Yeah - while Temple was my first exposure, but Ice Station is the best place to start, and up there with his best work. Later stuff goes from silly fun to just... lost.
WaxedWookie
joined 1 year ago
We're overpopulated given our current resource distribution/consumption, but solving that through eugenics is obviously moronic.
What confident ignorance that would be overcome with any research whatsoever. This is clear enough that I don't need to bother with an explanation - Here's 3 search terms for you:
Company town
Pullman
Monopoly
If you fail to tip them, you've failed them too. It's not complex.
You argument absolves the restaurateurs if consistently applied because the legislators failed them upstream (that's not to speak of absolving the legislators because of the voters) - I'm saying the legislators failed them, then the restaurateurs failed them, then the people that refused to tip them failed them. There's not a single point of failure, but that doesn't mean it's OK for you to decide to be the ultimate point of failure.
When very charitably, at least 12 of Eco's 14 signs of Ur fascism has been checked off along with the dictionary definition, this is a pretty weak argument - Where do you get your meaning of words if it's not based on the dictionary or on something's traits?
Deregulation and the outsourcing of state power to complicit, newly empowered commercial interests is standard within fascism, and pushing that power from notionally democratic direct government control to undemocratic businesses that have an interest in preserving the government that removed their guardrails and handed them all that power is undeniably authoritarian. Would you make the argument that company towns aren't authoritarian or centralised because it's not government power?
Excessive debt is indeed a driver of authoritatian policy for better or worse, but fascism isn't the only flavour of authoritarianism. Similarly, company towns tend to thrive in small government environments, and are historically incredibly authoritarian. That's not a good thing.
If you don't want to tip people that can't otherwise make minimum wage, use restaurants that pay minimum wage. You don't get to steal those workers' labour because the restaurateurs and legislators have failed them.
Others industries have to pay minimum wage - your contribution isn't factored into their base requirements for survival. This is a silly comparison. Do I support an increase in minimum wages? Abso-fucking-lutely - but electricians aren't routinely being paid less than $3/hr.
Me too - though I've lived in both.
Choosing to frequent a business that you know underpays their workers, where you know those workers rely on tips to survive, then choosing to take their labour and not pay for that labour isn't an arsehole tax - it's an arsehole subsidy, and it's the workers footing the bill.
I think workers should be paid enough to live comfortably without relying on tips, and that they should be a nice, but entirely unnecessary option - but you don't get to steal workers' labour just because you disagree with tipping.
Do you imagine that the people refusing to pay tips aren't fucking over the workers, or do you believe that because customers are fucking over workers, the restaurant owners can't be fucking over the workers too?
It doesn't matter - either take is transparently stupid.
Oh - my mistake - you think you're not supporting fascism... It'd be quaint if it weren't for the consequences.
Fascism is characterised by the merging of state and commercial interests, not a strong centralised authority in a beuracratic sense. Let's run the list, shall we?
"The cult of tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
Check.
"The rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
Check.
"The cult of action for action's sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
Check.
"Disagreement is treason" – fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
Big check.
"Fear of difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
That couldn't be Trum- CHECK.
"Appeal to a frustrated middle class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
Check.
"Obsession with a plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society. Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
Check.
Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak". On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
Check.
"Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy" because "life is permanent warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
Ukraine/Palestine - soft check.
"Contempt for the weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate leader, who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
Check.
"Everybody is educated to become a hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
Soft check, but that's clearly firming up.
"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality".
Check.
"Selective populism" – the people, conceived monolithically, have a common will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he alone dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the voice of the people".
Check.
"Newspeak" – fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.
Check.
I've got bad news for you...
Doesn't get paid properly to deliver a service you're relying on.
Tipping culture is stupid, but that doesn't mean you get to fuck over workers by refusing the tips they rely on. If you want to fight that fight, take it up with the business or your legislator, ya cheap asshole.
Your defence of your fascist alignment is to concede it's always ended terribly, then point to an anarcho-capitalist example where the goal is to collapse the government because Milei hasn't finished the job after checks watch less than a year?
I get that he's done a fairly commendable job with the economic tailspin so-far, but I'm not sure I see the relevance.
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Policy is not to arm countries blocking humanitarian aid - this is just sparkling aiding genocide.