Walmart now?
Have there been more fire bombings?
The beacons are lit! The working class calls for aid!
How many warehouses is it now? 7?
Is it really? I haven’t seen it
I’m not sure, honestly. Social media and news media seem to be telling different stories, unsurprisingly.
I’ve posted this in another area regarding this event, but I think it would be wise to post it here, too.
From Malcom X’s Ballot or the Bullet:
“Anytime you have to rely upon your enemy for a job, you’re in bad shape.”
“You can’t sing up on freedom, but you can swing up on some freedom. Cassius Clay can sing, but singing didn’t help him to become the heavyweight champion of the world. Swinging helped him become the heavyweight champion. But this government has failed us. The government itself has failed us. And the white liberals who have been posing as our friends have failed us. And once we see that all these other sources to which we’ve turned have failed, we stop turning to them and turn to ourselves.”
“He made a chump out of you. He made a fool out of you. He made you think you were going somewhere, and you end up going nowhere…”
“So today our people are disillusioned. They become disenchanted. They become dissatisfied. And in their frustrations, they want action.”
“You, today, are in the hands of a government of segregationists, racists, white supremacists…”
“America today finds herself in a unique situation. Historically, revolutions are bloody. Oh, yes, they are. They have never had a bloodless revolution, or a non-violent revolution. That don’t happen even in Hollywood. You don’t have a revolution in which you love your enemy, and you don’t have a revolution in which you are begging the system of exploitation to integrate you into it. Revolutions overturn systems. Revolutions destroy systems. A revolution is bloody.”
“So it’s the ballot or the bullet. Today our people can see that we’re faced with a government conspiracy. This government has failed us. The senators who are a filibustering concerning your and my rights, that’s the government. Don’t say it’s Southern senators. This is the government. This is a government filibuster. It’s not a segregationist filibuster, it’s a government filibuster. Any kind of activity that takes place on the floor of the Congress or the Senate, that’s the government. Any kind of dilly-dallying, that’s the government. Any kind of pussyfooting, that’s the government. Any kind of act that’s designed to delay or deprive you in need right now of getting full rights, that’s the government that’s responsible. And anytime you find the government involved in a conspiracy to violate the citizenship or the civil rights of a people, then you are wasting your time going to that government expecting redress. Instead, you have to take that government to the World Court and accuse it of genocide and all of the other crimes that it’s guilty of today.”
“It’ll be the ballot or it’ll be the bullet. It’ll be liberty or it’ll be death. And if you’re not ready to pay that price, don’t use the word freedom in your vocabulary.”
In this speech, he does say we Americans have a unique opportunity to do things non-violently. We did not get unions by being peaceful. We did not get labor rights by being nice.
I want a peaceful way. I truly do. But options are running out quickly. This is not an encouragement of terror or violence. I, like many other want other ways. But as we can see, we cannot control everyone. Some are in situations that feed the violent mind extra portions of greed’s injustice. This breeds a vengeful, hateful spirit that even the most noble and moral of humans cannot withstand.
If our world, country, and local leaders continue not to act swiftly and quickly, this will continue, not because you or I will act, spread hate, or encourage this, but because those who are starving for justice will act out. They don’t need to browse these halls of discussion to be radicalized. The ultra-rich and our dystopian nation will do that for them.
Choose wisely, work together, and eliminate injustice by any (hopefully peaceful) means necessary.
The rich forgot that before worker’s rights existed, greedy capitalists who owned factories and treated their workers horribly during the industrial revolutions would either find their factories or their homes burnt down, and themselves beaten to death in front of their own families.
Unions and worker’s rights were the compromise to avoid this from happening. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and the rich clearly didn’t.
I do worry that they are expecting it in some way. The few “smart” ones. The ones that are not flagrant with their funds and likes. The ones that don’t donate but hold hatred in their hearts. I worry about those. I wonder if they will slip out of the grasp of justice because they decided to hide in their money bushes and stay quiet.
But yes, the fools that we see in the news for sure have forgotten.
It was the fuck aroundest of times
It was the find outest of times
Initially around 20 people were inside
All survived unharmed
Physically
Edit - would be so mad if my mom worked there that shift, ‘tis upsetting b/c I immediately put myself in those kinds of shoes ya know? Even if paying workers is necessary for survival too
Initially
This implies more people entered later. 😱
I see it used akin to “started with”.
like, how many rewards points do I get at my favorite store? Well initially it was 10 points to a dollar until they got cheap and reduced it to five.
