Thank you so much!!!

I’ve recently started dipping my toes into writing, and I can’t think of a compliment I’d like to receive more than the one you gave. Thank you.

“What do you do?” may have the connotation of being about work, but the literal words are actually a great conversation starter. You are falling into the same trap if you answer “nothing” because you don’t do wage labor.

You don’t do nothing! How dare you!!

You organize online!
You learn about socialism!
You’re working your ass off to try to get healthier!
You need to rest and recover more than some folks, but that’s not nothing!

If you want to change the culture, answer the literal question, not the question they think they’re asking.

If they follow up with “I meant for work,” then give them a face and say you can’t work bc of your disability. Simple as.

Oh hell yeah I love an emergent property. That’s my new favorite theory

Lmao who’s the one person saying “I can excuse genocide, but I draw the line at pollution”

I don’t think we should give up on individuals because we’ve reduced them to their class interests. Class interests are an influence, but not a determining factor in ones beliefs. My class interests are opposed to socialism, but I am fighting for it because making the world a better place is more important to me than getting more commas in my bank account.

As a group, capitalists can be counted on to behave in their collective interests, but individuals have complex motivators and internal contradictions that they haven’t questioned. Most people want what’s best for most people, and most people would be willing to give up something in order to help others. At very least, there are selfish reasons for making the world a better place (note: kurzgesagt).

Very few humans will look within themselves and say “I would rather a hundred people starve than I suffer the slightest inconvenience” (if so - yikes). On the other hand, I think they won’t say “I would rather starve than be a slight inconvenience to a hundred people.”

Capital would rather a hundred people starve than grow profits slightly slower, but almost all individual capitalists would choose humanity when directly presented with that trolly problem. The evils of capitalism are emergent properties of individuals operating in a system that influences them to put profits over people. Each individual makes morally compromised but understandable “business decisions” to maximize profits, and don’t see themselves as THE problem.

Even for those people, pitching a world where they didn’t need to compromise their morals is worthwhile. “Wouldn’t it be nice if you could focus on making a good widget, instead of pushing to hit next quarter’s earnings target?”

I think this is an interesting post on capital itself having material interests, and individual capitalists merely being vessels to carry out those interests.

I imagine there are things y’all agree on re: the economy; where do you start to diverge?

Like I imagine you both agree that problems exist in the current system, since many people are suffering.

I imagine y’all agree that every corporation wants to maximize profits, which means that (all else equal) they want to 1) pay their employees less, 2) have employees work longer hours, and 3) charge the maximum possible price for all their products (I like to say “the perfect price for the company is when you wouldn’t buy it if it were one penny more”).

I think they’ll likely agree that there’s no “enough” profit - the line must go up forever. You can point to the pursuit of infinitely increasing profits as a driver of services getting worse. Netflix is my go-to, where a company launches a good product, takes over the market, then slowly starts turning the screws to increase profits (price increases, carrying fewer shows, cracking down on password sharing).

If you can get them to agree that capitalism puts profit over people (which you can get to by connecting the dots on things they already believe), then it’s an easy step to “I think that’s bad, and that society should prioritize people over profits.”

It’s likely that they believe that too, and their pushback will be about the details of how to run society that prioritize people. And you agree with that - it’s hard! That’s why there’s so much disagreement on the left! The thing that unites us all is that we want to replace capitalism with something better, but we also agree that how to do that is THE question. Lots of smart people have thought a lot about it, and lots of people have tried different things, but there’s not a consensus on how to run things. Hell, tell them that they might come up with the “correct” approach, but probably not without considering what other folks have thought and tried.

At this point, you can start deworming around AES states, from the perspective of “they tried replacing capitalism with something better, what can we learn from them?” It’s useful to reach agreement that capitalists will want to capitalism to continue, and have a vested interest in portraying alternatives to capitalism as bad.

China is a good example to use: “they’re straight up kicking USA’s ass in the trade war, high speed rail, green energy, patents, etc etc. Why?” You’ll hear the same tired script - don’t directly oppose it. Reference that the US wants to portray China as bad, and agree that China wants to portray itself as good. I like to lead into deworming explanations with “reality is somewhere in the middle of these two” - it engages their critical thinking and is an emotionally safe way for them listen to an alternative perspective.

Accept that they will not end the conversation with “wow, you were right and I was wrong!” Brains don’t work like that. Your goal is to give them an alternative explanation, then let them come to their own conclusions. Your goal should be to relentlessly focus the conversation on where the two of you agree, to be genuinely interested in their thought process, and to neutrally present contradictions for them to chew on after the conversation is over.

I wrote some more details on my general approach here.

Ah, yeah that’s a very US-centric example.

Idk if y’all are dealing with the same “feminism is actually bad” stuff we are, but I posted this comment shortly after the above post and using the same template.

Disclaimer: I’m decently new to discussing with people on the internet, where it’s harder to ask a lot of questions. I think the general logic tracks, but in person I wouldn’t recommend jumping to conclusions like I did there.

Edit: other examples:

• Libertarians
• Tariffs
• Capitalists

Which people, motherfucker??

Again, no shit. Everyone thinks we should be hiring on merit alone.

We can’t just wave a magic wand and say “don’t discriminate.” We need to identify WHO is not being hired based on merit and then take real actions to make sure that they’re hired fairly.

The subtext of anti-DEI is that white men are being discriminated against. The evidence for that is that many white men are struggling financially. And I agree, white men are struggling!

To fix that problem, we need to understand the cause of it.

White men are not struggling because of DEI. They are not struggling because of programs designed to fix discrimination. There are plenty of cases where folks overcorrected, and they shouldn’t have, but those programs do not cause the systemic problems that white men are dealing with. Ending those programs will not help white men, because they are not the cause.

White men are struggling because they live in a system where their bosses want them to work longer hours for less pay. Every product they buy is designed to maximize shareholder ROI, so prices are jacked up. You no longer own things, you subscribe to them, even houses. White men, along with everyone else, are being squeezed on all sides by corporations seeking maximum profits.

Ending DEI is the wrong solution to a real problem. It is a distraction.

The corporations that run this country don’t want you to think they’re the real cause. They need you to believe that maximizing profits is good, actually. They’ve built up a mythology that keeps you from seeing them as the cause of your suffering.

If they’re fucking people over, “it’s just business” and we stop asking questions.

They need you to believe that your suffering is caused by something else, ANYTHING else, because people WILL fix their problem.

DEI. Woke. Immigration. Nobody wants to work anymore. Feminism. Welfare queens. Trans folks. Abortion. Please, dear god, anything but capitalism.

Bernie Sanders got the closest. His campaign resonated with millions of people because he was accurately identifying some of the worst symptoms of capitalism. And Democrats killed his campaign to run Hilary, because they would rather lose than help people.

The two parties work together to advance capitalism. Republicans are the party of throwing wrong ideas at the wall and seeing which ones stick with people. Democrats act outraged at the ideas that don’t catch on, and quietly concede the ones that do (e.g. immigration). It’s the ratchet effect, and the result is that political news is inundated with arguments about things that don’t matter.

Capitalism is the cause of the problems that people have. There are many solutions, but labor unions are easy to recommend to almost everyone.

First, I think there’s some risk if she’s telling people you two are dating. Definitely tell your wife, but you should also probably talk to her parents about it.

1. If they start hearing stories about their daughter and you, they already have context for it
2. You can work with them to decide how to proceed

This is an opportunity to teach her about boundaries, appropriate behavior, and unrequited love in a relatively controlled environment. She will listen to you in ways that she won’t listen to parents.

You could have a direct conversation with her about how it’s not ok to tell other people that you’re dating. Tell her that it makes you uncomfortable that she knows you have a wife but still told you she has feeling for you. Tell her that you are happily married and not interested in dating a fourteen year old. Model clear communication.

And empathize with her that it’s hard to have feelings for someone that doesn’t like you back. Talk about how you’ve handled it in the past. Tell her that it’ll pass. Tell her what she should know as she grows up.

She’s a teenager, so her feelings for you will go away regardless, but I think you can make the rest of her life tangibly better by having a real conversation with her.

I’ve had some luck by working backwards to things you agree on, then stepping forward until you start to diverge. You need to be genuinely engaged in their thought process, though, so prepare for psychological damage.

E.g. for immigration, you can start from “this is super fucked up and I don’t think we should do it. Why do y’all support it?”

It make take a few "why"s, but I think their reasoning will ultimately end up at:

1. Lots of people are struggling financially, that’s bad, and we need to fix it.
2. Because of supply and demand, having more people in the US lowers wages and increases prices
3. If we have fewer people in the US, wages will go up and prices will go down
4. There are lots of people here illegally. Kicking them out will fix the fact that people are struggling financially

Which is wrong, but at least is a logical progression that you can challenge. They believe that the social benefits of deporting people outweigh the human costs of doing so. It’s “for the greater good” and “you gotta break a few eggs to make bread.”

You now get the privilege of talking about the real cause of low wages and high prices being capitalism. You’re in your element and should have a DEEP bag of examples. As usual, tailor to your audience, make it simple, and try to avoid trigger words like any -isms.

If you convince them that capitalism is the problem, not supply and demand, then there’s no longer any benefit to deporting people and it’s only a fucked up thing to do.

They’ll have weak, residual arguments like “but they’re breaking The Law” or “but maybe it’s a little supply and demand too, as a treat?”

At that point, you’ve won. You can provide weaker pushback on these, and start looking for a way to end the conversation.

There is no world in which it ends in “oh. actually you’re right” - our brains take time to change. Your goal is just for them to think about it by themselves.

This is not “past” discrimination. This is happening today.

We are CURRENTLY in a situation where women are discriminated against, and that’s a problem. Men who are less qualified are being hired over women who are more qualified. Denying that is either ignorance or bad faith.

The solution to that problem is to hire more women.

Honestly, “gender shouldn’t be relevant when it’s not relevant” is in the same vein as “all lives matter.”

Yeah. No shit.

Is it weird

Implying those statements are contentious is either ignorant or in bad faith.

Nepotism is a problem, sure, but racism and misogyny are also problems.

We should fix all the problems, and that’s a fight on many fronts. We should support anyone fighting for equal treatment.

This might be the bit already, but I unironically think the body is a great metaphor for how society should run!

E.g. different cells have different specializations, but every cell gets the nutrients it needs.

Right!? You can’t pour from an empty cup, and capitalism is systemically emptying everyone’s cups.

I think the short answer is “join a local leftist org,” typically DSA and PSL are mentioned.

I think the type of projects those orgs should prioritize are ones that give folks incrementally more freedom from capitalism.

I think the best example is forming a union & demanding higher pay, but at a community level you could also look into:

• Community gardens
• Tool libraries
• Getting folks together to buy in bulk

There are plenty of people that think that each of those things are morally wrong, and some who would say that they’re much worse than a bomb threat.

Those people are writing the laws.

Legality and morality are two completely different things. It’s a comfortable lie to think they’re the same.

Having an email provider that will not comply with law enforcement is important because any of us could be next on the target list.

I’m not saying “yay, it’s morally good to send bomb threats.”

Folks who care about privacy don’t want their email provider engaging with local authorities.

when tyranny becomes law rebellion becomes duty

“Illegal” is NOT immoral, and when laws are increasingly being passed by right-wing nutjobs, folks doing the right thing will be doing illegal things.

• women getting access to an abortion
• undocumented folks avoiding being sent to El Salvador
• trans folks getting healthcare

Any platform has three options:

1. Always comply with law enforcement, and give up vulnerable populations that are targeted by the government
2. Never comply with law enforcement, and make law enforcement track down bomb threats some other way
3. Sometimes comply with law enforcement, based on… what criteria? where’s the line?

3 is obviously the thing we’d like, but no company is going to open itself up to legal threats by doing it.

This article shows that Proton Mail is falling into category 2. I think that category should exist to protect vulnerable populations.

its employees had received emails containing obscene and vulgar content sent via Proton Mail.

the email service reportedly refused to share details about the sender of the allegedly offensive emails, despite a police complaint.

Last year, the police department of the southern state of Tamil Nadu had sought to block Proton Mail after the email service was found to have been used for sending hoax bomb threats to local schools.

Honestly, pretty glowing review of Proton Mail

Do you have pointers to help me understand what makes you prefer Marxism? I know there’s been a bunch of discourse on it already, and this probably isn’t the spot where we resolve it, but I’m relatively new to leftism and am interested in learning more.

Short(ish) version I have for preferring anarchism to Marxism:

My ultimate end goal is that everyone ascend Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and self actualize.

Self actualization requires freedom, agency, and control over things you care about. Pursuing self actualization is hard, though, and human brains want to be lazy.

I’m anti-capitalist, but a positive of (small-scale) capitalism is that it incentivizes individuals to think, “What should exist, but doesn’t? What can I do that others would like?” and then actually go do it. Our aim should be to encourage those types of actions, but with an incentive structure that doesn’t result in… this.

My concern is that a centralized state will result in folks voluntarily giving up their agency over stuff administered by the state, since it’s easier than feeling ownership of it. Over time, I worry this would would atrophy individuals’ agency and result in a kind of bystander effect, where folks look for the state to do things for them.