I think we have finally reached the end stage of the empire
In what fucking world do capitalists think this is going to work out for them?
The world where they just printed several trillion dollars over the past few years and pocketed the proceeds.
They've got the NSA combing the internet for signs of organizing and uprising. You think they're scared? If the British had today's social network analytical tools they could have identified the Founders and hanged them all.
i think the COINTELPRO boogeyman is actually wildly overstated. the feds begin to intervene when there's an actual threat to the established order. they started infiltrating and subverting green anarchists and the animal rights movement once they were already breaking into factory farms and spiking trees. right now the obstacle to an organized left in the imperial core is more elemental than that: it's that most people who identify as communists get most of their social interactions from the internet. like if we unironically refer to a website where we're too scared to post pics of our faces as a community, or if our biggest reason not to go to the gym is we think someone will make fun of us, that's gonna make it way harder to get organized with each other than agent smith lurking in our gamer chat app.
like the state is a problem we'll have to contend with, and should be considered sooner rather than later, but it's not the most immediate one.
i'm not even saying we should all be posting selfies here, i think there's some pretty good reasons not to have all your personal shit online. what i'm saying is that, given that fact, we can't meaningfully organize or even properly socialize as human beings over the internet.
I practice opsec here, and online generally, because of everyone BUT the government. now, some of that is definitely my privilege showing. no question.
But I'm way more worried about getting harassed or stalked or even just taken to task for shitty views I used to have before I learned better.
I think it is a little of both. I know that if there was an organized leftist group in my arra, that I would want to be part of it, with the understanding that while I would be learning theory, someone else would at least help me figure out the praxis part. Here in $DeepRedState, the whole idea is so overwhelming that I wouldn't even know where to start. Considering how chud the local pigs are, I'm even nervous about bumper stickers or other outright leftist signalling.
People say talk to neighbors or whatever, but I'm deeply, almost agoraphobically introverted. Also, many of them have thin blue line flags, chud bumper stickers, or other decor that tells me I probably wouldn't be welcome. My brain to mouth filter ain't great, so the last thing indeed is to get shot cuz I laughed at an antivax, anti-gay, racist asshat.
I would love to be part of a leftist movement. However, I am not capable of organizing said movement. Give me a vanguard to follow and I'll be there.
don't underestimate the degree to which infighting hurts us. for all that we joke about it, it's a serious problem.
Absolutly. People forget how many governments with vast survaillance infrastructure completly fell apart in the 20/21th century. How US intelligence couldn't even stop the Taliban from organizing an effective resistance. How we don't life in a time were marxists are exiled like Marx himself or almost all Bolsheviks, their books not prohibited ect. The establishment was always against us, but material conditions ultimatly trump the superstructure.
The left in the last few decades struggled with an effective message that is actually attractive and believable to most workers. Mostly because many leftists are still soccdems and social democracy only partially worked because the special conditions created by WWII. Today it always fails because it doesn't understand capitalism. The radical left on the other hand gets bogged down in foreign policy and history discourse and sometimes puts idpol in the center of the message, all of which usually fail to appeal to the average worker.
On the other hand: Clearly it must be open to minorities and not bigoted. The message must be "Lets fight for our common class interest together", not "White-Cis-hetero-Workers only".
How US intelligence couldn’t even stop the Taliban from organizing an effective resistance.
Because their goal was to keep the war going, not to actually win it.
for whatever it's worth, the technology is typically worse than claimed and the people using it are generally incompetent.
as a software engineer, I'm very afraid of technology NOT working, but for any claims that require technology to work as intended, I'll believe it when I see it.
there isn't a platform on earth that's capable of processing exobytes of unstructured, mostly encrypted data.
you'll notice that in the vast majority of fugutive cases this year (of which there have been several high profile ones), the state was able to use technology to a scary degree to assist the investigation and subsequent piecing together of information, but they still relied on a tip line and tips from human beings.
also, unlike the DHS, which is filled with "true believers" and hard-core reactionaries, the NSA is mostly a bunch of apathetic nerds.
all of that said, it is still a cause for concern. but I actually also do think it gets talked about a lot.
I'm just idly thinking: But I am wondering how functional security monitoring of the state actually is. Sure there is advanced tech and all, but with hundreds of millions of people- that's a lot to keep track of. Even with advanced tech, like you said, that's a lot of data.
In addition, the state has been doing a good job of hollowing itself out to private firms. How well are these firms communicating with one another? Can the people running these firms be trusted to follow through on their investigations? How many of these contracts are favors to the friends of politicians?