(For example) :)
Or, how’d my diet go?: great b/c initially I weighed 1000lbs but now weigh 100lbs
Guy worked for a third-party distributor, so he didn’t destroy his boss’s warehouse
Anyone know how big the 3P distributor is? Is Kimberly-Clark OK financially and were they following best practices? Ideally you would make sure everyone you pay was treating their people properly including timely compensation, right? You’d have a supplier code of conduct demanding it and a system in place to verify…
Also wonder if the head of the Kimberly warehouse was aware of their subcontractor was making life so hard for their people and whether they put them on a leash. A takeaway here for a business person, don’t let clowns put you at risk, no matter how tempting it is to sign away trying offload your liabilities and optimize your headcount spend.
I am become death, destroyer of wally-worlds.
Bonfire Lit
I posted this comment already yesterday but i’ll post it again because it’s still relevant:
Do we want to get higher wages? The obvious answer might seem “yes”. But i argue it’s not that obvious.
People should be able to live without being forced to work. When your only income is from wages, that effectively forces you to work. I think we should strive for a society where basic needs are fulfilled even without jobs.
There should be a clear definition of what “basic needs” means. Opinions will vary greatly when you broaden the discussion.
I’d define it as such:
- Health care (this includes good food and water)
- Housing
- Transport
- Education & Information systems
Medical care
Housing
Food
Water
Internet
Replace internet with access to means of acquire knowledge and communicate with others. Internet just happens to fulfill both very efficiently.
This is really the only answer and people saying “it will take generations” or “it’s not feasible” get over the negativity- the world is what we make it; and there is CERTAINLY more than enough money to provide for housing, food, medicine, electricity and info/connection for everyone. There is a shadow economy that operates outside of the tax economy that’s measured in the trillions of dollars per year… the answer is not “tax the rich” it’s “burn this entire system to the ground and build it anew”
We should strive for that society, sure, but that’s going to take generations. Meanwhile, people need to eat today.
It will only take 1 generation willing to fight for the change.
Or don’t wait, and start doing things French style today.
Personally i think that unless you’re disabled everyone should work. Where I live everyone has basic healthcare, cheap schools and there are lots of unions and workers rights so literally no one has to work more than 32 hours for a basic level of living. If youre disabled you receive wellfare so you dont have to work. Its literally a choice if you live on the streets here.
I have literally no idea why the US has such a horrible and oppressive system when it comes to workers rights, healthcare and schooling. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a two party system. I have no idea why the rich barely pay any taxes there. You have a truly corrupt and inhuman system in place.
Its literally a choice if you live on the streets here.
What if you can’t find work for whatever reason (e.g. there’s high unemployment and not enough jobs for everyone, or the person is somehow considered “unemployable,” but not necessarily disabled)? What about single parents with infants/toddlers? Are there a lot of “bullshit jobs” where you live?
We have a social rent system in place for that, it means the government will pay part of the rent. Also if you cant work because you have kids there is a system in place for that too, you receive benefits (which is based on minimum wage).
Basically everyone pays taxes on their wage here to make sure no one has to live on the streets. There is lots of social housing here.
The problem with that is there are doctors with individual opinions gatekeeping that welfare. One might think you’re disabled, while another might think you can get better. I’ve been stuck in just that kind of limbo for almost a decade. I’m required to look for a job each month that everyone involved knows I could never do, and so I have to live on the bare minimum until I reach some arbitrary threshold to get the pension I should’ve gotten a long time ago.
Meanwhile my family suffers, I have to spend what little I get on the medicine keeping me breathing and when I finally get it I’ll be too far gone to have any time left.
All this because I happened to get a disease rare enough that there are no experts and it just so happens to interact with the asthma I already had in unpredictable ways.
So tell me, who should decide who’s disabled and who isn’t?
The US specifically didn’t choose a two party system. We accidentally set one up. The math proving that FPTP has a 100% guaranteed chance to devolve into a two party system hadn’t been done until the mid 1800s
It’s because we were a nation founded by violence and oppression and built on the backs of a slave race, none of which are practices we ever truly abandoned.
You have healthcare, affordable schooling, and labor unions because, wherever you are, your populace is considered a workforce, not a slave race. When your society relies on a workforce, you want them healthy so they can work longer, you want them educated so they can work smarter, and you want them comfortable enough with their salaries and their hours to feel they can afford to have kids, who will one day join the workforce.
Governing bodies in the US don’t need us healthy, smart, or comfortable. They just need us to 1) work (hence tying our healthcare to our work hours), and 2) breed (hence minimal sex education, poor access to contraception, abortion bans, etc).
They don’t need to give us healthcare (or education, or basic human necessities or rights), because as long as we’re breeding, it’s cheaper if we just die. And if that ever bothers us enough to take to the streets (which it has, many times), our local police forces are highly militarized and have no qualms about doing to us what their white ancestors did to my native and black ones (which they have, many times).
