BrotherL0v3

Pure speculation:

Reality is complicated. Nuance is hard. Fascism dumbs it all down; things were better before, it's their fault things are bad now, let's fuck them up to make things good again.

Nihilistic opportunists love it because it's easy to float to the top amidst a wave of tribalistic idiots. Tribalistic idiots desperately want it to be true; if the problems I face are secretly simple, it means I'm not actually dumb for not understanding what was going on before.

I first played this game at a really emotionally raw point in my life, and it was a real gut punch. $2.50 is a great price for it.

Folks. Publicly traded companies will ALWAYS compare the expected value of breaking the law with compliance.

Say it costs $100 million to follow the law. Breaking it comes with a $300 million fine, but only a 20% chance of getting caught.

They compare a 100% chance of paying $100 million to a 20% chance of paying $300 million.

Average cost of following the law: $100 million

Average cost of breaking it: $60 million

If we're gonna do capitalism (which I would rather we not, for the record!), we have to make that expected value calculation break in favor of following regulations. If it is cheaper to break the law than to follow it, you're not just losing money by complying: you're giving ground to your competition. Fines need to be massive. Infractions need to get caught and punished. Executives need to be held personally accountable. Corporations need to be dissolved. Fines cannot be just the cost of doing business.

Fuck that defeatist bullshit!

Of the top 10 largest protests in US history, two have happened this year, and they were both largely in response to Trump.

Movements are being built, organization is happening, people are pissed. Excuse us for not jumping straight to violence without a plan like the J6ers.

God. The "Americans Bad" circlejerk on Lemmy is so lame.

I think you're exactly right.

A few years ago, we saw a huge amount of mobilization for George Floyd. People fighting cops and winning.

After that, we saw a submarine full of billionaires implode & people cheered.

Recently, a health insurance CEO was shot to death in the street, and people rallied around the shooter as a hero.

Trump has been a uniquely effective vehicle for the ownership class to launch bullshit distractions at a population of Americans who are showing signs of class consciousness. Keep 40 or 50% of people mad at trans people and immigrants and DEI, and the rest busy trying to minimize the damage being done. Motherfucker said Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs in a presidential debate, and people somehow still take him seriously.

But he's not long for this world. Dennis Prager has all the charisma of a bad case of trench foot. Rupert Murdoch is ancient, we're already down a Koch brother, everything Elon Musk touches turns to shit, and I'm crossing my fingers that all the HGH gives Peter Thiel a heart attack.

The ownership class has got to make hay while the sun shines. Things are primed to turn around on them quickly.

So the citizens still have to physically vote even though there's only 1 option?

Yep! Technically tho, they can cross out the name of the candidate to vote "no".

See that little table to the right? They have to use the red pen sitting on top of it. But don't worry, it's "anonymous"!

Apparently in more recent elections, "no" votes just go in a separate bin?

It also appears to double as a census, since voting is mandatory. That same Wikipedia article says elections are watched by the inminban to keep an eye out for no-shows.

To be completely fair, there is apparently one position in local elections that can actually have two candidates. It's mostly a figurehead that's subordinate to the unelected mayor, but hey! Two names on the ballot!

Can't find anything about how ballots are counted, though that doesn't exactly surprise me.

To be clear, Kim Jong-un was not up for "election" in 2019. According to Wikipedia, it was actually the first time someone in his seat didn't even bother with the sham.

Not like it's a huge change, going from being the only name on the ballot to not even letting people vote.

Look at that dip right before 2020! Wonder why America dipped so much lower. Surely, face-masks as a way to prevent the spread of infectious disease wasn't suddenly a controversial issue!

Any angry mobs a guy could join? Anyone about to drag the far-right nut jobs that control our government out into the street and [REDACTED]? Can we do that before the genocide this time?

CNBC financial news channel anchor Joe Kernen compared New York to Batman’s crime-riddled Gotham. “ They’re taking Wall Streeters and making them walk out onto the ice in the East River, And, and then they fall through. I mean there is a class warfare that’s going on.”

"Raising taxes on people who have more wealth than they could spend in a hundred lifetimes is the same as murder."

I cannot empathize with anyone who says that shit with a straight face. You've either abandoned any principles you may have had to spew propaganda, or are so completely delusional that you actually believe it.

He also decided to kill thousands of low-level criminals instead of like ten rich people.

Imagine one day a mega-billionaire has a fatal heart attack. Found in his possession is the name of another mega-billionaire, scrawled onto whatever was near them in their own blood.

The next day, that billionaire drops dead. Another heart attack, another name found near the body. Rinse and repeat.

Eventually, one gets smart. Publicly pledges to give away their entire fortune and take an oath of poverty the day their name is found. The reaper skips him, and the message is sent: if you're ultra wealthy and want to live, stop being ultra wealthy.

Sure, it may not be foolproof: there's probably a lot of super rich people whose identities are more or less private. Maybe one of them can pull a fast one & hide their wealth rather than give it away. But still, it'd probably be more effective than what Light did with less killing to boot.

Republicans will ram through whatever shit they can whether it's legal or not, and Democrats will trip over their own dicks and let the parliamentarian block them even when they have a majority.

I increasingly feel like voting for people is a bad system. I don't want to pick someone to make all the decisions for me: just let me vote directly on the issue dammit. Tired of representatives lying to get elected or doing heel turns or chickening out.