[0665] Luna Under Pressure
└ posted on Monday, 9 March 2015, by Novil
I make the bold prediction that some vegetarians will not like this strip.
- Sandra: So that you two have something decent to eat, Benjamin’s dad will drop off something from his butchery every day from now on.
- Luna: Wow, thank you.
- Benjamin: Are two pounds enough?
- Luna: Two pounds of meat every day? Isn’t that a bit too much?
- Benjamin: “A bit too much?”
- Luna: ?
- Benjamin: I must’ve misheard. Because only a g-o-d-d-a-m-n commie would complain about “too much” meat…!
- Luna: Uuuuhh… three pounds would be even better, of course.
- Benjamin: Goddamn right!
@ Arent:
Some dude named Jerry wrote that in response to me calling Communism evil, not me.
@ Jerry:
“There is Nothing Inherently Evil or Insane about Communism.”
So you do not view theft and slavery as inherently evil? Communism advocates universal theft and universal slavery as a means to the end goal of universal economic ‘fairness’. If you move the methodology of Communism out of the realm of economics and into sex it becomes more clear. Under such a regime, all women and all men would be required to have sex with anyone else who wanted it and could not refuse them because everyone should have equal access to vaginas and penises. Institutionalized and universal rape, yay! Communism also advocates violence against those who do not comply. So yes, I’ll say Communism is inherently evil and insane, and greatly so.
“And, just for the record, None of the governments that Call themselves Communist have ever come even Close to actually Implementing Communism.”
And none ever will. Short of humans having mind control chips that turn us into automotans runs by a computer that no one can reprogram humanity will never come close to the beautiful dream of Communism. (That is sarcasm for the clueless.) It will always take the form of an Animal Farm type of government.
“In point of Fact, Communism is about the most Idealistic form of government ever proposed.”
If you accept equality of outcome as the ultimate good instead of equality of process and if you accept that the ends justify the means, I suppose you could believe that.
“It just has One Glaring Flaw:
It completly ignores Human Nature and therefore begins to deviate from its own ideals almost Immediately.”
Ignoring human nature is akin to saying ignores reality. Might as well say teleportation via thought is the best form of transportation ever proposed but societies based on moving goods and services and people based on said magical teleportation almost instantly deviate from the desired goal.
“The Closest thing we actually Have on this planet to Communisim are Beehives and Anthills.”
Those aren’t examples of Communism. The Queen gets all the perks. The model of one ruler and the rest who obey has been pretty well modeled by lots of human societies.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0iC9xpDSXyI
You think you could do a comic for this? Probably address the SJW and traditionalism extremes going on right now in addition?
Novil, I would like to see something like that coming up soon.
@ GnarlyDoug:
Holy shit, strawman arguments. I would have played examples of how Communism by nature gives no motivation for the individuals of a community to work hard. The first thing you addressed for “Communism is inherently insane and evil” is way too much in the range of making everything look extreme.
I would have looked at communism as an abusive and indifferent parent that doesn’t give a fuck about how well or poorly their children are doing. Someone makes something for themselves, they get beaten for hoarding. Another slacks off and they are still allowed to get whatever food is available for everyone else to have the same amount. Soon everyone would not be producing enough to sustain everyone else, and everyone dies.
It is like the captain that has a jammed submarine, not having enough air for two days when rescue cannot come in five, and decides not to sacrifice >66% his crew because everyone needs to have an equal chance of survival: none.
Communism would fundamentally discourage people from pulling their weight and kill everyone if there is even the slightest chance that less than half the people under them would survive a crisis. Communism is retarded beyond words and as an ideology it would not allow patience to realize that this is the case. This mixture of ignorance and retardedness makes communism a severely destructive, insane, and evil ideology.
Everything else you said I agree with though.
Communism also denies people the ability to follow their dreams.
@ preadatordetector:
“Holy shit, strawman arguments”
Where? I may have skipped a lot of steps to my view of Communism, but I do not believe I truly misrepresented what it is.
“The first thing you addressed for “Communism is inherently insane and evil” is way too much in the range of making everything look extreme.”
Communism IS extreme. It is as extreme as radical Islam or the Westboro Baptists. I’ve no interest in mitigating my language to appease fools who have drunk the Kool-Aid and think Communism is somehow rational just because a lot of people believe in it.
“I would have looked at communism as an abusive and indifferent parent that doesn’t give a fuck about how well or poorly their children are doing.”
Anthropomorphising natural phenomena like the sea or the lightning into gods helped people to an extent to make sense of a world they did not understand. It was just a place holder for the truth however, not a revealer of it. Your approach of anthropomorphising an ideology like Communism is no different.
