teawrecks

joined 2 years ago
[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I agree with the first statement, the rest feels to me like an arbitrary list of nice things that I don't believe is backed by empirical data, so I can't agree that "Anything short of this will just lead right back into fascism as history has shown". The "$50 million" number is arbitrary. And workers tend to not have capital to start/run a company, nor do they want to assume the risk associated with it failing. Is there a specific historical example of all those things being successfully guaranteed in some society that you're thinking of? How is it going for them now?

I would like to know what your idea is to get out of fascism without any kind of violence

To stick with my original analogy, the same way I "get out of" food poisoning without puking my guts out for a time: I don't eat it.

To relate it back to your first statement which I agree with, "We need a society in which people are not able to obtain the kind of power that can allow for fascism". How do we do this? Democratically! We need a society of people who detest the signs of fascism:

  • appeals to palingenetic nationalism
  • the enemy is "strong and weak"
  • "fake news"
  • zero-sum social hierarchies
  • fear mongering
  • money as speech
  • basically any attempt to combat economic hardships using any means besides addressing weath inequality
  • etc.

Personally, I think we need to agree on a charter of some kind that has a feedback loop built in: as wealth inequality is relatively low, allow more capitalism, more risk, more innovation; and as wealth inequality rises, so too do corporate tax rates, guarantees on worker compensation, all the bells and whistles. If you're a corporation who doesn't like the tax rate, tough, we've all agreed that until the state of the society gets better, your ability to capitalize on it is handicapped.

"But why not always socialism, workers own all the things all the time?" The world is a big complicated factory of interconnected systems. We can't hope to control it all even if we had a One World Govt running everything, much less hundreds of independent nations and cultures. At best we would create unintended emergent phenomena like black markets. I don't think we should aim to control everything, we just ensure society sets up the right incentives, and the one thing that should underscore every incentive should be human dignity.

Homelessness should be illegal, in that we as a society should not be allowed to let people be homeless. It should be a crime against humanity for any society to allow one person to take billions more in tax breaks each year, while another person dies in the streets. Same for starvation or lack of healthcare. I would even go as far as to say, giving someone a job that is too mind numbing should be a crime. It's one thing for you to work for the weekend, it's another thing for it to be psychologically demeaning in its mundanity, which seems to be the ideal end game for many jobs: optimize out any way for the employee to mess anything up with the way that they are.

The part I don't like to admit though is (without going down a second rabbit hole), I think the best way to achieve this cultural shift is through religion. We need a religion that emphasizes human dignity above all else. No other mechanism has proven as successful at shaping the behaviour of large groups of people.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 25 points 4 days ago (10 children)

It's not a popular take in doomer circles like lemmy, but I legitimately believe that there is a "bloodless" outcome that results in the right absolutely crumbling. Not only that, I believe anything less will inevitably result in this exact situation repeating itself every hundred years or so until we learn as a people how to build a sustainable, equitable society that prioritizes human dignity over greed.

We need to learn as a society how to identify and reject fascist ideologies the same way we can look at moldy food and know not to eat it. And I think the Internet may be the tool that gets us to that point.

Until we get to that point, all democracies will continue to fall victim to these types of attacks.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 34 points 5 days ago (7 children)

These comments are severely overestimating the level of autonomy players are given in this game. It's just a branching story, where the branches one player is presented with are dependent on the branch another player chose. I imagine if only a single person plays this game, it will just make stuff up to make it seem like there are other players affecting the world.

Also, also the cynicism on Lemmy is a stale meta at this point. Be the change you wanna see or stfu.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

First off, Trump is one thing, but MAGA is losing ground. Source. As soon as trump entered office, the MAGA movement stalled and has started trending back down. This is because he's been given the every lever, and as expected, he's botching it.

Second, you're interpreting what I'm saying in the way you want to hear it. Absolutely go protest, get naked and stand in front of a tank, douse yourself in oil and set yourself aflame on the whitehouse lawn, sound the alarm so that everyone hears through all the noise. And like always: defend yourself and those around you from criminals using whatever means you have.

