Talcosis

Well. Shit.

https://xkcd.com/55/

Companies get penalized if a lot of their former employees start getting unemployment.

I had a friend who bought a BMW a while back. The blinker literally didn’t stay on. You know how in most cars, you move the blinker and it kinda stays in place and blinks until you turn the wheel? Yeah the blinker in his BMW didn’t do that.

Investors don’t care about the companies they invest in, they care about return on investment.

If it destroys the company, they simply invest in another company.

Nobody deserves shit. I made the choices I made and got to where I am. A number of kids I grew up with made different choices, and left that village for the first time to go die in Ukraine.

C’est la vie.

You’d have a lot fewer engineers, scientists, doctors, and lawyers. Pretty much anyone with half-decent money management and enough income to not live paycheck to paycheck in the western world makes the global 1% in their lifetime. That’s only about a mil in total assets.

Median american (so probably not the four careers I listed) will earn ~2mil in their lifetime.

Any given population is approximately 30% highly authoritarian. Their behaviors can be summarized as:

1. high degree of submission to established, legitimate authorities in their society
2. high levels of aggression in the name of said authorities
3. a high level of conventionalism Often, a high authoritarian individual can be identified with the following question: To what degree should society be dictated by authority? Low and medium authoritarian people will both answer “not at all”, while highly authoritarian people will say something like “an average amount”. This illustrates the need to be normal in their lives. The need to see oneself as average.

So, one of the most effective ways to prevent this is for highly authoritarian people to see others acting in defiance of authority, as well as interacting with other, non-authoritarian people. Basically showing that continuous submission to authority is not the only way to live a normal life.

https://theauthoritarians.org/

I feel intimidated to talk about it as well, because —how do you even talk to someone about any of this?

The problem with “both sides” is that it doesn’t really fit the perception of most people. The upper leadership is very much “both sides”, and the majority of the policies are also “both sides” as a result. However, most people aren’t interacting with Nancy Pelosi on a daily basis. The nice old lady down the street who volunteers for the democratic party and bakes cookies is pretty apparently not the same as the dude in a lifted pickup with a maga flag and a gun rack. The closest most people are gonna get to a “both sides” democrat is going to be the local mayor, in a community of 20k+.

I don’t really have an easy answer. ACAB ran into similar issues, but the nature of police work is routinely and publicly violent. That made it much more readily apparent.

The oligarchs will escape. The people up against the wall will be those that are not wealthy enough to escape, but not poor enough to be desperate.

There’s a reason that Orwell was banned in the US for being pro-communist and banned in the USSR for being pro-capitalist. That reason is because Orwell was anti-authoritarian.

I was born in a small village ~200km SE of St Peter back in the soviet days. We got electricity when I was six years old, because my neighbor figured out how to tap into some nearby high voltage lines. After the collapse of the soviet union, I collected enough scholarships and got a visa sponsorship to get a chemical engineering degree in the US. Then I went on to grad school. Then I got the rest of my family out of there. Now I am somewhere in the top 10% of the US.

The only advantage I was born with is above average intelligence and the ability to put it to work. And a bit of luck for everything else to work out.

That is the cost of my comfort. And yes, I am sure that whether leftists or fascists take over, I will be persecuted. Fascists will persecute me because I am not a fascist. Leftists will persecute me because I have done reasonably well for myself, but not well enough to hop on a private jet when the shit hits the fan. That is also the cost of my comfort.

Yeah, everyone except the people that end up against the wall.

More often than not, those people aren’t the ones causing the structural problems in society. The really rich people with the power all escape before that point.

If you can’t tell the difference between someone who doesn’t think the world is 100% bad and trump, then your ideological purity tests are too black and white for us to ever be anything other than enemies. I won’t ever be able to 100% agree with every thought you have. Nor will anyone else.

Yeah, no shit. I do things to improve my life. If you don’t, then you’re either lying or an actual example of capitalist caricatures of leftism, just looking for a handout.

Edit: And if you’re not acting to improve your life and the lives around you, what’s the purpose of revolution? Action for the sake of Action? That’s point #3 on Umberto Eco’s list of the 14 common features of fascism.

What an astute observation! I wouldn’t even describe it as a boil, maybe a light simmer if anything. Because you know what? My life is pretty nice.

So now that we have established that fact, perhaps it would be prudent to consider how you reach the majority of the population that is in my boat (not literally, I mean, when I’m on my boat I’m generally reading a book on my own). But I mean the ones that think like this and don’t read books by Kropotkin.

When I become Jesus Christ, savior, and responsible for the collective sins of humanity.

Until then, I’m responsible for myself, and will act accordingly.

I am glad that you were able to build a community of your friends and neighbors.

I do not have the time or resources to do so.

So you labeled that as me being a consumer brained idiot on par with Alzheimer’s. Now you’re surprised that my general demeanor towards you is negative?

Okay. I guess your world doesn’t have a place for me then. If it’s camps either way, I’d rather do it the easy way.

Okay. Well, when all your hard work leads to actual tangible results that are better than the status quo, then we’ll talk.

Until then, less blabbing and more sleeve rolling

Yes, I am certain that your life will begin improving measurably when the food runs out.

Okay. Well, when this glorious mythic Revolution begins, we will see what happens. Until the second coming of the Revolution, were stuck in reality. Although it seems some of us might be stuck is a certain level of Revolution Revolution worship.

Revolution.