I agree with Communism killing incentive, but that is nothing more than a symptom, not the cause. The cause is using violence as the core methodology for managing all economic transactions. Slaves will do enough work to not get beat, nothing more. Violence kills incentives, kills innovation, kills initiative. That is the poison pill at the heart of Communism, the rest is just decoration.
Disloyal Subject wrote:
Goodness, that’s specific. Do I detect personal experience behind this?
Actually, I think vegetarians would laugh and say “sounds about right.”
@Comunism Argument (Because there are WAY too many out there now), I’d actually argue that the internet is comunistic. You guys are all out there arguing why communism doesn’t work, and I agree that it didn’t work as a function of government and likely will never work in the physical world. On the internet, however, there are plenty of examples of functional small and large group communism. Why? Because one object is suddenly many the moment it hits the internet. You have to literally code in means of destroying the original if you wish to limit the amount of something out on the internet. However if you temporarily dismiss those tat require payments for their products by artificially limiting supply, the internet works on a communistic basis. Those who can draw comics do. those who can write code for free programs like paint.net do. Freeware operating systems too. People host server space for free. Programers, gamers, video-makers, etc. contribute what they can and have unfettered access to what other people have contributed. This is communism in essence. Just by being on this website and commenting, you are taking part of communism, putting up your contribution (post) and receiving unfettered access to the community’s resources.
The problems with communism are what follows, and probably ONLY what follows:
1. it does not account for human greed
2. it is not prepared to handle scarcity.
Hopefully the communism tag will be used more often.
@ Crazy Roth:
The internet itself is not Communistic. Their are hierarchies on the internet. There are sites you cannot enter and content you cannot see unless you pay. Internet access is not free and universally the same for everyone in the world. Most of the hardware the internet runs on is privately owned. The internet itself is an example of functional and nearly unregulated Capitalism, not Communism.
As for things like this conversation and open source software and whatnot that are openly available to all, that is not Communism either. It is Communal, but not all things Communal are Communist. That is the same type of logical fallacy as all dogs have tails, that animal has a tail, so it must be a dog. Communism specifically is about addressing issues of non-equitable distribution of financial and political power, real property, and scarce resources. Things like what you bring up are not even in context for what Communism attempts to address, making your whole statement a strawman.
GnarlyDoug wrote:
Oh contrair, my argument was far from strawman, and “all dogs have tails” arguments.
To begin with, let’s start with the first definition of communism that does not require Carl Marx.
“http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/communism.html” discusses a “classless society”, in which “all (or nearly all) property and resources are collectively owned” and “social relations were to be regulated … according to his ability, [and] his needs.” It also says “Differences between [types of] labor and between [types of] life were to disappear, opening up the way for unlimited development of human potential.” and that ” there has never been a truly communist state” Working from that definition alone, I can break my argument down into easier to digest peaces.
But first, I’d like to address the “pay to play” argument you made. Yes, some sites you do have to pay to access, making them less comunistic. And yes, individual sites are not comunistic. However, I can rebuttal all of those with relative ease. The idea of having sites which are under rule of moderators is the same idea as having houses and stores run by the people who live and work there; they represent a micro-government, not the macro one in question. What’s more, the data which is “pay to play” is still open to everyone, however our computers cannot understand it without having the key to deciphering it, which belongs to the person in the partnership. ALL scarcity on the internet, with the exception for when servers go down, is artificial. Without direct manipulation, there is an unlimited supply of all content.
Also, the hardware on which the internet runs is not the internet itself. That’s like saying we live in a cellular world simply because humans are made up of cells. Although true, we humans don’t work on the cellular level. Think of the hardware of the internet as the structure of the city, and the internet as the city. The structure needs to be there, but it’s immobile structure is hardly telling of the fluid city.
Now, let’s break into that definition, shall we?
” classless society”
First, we shall look at the classes on the internet. There really aren’t any. In aggregate, the difference between my use of the internet and yours is too minimal to be considered a difference in class. The only real class system there could be is a class by language,, as not all content is in all languages.
in which “all (or nearly all) property and resources are collectively owned”
The resources are actually the most interesting part of the internet however. With the number of people who put up free stuff and allow us to use their servers without charge, everyone has nearly equal access to all resources, be it coding classes or cute kitten photos or pirated movies. Once out there, anyone can request the data be sent to their computer, and barring firewalls and people who work hard to limit others access to data, that data is pretty much belonging to the person who requests it as well as the person who put it up in the first place. Not only that, Google’s cache and the internet archive will crawl the site and store any non-artificially blocked resources. In other words, any resource not actively hoarded does belong to the community, not just the person who hosts it.
“social relations were to be regulated … according to his ability, [and] his needs.”
