@charlag No problem. I feel like it's not the strongest argument and sometimes sounds like it's arguing for social democracy rather than democratic socialism, despite claims to the contrary, but the overall spirit and tone of the article was quite good, I think, and a nice rebuttal when faced with people who like to assume that socialism = USSR = no freedom, etc.

@ink_slinger @charlag

I'm fine with piecemeal reform towards anything better than what we have now.

The loudest people I see on the Fediverse (and Tumblr, and Reddit) just seem to be crazy extremists calling for blood but with no idea how society will benefit from murdering people they hate.

I was hoping the article would be more prescriptive. I definitely don't think you can fix society through murder alone. That's supervillain talk.

@ink_slinger @charlag

I think of the downsides of capitalism as like tornadoes - They just form, in certain places, and they hit poor people the hardest.

When a tornado hits, of course we can look the other way, "At least it didn't hit ME."

Or we can coordinate to stand together, "We'll help you rebuild or move away from where tornadoes form."

But some people seem to just be yelling at the tornadoes.

@golf_oil @charlag I think the guillotine and wall jokes are, for most people, just jokes and a way to vent. But, yeah, there is a subset of people who seem to look at revolution as some kind of revenge fantasy and, while that's understandable, it's probably not a great model for a stable post-capitalist society.

I don't think we can reform our way to utopia, but I think we do what we can in any given moment, which might often mean just piecemeal reforms.

@charlag @golf_oil Some improvement is better than no improvement, for sure. How we move beyond incremental reform is obviously up for debate and the reason we keep splitting the party. 😉

@golf_oil @charlag Despite all evidence to the contrary over the past two centuries, I still like to think we can change things through the electoral system. Realistically, I don't think elections alone are even remotely enough. We'll need a social revolution and possibly at least the threat of violence, as much as I'm not a fan of political violence. This might just be residual liberalism, though.

@ejworthing I'm sure a lot of them are Bernie Sanders "socialists," which means that they're not actually socialists. But it's a start.

@ejworthing And, actually, that was one of my issues with the article. Despite claims to the contrary in the conclusion, most of it could describe social democracy (aka: friendlier capitalism) just as easily as democratic socialism.