It’s all these little details that I’m going to forget to talk about whenever someone asks me what this was like in 50+ years. How do you get across the point that every day it felt like you learned about some new, different way in which the basic infrastructure of society was crumbling under your feet?
One thing Patrick Wyman really hits on in history of Rome podcast is how the actual experience of decline and fall was so radically different for different people living in the empire. First off, a full half of the empire didn't fall until a thousand years after a lot of folks think about "the end" of Roman Empire - just less than 65 years before the Protestant Reformation!
If you lived in north Africa, without having to ship all your grain to Rome, life might have actually gotten better for you during the decline. But if you lived in Britain, where the economy was largely based around the military... when the legions left the economy collapsed. I don't think it will be any different for us in the US. Some areas might thrive in the absence of an effective central government, just like some individuals might. While a whole lot are hurt, of course.
And while a lot of people will say what's the big deal about the post taking longer, another thing Wyman emphasizes, with Rome it was the cumulative effect of a thousand things like this. For us, it will be longer post times. Then more days of the year without electricity. Then it becomes nearly impossible (unless you pay serious $$$) to fly cross country in less than a day. Death by a thousand cuts.
These are ridiculously easy things to fix from a technical standpoint, though- we just need our political impasses resolved. I don't think we're in the crisis of the third century, we're in the collapse of the oligarchic republic preceding the emergence of a popular dictator (in the Roman sense), either coming from a mass movement to expand democracy and struggle against the global capitalist class (establishing America as a socialist republic), or a "populist" individual leader who establishes the beginnings of an actual, mask off empire that "reconciles" the class struggle through hyperexploitation of the periphery (from our perspective it will be ecofascist but it's almost certain to be multicultural, which will throw a lot of people off)
What we really need to resolve this polarization is the unity of our trust and the trust of our unity :pete:
- Big box retailers murdered small businesses and consequently a variety of physical retail locations.
- The dot com years brought about online retailers who were propped up by the government in the subsequent bubble burst
- The internet sought to replace physical mail with electronic mail
- Physical letter mail declines, packages increase.
- Online retailers begin changing the landscape. Even fewer physical locations to buy goods as stores move completely online.
- Commercial real estate declines
- More mail is now packages than letter mail. People depend on deliveries now more than ever.
- Major online retailers already own the mail system implicitly through tough contracts
- Once the system is privatized, and people have few to no choices in physical shopping, the system gains a larger market.
- Private companies are free to then fight over who gets to own it. DeJoy's company will take a large chunk and then sell off the less profitable parts to others.
- Amazon will pull out their big swinging dick and buy out De Joy's share because they have the money to do it. They're very into vertical integration.
When there's a gold rush don't mine gold, sell the shovels. This is going to happen. I think both Pelosi and Feinstein have family who are tied to privatization efforts via the Kochs. So there's not going to be a real opposition. That's why Biden's admin hasn't done anything yet. We're about to see the birth of a future trillionaire family. We're going to be hearing about DeJoy's kids or grandkids running for President in 40 years.
When there’s a gold rush don’t mine gold, sell the shovels
One word: Boxes
When there’s a gold rush don’t mine gold, sell the shovels
And when the speculation bubble pops, sell gay lifestyle stuff to the 90% male frontier workers who are stuck in California with nothing to do
Everytime I go to the courthouse in my city they still havent fixed an elevator.
This is what the fall of rome had to feel like
I know this is hyperbolic, but it is symbolic of the decay of infrastructure and the death by a thousand paper cuts that truly leads to the collapse of an empire
I think of this every time I can't listen to podcasts on cellular and have to download them in advance.
They said they couldn't do it legally.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/biden-cannot-fire-usps-louis-dejoy.html
"Trying to force DeJoy out could lead to constitutional chaos."
Imagine after 4 years of Trump saying something so silly.
Progressives are furious that DeJoy has kept his post, but Biden’s hands are tied: While the president can fire other high-ranking executive officials at will, federal law bars the president from terminating the postmaster general under any circumstances. Biden can attempt to oust DeJoy indirectly, but that option is fraught with legal uncertainties, and certain to trigger Republican complaints of norm busting. Unless the president is willing to take a significant legal risk, DeJoy will remain in control for months or years to come.
