This is from David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years. It's an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.
MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.
SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?
MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?
SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.
Can we just stop having this discussion? It's so boring. Both sides misrepresent the other. Tankies are stupid. Also nobody is a tankie. The Biden administration sanctioned a genocide. Every other US president is a war criminal. This discussion never goes anywhere.
I think way more exciting for me since I moved here is the fact that every bar has at least 3 different kinds of custom lemonades made with raspberry, elderflower, etc.
Fully agree there. This administration has to be removed from office. While there's still a congress to do this. What I'm worried about now is a Reichstag fire event that will allow them to enact emergency legislation that will put the Patriot Act to shame. I watched the USA collectively lose its mind in 2001; it wouldn't take much to do that again.
I only have one minor pushback. I read The Art of the Deal back in 2016. And having not read Mein Kampf, I can safely say it is no Mein Kampf. When it's not totally incoherent it reads like a puff piece in a tabloid rag. So I guess I'm just less afraid of Trump than I am of a Hitler-class demagogue, but that says nothing about the MAGA movement as a whole. You don't need intelligence to be a figurehead for a fascist coup.
I think it's time for a general strike. There are rumblings of a reinvigorated labor movement, so for the first time since the 1970s I think it's within the realm of possibility.
Here's my most optimistic take for Americans. This guy is not as bad as Hitler. He's out to scam the world, not conquer it militarily. So that's a plus, for now. If his successor is Vance then the invasion of Canada and Mexico might actually happen.
I have a friend who looks like this. 6'5, Carhardt jacket, overalls, drinks Budweiser like it's water. Hangs out with socialists. He says he got his septum piercing mainly so the alt right would leave him alone.
Marxism-Leninism explicitly calls on using technology to eliminate scarcity. That's what collectivized agriculture and mass electrification were for. Along the development pathway the leadership sort of forgot this because they ran into a lot of problems (not the least of which was an incredible amount of hostility from the capitalist powers).
In my view Zeitgeist was just an update on The State and Revolution, but somehow without the armed overthrow of the government. Like technology will somehow allow us to surpass our class antagonisms and ingrained social structures (eapecially militarism) without toppling the ruling elite. I think it turned out to be a naive view unfortunately.
As your annoying communist I'll also point out that if you're a scientist developing novel methods to detect endotoxins your grant funding is currently being eviscerated by the US federal government and you're likely to find a much more lucrative career path working for a pharmaceutical company that lacks your research ethics. And if you make it up to the admin level you can go lobby the government too!
The problem is global. The US and the global elite are dragging the planet down with it. The most downtrodden victims of US domination are usually abroad anyway. So it feels pointless to worry about where people are because we all need to unite to fight Davos and its appointed imperator.
This is from David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years. It's an anecdote his grad school advisor told him about a Samoan lying around on the beach.
MISSIONARY: Look at you! You’re just wasting your life away, lying around like that.
SAMOAN: Why? What do you think I should be doing?
MISSIONARY: Well, there are plenty of coconuts all around here. Why not dry some copra and sell it?
SAMOAN: And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: You could make a lot of money. And with the money you make, you could get a drying machine, and dry copra faster, and make even more money.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, you’d be rich. You could buy land, plant more trees, expand operations. At that point, you wouldn’t even have to do the physical work anymore, you could just hire a bunch of other people to do it for you.
SAMOAN: Okay. And why would I want to do that?
MISSIONARY: Well, eventually, with all that copra, land, machines, employees, with all that money—you could retire a very rich man. And then you wouldn’t have to do anything. You could just lie on the beach all day.