Well, if we want to look at real-world cases, the feds didn't seem to have much trouble assassinating BLM leaders.
that wasn't because of tech though. the feds have been assassinating people since the three letter agencies were first formed.
I always thought that was more likely local shithead cops with the tacit approval of the feds
This is a classic who watches the watch man situation alot of these data collection tools surely collect a lot but have issues massive sorting relevant data, there's a lot of porkies that think the nsa system is perfect because they used the buzz word ai or neural networks.
Edit: another issue since the early war on terror and even before is agency's not sharing data and it has only gotten worse, the nsa won't share with the fbi or the cia if they feel it might make them look bad, ect. This is also true in reverse with other agency's because they want the credit.
agency’s not sharing data
why don't they?
I feel like they might loosen up on those restrictions if there was actually any kind of leftist movement to thwart...
It's inter department conflict ie work politics, agencies all want to be the star child like the cia but they have get funding depending on how politicians feel about there performance, also in a major way the cia has gone rogue in the sense it doesn't listen to Washington, why? because it doesn't have to it can generate any amount of money on drugs so funding is never and issue they can just murder anyone even in Washington so they cant be challenged. Ask jfk. The other 3 letter agency's cant do what the cia can so they play politics to get funding, working together doesn't get them more money individually that change didn't happen until the late 70's.
Here is a list of the winners to losers
Cia
Losers below. Fbi Nsa Dea Homeland security Border patrol Tsa
People talk about "thought terminating cliches", and I really think that the whole "go organize!" bit is one of them. Not all of us are capable, whether it is materially or mentally/emotionally, of starting the organizing. Some of us need more than a vague " talk to your neighbors" to get started. My nearest org is almost an hour away, I work full time, and they don't do anything near my side of the state. It's a shame because there is a lot of potential, but I wouldn't know where to even start. That's what "organizers" are for in the first place. And I'm definitely not an organizer.
In a world where they constantly give local police departments old tanks.
Gas is an inelastic good since people consume about the same amount of gas regardless the price. But long term, people will move closer to their work, buy more fuel efficient vehicles, or use shared transportation. This transition is brutal to the poor. I wish the government provided relocation assistance but they'd probably be accused of genociding our car dependent cities.
A lot of Americans are in bad situations and/or have complete carbrain and will commute 40+ miles one way for work. One of my professors drove 200 miles per day because his wife had a job in a different city. Americans deal with high gas prices because they assume it's temporary and perhaps voting for the other party will lower the prices. Americans can deal with a lot of hardship or pointlessness if they assume it's temporary or only impacts less than 10% of the population.
I'm curious to see how much people can take. It might have to get to a point where the cost of gas exceeds a weekly paycheck for people to care.
complete carbrain and will commute 40+ miles one way for work.
I feel like they're always some chud manager who drives some full size SUV so they can tow their boat once a year too.
My manager lives like an hour away and drives ones of those huge 4 door lifted trucks that requires a foot hold thing and a grabby bar to climb into
Yeah, a lot of environmentalists want gasoline up to $20 a gallon. Because at that price suddenly lots of heretofore "infeasible" solutions become feasible. It hurts the little guy the most, but since when do environmentalists care about the deplorables?
since when do environmentalists care about the deplorables?
Plenty of environmental literature talks about how to create a sustainable world without shoving all the burdens onto the poor. That's not usually what gets amplified, though.
Yep, Malthusianism and eco-fascism are the only forms of environmentalism that don't threaten capital.
The people who write the environmental literature are overwhelmingly upper middle class and professional-managerial class. They are in conflict with the little guy and this will never change.
but since when do environmentalists care about the deplorables?
Literally, every environmentalist I've ever met has been a democratic socialist, Indigenous patriot or an anarchist. Who are you even talking about?
I've met more than I'd like to. I'll call them liberals, careerists, ineffectual, coopters, but they always strike me as genuine and as having a deeper analysis of power. C'mon, they quote Naomi Klein like it's the bible.
We're in an energy crisis because we stopped buying oil and gas from the second largest oil exporting country in the world. I think putting the blame on speculators is propaganda to redirect the blame away from the war. I think it is more likely that Europe is importing oil and gas like crazy due to the supply shock than a global conspiracy by oil companies to artificially inflate the price of oil. Prices will go down when the war ends and we buy russian fuel again (or tap a ton of wells) but the EU pledges to cut off russian oil by 2027 so I think we're in it for the long run.
Any reading on this? Not saying I don't believe you, but I am very interested in the topic
Oil prices are based on global demand. Since the start of the conflict, week over week the US has been consistently selling more domestic oil to Europe and they are willing to pay more for it than we are.
