I always try to direct people to these alt tech platforms. Never gotten anyone to come… But I think that this will change as censorship and control of information grows tighter.
The thing I am most concerned about is beating the censors and the general thrust against human rights and democracy.
This site is so small, but it represents the effort at decentralizing and spreading out how we communicate and taking it out of the hands of not just government censorship, but also out of the hands of oligarchs that have means of canceling and waging economic warfare on people IRL.
To me, this is no longer about left/right or any kind of identity, it’s about those who really value freedom qua freedom and those who are supporters of soft totalitarianism, either wittingly or unwittingly.
So I can tell you that we may disagree on a million things but this fight we have for the self-expression and decentralization of communication & power is the most important thing…
Becuse us communicating freely as critics of one another and of society in general is what is powerful and meaningful, and what they want to stop.
I agree, especially with the last line.
Populism is an ideology that splits the world into the common man and the elites and says that the common man is being held down by elites.
The opposite of populism is elitism.
This alone should explain exactly what’s going on in the world right now – the fact that populism is used as a swear word by so many people shows that many people are elitists and spit on the idea of helping the common man.
Some people might claim that anti-populists are meritocratic. Most of the people who are anti-populist are also anti-meritocratic. Their ideology paints selecting people by merit as a process that’s inherently flawed because people will have merit not just because they are better but because merit is unfairly distributed.
What many of the anti-populists want is a sort of aristocracy of technocrats selected by systems such as the university system that select for their personally preferred political attributes. Those who are selected by the system are deemed in fallible and anyone who opposes the dictats of these exemplars (who today are just regular mortals with a few years of classes if we’re being honest) is clearly wrong and evil.
I think the extremes of either populism or elitism are detrimental. For example, tax cuts are a classic populist move, everyone loves having more money in their pockets. But if the country can’t afford it or if it doesn’t make economic sense, then it’s a cynical play to win an election.
Similarly, introducing new taxes to shape behavior is an elitist thing to do, for example. This is especially true when people don’t have any viable alternatives to the thing you’re taxing.
What we need is balanced leaders who are legitimately trying to do the best for the country and its people with the cards we were dealt. It almost feels like they belong in @HemerroidMcGee’s Cryptid thread though.
I would tend to agree with you that extremes are harmful. We know from history that both sets of extremes here cause harm. Hammer the elites (defined as the people who are most productive rather than the people who happen to have power at the moment) into the dirt and millions die because those people actually do a lot of good. Hammer the common man into the dirt too much and they go “fuck this” and start building guillotines.
Right now the establishment is extremely elitist (ironically, given that leftism is a populist ideology at its core, and also while previously I defined the elites as the most productive people, government is by definition completely unproductive), so things need to swing back significantly (a blue collar worker’s last dollar is split 50% between themselves and the government which is absurd – imagine all the wealth going to government elites who then pass it on to their corporate elites), but if you make it impossible to excel and try to make everyone the same then the most productive people are likely to just give up on trying to be productive since there’s no benefit to doing so – the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
Socialism is ironically extremely elitist. The all knowing, unavoidable bureaucrat class, the all powerful government which controls every aspect of life, the belief in universal truth, these are incredibly elitist ideas.
I think there needs to be a balance between people, businesses and government. Whenever power swings too hard in any of these directions, you get a disaster. Socialism is extreme government, unchecked capitalism is extreme business, libertarian/anarchism is extreme people. In isolation, they will all fail.
I always come back to the fact that blue collar workers are paying half their income in tax, we’re definitely too far in extreme government. People blame capitalism, but in reality the smartest companies are just figuring out how to get some government cheddar since that’s where the money is all going and coming from.
It’s funny how our motivation for HC is fundamentally so basic, all we want is a place where we can have fun and talk freely about whatever. When everything is censored and political, simply talking freely is an act of defiance.
I think our biggest advantage is that we have no guiding interests or agenda.
I’m glad you feel good about this place, Alice and I do too. We have a good group of people here. Hopefully more will join us eventually, but I’m ok with it either way.
