bobo
I mean, we did legitimately save a lot of money this summer. Catch of the day in an overpriced seaside vacation area is not cheap at all.
The rest of the year though...
Well if I stop buying fishing gear, at some point it'll be financially worth it. I mean I've already "paid off" the license for this year. Yup... Ignore the brand new rod and reel I got for black Friday, it was on discount. Or the fact that I got a gold membership discount at the local tackle store because I spent enough money in a year.
I don't think there's any 'compromise' about it. He doesn't come off as having anything in the way of a 'modern' view of liberty and individuality, and seems to have little interest in portraying himself as such;
Individuality? Definitely not in the western way of thinking. Liberty? He did make men and women equal in the hypothetical society, while living in a highly patriarchal one. And the social mobility doesn't depend on who you were born to. Also there are no slaves.
only his reputation as a titan of philosophy makes people reluctant to ascribe the clearly oligarchic views he's expressing to him.
The theoretical society is aristocratic in the literal meaning of the word - rule of the best. There are distinct classes, but every class is comprised of only the people who are best suited for that task.
This isn't all that unusual for his time period. But that makes it all the more important to acknowledge.
I'd say it's overall quite unusual, utopic, and based on a long history of disappointment. Democracy was on its last legs and killed his teacher, an oligarchy he had an influence in was corrupt and murderously greedy, and tyranny got him enslaved for trying to teach an heir basic human decency.
Plato's Republic boils down to "If we educated our oligarchs and told them to be really strict with themselves (and especially the filthy poors), Justice Will Win In The End"
The ruling class aren't oligarchs, and are in fact the filthy poors when compared to the working class. It's basically a society governed by monks with extremely strict rules and selection criteria.
I think that idea comes from an earlier form of Athenian democracy that involved a lottery to form an assembly. The idea was to prevent people who want to rule from ruling, and instead make it a chore that had to be done for the good of the community.
The working class are free to obtain all of the personal wealth they can, but they're disallowed from any involvement in ruling or enforcement. And considering your stance on oligarchy, you agree with him that the greedy shouldn't be involved in governing.
And if I remember correctly the founding myth warns that the society will fall apart if the greedy take control.
For a more modern example, you can look at any technocracy or Vanguardist regime of the 20th century and judge for yourself if a self-selecting caste of men educated in either practical matters (largely the former) or the humanities (largely the latter) with a clear intention of reconstructing society in their own image and with significant restrictions on the accumulation of personal property have made any exceptional progress towards a just society - or if they've done the exact opposite.
What did the myth warn about?
None of those had a system to completely remove all personal property from the government and enforcement. If those people are living better than the working class - you fucked up.
IMO that's the lesson of the metaphor, if your decisioning is influenced by personal gain or desires, it is not just. Only what is best for overall harmony is just.
That would be curious considering that his account of democracy is not an account of 'mob rule', but of literal anarchy - ie that all people do as they wish to.
Are you talking about the transition from democracy to tyranny in the Republic, or something else? I don't know of any other accounts that could be considered in any way anarchistic.
If that's the case, it's not that everyone does whatever they want, but they think they can be whatever they want.
One day you're a labourer highschool dropout, the next a doctor proving vaccinees cause autism, the next you're a mathematician proving the earth is flat, and so on. It's a bit exaggerated, but it makes sense something like that could lead into tyranny. Remember Pisistratus and the other tyrants of Athens?
If he didn't trust anyone with power, he should come off in support of his account of 'democracy', but instead he regards it as one of the worst states of a polity, below only tyranny.
Keep the historical facts in mind.
During Plato's life Athens went through different systems, and ended up on a direct democracy that's paying free men to attend the assembly. The same free men who voted for Socrates to kill himself, and then a year later built a statue to honour him. Literally soldiers without a war, and the lowest of the free class, voting on things they know nothing about for a living.
He didn't shit on democracy for no reason, it was a dream on its last legs during his life, and it died shortly after him.
Sure, and USA is a land of freedom and chances, where people are equal and nobody is being persecuted for their religion or the colour of their skin, and where money trickles down to water all of the working class.
Get real dude.
Afaik personal property is illegal in theory, but you can buy a car and have your family inherit it. The ruling class in theory doesn't own any private property, yet the Kim family owns a private island, yachts, luxury cars, and enough money to pay NBA players for a sleepover.
Also, you're forgetting a few key steps in making the Plato's polis like:
- killing/exiling all adults before starting with the reforms
- removing the concept of family, and instead having all children grow communally
- a magical system to correctly grade newborns and assign them to the correct caste
Edit:
But again, you're comparing the myth of an actual society and it's actual state, with a hypothetical society that wasn't ever supposed to have an actual state. Plato purposefully Deus exes problems away so you can focus on what the polis represents - a metaphor for a righteous person.
Dude have you even read the republic? They're literally preordained golden gods used as a metaphor to explore what righteousness means through a theoretical society. They're presupposed to be better than the rest of the population so the discussion can move on instead getting bogged down with figuring out who goes in what caste.
But even if you interpret it literally, a ruling caste that can't ever own personal possessions, and has been brainwashed since childhood to put the needs of the community over their own, would be a better system of governance than a bunch of rich, corrupt bastards puppeteered by corporations.
A platform purposely made to run bash scripts is using bash? Impossible...
Meanwhile I'm on my second Logitech in 15-20 years.
But the inclusion of Peter Wohlleben as a plant makes perfect sense?
