Fuck governments and all their supporters.
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2025
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"The system" includes public hospitals, public libraries, public transit, public schools, waste collection, sewage & water treatment, public museums, public parks, as well as more abstract functions like standards organizations that ensure that when you plug an electrical device into a wall socket it doesn't burn your house down - plus all of the internal government infrastructure and staff required to make all of those services functional.
It's a social infrastructure hostage situation.
Sort of. If you actually spend time thinking about government infrastructure beyond the surface level, you look at how much extraordinary work is accomplished by organizations like NIST, or just your local county waste treatment facilities or hospitals, you recognize how much benefit you get from that every day, how many problems are solved for you before you even think about them (seriously, just try to wrap your head around what it means that you can just take any electrical device and plug it into a wall socket and it just gets power, and adding or removing devices at random doesn't bring down your local power grid or cause brownouts or safety hazards, and how complex the system behind that is) you realize how much staff and coordination is involved in keeping all of that working...
The reality is that "the system" is also "the people", and how can we escape from ourselves?
I don't think you said anything fundamentally new in this comment that you didn't say in your first one.
Yes, and also no one that has responded to me so far has actually responded to what I said, fundamentally, in my first comment.
I have gotten a fair amount of ad hominem though. Always impressive to see that, definitely a sign of emotionally mature people with well thought out ideas.
You're in an anarchist com. People here don't really care about why things are organized this way; just that the state exist and that's a problem. Lemmy as a whole has left leaning people, so they will talk about anarchy and means of production. Still if you are curious there is the far right version called anarcho capitalism which wants to see NIST as multiple private for profit entities. DOGE and the current shut down are part of the ancap plans for the US (inspired by Argentina)
Nobody here is complaining about the existence of infra-structure. OP is talking about who controls it. It's about power.
In reality there's no practical difference. For instance, the head surgeon of a hospital's surgery department makes control decisions every day - what supplies to requisition and when and how much, what equipment to acquire, what staff to hire with what qualifications and how many... this is a position of power. But that head surgeon is also part of the surgical team, they're part of the infrastructure, they're part of the service. They are an essential part of the proper functioning and organization of the surgery department.
They are the buereacracy. They make decisions that directly affect the lives of patients, decisions which those patients have no say in. They are inseparable from the whole. Their decision-making cannot be replaced by a committee of unqualified individuals, it cannot be farmed out to a public vote, and it cannot be left to a government official no matter how well-intentioned. The authority for those decisions - the power - is necessarily concentrated in the hands of the person most qualified.
People in roles like that are "the system", or the control, or the power, or whatever you want to call it.
We [cryptagion, infinitesunrise, for_some_delta, me, etc.] are talking about 1) political power, 2) over the society as a whole, that is 3) effectively unchecked, since the only so-called "check" (voting) is a circus.
In the meantime, your example is about 1) decision making, 2) in a very restrict scope, in a way that 3) can easily have internal counters and checks (i.e. if the head surgeon is doing some dumb shit, other surgeons should be able to remove them).
In other words your whole comment boils down to three paragraphs of "ackshyually, no practical difference between apples and oranges". It's so fucking bad that, to be blunt, I'm not wasting further time with it.
I think they're more suggesting that breaking the system will fundamentally and necessarily break some of the public services that thousands of people depend on, and if you're serious about breaking/changing the system, answering the fundamental questions of "how do we prevent as many needless deaths due to service interruptions" is important.
Nah, their argument is clearly an analogy between both situations, to "prove" both things are the same.
That said your concern is reasonable. It's about transition; something the left has been discussing since at least the Second International. Individual takes go from "you won't make an omelette if you don't break some eggs" to "minimise harm as much as possible". I lean towards the later - seize, put it under the control of the workers and/or general population, let them gradually restructure it, repeat as needed.
Experts exist. Individuals may concentually yield to expertise. Individual autonomy is maintained by all parties.
"The system" as in capitalism remains a class struggle between owners of capital/land and laborers like the expert surgeon. The sentiments of "fuck the system" can be expressed in other phrases like "no gods, no masters" or "dump the bosses off your back".
No. Those are social services, not the system. "The system" specifically refers to economic and political power structures. Any modern society can and necessarily must have these things, so they're not an argument in favor of one system over another except in the sense of which system provides the best access to them. Bourgeoi democracy is clearly failing at like half of these, so yeah.
You do realize that there's no real separation between these thing, right? We assign terms to them so that we can talk about them, but in practice a logistics system is an economy and is also a governance organization (or requires one to maintain balance and adequate flow of resources from one place to another), and politics is inevitable when people are involved in complex administrative work. It doesn't matter if "the system" is capitalist or socialist or feudal or whatever, someone somewhere has to make decisions about which needs get met with which resources at what time and how to get them there, otherwise nothing happens.
I'm not arguing in favor of any particular system, I'm pointing out that there are real people's lives that are actively dependent on the current system and that changing the system will have a drastic human cost that most armchair rebels never think about. I'm pointing out that if you're actually serious about building a better society then you should start with figuring out the details of how to provide care for people who are unable to provide it for themselves.
If your plan doesn't account for the weakest, the poorest, the most vulnerable, people who are laying in hospital beds on life support, people who are going to the emergency room because they can't afford regular health care, children with cancer... from the outset, right now, before you even talk about tearing down the current system, then it will be just as bad as any other system that has come before, no matter what label you apply to it, because your priorities are completely fucked.
Personally, I find it useful to distinguish between government and governance. All that infrastructure you describe would be impossible without systems of governance. Government (as most people understand it) isn't the only form of governance.
I'm not sure what a world without government would look like, but to me, that's the big challenge — how do governance (in a manner that's actually democratic without being overly bogged down in bureaucracy). I don't think it's impossible though, and even if we're unfathomably far away from actually getting to a point where we could do away with government, it's useful to ask the question.
OP seems like a 14 year old libertarian whose parents complain about paying taxes.
I would say it's ironic that someone was using a reference to an indigenous people who were fighting against a fascist colonial state as a username and arguing in favor of fascism, but actually nerds missing the fucking point with literature is the norm, not the exception.
Who is arguing in favor of fascism?
anyone arguing to keep a system of fascism. whether they consider themselves a fascist, or not.
OK, tell you what, when you can provide a plan in detail that describes how your local county hospital (not the entire country or anything, just one facility) will keep the lights on, clean water flowing, waste collection and disposal handled, sanitation supplies and other logistical needs met, emergency room staffed and operational, blood bags and critical medications in stock, and long- and short-term patient care needs met while you are busy "fucking" the current system (and presumably establishing a new one) then you might be worth listening to.
Until then you're just an angsty teenager making extreme accusations that only serve to highlight your very tenuous grasp of reality.
You have no idea what you're talking about in practice, or what the human cost would be.
https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project (Archive version)
The plan probably involves bears.
the economy is made up. you're so brainwashed by capitalism, that you think it's the system that's keeping those things running, and not the labor of the working class. only the rich depend on capitalism for existence.
I don't care if you listen to me or not, just stay out of our fucking way, bootlicker.
Of course it's "made up", that does not make it irrelevant or inconsequential. All of human language is "made up" too. That's some real "Im14andthisisdeep" shit right there.
I didn't say a damn thing about capitalism. Don't project, and don't put words in my mouth.
I'm talking about logistics, administration and coordination, things that require "the system", or at least a system of some sort in order to function properly.
Of course it's labor that makes it happen, but when it comes down to it a hospital does not and will not manufacture its own resources (exam gloves, IV bags, water, electricity, etc). Those things must be produced somewhere else and brought to the hospital when needed, which means someone has to do the administrative work of deciding how much and how often, and how to get it from point A to point B. That administration is "the system" that you're so keen to break, without a plan to support the needs that are currently sustained by it.
If you can't bring yourself to address the pragmatic details of your ideas then they belong in the bin alongside the venture capitalists. No amount of name calling on your part will change that.
it's inconsequential to me. I didn't bother to read any further than this, capitalist pig. you're dismissed, so fuck off.
You are a very angry person, aren't you?
I just don't value champions of the oppressors as worth more than a bullet.
Why are questions about logistics and human lives "tools of the oppressor" are you a wallstreetbets ape fighting FUD?
if you're going to use quotation marks, at least make sure you actually quote the person, you knob
A simple yes would have sufficed. I was clearly shrimpy paraphrasing.
Ooh, threats of violence now. Classy.
oOh, ThReAtS oF vIoLeNcE nOw