And to be clear, this isn’t meant to be a woe-is-America spiel. These are problems that we’ve had many opportunities to address over the years, but let hubris, bigotry, and plain old stupidity get in the way. This is very much a mess of our own making, so I’m not trying to throw a pity party, just addressing your confusion.
TL;DR: Violence, oppression, and slavery. The tried and true American way.
You left off they want you poor so you’re more likely to commit crimes, like stealing food, so they can put you in jail and now use you for actual slave labor where its still legal.
America: 4% of the world’s population
20-25% of the world’s prisoners
But your BigMac costs a dollar less because of it!
But I love my Trump sponsored hamberders!
The irony of assuming that it’s cheaper to let people grow old and die when the reality is a senior pension requires the income of two working aged citizens to subsidize it is not lost on me.
I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good idea to have a two party system.
It doesn’t matter if the candidate you’re voting for supports the two party system. This current election is the most important one of our lifetimes. So we’ll keep voting for people who support the two party system because of the two party system.
Because your favorite authors, screenwriters, poets, bands would be homeless under what counts as “work,” or they’d not have the time, money, energy to invest in their preferred work.
This is exactly why my country subsidizes art so people are still encouraged to make. I guess the US doesn’t have that either.
If it’s a good idea, it’s safe to assume it doesn’t exist in the US. You’ll be correct much more often than not.
Is there competition for the subsidies?
I agree. “Starving artist” should not be a common phrase.
at this point, most of us were born into it.
by the time we were born, it was so entrenched nothing but horrible bloodshed could change it.
we’ve been inundated with news and media since early childhood not to rise up for that change and many of us have (until recently) been left comfortable enough that we don’t want to risk what remains.
we’ve been made to believe (by the aforementioned propaganda) that we can vote in real change. some of us still want this to be true. it’s becoming apparent this may not be the case. we’re terrified.
Even if change can be voted in, its pretty obvious now that it can be undone pretty easily as well. Change is at best temporary.
I had to take early retirement last year due to a spinal injury that causes random vertigo attacks that drop me to the shop floor more than once a week. Hated like hell to do it but didn’t want to be fired as a safety risk since it would’ve prevented me from getting work anywhere else. The company was visibly relieved by my decision as well so I guess it was my time to drop off the chain, no pun intended.
except the national economies aren’t organized in a way to enable any form of UBI.
national economies handle being welfare states just fine, which isn’t so different from what a UBI would be. Also developed service economies live and die by consumption. A UBI would stabilise and stimulate domestic consumer demand.
there’s massive difference in scale though that brings in a lot of variables that would require a full lock-in before implementation. Given how globalised and interdependent modern economies are - there are too many unpredictable factors outside of governmental control that can whiplash onto national economy and wreck the plans even more than usual. And that might render any UBI-type system a huge burden that would get targeted by folks from IMF making “valuable” “suggestions”.
Yet
it’s not like governments are trying to get there when it’s not an election season though
Elections aren’t going to save you.
I mean Somalia is right there, mate
What?
exactly. If elections ain’t doing the trick, Somalia is doing all of the tricks
The Comingle app (beta) is seeking to start our own UBI without relying on the government to do it for us. Seems very promising
How?
It’s a nonprofot org which basically just does monthly UBI to your bank account when you sign up… They did the math and it turns out you only need a few thousand people of diverse economic backgrounds for it to be viable.
From what I understand it’s like a phone banking app, but more secure, and it takes something like 10% of your earnings each month, then returns a lump sum to everyone of around $500 almost immediately. So people earning $40k/yr will net a couple hundred dollars per month. If you make nothing that month you will get closer to $1000 People who make $100k/yr will lose a couple hundred dollars. And the multimillionaires will lose a couple Gs a month (which sounds like a lot but it’s negligible to them).
the multimillionaires
Why would any of them do this instead of charity donation that they can deduct from their taxable income?
Great question. So this money goes directly to people, instead of through a charity. We are cutting out the middle man, and it affects EVERYONE with cash, not just a select few who know how to benefit from the charity and qualify for their supplies or whatever the charity provides. It’s awesome for us, but not as awesome for the billionaires and multimillionaires. The only real benefit for them is, they get to keep their heads!
how so? why not?
Every take that excludes this perspective is ableist.
Just my two cents as a person who was born and will die disabled.
the cited comment is the most “shit firstworlders say” ever.
It’s an ideological position, yes we should be striving for a non-ableist society
That ain’t happening in America in your lifetime.
