

You dense bastard, I already said I'm not advocating for communism. I'm pointing out the inconsistency in what you're saying. You've explained what fiat allows the owner class to do, but you haven't explained how that means it's not capitalism.

Dude, you can't even explain yourself, don't try to tell me what I do and don't understand. Maybe consider the possibility you're the one who doesn't understand if you can't articulate your reasoning. Nothing about the quality of the money changes the fundamental structure of the economy. It changes the fairness, yeah, definitely, but it doesn't fundamentally restructure the economy or society. It just adds another perk to being in the owner class.

Lmao I'm not advocating for communism, I'm asking you to explain how we don't live under capitalism, and you can't seem to do it. You've set a seemingly arbitrary distinction and won't explain why it's a reasonable one to make. I understand bitcoin well enough, I just don't understand what *you're* saying.

We had hard, gold backed money in the Gilded Age of America, and it sure as shit didn't stop capitalism from abusing people. We hard, gold backed money when people fought for union rights and the government BOMBED its own citizens. We had hard, gold backed money when we sent children to work because their hands fit in the machines better so they could be maimed for life to save the capitalists a few bucks. We had hard, gold backed money when we had fucking slaves, when you could own and trade in living human beings. Abusing the money printer is just one of many, many ways the capitalist class exploits us, but the fact they're doing it doesn't change the fact we live under capitalism. You can't even explain WHY fiat means we don't live under capitalism, you just insist it makes a difference that you don't explain.

Okay, yeah, you've got the gist. Props for actually taking the time to read the basics and form your own opinion on it. Precious few people understand it beyond politicians smearing anything that might help the poor or cost the rich money. And yeah, it sounds nice, but I don't think we're ready for it. We can't control our greediest actors with power centralized like that. I think decentralized techs will help with that and it's part of why I'm curious to see how DAOs evolve.

My understanding differs a little on personal property, though. My understanding is that there's a distinction between personal and private property, which, to be fair, is some confusing terminology. If I have it right, personal property is fine and includes things like your home and most stuff your keep in and around it. Private property is ownership of things like but probably not entirely limited to the means of production, the land, tools, and materials needed to produce the goods and services that society depends on. So you could theoretically own your home, clothes, entertainment and hobby supplies, probably even the tools required to work your own individual trade, but you couldn't own, say, a factory that takes a couple dozen people to run or the power lines the city depends on for electricity.

I also disagree that fairness and freedom are fundamentally incompatible. In many cases, lack of fairness restricts our freedom. Employers leverage imbalanced power dynamics that force you to accept unfair wages to scrape by, restricting your freedom to act outside of work. Politicians define and enforce an unfair system designed to keep you in check, their friends in power and wealth, and any freedoms that might challenge that restricted. Shitty individuals will use their unchecked freedom to negatively impact your life and diminish your freedom to act as you choose. In a society that aims for and truly achieves both fairness and freedom, everyone would be given a fair shot at life, and the only freedoms you'd lose would be the ones that negatively impact others or ecosystems. I forget who said it or the exact wording, but there's a quote to the effect of your right to swing your first ends at the tip of someone else's nose. I think most of the freedoms we fear losing in a society like that are the ones we have been conditioned to accept as morally acceptable or even right despite the fact that they harm others unnecessarily.

I also don't think it's fundamentally incompatible with individual sovereignty so long as it's in line with the above on fairness and freedom. I want people to have as much freedom as reasonably possible, but I don't think it's reasonable for us to have the freedom to harm each other without consequence.

From my understanding, most of the harms and failures from communism aren't really aspects communism, just facets of implementations that sucked. For example, nothing about communism itself is against religion so far as I understand, but the USSR and CCCP both enforced mandatory atheism because they viewed it as incompatible. I don't think that's the case, nor do I think most of those other failures were required. They're failures in our ability to adequately govern each other, and many of those failures may be addressed by decentralized tech that increases transparency and allows us to better supervise our leaders and government workers. So for now, I agree it's a bad idea, but I think that may begin to change in the coming decades. I doubt any of us will live to see it happen. I don't think we'll be ready for it until we can achieve it peacefully.

I don't think that makes the system not capitalism, though. I think it just makes it a special subset of capitalism. None of this changes the fact that true value belongs to those with the means to buy and own the means of production. It's just capitalism in which the capital class has the means to pervert the language of value transmission.

In what way is it not capitalism? You've got people owning the means of production by virtue of having the wealth to buy them. That's textbook capitalism.

I'm gonna preempt by saying I'm not actually advocating for communism, just pointing out a trend I've noticed.

I can count on no fingers the number of times I've been warned about the dangers of communism by someone who actually understands communism. What do you think communism actually is?