I hope an economist can come in here and correct me if I got anything wrong. This is my personal take.

I sort of understand money as a manner of storage. It a battery for potential influence of other humans. Like a note with I.O.U depicting that someone’s future behavior is to provide some good or service to you, that note is a battery for influencing someone’s behavior (the behavior of providing a good or service). Money is just slightly more abstract than an I.O.U because money isn’t tethered to a specific provider, recipient, good or service. Yet, the logic remains. This really stands out when you consider people work for money, and negative money (debt) incentives us to perform legal means of reducing that debt.

We’ve as a society all but accepted this use of money, being a battery to influence us, by manner of participating in the game it invokes for us. We work to earn money, and we use that money to buy that which we need or want, to pay debt, to invest (depending on how much you you can spare)… Goods and services are provided by others in aim of receiving the money we worked for. On the macro scale, we refer to these exchanges as the economy. Both: goods and services readying themselves for the potential to receive money, as well as the exchange itself when transactions are made. Each are conduits for money to flow, and this tool (the battery) benefits us humans in many ways.

But the manner in which we’ve structured and regulated this process has yielded a system which is vulnerable. Our manner has created a class divide where the successful may use their success to hoard and prevent others from obtaining the same success. We’ve fallen into yet another type of society where hierarchy exists, alike slave-master. Now, less obviously, we are in a society where the rich control the poor. The rich influence legislation to control the incentives of the poor, by legal coercion (e.g., non-competes, hiding free tax filing options, zoning laws inflating housing costs, …), all the while influencing legislation to provide corporate loopholes and tax cuts. Meanwhile there is social coercion, by means of controlling mass media, social media, market media, and entertainment media — giving the minority of the rich a megaphone with few alternative voices to compete at such scale.

This cycle is one which can become self-perpetuating. As the rich become richer, they have more power to make themselves yet richer. The class divide widens. The poorer are stripped evermore of their voice in the matter. Yet, let’s remember where this economy thing began — it was a tool for our exchange. Our tool, now exploited for their gain.

So when you say they stole $125 from everyone, I agree with you. We are on the exact same page there. The working class is practically voiceless, and this is why they are scared of democratic socialism. They don’t want the working class to control the means of production, because that stands to balance the scales here. Balanced scales, by virtue of where we are now, means a deep contest of control which the rich are so privileged to have freely now.

Gonna make astronomy real confusing for the next intelligent apex species.

(lifts head from primitive telescope) Hey Jo, what the fuck was that?

It’s a capitalist society where the free market works like natural selection on steroids. Those who would drown in a bathtub are quickly replaced by those who found a way to profit most from the situation.

This one? https://youtu.be/mkXIWPmdfdo

Edit: no wait, this one? https://youtu.be/6MTTug24lpE

Edit2: Ohhh, no, it’s gotta be this one right? https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/727604522156228608

Accidents can happen even before you eat. Preparing the chicken might mean contaminating your hands, a knife, a cutting board, and your countertop if there’s even a small amount of water flowing out the meat. You put all that in the sink, wash your hands, but… by washing your hands, were you careful enough not to contaminate the water valve on your kitchen sink? How about the soap dispenser? Did you make certain nobody touched the countertop before you sanitized it? There’s a lot of ways something can go wrong when working with dangerous substances.

Funny enough, I do not fear communism out of spite for the Republicans. It’s a system of government, and they’re who demonized it. I’m willing to try and remove that bias.

I think there’s evidence that they were business partners in the trafficking operation. Trump owned children beauty pageants, he had girl servants at one of his resorts, reports of some of those girls winding up with Epstein… I bet there are financial transactions proving it.

I would like to look into this. Do you have a name?

I really don’t want to peddle conspiracy, but if we’re talking speculation… I’ve heard speculation that human clones could be used for organ harvesting to extend the life of someone. Specifically, this theory was floating around when someone overheard Putin and Xi talking about living to 150 years old (or something to that effect).

Edit: here’s an article about the 150yo comment: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr70rvrd41ko

Will I fall into this obvious trap for discussing the grotesque volume of time spent on the Olive Garden app? No. No i will not. … fuck.

(Cries in Big Mac sauce.)

Sorry for asking, but what are the chances this gets an IOS release?

It was once an upon a time reasonable to boycott. Now look, as your options dwindle to fascist supporter A, B, or C. That, or a single alternative who can’t actually meet your consumption needs. This is a problem that has gotten worse with time and will continue to get worse so long as nothing is done. Imagine a world where all your options for water are Nestle and similar. We can argue on the specifics, but that’s the general consumer dystopia we’re clearly headed towards. Our way of life has been compromised.

You raise valid points, yet I think we’re talking about different kinds of Socialism in a way. Your form of socialism here is like a Cold War era form of the ism. That form is often thought of as something which needs be imposed in a top-down fashion unto society — an inherently vulnerable approach. Look to history, a lot of 20th-century “socialisms” were really authoritarian states using socialist language to justify centralized control, and they did often end up as new dictatorships.

I think what I am aiming for, though, is not socialism as a bridge from dictatorship to democracy, but as a result of capitalism evolving beyond its own contradictions. More like democratic socialism: cooperative ownership, strong social infrastructure, but still open markets and innovation. It’s less about revolution or replacement, and more about integration. A phase where capitalist systems start to internalize social equity and worker participation as competitive advantages rather than ideological opposites. The socialism Id advocate for can (and maybe should) rise organically from the bottom up.

I’m a young dude and biased I may be, I believe socialism is the ideological result of a capitalist society. It’s not a competition the way I see it. It’s as natural an evolution as how containerization arose from the era of virtual machines. Change is slow, but we’re having 5% more debate about the merits of democratic socialism than we were 5 years ago. It’s something that won’t go away, dominos are falling. Trump having destabilized things only helps broadcast issues that have always existed within this society and usher in new ideology that aims to address those issues. Modern politics is becoming more and more like progressives versus traditionalists, with each passing day. That evolution, away from left versus right, is evidence that capitalism is on the defensive.

On the backs of those who are selfless, they avoid strain. On the welfare of those who are selfless, they avoid loss.

deleted by creator

Kind of like that 3 day special operation in Ukraine?

Also, what’s stopping people from signing up for ICE then leaking the names of all their colleagues? Sign up, get paid, do as much good as you can until they fire you… so long as people are loosing jobs in this shit economy, I don’t understand why we haven’t seen a single case of this yet?

People who lost their job as part of the shutdown, what do you have to loose?

Remember also when Trump dissolved the U.S. National Security Council (NSC) Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, right before COVID-19?

deleted by creator