If you’re capable of working, you should work. It should be a fair wage and billionaires shouldn’t exist. Our society should support those who can’t work.
Explain what you mean by “should work.” What qualifies as “work” and who makes the determination that it is valid or correct?
Why? We don’t have enough work for the number of people that our work can sustain. Our ancestors literally dreamt of a time when the labor of a few could allow the leisure of the masses. We would be better served at this point addressing workaholic tendencies and refocusing that energy into something they actually enjoy doing.
deleted by creator
I’ll tell you what. I have had to interact with some people in retail or fast food who were technically able to work, but I really wish they didn’t. I would chip in some money from every paycheck for those people to stay home, do something they enjoy. Maybe do a kind of work they are good at, but doesn’t pay much. Some people are born with the drive to be a ceo, nfl level athlete or what not. Some are born eith the drive to solve problems, help people, or what not but also to relax. And some people are born with no drive at all. They are capable of working, but the lack of drive means they will never be any good at it. So if you don’t force people to work, you will find most still will in some form. And the ones who don’t… it’s better for all of us that they don’t.
If you’re capable of working, you should work
in what country do you live, if i may ask?
Counter-offer: Make tents for the homeless out of landlord skins
Live inside the rich.
What about food? ;)
Stat.
“What does that mean anyway?”
“I don’t know, but that’s not the point.”
For a paper products distribution center, you’d think they’d have some sprinklers in there lol
Read in an internet comment, so take with a grain, but he apparently had a multistage plan. Started a small fire, fire dept came to deal with it, and company brass had them turn off fire suppression to limit unnecessary damage to product in other areas. It was then that they lit a bunch more fires, and by the time the figured it out, it was too late.
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25499844
I was going to paraphrase the comment and then I decided to just directly quote it instead
what walmart was firebombed?
Not a Walmart, but a Kimberly-Clark warehouse as others mentioned. This is more making fun of an old tweet of a liberal essentially saying “leftists will say voting doesn’t work and to instead firebomb a walmart and then they don’t firebomb a walmart”, and this meme was about the irony of something symbolically similar happening. And uh, there’s been four warehouse fires this week counting this one.
None — it’s a Kimberly-Clark distribution warehouse. Their products include Kleenex, Cottonelle, Scott, Kotex, and Huggies
Are they a paper products monopoly?
Oligopoly.
I’m not sure if I’d call them a monopoly, but they are a multibillion dollar company directly in competition with Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, Clorox, etc
It was the big Kimberly-Clark warehouse in LA, but firebombing a Walmart is a good idea, too, as long as the people can get out. I’m not concerned with the lives of Sociopathic Oligarchs, but I don’t want workers to be hurt.
Except with insurance they probably made money. The trick is for it to happen often enough that insurance gets too expensive.
Well insurance only pays out on the value the retailer bought their inventory for, not the sticker price. Yeah they’re getting a lot of money but rebuilding inventory and a new warehouse is probably more money. And Insurance companies might start considering underpaid employees as an insurance liability.
And Insurance companies might start considering underpaid employees as an insurance liability.
That’d truly be righteous but I suspect they’ll start expecting more surveillance, security, and fire systems instead.
Which, although they don’t improve conditions for the workers, are also expensive
And require more workers who, after a certain amount of time underpaid, might very well be too indifferent to notice certain systems were down when another one of these suckholes goes up in flames. Dunno. Could be.
They turned the fire suppression system off once the firefighters arrived, reportedly. I hope the insurance company denies their claim. Seems like an act of God to me.
suspect they’ll
automate
Assuming it wasn’t a company owned warehouse, the landlord will probably be making an argument that their disgruntled employee makes the fire their fault.
Insurance will only pay out actual value (i.e. what it cost to produce those items). They’ll still miss out on all the potential profit from selling those goods.
They’ll miss it on some things for sure, but if there were sunk costs or put performing products, that money can be reinvested in better performing items. I’m sure I’m an active, perfectly running warehouse, having to replace every item just with an at cost payout would be annoying, but there’s also the possibility that the payout gets them out from under old stock they would otherwise have lost even their costs on.
They announced they’re moving their entire operation out of CA, lmao.
Wow, its like… direct action works, when complaining loudly and formally doesn’t!
Whaaaat, that’s crazy lmao
Funny, if they weren’t already planning that, seems like an awfully knee jerk reaction based on a single incident.
They probably didn’t make money. Insurance won’t cover the retail value of unsold product, just the cost to make it. The building owner can get replacement cost for the building, but still loses out on rent.
The insurance company will raise rates to compensate for the payment, but it’s probably enough to hurt them for a quarter too.
If it were profitable to burn down a warehouse, there’d be a whole industry around it
If you’re in the warehouse building industry, them burning down can be very profitable…
Maybe, or maybe sales have been shitty and instead of product sitting on the shelves this let’s them write stuff off and pocket cost of materials.
Just saying there’s more to it than what it would mean to you or i if we had all our eggs in one basket and had to count on an insurance payout to keep above water. It’s likely not a windfall for them, but i wouldn’t be surprised if one warehouse fire is much more than a line item in a meeting or two, or even good news for some department or other if they were overextended in stock or something. A second or third big loss like that, though, would probably be required before anyone important is motivated towards any kind of inspection based on the bottom line though.
Is that a lack of fire suppression equipment? Insurance won’t like that at all. 😃
I dunno. I think that insurance will usually only cover Replacement Value, so if it cost them $20 per item and they sold it for $25, they could only claim $20. Then compounded with failure to meet contracts and updated cost of production (may cost $21 to make now) I doubt that they made money. You’re right that the cost of insurance is where the real hurt will be - see ship insurance in the Strait
We’ll there are lots of kinds of insurance, a manufacturing and distribution company isn’t going to have the same insurance you buy as a homeowner. I would expect they are covered for whatever they calculated into their cost/risk contract?
That said, i maybe know enough to know most of what i don’t know, but far from inside into on the topic.
They are probably “self insured”
Certainly could be, and doubtful that they are fully insured against all contingencies… Possible they are underinsured against for intentionally, since they could conceivable think it’s low enough risk that it’s cheaper to allow a loss even as big as this to fall under operating losses for rare or occasional incidents like this.
Once a company is big enough even subjectively huge losses are simply a calculated risk. Do you pay a million dollars a year for 10 years to subsidize something that might cost 10 million dollars that only happens every 20 years, or do you bank on it not happening and write it off as a bad quarter if it happens?
Way more goes into those calculations than one might think, and if they’re self insured there’s just a budget item that takes a hit for this and someone gets chewed out it fired for being the one that gambled this way… While someone else loses a promotion if they signed off the other direction and paid for a million dollar policy they didn’t need.
Insurance is all mostly the same regardless of type. You aren’t going to find a company willing to take the counter party risk of you losing a claimed retail value of a product, especially a commodity. If it was collectables or bespoke crafts then it would likely be different.
Sounds like you’re more familiar with the industry than i am, but my understanding is that insurance policies are written based on what you want to cover and the value is reflected in the premiums. Companies often have an assumed product, returns and stale inventory loss calculated in. Possibly just recuping costs for ‘all’ inventory could be a plus for the bottom line, especially if there were anything like a rider for opportunity costs. The building itself could have been out of step on depreciation and now moved up with a more modern facility in planning.
May not be the same situation but plenty of business owners have considered it a windfall having insurance pay out on replacement costs for things they you weren’t utilizing and an opportunity to put up a bigger shop and roll the payouts into more modern supplies and equipment rather than gathering dust on sunk cost stuff they never would have gotten their money out of otherwise.
If you consider insurance payouts a windfall there’s probably fraud involved. Insurance generally doesn’t pay more than a thing is worth because of fraud. It’s a little more loose with things that can’t easily be valued, like art or a life.
Yes, but relatively often you can get underwater on the cost of stuff that is sitting there no longer making you money. If half your warehouse is full of stuff that isn’t moving or is outdated product, then recovering even the cost of making it can be a windfall. The amount of stuff a company has to write off, dispose of or clearance for pennies can make an insurance payout a win.
Things don’t always depreciate at their started number on paper, especially when using certain completely valid forms of accounting. Not saying this is certainly what is happening at an active warehouse, but there’s a whole lot more to it than thinking everything sitting there was absolutely going to sell at a good profit. Equipment and structures, for instance, often pay out at replacement value which can easily be more than you’d get for them at disposal rates.
I’ll bet you that Walmart is selfinsured, and this absolutely hits them directly.
Likely, but self insurance is a thing for a reason, if it was cheaper to insure than self insured they’d probably do that, but they have that risk wether it was arson or an accident and if one warehouse would actually hurt them, they wouldn’t be self insuring.
Any way you look at it, unless it hits them enough that they have to be concerned about the price of champagne they’re filling their swimming pools with, ‘one’ incident isn’t going to make them rethink their whole salary structure. At this rate it’s shifting from one budget line item to another, and they’ll probably just take it as an opportunity to invest in two warehouse to replace the one that went up.
Insurance companies too exist to make money. If their customers generally went plus, the insurance company would go out of business.