But yeah, speculators caused the prices to rapidly increase but we already saw the effect of this. If we beheaded all the speculators today, it wouldn't cause oil prices to substantially decrease because European demand is rapidly increasing.
One solution is banning oil exports and then we would have cheap gas again but Europe would get crushed and they would go into an economic depression.
Yeah, I agree, profiteering ghouls are making a bad situation worse.
Factually speaking, gasoline producers are making all time high profits https://fortune.com/2022/05/05/oil-companies-massive-profits-first-quarter-russia-ukraine/
Those taking losses from withdrawl from Russia are taking big one-time hits
But long term, people will move closer to their work, buy more fuel efficient vehicles, or use shared transportation.
So, There's this place called America, and all of those things are illegal.
people consume about the same amount of gas regardless the price.
I have stopped driving out to the suburbs to visit my family and have been making excuses to work from home more often. It's inelastic for suburbanites, for sure, but city dwellers absolutely reduce consumption.
these signs are unable to display prices above $9.99. what will they do? start a convention where "1.01" will mean $10.10 per gallon?
I was going to say that switching to liters would allow for smaller nominal prices while also helping Americans understand gas prices in global discussions with people who buy their petrol by the liter...
But no, we would totally do quarts before moving to metric.
Americans will use metric when hell freezes over and not a moment sooner
'Lower tier ponzi pyramid members, here is where money is going to increase but lets just keep that between us, eh?'
I paid $5 a gallon last week in the midwest in a rural area, which was surprising to me. even the cheapest gas nearby is above $4 .
Im thinking maybe they will just get call center at home jobs? Idk those online jobs everyone talks about are hard to get.
Actually I've heard it's incredibly easy, and not only that, but you can make 12k a month!
Eh, yeah, but that's California, so they're gonna be at $15.50; I think it's just going to stay at "Biden did this" levels of unrest.
I hope I am wrong.
And somehow there was still some asshole driving an H2 Hummer (~10 MPG) today :stalin-stressed:
(not where this picture was taken, but still)
if we see prices start busting through $10 i think there's a 50/50 chance the federal government just starts subsidizing fuel. there are so many people i know that will have to quit their jobs because the travel cost will exceed their pay. economic collapse here we come bayyybeee
The government is already subsidizing fuel by draining the strategic petroleum reserve, which will last the next 5 months. Many states have already suspended gas taxes.
Didn't California give a gas subsidy of $400 bucks or something to drivers?
pretty sure i was gas jugging at this very location just last year. it was 5 bucks a gallon then. assuming this is in LA. people were just handing me 20 dollar bills and saying "i can't afford to give you gas."
"no more working from home" while this shit goes on is just proof that nobody in charge knows what the fuck they are doing
Edit: well they know, they're knowing they want more money, but they are failing the social contract to a degree we haven't seen since Tsar Nicholas II
The social contract is that you can extract as much surplus as you want, but you can't dig into the necessary value pool for profit because that puts us back into slave state production relations.
Fun fact: according to capitalist
GNINNI figures and capitalist employment statistics, every American worker generates $100,000/year in value (on average). Calculated withGNINNI so that means if we did redistributive policies right now, we could keep all current production going and also pay every current worker $50/hr.Yeah the amount they skim off the top is unreal. Absolutely unbelievable how much they take and they still balk at the most modest of requests. Goddamned vampires.
A good portion of that is surplus expropriated from the global south, but ots kinda wild that even at $100k/year you're still not really totally comfortable (that's 2 people working median wage jobs). The shift to surplus production is so severe that the global north is even struggling to maintain the extravagant lifestyles of the bourgeoisie.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X
This paper makes the case that, roughly speaking, for every single dollar in "aid" to the global south the global north reaps 35 dollars back. This shit has to hit a breaking point eventually.
It's hitting it now. The global shouth is waking up as it rapidly proletarianizes and China is the only one helping them to build out productive infrastructure. The "north" is a rounding error in terms of productive labor potential and will be absolutely wiped out in a matter of years as Africa and India continue down the path of liberation and join with China. The era of Western European hegemony is over.
God willing. And if there is a history it will be remembered that the only way they accomplished that hegemony was by standing on the necks of the global south to prevent them from achieving their own potential. To quote Parenti: "You don't go to poor countries to make money"
I revel in the fact that the history to come will mostly ingore everything that the capitalist order has wrought. There will be an addendum about the dark ages that most schoolchildren will ignore and this era of development will be wholly ignored.
they are failing the social contract to a degree we haven’t seen since Tsar Nicholas II
Hopefully it ends the same way too :lenin-laugh:
