Reading Liberalism: A Counter-History and I finally feel like I'm getting to the really juicy bits (2/3 through the book. The earlier half was good and probably a necessary foundation, but got a bit repetitive-feeling).

::: spoiler My thoughts (spoilered because long):

first off if any motherfucker invokes divine providence to justify inequality: gulag

second: liberal theorists love to draw arbitrary lines in the sand and say that their principles and reasoning only apply to one side. The distinction they drew between "civil" and "political" laws, or the "totally good and normal laws that help the rich" vs the "impermissible welfare laws interfering with the divine will of providence that the poor stay in poverty", the exclusion of labour relations as an inherently non-political question, etc. Often these seeming contradictions and their unconvincing justifications follow from unquestioned beliefs like the inferiority of "other races", the belief that the poor deserve to be poor, and simple self-centeredness (only considering the freedoms of people like them, typically upper-class, of the dominant racial group, etc. and disregarding the lack of freedoms accorded to other groups)

third: The quote about anti-semites and ridiculous arguments applies. They will in one breath condemn you as backwards and wishing to bring back absolute monarchism by expanding the state, bring back medieval forms like the guild in the form of unions, or take on the pre-modern role of the established church (providing welfare is equated with the church's organized charity), and in the next breath glorify the past as a simpler time when people (serfs) weren't so uppity, but also a golden age of individualism (for Great Men, anyhow, entirely disregarding the lack of autonomy of the serfs, and of course disregarding great/influential individuals leading uprisings against them, e.g. Toussaint L'Ouverture.) Much of this is echoed in modern discourse. Using necessary force to implement the will of the people against the formerly powerful, is condemned as authoritarian, while using more distributed power structures to confine the majority of the population in effective servitude is totally fine and normal and Democratic even.

fourth: We should be mindful of those we ally with and their reasonings. The christian abolitionists in the US were on the right side of history when condemning and fighting the chattel slavery practiced in the south, but their reasons for hating it were not necessarily aligned with a purely socialist perspective. They tended to see it more in terms of the sinfulness it enabled on the part of slaveholders(sexual assault was pervasive, among other things), of not allowing slaves to be converted to christianity, and of forcing them to be complicit in the above sin, so when slavery was officially abolished (outside of prisons, anyhow), the christian-fueled radicalism of the abolitionists crumbled, despite the persistence of incredible levels of oppression against the freed slaves in the south, both politically and economically, not to mention the blind spot many had for the oppression of Black people in the north. For many, their conviction against slavery came more from the sin aspect than from a genuine belief in equality, or even in simply improving the lives of the enslaved.

I could probably write more but I don't have the time. The book is good. :::

hexbear down :/

How am I supposed to slack off at work now

I've downvoted this post from lemmygrad. Doesn't appear to be federating so far

edit: yeah it shows up on lemmy.ml but is ignored by hexbear. There may have been a change in the logic with 0.19.4/5

they are now on a modern variant of lemmy, but still pretty customized. There is a small compatibility issue with mobile apps being worked on but otherwise yes. I believe they are workign on porting their changes to v0.18.1 of lemmy now.

lemmy.world is run by the same people as mastodon.world and it is already donation funded. They post financial updates on their blog: https://blog.mastodon.world/

they have been funded by grants from NLnet (I think from EU funds?) but I think are transitioning to donation-based.

Just to get it out of the way: there are obviously some issues with lemmy discoverability and quantity of content

But to be blunt: this is not the kind of user lemmy needs right now, he won't be missed. He doesn't want to join a community, he wants to scroll a feed that is pre-curated for him. And to be honest, that is most redditors, for better or for worse, but the core of the site, what gives it most of its value besides just scale, is powerusers and mods who will see: "oh there isn't a formula1 comm yet? I'll make one". Boom. Problem solved. among a userbase of thousands there will be other people who want to talk about F1, but you need at least one person to be engaged enough to create the community and post to it once in a while.

This perspective is fundamentally self-defeating if you want to get an alternative off the ground. It will take off if people get into it, and it won't if they don't

No matter how politely stated your disagreement is, if it boils down to "I don't think I should have to respect trans people's identity"/"I don't think trans people should have rights" then it's transphobic and I'm 1000% fine with that being bannable

the lemmy source code is public

hexbear is currently running an old version of lemmy that doesn't support the v3 API or federation. migration to a more modern lemmy is in progress

Cloudflare does have the ability to spy on traffic though, they hold SSL keys.