That’s thinking of it way too much like an ideal one for one transaction. Insurance companies don’t based their profits on how much the stuff costs to replace directly, they make money based on the cost of payouts compared to premiums. If they can get enough clients to pay the premiums, they could pay 10x costs and it would make exactly 0 difference to their bottom lines.
It’s actually the reverse in many situations, insurance exists to help recoup costs in an emergency and if you have a policy that doesn’t pay enough to recover from a loss then you are underinsured, and the only way to ensure that is to buy a policy where you’re at least slightly over insured. That’s why homeowners insurance is based on replacement cost, not on the cost when you bought it.
Business insurance admittedly is different, but to be fully covered, you are also getting replacement costs for things like stale product, depreciated equipment (which depreciates differently for insurance purposes than for taxes and accounting) and things like building and infrastructure which are at replacement costs vs purchased prices.
Basically insurance companies are less concerned with having to make absolutely sure everyone gets as screwed as possible on every individual payout, than they are making sure they’re collecting premiums much faster than they are having to payout at all. Writing every policy so that no one ‘ends up with a plus’ is far less profitable than making sure they are selling policies that are useful. Of course they also want to pay out as little as possible, but that is not nearly as attainable as calculating the likelihood of risks and raising rates whenever possible.
If I understand you correctly, you’re saying that the insurance industry is the underlying problem?
Oh, for sure that’s part of the problem, they definitely have their own issues, but they are more like a layer. Insurance itself isn’t a bad thing, but like basically ever industry they suffer from greed and loopholes too.
The world needs to move towards socialism to respond to this moment, or fall into the grips of fascism.
How does capitalism inevitably lead to fascism?
Basically, the issue with capitalism is that the more wealth you have, the easier it is for you to make more money. And since money can be used to buy goods, services and influence, there is always a way to use money to gain more political and social power. With that political and social power, you can push society and the legal system in the direction you want to go. So you can use your wealth to gain power, and then you can use your power to change laws and society so that you can make even more wealth and power. It’s a positive feedback loop.
Obviously, though, if the billionaires and ruling class are accumulating more and more of our society’s wealth, that inevitably means that there’s less for everyone else to go around - therefore, working class people feel poorer and poorer. Meanwhile, the economy is going absolutely great for rich people, so inflation continues to go up - everything gets more expensive, but wages don’t increase. The wealthy just keep more and more of the wealth for themselves. To accumulate more and more wealth, they change the laws so that they can avoid paying taxes, so public services collapse. Politicians are lobbied to ensure that public funds are diverted away from where it is most needed - housing, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure - and instead into industries where their class interests most benefit from it, such as weapons manufacturing and extractive industries such as fossil fuels and mining.
The working class are bound to notice that their lives are getting shittier and shittier, and if that situation is left unchecked, the working class would realize that the ruling class are fucking them over, rise up, and overthrow their rulers. Obviously, the ruling class need to do something about this, but there’s no solution that the ruling class can offer. They’re causing all of the problems, to fix them they’d have to give up some of their wealth and power - and that’s not something they’re going to do. So they need to find someone else to blame the problems we have in society on. Unfortunately, though, no matter who they blame the problems on, and no matter what they do to “fix” it, the issue will continue to persist, because the material conditions underlying the issues are, very intentionally, never addressed.
So, the conundrum returns: The ruling class said that minority A caused all of the problems, minority A is persecuted and oppressed, but society doesn’t actually get any better. Either the problem wasn’t minority A, or minority A just hasn’t been oppressed enough yet. So the ruling class can either escalate the oppression, or they can shift the focus to another minority group. The division continues to escalate in terms of how vitriolic and extreme it is, and it also continues to divide the working class into smaller and smaller groups.
To get the working class to buy into this hateful message, they need to take advantage of our worst instincts, and one of those instincts is the in-group bias. The majority are manipulated into being suspicious, then intolerant, then hateful, then violent, then genocidal, towards whatever the targeted minority of the day is. Anything that can be used to divide the working class - sexuality, nationality, immigration status, ethnicity, religion, sex, gender identity, age, all of these will be used as wedges to keep the working class split apart and not working together, because they know that if the working class actually unite against them, they are completely and truly fucked.
That’s exactly how fascism manifests. It’s because it’s possible for people to accumulate power through wealth. This is why capitalism must be abolished. If we do not abolish capitalism, fascism will always return. It’s just a matter of time.
But can't capitalism can be reformed?
While, of course, some laws to reform capitalism can be passed, and would definitely alleviate the worst harm caused, over the long term, capitalism cannot be reformed.
Any attempts to reform, democratize or socialize capitalism may yield short term improvements to quality of life of the working class, but if capitalism is not abolished, it will always reassert itself, and capitalism inevitably leads towards fascism.
The New Deal prevented the US from sliding into fascism in the 20th century, so that’s ultimately a good thing, but it did not go far enough, and that’s why we have the resurgence of fascism in the 21st century America.
But the Soviet Union was really oppressive!
Yeah, the soviet union had a lot of problems, Stalin was a psycho. Let’s not do that, but we can do socialism using a bottom-up, direct democratic, consensus based decision making approach, rather than a top-down, centralized state. We can learn from the mistakes of the past.
I’d encourage you to check out an anarchist FAQ to learn more - If you haven’t heard much about anarchism before, you probably have some misconceptions about it, so I encourage you to watch the Q&Anarchy video series by Thought Slime or have a look through an Anarchist FAQ, because it’s almost definitely nothing like what you think.
I personally believe that it’s the most coherent philosophy which adequately explains and addresses all of the problems which plague our society, and which holds the most promise for a path out of the inevitable cycle of the continuous rise and fall of fascism that capitalism makes inevitable.
The USSR was a dictatorship under a mask of communism and socialism. It was literally the opposite side of a coin, where mostly the top of a country had all the goods, while ordinary citizens were used as cheap working labor. Basically, the same thing what happens in the US, but with less freedom. It was never a true socialism/communism system in a first place.
America needs to pivot from a Trickle Down Economy to Trickle Up Economy, or it’s going naturally pivot to Robin Hood Economics, and that often comes accompanied by revolution and guillotines. The wealthy won’t like that one bit.
Why would anyone in power not see that as a very clear choice?
Those in power are often there because of the donations of the wealthy and lobbyist groups. Without that money, they wouldn’t win their election campaigns. The wealthy are generally more comfortable with fascism than any kind of leftist politics, because leftist politics threaten their class interests - amassing maximal wealth and power - whereas fascism does not.
That is what i was implying, yes. Go eat some fucking salmon.
Oh, sorry, I’m autistic and sometimes I struggle to read tone and implications and things like that. Sorry for preaching to the converted <3
Go eat some fucking salmon.
Hahah! I like your style, but I’m actually a vegan bear! So I suppose I should go eat some bamboo shoots :p
It’s not you, they’re just being a wanker. Not your fault they’re a shit communicator.
Shit. sorry.
All good, no worries!
Does yhis client support notes? I feel like im likely to make that mistake again.
Not to start The Discourse, buy honey y/n?
but we can do socialism using a bottom-up, direct democratic, consensus based decision making approach, rather than a top-down, centralized state. We can learn from the mistakes of the past.
No you can’t. Your country has spent more than the last 200 years glorifying and giving power to whatever sociopath was crazy enough to amass the most money at the expense of everything. You really think this group of people is going to sit back without using their circle of influence to corrupt whatever flavour of socialism you come up with? If you truly believe the people you’ve willingly given the keys to will do nothing and watch the world screw them over, I’m sorry to say you’re more gullible than optimistic.
You really think this group of people is going to sit back without using their circle of influence to corrupt whatever flavour of socialism you come up with?
I’m sure they’ll try, but there’s more of us than there are of them, and we can fight them every step of the way. There are all sorts of ideas in anarchist theory of how we can mitigate these threats.
Are you saying we should just give up, and not try to build a better world, because we have no hope of defeating the ruling class? That’s just nihilism. May as well just give up and make the billionaires emperors if that’s what you truly believe.
Japan got “modernised” at the end of the Edo period, bringing about the abolition of classes and a forced transition to democracy. You would think that this resulted in commoners taking back the power, but all it really changed was daimyo adjacent people becoming politicians and samurais trading their sword for a CEO seat. No major shift in influence occurred, because social ties are immune to sudden changes in governance like this.
It’s all about who you know, and people with heaps of money know just the right people to corrupt whatever utopia you can come up with. The problem runs deeper than the system of governance, as we’ve forstered a system that strongly correlates power with sociopathic behaviour for too long to be able to just overturn it like that. I don’t want to say you should give up, but looking at things in perspective, I can’t responsibly say that’s a good plan either.
So we can learn from that, too. You’re 100% just saying “we shouldn’t do socialism because it has failed in the past”. Brother, capitalism is failing NOW. I can share examples of socialism succeeding.
What we need to do is basically have a movement to tell any politician that if they approve any military budget above 1b, we will not elect them next election. We need a movement of actually voting for sane people with sane policy. Everyone is all “crazy grandpa has a gun and hes trying to destroy everything”. Well, crazy grandpa just asked for 1.5 trillion dollars to buy more shit to mess more shit up. Don’t give him any money. If a crazy person walked up to you and said, “give me 1.5 trillion to mess everything up” no one would give them that money. Lets instead maybe invest in education? Healthcare? Social saftey nets?