Social relations are also different on the internet – we are exactly where we want to be at any given time, and we contribute exactly what we can contribute when we want to and take on the same lines, pardon the multiple meanings. I can put up videos and posts and potentially web comics, and take whatever I feel I want or need from the internet, and am free to do so according to the internet’s communistic economy.
“Differences between [types of] labor and between [types of] life were to disappear”
For the most part, we aren’t discriminated against when it comes to labor types. Programmers receive exactly the same amount of opportunities for information as comic writers do, but each take different opportunities. Now although these two experiences will never be the same as programmers will naturally opt for a more customizable browsing experience than a comic artist (Sorry, but only programmers really have power over their browsers, IRC clients, and developer tools), when it comes to potential content, their rankings are the same or proximately the same.
“opening up the way for unlimited development of human potential.”
If you do not believe this, please understand that the internet basically runs on an open source operating system written over the internet, and that many other open source programs are also available for free and run extremely well. There are also sites like this and YouTube and many
” there has never been a truly communist state”
That simple statement breaks every argument of how evil communism is when that argument is based on other country’s experiences. Communism has yet to actually be implemented as a system of government for any country. The government of the internet, however, has yet to be recognized because there is no central government – everything is public, no mater what. The government of the internet, in and of itself, is not a standard government because it s the first true implementation of any form of communism, even as the internet’s system of governing suffers from access fees and as governments in the physical world attempt to oversee it.
One last thing before closing down my argument: when you said that my closing arguments were “not what communism hopes to address”, you may have been right, but you were wrong in why I put them there. I put my arguments there because they follow what caused communism to fail to be implemented in other attempts to have communistic nations. The real idealistic goal of communism was to have all communal resources, which only the internet has achieved so far.
—–
You called my argument a straw-man, but it seems Rumple Stilskin has already been here, for my argument did not burn quite as easily as you thought it would.
GnarlyDoug wrote:
It was adressed to “Jerry”, not to you.
Crazy Roth wrote:
But any kind of society, laws, ethics, governments exist *pecisely* to handle scarcity and ressource conflicts. To design a “perfect” society without taking into account how to handle scarcity and human greed is simply insane.
Arent wrote:
Which is why it didn’t work. However having an experiment with an idealistic extreme which fails to take into account certain aspects of society is exactly how we identify those aspects of society. I have no doubt that Communism is flawed and definitely failed to do the jobs necessary to be successfully implemented. However nothing that I have seen from it even suggests “evil” to me.
@ Crazy Roth:
Then I guess the wars and the racial cleansings and so on were also worthy experiments in the name of humanity.
(I know, now comes the part: “Hey, those are not the same….”)
((Yes, they are.))
I’m done with this, if you don’t know the crimes they commited and the number of people they killed and deported in the name of communism, I’m not going to argue this further. You have the right be believe what you want. Yay for liberalism.
@ Arent:
Hear, hear! Have my like, Sir or Lady.
@ Crazy Roth:
“To begin with, let’s start with the first definition of communism that does not require Carl Marx.”
Then you’re not talking about Communism, you are talking about another ideology called Communism by someone else but that is different.
“The idea of having sites which are under rule of moderators is the same idea as having houses and stores run by the people who live and work there; they represent a micro-government, not the macro one in question”
If it’s not setting policy for others and backing it with threats of violence it is not a government. In your example, whatever institution gets to decide who lives and manages which shops and houses is the only institution that can truly be called a ‘government’. The shopkeeper can only be called a government if he can write his own laws and then back them with threats of violence and the larger society sanctions this. “You did not wipe your feat before entering my shop! Give me all of your stuff as compensation or I kill you. It’s legal because I set the rules here.”
The problem with your analogy is that it removes the core aspect that matters, the use and threat of violence against others. I could not care less about whatever voluntary relationships and agreements people enter into. Glossing over that by calling things things like shopkeepers ‘micro-governments’ is just an example of reductio ad absurdum.
“ALL scarcity on the internet, with the exception for when servers go down, is artificial. ”
You forgot bandwidth and access points, but in the main I totally agree. The great wonder of the internet is that it has made access to information non-scarce.
“” classless society”
First, we shall look at the classes on the internet. There really aren’t any.”
The IETF sets the actual rules of how the internet functions. Way more say than you or I. The Great Firewall of China makes everyone in China a second class internet citizen. Christopher Poole, aka ‘moot’ and founder of 4chan is internet nobility. Try pissing him off and see how egalitarian the internet really is.
“in which “all (or nearly all) property and resources are collectively owned””
This I’ll grant you. Very little infrastructure is collectively owned, but the part that matters, the data, in the main is. It is however heavily filtered, monitored, and controlled and not by the same collective that makes use of it.
“social relations were to be regulated … according to his ability, [and] his needs.”