But we are at the ideal time to appeal to MAGA. Look at all the Republicans breaking from him over the shutdown. MAGA is to the right what Occupy WallSt was to the youth before the rich steered it back to a left/right old/young thing. There are systemic problems, and people are seeing that targeting the "woke" isn't going to solve it. They are soon going to be forced to demand working solutions. He can only blame Biden for so long.

Of course, nothing i say will convince some people. There are a class of horny idiots who desperately need to act on their frail emotions, give trump what he wants, and go out in the streets with MAGA to aggressively suck each other off. You are free to be in that group if you want, but know that you're not helping anyone but yourself and the fascist movement. (Of course you and I both know that the only fingers you're lifting are from your keyboard to downvote someone you disagree with 🤣).

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 45 points 6 days ago

I've been waiting for this moment for years. I knew that when Oregonians got serious about protesting trump, it would be a bunch of geared up military vs a bunch of naked unicyclers. And you just can't sell that as threatening.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 0 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I'm not trying to be mean, but I do think you need to hear this: touch grass. This is a big deal to Americans, but it's pretty much politics as usual for like 70% of the world. Recognize that the fact that we get to think it's a big deal is part of our entitlement.

I get it, trump is testing limits, he's got ICE rounding people up, he's trying to deploy the military into states, he's painting innocents as terrorists. And I'm telling you, it's not popular. He doesn't have the support to pull this off, he's doing what he's doing not because he's strong but because he's weak, desperate, and he knows it.

Right now, he desperately wants this to devolve into violence, because like any demagogue, he can't be a functional politician, he can only fight invisible enemies. He's trying to provoke a war in time for midterms. Don't give him what he wants. Stand united in peace with the vast majority of people who don't want this to continue.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 6 days ago

The fact that we're able to have this conversation means we still have the power that matters most. And the fact that they hold all political offices means they get blamed for any unrest. It's why every incumbent in every election in the world in 2024 lost support, and it's why trump is so afraid of the midterms.

Meanwhile, Bernie and AOC are holding successful rallies in southern states, and local candidates like Graham Platner are gaining traction. The right has spent decades shifting blame away from the rich, and it seems people are finally getting wise to it. It sucks that they had to see how bad it could get with their own eyes before figuring it out, but that's just how humanity works, it seems.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz -2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

As long as you accept that you are playing into their strategy to instigate a civil war which they've been working toward years, if not decades, sure.

Alternatively, we could opt to listen to experts on fascism, recognize the systemic issues that give rise to it (like economic instability and wealth inequality), make a concerted effort to address those concerns, win over the working class which the left has neglected for the last 60 years, and bring the temperature down for centrists thereby cutting off the primary weapon of fascism...

But we'll probably do it the dumb way.

Edit: for the record, I'm fully convinced there are psyops going on here on Lemmy, and the people like you trying to push us further toward violence and civil unrest are either them, or useful idiots helping them.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 week ago (8 children)

For the record, fascists will always project that they are afraid for their safety. Playing the victim is how they gain power. When one of them is targeted, it doesn't create fear to dissuade the rest, it empowers them to play it up for support.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The mag 7 is 1/3 of the S&P500, but that doesn't mean the loss will be limited to 1/3. A those other companies are also dependent on AI and the success of those 7.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 7 points 1 week ago

The Mag7 are the 7 giant tech companies currently propped up by the AI bubble. These companies represent upwards of 34% of the marketcap of the S&P500. The other 493 companies are also intimately tied to the success of AI and/or the Mag7. Not just everyone's retirement accounts, but a huge amount of the world is invested in the US S&P500 thinking they're diversified across 500 successful companies.

So to be clear, yes, we're absolutely poised for a worldwide economic recession. I wouldn't be surprised if smaller nations who rely on USD are completely bankrupted, but one thing is for certain: when AI pops, the fallout will not be limited to the US.

[–] teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

Spontaneous

For some unknown reason, teenagers in a small town keep randomly exploding in a mess of blood and guts. The rest of the plot is a coming of age black comedy around that premise. I thought it was quite good.

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