That’s very intellectually dishonest of you to reduce my argument to “100% just saying ‘we shouldn’t do socialism because it has failed in the past.’” That’s what we call a strawman argument, and that’s not what I’m saying if you read what I wrote. What I’m saying is:
- The way power and influence has been handed out in the past 200+ years, is mostly giving it to who was able to get the richest.
- Getting richer than 99% of the population around you strongly correlates with sociopathic tendencies, aka not caring about your fellow humans and sacrificing everything for money.
- People with capital and influence, and people with legislative power have social ties that run at a deeper level than just “capitalism,” and a system change would not sever or alter these in a significant way.
- As long as “the influent” know the right people, they will try, and mostly succeed at, corrupting whatever new system has been brought upon.
- Even if you somehow magically imprison or wipe out all these people, which is morally more than questionable, as long as there are positions of power within your system, sociopaths will continue to seek and attain them, and the cycle will start anew.
I’m not a nihilist, I’m providing an observation based on human behaviour and our current system. I’m not saying nothing can be done about it, but oh boy you’re going to need way more that socialism. You’ll need a grassroots, global (aka, almost every country on board with it) movement, involving a complete overhaul of the education and values system across at least 100 years (to give time for people from the old world to be replaced), and at the same time have the current people in power somehow relinquish all their advantages and sit back to look at it. People who’ve been educated to believe the world is their oyster and a zero-sum game, sit down and do nothing while they see others thrive.
… how am I the one who’s unreasonable?
Edit:
OK, through the magic of using two browsers, I can now re-read your comments.
You’re right, I completely misunderstood your comment. I apologize for that. I was on my phone and not properly paying enough attention.
I actually completely agree with you. The issue is that we need to actually abolish all forms of unjustifiable hierarchy - as you perfectly put it, “as long as there are positions of power within your system, sociopaths will continue to seek and attain them, and the cycle will start anew.” This is, obviously, a very difficult task, which will undeniably require a great deal of effort. A “social revolution”, as I would put it - where not the ruling class are overthrown, but the entire vertical structure, where people are in positions of power over others.
This is actually the foundation stone of my entire political philosophy - which is anarchism. If you haven’t heard much about anarchism before, you probably have some misconceptions about it, so I encourage you to watch the Q&Anarchy video series by Thought Slime or have a look through an Anarchist FAQ, because it’s almost definitely nothing like what you think.
The term “anarchy” actually comes from Greek, basically translating to “without rulers”, or “against hierarchy”.
I personally believe that it’s the most coherent philosophy which adequately explains and addresses all of the problems which plague our society, and which holds the most promise for a path out of the inevitable cycle of the continuous rise and fall of fascism that capitalism (and hierarchy) makes inevitable.
Original message follows:
I would really like to engage with you in good faith, but I’m struggling to keep up with this conversation because for some reason the comments aren’t loading, I can only reply to you through my inbox, and it’s really messing me up. Do you know what might be happening here? Kinda need to fix this to re-read our conversation, if I have been unreasonable then I will gladly apologize though. I want to be fair.
Hey, thank you for re-reading and engaging with what I actually wrote.
The one interrogation that was not solved for me is that such a change requires a tremendous amount of energy and dedication across all society’s decision-makers, and I fail to see where that energy would be sourced from when almost any forces able to institute change benefits from the status quo.
I don’t disagree that there are better theoretical systems, I just fail to understand by what miracle they would ever be realised from the starting position we find ourselves in. It isn’t just about how many of us vs how many of them it is, unfortunately. The entire world’s understanding of power dynamics, trust in money and institutions would need to shift, and after that, there’s little guarantee the same people wouldn’t come on top again to corrupt it all.
I guess my question is: how do you guard any system from human corruption, other than just honour, promises, and gentleman’s agreement?
If you make yourself a ruler and give yourself the power to stop such corruption (which fundamentally needs to be more power than it takes to instigate it), you’re effectively becoming « the good dictator », and then how can you guarantee that this amount of power will not be used for bad by yourself, or any of the people that will come after you? When power concentrates this much, it only takes one bad person to get it.
Thank you for that, this echoes my sentiment.
About technical difficulties, I don’t really know. My lemmy app doesn’t seem to be having any problems, so it may be a client-related problem.
This is an absolutely hilarious way to hear about this news.
Right? For a minute, I was like “Wait… I don’t get the joke. Is- is this just a general public announcement?”