Social relations are also different on the internet – we are exactly where we want to be at any given time, and we contribute exactly what we can contribute when we want to and take on the same lines, pardon the multiple meanings.”
What you describe is the opposite of your social relations being regulated according to ability and needs. Under the Communist doctrine if you were for example good at teaching math and someone else needed a math teacher you would be REQUIRED to provide said instruction and videos. You have the ability, he has the need. Communism is not about freedom and liberty.
““opening up the way for unlimited development of human potential.”
If you do not believe this, please understand that the internet basically runs on an open source operating system written over the internet, ”
I’ve been a professional software developer for nearly 2 decades and into computers for years longer than that. (I’m not quite but almost old). I know what open source software is and I was a proponent of it before 99% of the people in the world had ever even heard of it or Linux. Open source software is communal and I am a big fan, but it is not an example of Communism. Stop conflating voluntary interactions with the forced redistribution of scarce resources, forced interactions, and forced social structures Communism is actually about.
“” there has never been a truly communist state”
That simple statement breaks every argument of how evil communism is when that argument is based on other country’s experiences.”
Not quite following what you were trying to say. Using violence to take the fruits of someone’s labor to give it to someone else or for yourself is wrong, even if done for the purpose of giving to the poor. Any society based on doing that is thus wrong. I do not need to see it implemented to know that it is wrong.
“The government of the internet, however, has yet to be recognized because there is no central government – everything is public, no mater what.”
No it is not public no matter what. Government monitoring is pandemic. The US just passed the Internet Neutrality act. Regulation is coming, it’s just taking time.
“The government of the internet, in and of itself, is not a standard government because it s the first true implementation of any form of communism, even as the internet’s system of governing suffers from access fees and as governments in the physical world attempt to oversee it.”
The internet is not a true implementation of Communism. It is a nearly true implementation of Anarcho-Capitalism. Open Source is basically a true implementation of pure Anarchism. Anarchy means rules without rulers. It does not mean chaos or rule by the strong like most people think. Communists like to call themselves Anarchists, but because Communism sanctions, even requires, violence to achieve it’s ends it will always devolve into a form of Totalitarianism, the opposite of Anarchy.
szemte wrote:
No, because the moment you start comparing attempts to kill people for “racial cleansing” with attempts to hold a more perfect government, you change between analyzing government strategies to corruption. If racial cleansing represents communism, then I suppose that our genocides, internment of the Japanese, slavery, racism, “advanced interrogation methods”, greed, and nuclear bombings represent us.
And let me make this clear: I was NEVER arguing the merits of the governments set up upon the principals of communism – not only were unsuccessful at it’s implementation, all “ideal” methods of governing and all means of determining moral standards have been warped into their worst possible form by someone. What I was defending were the arguments in favor of communism, which is based on the ideals we should all have, despite the implementation strategies not working in the obvious tests.
Communism was an experiment, genocide was a result which told us the experiment was failing.
@ GnarlyDoug:
One mistake / oversight in my post I want to correct. Poole as internet nobility and the IETF are examples of non-coerced hierarchy. I’ve no problem with non-coerced hierarchy or ‘class’ structure even. Some Communists are so anti-hierarchy extreme however than any form of hierarchy to them is oppression. The so-called Great Firewall of China on the other hand is an example of true oppression and segregation on the internet.
Haiiro wrote:
Many favor it, while others don’t.
…If you know what I mean 😛 @ Leon_Skunk:
…
You’re goddamn right.
Arguing that Socialist/Communist ideals are not to blame for the actions of the leaders of self-proclaimed Socialist/Communist governments is the same as arguing that Fascist ideals are not responsible for the Holocaust its leaders caused.
If I kill 100 people to save 200 and justify it using Communism, (to the benefit of the greatest good) then the ideology is at fault. Saying that Communism is just “an idealistic viewpoint” whitewashes the 60-90 million people it has ground into dust in its name.
And before anyone does it, arguing that Capitalism is just as bad is a non-sequitur because Communism (contrary to popular belief) isn’t an economic model… it’s an ideology. It has economics as a part of it, but China proves the point with its form of Communist Capitalism. The opposite of Communism is Individualism. (just look at the words and it becomes clear… Communal versus Individual)
Communal ideology treats all of its member parts as equal… and equally unimportant. A heard doesn’t care if it’s “fair” that one of their members gets killed by the lions so the rest can escape. The internet is by that measure nothing like a Communist ideal. If you doubt that, explain the expressions newb or troll. The internet is far from any kind of “egalitarian paradise”.
That’s not to say that Individualism doesn’t have its faults. Taken to extremes it is cold and heartless. Compassionate Individualism on the other hand…
You Go Benjamin! Show Them Commies How meat is ate! four pounds a day! and lift a lot!!