I think it's not that everyone wants to exploit, but if the opportunity exists and there are insufficient systems to discourage it, then some will. As demonstrated by [wide gesture at everything]
this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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Like, even if that was human nature, shouldn't we try to overcome it?
I mean. That's exactly why all these systems fail. The shitty people get ahead by exploitation or breaking the rules.
Aka republicans
Right, and imo most people just want to get along. We just need a way to defend the commons from the shitty people rather than make them trillionaires.
Well, the serial killer problem became much less pronounced
From the time of the Natufians, beginning around 13100 BC , up to the Early Bronze Age IIb around 3200 BC, there are only a handful of violent deaths indicated by skeletal remains:
Guess the Bronze Age Collapse never happened. The Sea Peoples never swept through coastal cities raiding and plundering in the Mediterranean. Egypt and Assyria never dominated their neighbors. All those books I read were wrong. Even in Egyptian tombs, the extensive records of wars are all wrong.
Listen up. New information. All reports of societies duking it out in ancient history didn't happen. It's time to realign our understanding of human nature. War is a modern concept. In fact, I'm gonna go even further and declare that until the USA and our genocidal partner attacked Iran this year, there had never been a war EVER. Tell your friends.
Right, surely you must question your assumptions when there are no violent deaths at all.
The kinds of injuries they're talking about cranial fractures, a blow to the head, multiple fractures, etc. surely are seen today in people who die on construction sites, or in car crashes or after falling off a building.
If you're not finding those kinds of remains, something else must be happening. Maybe there was a taboo against burying people who didn't have perfect bodies. Maybe anybody who died from violence or violent accident was given a "sky burial" or something.
I mean, put aside the idea that there was no war. Is it reasonable to think that in the bronze age, people aren't getting mauled by wild animals? They're not getting kicked in the head by their livestock? They're not falling off buildings?
But I need to excuse my bad behavior and shitty ideas with an intellectual lacuna that brooks no argument. Do you have some better alternative?
It might not be that the person wants to exploit others but that exploitation is the norm in their experience in life.
We’ve said the word exploit so many fucking times they’ve lost all damn meaning!
I apologize for the exploitives.
And must be excused by intellectual lacunae?
The best reason to have children is for the free labor on your farm. Don't live on a farm? Force them to make shit you can sell on Etsy. Gotta make a profit somehow.
Uh, NO, the best reason to have children is that the line must go up and the social security system is going to be partially unfunded within six years!
You can think something is human nature, but also think that you’re above that nature
I am above drinking, eating, and defecating.
I will proceed to live the rest of my life without doing any of those things.
You sure will!
Just other people. Obviously I'm better than them. Maybe better than the gods.
American leftists becoming addicted to extracting social capital this last decade kind of low-key has me thinking he might be right. Not that it's impossible to live that way but the will to power is just too strong for egalitarian notions to ever become a significant thing again.
We've got like a dormant virus in our souls that was just waiting for the internet to exist and for money to get low
There's no thing like an American leftist because there's no left in the US.
And who thinks otherwise are just dumb mouth shitters who only had US propaganda for ~~meals~~ pasture all their lives.
Well, I thought you had an accurate take up until the tourettes goblin made you reply to yourself there. Something tells me your own ability to make anything good in the world might be a vestigial non-prority next to impotently talking shit on the internet. So at least we have that in common