You mean legal risk like Trump? The guy you fuckfaces said for 4 years straight was going to be arrested at any moment. And then shifted to him being arrested on Inauguration Day. Now just act like that shit never happened. Now it's too much to ask a president to risk himself legally in order to do something the same article admits would be good and helpful? Fuck I hate these people.
Let me help. Here's what you do. Grab your secret service and a few members of the world's largest military of which you solely have command. Walk your ass down to the Postmaster General's office and drag his ass out of there. If anyone tries to physically stop you, shoot them. Then when DeJoy tries to sue you, you ignore subpoenas. You claim you were acting completely within your authority. Then the media will spend all their time factchecking your pinocchios until they have to move on. If it goes to the Supreme Court you walk your ass over there and ask them with what army do they plan to stop you? Then you go back to the White House and just keep pretending you did nothing wrong. When you leave office nothing will happen because you were the president.
Also, it's fucking hilarious that doing that one thing would be a victory for the Democratic party for decades. Biden wouldn't have to do anything else.
"If you want to see more things like this, you need to donate to the DNC."
Even better, let the Supreme Court rule that you are in the wrong, but refuse to give DeJoy her job back and dare the court to do something about it
A service where we clutch pearls so hard they return to their constituent minerals.
If Big Dick Lenin were somehow magically the president with nothing else changed, be like:
Democrats will eat their own though, only republicans are loyal to power.
Thank god we made sure to :vote: for Biden to save the postal service!
Pretty weird that our standard of living keeps decreasing despite a promised recovery from Covid, huh? I'm sure when everyone gets back to work it'll all be better
Neither rain nor snow nor glom of nit can stay these mesengers abot their duty
Don't arsk us about: california, oregon, any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows, florida, your life-saving medication
Fun Fact: the correct term for Discworld stamp collecting is Flataly
They're going to make the USPS just subsidized transport for Amazon packages. Just taking money from people's taxes and shoveling them to Amazon.
This doesn't make sense from a cost cutting standpoint, what most people who don't know much about post office logistics need to realize for mail delivery is that the volume of mail is never ending so there isn't currently space to store it or enough transport trucks to slow delivery, they have to deliver it that fast.
It's because the post office is prioritizing resources for Amazon deliveries instead of delivering mail.
I don't disagree, but it seems to me that the post office is being sabotaged with moves like this. My mother worked for USPS for 20+ years, she and I have had some discussions on this. She retired because of all the BS over the last few years, it got too much for her.
Amazon is rolling out their own delivery service and using gig economy workers, which is not a good thing, but should take some burden off the post office's volume.
legit if china declared that mail would take 40-67% longer to deliver every western editorial would predict its imminent collapse. you know it, i know it
Lol calling a nonprofit public service provider having a "monopoly."
We're reaching the neoliberal singularity. The point at which the state, Capital and culture all become one.
It's so weird to me though, the absence of invaders on the border. Like, every other imperial collapse sees more and more daring raids being committed against the dying empire, more territory being ceded with every year. But we aren't seeing that. America has so thoroughly destroyed all competition to the point that it is just eating itself inside out. The closest we see to that is the belt and road, but it feels wrong to call that a conquest or session of territory.
simple geography: the USA is not particularly invadable. If it happens it'll be from the south, maybe in a decade or two, and I hope it's a united global south that does it and not some kind of cartel ISIS of our own indirect and direct creation
Let me be a little more clear. :england-cool: :israel-cool: :japan-cool:
We have own barbarians, they don't need to come from across a border. The barbarism is coming from inside the house
Like, every other imperial collapse sees more and more daring raids being committed against the dying empire, more territory being ceded with every year. But we aren’t seeing that.
I don't know, man. Look at Colonial Pipeline. Look at the BLM protest marches against the police. Or the collapse of our imperial redoubts in places like Afghanistan and Hong Kong and various corners of Latin America. There was that story any the US border wall being sold for scrape in Mexico. There's the sporadic shootings at military bases. There's the increasing lawlessness of private businesses, up to and including the sponsorship of the Jan 6th riots.
There are a lot of instances in which the imperial state is deteriorating, even if it doesn't involve Russia reclaiming Alaska or Mexico chewing up San Jose.
That's a fair point. I'm focusing too much on obvious places and not on the real places of imperialism.
