this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Yeah, we may be at checkmate. Unlike the end of the age of the robber barons, when we reformed capitalism in the late 1800s / early 1900s in the US... this time the capitalists have purchased enough politicians to stop reform completely and forever.
What's funny is that this is entirely unsustainable. If they were in any way a real "capitalist" they would realize that the creeping authoritarianism they're pushing destroys economies long-term. They're laughing all the way to the bank right now because they're not concerned with the future.
However, they should be, because this House of Cards can easily collapse with the right push. They literally can't see past the profits at the end of the next quarter.
They literally can't imagine that all of them choosing to undermine capitalist principles at the same time will result in capitalism failing completely. The only reason it even functioned as well as it did for so long was 1. regulation and 2. raping the third world for resources.
I mean, I'm a fucking leftist, and it makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills that things are so far gone that I'm actually arguing "if we're going to do capitalism, we may as well do it in a way that it actually functions properly" as if that is a fucking fringe idea here.
The wheels are about to fly off this fuckin turkey.
Yep! And their short-sighted greed is going to drive us right to the brink of annihilation. Weβre staring down the barrel of environmental collapse and our leaders are generally either old enough they assume theyβll die before it gets βthat bad,β and the others stupidly think money makes them immune to the destruction of the biosphere. Anyone under 50 right now is going to live through some incredibly dark times. We are all dogs in a car with the windows closed and the heater on in a Texas parking lot. Business as usual is going to get really ugly, really quickly, really soon.
The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows
The government is corrupt
And we're on so many drugs
With the radio on and the curtains drawn
We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
And the machine is bleeding to death
The sun has fallen down
And the billboards are all leering
And the flags are all dead at the top of their poles
It went like this:
The buildings tumbled in on themselves
Mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
And pulled out their hair
The skyline was beautiful on fire
All twisted metal stretching upwards
Everything washed in a thin orange haze
I said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
These are truly the last days"
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it
Like a daydream or a fever
We woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
For sure it's the valley of death
I open up my wallet
And it's full of blood
except you are human and not a dog and you could take care of the problem with any kind of weapon but you chose not to do anything out of convenience
I wish this were true but good guys with guns are pretty easily stopped by megacorps with security staff
And the politicians with police.
number of people in the world > megacorps and security stuff
Sure, but that's not the end stage of the thought experiment. It's not really even the start. How exactly is this larger group of people supposed to enact any viable change? I think we could agree that seems unlikely to be possible in an unorganized/uncoordinated manner. The solution to that is to get organized and coordinate, right?
Well what does that look like? That could take nearly as many forms as people you ask to agree - so you'd need an idea that enough people would fall behind to still out number. Once that is achieved... What? If the goal of the burgeoning group is violent revolution, they won't get very far into the planning phase before being scooped up by security forces in some form or another. If the goal is nonviolent revolution, such as refusal to work, the system is constructed in such a way that those you would need to participate have a lot to lose, and little ability to withstand a protected protest/encounter/whatever, vs, presumably, a group that could easily outlast all of those things, as well as their children, and their children's children.
That's not to say nothing can work, but I think it might be just a bit reductive to suggest that things are as simple as suggesting it is total apathy in those who would need to unite to accomplish these goals that explains why the goals aren't striven towards.
Unfortunately their house of cards is built on a foundation of wealth...and not just fuck you money, but literal centuries of fuck you money.
The fortune 50 I worked for could literally stop doing all business and maintain their current spend for a century and still be solvent.
This isn't unstable at all...it's built to last for 100s of years...the current leaders to their grandkids will be safe.
To further that...the 1% have private armies and well stocked bunkers to ride out any social uprising. That's the really scary stuff.
We are all fucked though. Enjoy the hunger games.
Those armies are going to want to be paid and that'll be hard to do once currency has no meaning. If we are going to go that route. As a matter of fact, a bunch of the 1% have recently had meetings with "experts" on ways to keep their hired mercenaries from turning on them once things truly collapse.
You really think those bunkers are filled with cash Scrooge McDuck style? They'll have food, guns, and likely lots of gold. They'll also very likely be sustainable.
Keeping the mercs fed and happy is a trivial thing.
what future?? why would they think of anything long term?
they are cashing in while earth can still support human life.
That's the thing, though, they don't care about the future. They only want to maximize today's profits.
Tomorrow is someone else's problem.
I don't know how to solve this problem without a massive peiod of hardship for everyone until the societal parasites finally feel the pain , but the cause is pretty obvious.
Money can be an addiction. billionares are basically junkies with mental problems, do not expect them to follow any sense or logic
Thank you! I've been reading the responses and many of them hit the mark, but yours is the only one mentioning the sbortsightedness of it all. My brother and I have had many conversations about this subject and agree that part of it has to be some kind of collective brain misfire for the lack of a better phrase, that happens to organisms that get to the level we're at, since everything that we build moves faster than evolution will allow our brains to adapt to, and while we see all of this as a mistake we've made or a small subset of us being greedy and upsetting the apple cart, I posit that it is just our species finally reaching a bottleneck that all species eventually face. We just artificially pushed the ceiling further and further upward so we didn't see it. I think we are starting to see it though and it's unlikely that we can do anything to stop from hitting it now.
I think really rich people do think in long terms / generations and aim for a feudal system, which can be stable (like in the middle ages).
However, I personally don't think that a feudal world with nukes will be stable very long.
I also think, that many rich people overestimate their amount of control in a totalitarian country (despite billionaires already disappeareing in China and falling out of windows in Russia).
Yes, CIA, this post right here.
This goes back to the original sin. It's stupid to be evil and greedy. The latter is the foundation is their entire ideology is built on the former is the mortar holding together the bricks of other people's labor their house is built on.
Uh, didn't the rich rather famously buy political influence back then as well?
Yes, but not at the same scale. They've become masters at it in the modern age.
I dunno, from what Iβve read about political machines in the gilded age it was really just as bad back then.
People worked 12 hour shifts 6 days a week back then with no minimum wage. A lot of people lived in company towns and didn't even get paid in real money. Child labor was legal and widespread, although some shit hole states are getting back to that.
Things are bad now but anyone who thinks it's as bad as it was in the gilded age is either delusional or extremely ignorant. There's a reason the progressive era happened, people were pushed beyond their limits and propaganda couldn't make up for that anymore.
It helps that the field of psychology has come a long way, and it helps further that being a psychologist to help people pays peanuts, but being a psychologist who helps write ad campaigns to make sure the ads have the most psychological impact pressuring people to buy pays big bucks.
Hey man, the FTC is doing anti-trust like nobody's business for the first time since gods-know-when. It's not a silver bullet, but it's progress for the first time in forever!
Time to sharpen the guillotines again..