Isn't the "company" part of what you mentioned still playing the game?
Huh thx for the book suggestion.
That is sort of my point. If you play the game you are going to lose (in this case get co-opted) so you need to be able to not play the same game that they are.
most people are not capitalists and hold no capital now.
Yeah most people aren't but almost everyone has to participate in a capitalist system.
it sounds like you just want to ban big business.
No I want to use a system that isn't capitalism.
Yeah it is through capitalism at the moment. My point is that it doesn't have to be.
I was pointing out free stores as a model.
Yeah I agree that should be the ideal however, like you have said, it hasn't ever really been implemented yet.
There are a bunch of groups around the world that follow similar anarchist principles, like Rojava, Zapatistas, or even Temporary autonomous zones, but all of them have some unofficial/hidden/weak form of organizer that can be targeted by people with the right resources.
My point being that since systems tend to sustain themselves if we don't start building systems that can function without the need of an organizer or something of a similar sort then there will still be that place where the power can be misused.
or anarchy (more like anarcho communist probably).
I've come to a similar conclusion, however I still have some hold ups on how anarchism currently being implemented across the world.
It still relies on organizers and extra attention being diverted to certain individuals who give an agenda for what needs to be done next. This allows co-opting these movements to be a lot easier than if we could work past that.
I think there is also a subset of US culture that thinks that STEM is the only “real” academic group of fields worth pursuing, and knowledge in liberal arts is pointless -> not contributing to society -> not a meaningful part of the meritocracy.
Yeah I agree with this quite a bit.
That's fair.
Well the way I interpret it is that people who demonstrate their ability are put into a position where they are rewarded more relative to their peers and/or have control over what their peers do.
So for example if I was a engineer and based on some metric was considered highly valuable then I would be paid more than other engineers and I would be put into a position where I can give other engineers directions on what needs to be done.
I don't think the idea of meritocracy only lives in the U.S.
Ok I agree with that definition, but the suggestion that you were making, at least how I interpreted it, was to start a socialist company to try and be successful within that same exploitative system which I think sort of misses the point of what I was trying to say.