>>100928
I was such an insanely jealous and egotistical commie in my teens and early twenties, and it had a lot more to do with me being a butthurt loser and an outcast than anything in economics.
I just wanted to live in a kind of world that would accomodate me and my desires perfectly and hand me all the things that I wanted without me having to put effort into getting them, because I totally knew how incapable I was at getting what I wanted myself. It felt like there was an invisible force pushing down on me and preventing me from being happy or getting successful in life, which is why I was drawn to all kind of different brands of socialism that promised me some order in life, to beat up the bad guy and give me what I felt I was entitled to. It appealed to all my weakness and desires. The moral righteousness was a big thing too: It was never me who was wrong, it was the whole world and everyone in it that was stupid and complacent and was just following the rules of imperfect capitalism like cattle and wageslaving themselves instead of thinking for themselves and finding the courage to try something new and different and try out perfect socialism once again.
Later on my mentality changed, I stopped being a victim, I stopped blaming others, I took responsibility for myself, and I realized that the only reason why everything sucked before was that, despite the world being unfair, I still had some power to do something about it and achieve what I want, and the real bad guy is not companies, it's not normies, it's not rich people, it's those that try to take away my power to seek my own version of happiness. Not sure if this makes any sense… I don't really know what it was that made me an ancap, changing my mentality from a victim to some who takes responsibility was definitely a catalyst, but it just kinda clicked with me. I think what drew in to it first was the edginess of it, then it was the "fact" that as chaotic as it might be, it's still a good way of running society without some fucking government rat breathing down your throat and telling you what to do, and after that I was doing research and getting redpilled by other ancaps on reasons why shit still sucks despite us living in a (supposedly) "capitalist" society. What kinda pisses me off, is that no one ever told me about this stuff before: almost every day there is trendy commie propaganda being thrown at me, but I was never told about libertarianism until my mid-twenties, after which everything made SO MUCH sense and my view of the world was radically different, and I think it's true for so many other people.
Anyways, threads like this are really underrated, because understanding why you stopped being a commie is important for helping you connect with others who are still commies and showing them a way out. It made realize just now that arguing about economics is usually NOT about logical shit like: "socialism is bad because X, Y, and Z", it's more being emotional like: "look, I understand why you feel that way, I understand how hard it is to deal with [describe problem in detail], that's why I support [solution] so that you would be better off", you have to be extremely patient and empathetic and explain capitalism in a calm, easy to understand way, because maybe they already agree with you, it's just you're the first person to ever tell them about it.
This is also why I shill for self-help and self-improvment as much as I shill for capitalism. Successful, mentally healthy people do not turn to socialism, it's usually weak people who dwell on negativity, or the ambitious psychopaths who directly have something to gain from taking such a position.