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I'm chill with safety nets for poor people and regulations on large companies
what I consider far left is when people start saying that the govt should own everything and there shouldn't be private property. that's an extreme and I am against that.
edit: all of you downvoters are actually far left commies and I'm completely correct
Anyone that states "I'm completely correct" is laughing matter.
you want the govt to own everything? if so you are a communist. that actually is the definition
You're certainly entitled to you opinion, and we're chill on the same things, but I do think more industry -- especially the kind which are utilities -- should be nationalised. I'm even open to the abolishment of private property. But I think we need updated democracies (better representation, maybe try local direct democracy nodes?) before we start getting close to seriously considering these questions as policy.
And of course it may turn out that these solutions (nationalising, all property publicly owned, etc) aren't the best ones for human flourishing, so then we just course correct.
As long as we don't get tooo attached to any particular ideology, and focus on outcomes, I think we could make a much better world. Kind of borrowing the Meliorism aspect from liberal democracy and running with it here, I guess...
i think a one of the largest problems with democracies nowadays is the influence of money on them. if that were removed we could actually move to a more reasonable world
You're absolutely right. There's so much broken with our existing democracies at the higher levels (and municipally as well, I'm sure), that it is maybe too optimistic to try and extend to influence of the political class into more industries.
I have a hunch that workplace democracy (usually in the form of unions) is one of the lowest hanging fruits to improve the situation overall, and it's still hypothetically within our reach in much of the global North. That is, it's still a risk, but it's unlikely that the army will be called in the open fire on strikers (yet).
Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement – in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods. (Friedrich Engels, Principles of Communism, 1847)
Communists ain't taking away my beaten up electric bass and my microwave oven
One of my friends described it as there's difference between private property and personal property. Your toothbrush is personal property. No one cares about that. Your factory where you assemble widgets is private property, where you're paying people to convert labor into stuff you can sell.
I should read more left-wing theory. It made sense when he explained it.
How does that apply to things like computers? My personal PC can also double up as a server from which I run the applications that I sell to people. The PC is the means of production, and it is mine, but I don't necessarily write all the code myself.
I'm not sure!
I'd guess maybe the code would be open source, or at least freely shared among everyone who works on it. Then anyone can use their personal computer for the code, like anyone could use their personal guitar to play a song you wrote.
The computer can then remain personal, and the code itself is treated like the means of production that is collectively owned
Private property that isn’t personal is someone elses property
Modern leftists (i.e. anarchists) are against the government at all.
that's only the case if you exclude authoritarian communists and other similar systems that want a govt from your definition of 'leftists'