Edit
https://www.phillyvoice.com/philly-woman-arrested-uber-eats-robot-protest/
This article has more from and about her. Even more based than before.
Edit
https://www.phillyvoice.com/philly-woman-arrested-uber-eats-robot-protest/
This article has more from and about her. Even more based than before.
In liberal democracies property has always had more weight than human lives.
That’s not specific to liberal democracies. Liberal democracies tend to be more respectful of human rights than other types of societies. As such they are constantly under attack by internal and external forces that place property before life. It seems they always succeed in bringing democracies down. But that’s not per se the fault of liberal democracies.
Placing property before life is a defining feature of liberal democracies. Its the concept they are founded upon. Protecting private property is their guiding light. Bourgeois liberals will always sacrifice the lives of however many they have to in an effort to protect their property. Human rights are only allowed in so much as they allow for stability in that protection.
“protecting private property is their guiding light” – that was true in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, the mediaeval feudal societies, in Nazi Germany, etc etc. Beyond small tribal societies you are hard pressed to find an example where property wasn’t more important than people. That’s true for the so called communist states too, just the property technically wasn’t private (in practice it was, no wonder oligarchs emerged from its collapse). And yes, it is true in lib democracies too, but with the added counter-idea of humab rights which most other societies lack(ed).
Except its not true in a lot of your examples. Part of the reason the age of liberal revolutons took place was to secure private property rights for that Bourgeois class. To stop a king from being able to seize private property whenever they want. To stop a state from saying the state owns all of the property. You mentioned ancient greece, well think back to Athens then. When they discovered a silver mine near the city they didn’t say it should belong to the person who discovered it or the person who bought the mine, they said it should be used for the public good to build a fleet. That’s not private property. That’s a concept which would cause liberal democracies to murder people in the streets over.
We are not arguing about who owns property in various societies, or what societies had more private property vs state owned property. We talk about which societies placed human rights above property rights. You can be sure the ancient Athenians sent slaves to work those silver mines. Not very humane if you ask me.
Please tell me you are not gonna bring up slavery in the context of liberal democracies. Cause I mean, come on. You really want to set me up that perfectly?
You are arguing with yourself not with me. I never said liberal democracies don’t place property before humans. All I originally said was that other societies placed property before humans, not just liberal democracies. To which you said my example of ancient Greece was wrong, because the state owned some silver mines. To which I said that’s not a good argument, because they still used slaves. Like some lib democracies used to too, I am aware. As a clue, they abolished slavery, which very few other societies did, but it’s kind of beside my main point, see above. If you want to argue, argue with that, not with stuff I never said.
EDIT: I am not even saying that liberal democracy is good. I think it is better than a lot of other systems. It’s still very flawed, and partly because it cannot synthetize property rights with human rights. At least it keeps trying .
Nah, liberal democracies are generally partly socialist in limited but notable ways, and common property is not unusual. Nobody is massacring groups over the ideological principle of public highways, or nature preserves, or recreation centres, or national corporations. I mean, in Canada, for instance, people died due to colonialism, but that’s a different, if related story. It’s a very capitalist society with a bunch of popular collective property and “crown” (nominally state-owned) corporations.
Economic systems historically overlap. We still have shreds of feudalism hanging around.
How exactly do you justify separating colonialism from liberalism?
In the same way we separate yellowjackets from paper wasps, even though those with phobias call them all bees.
Colonialism is a type of imperialism that maintains economic and social subjugation of the (usually) remote region, and may or may not involve some form of genocide. It’s a geopolitical term describing historical aspects of imperialism, and spills over into doctrine and ideology, which is maybe why you are conflating the terms.
Liberal, and liberalism, in the narrow non-colloquial but generally pejorative usage that you are implying, refers to a doctrine of possessive individualism. That leads to colonialism, via imperialism, yes, but they are not the same.
They’re not one to one the same of course but they are intrinsically linked. Colonialism only was able to operate through liberalism. Colonial Charter companies is the means through which colonial imperialism was spread. You can’t say they’re not related. Every fiber of their beings are related. You could honestly say that liberalism wouldn’t exist without colonialism and certainly vice versa.