aaron

joined 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Exactly. Just nuke the radiation.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago

You can build homes and all sorts of stuff out of wood. It doesn't have to be a low-tech backwards building material.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

This deserves more interest than it got.

Assuming it is true of course.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

You clearly know nothing about the actual motives of brexit voters. but call other people short-sighted.

The choice was Trump, or a continuation of the political/economic ideology that made Trump inevitable. Implicit in t he act of voting is the giving of consent. This outcome has been decades in the making. And yet you blame 'non-voters' for all of the ills of fossil-fuel powered neo-liberal capitalism, and then have the cheek to call others short-sighted. Grow up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Thanks I haven't read it but do intend to. Compared to Marx Piketty is probably a breeze to read lol. I wouldn't be surprised if Piketty isn't a better choice for people to read nowadays.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Presumably he means the financial success of chatgpt paid for the coterie of staff he employs to look after the child he never sees.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

The mantra I was told was always 'add value' at your job.

When I read volume one of capital I came to understand that this was willingly giving more of my labour for free on top of the labour capital was already profiting from (after all I am only given a job earning x units/hour as long as capital, via management upwards, earns x+1/units from that labour). Thus wealth trickles upwards in capitalism. Not down.

Everyone bought the 'add value' line and repeated it in work as though the were doing something great - us humans tend to believe what we are told (and once those neural pathways are burned they don't change easily), which is in large part why those without empathy are able to succeed. We need to rely on each other and they don't give a fuck.

Another one is "always use other people's money" (from think and grow rich, or whichever popular book it came from). If you're Elon Musk looking to hedge risk when buying twitter then fair enough, otherwise you go cap in hand to capital, and pay it a portion of the wealth you create for the privilege of being loaned the capital to begin with. Capitalists want you to use other people's (actually their) money in order that they can take their cut of your hard work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

Yes.

Who knows what other reasons various people in and around the government at that time had for invading Iraq, but what does seem to have been established is that it wasn't WMD's or anything to do with 9/11, which iirc, is what the Americans and us (well Tony Blair, who was paid handsomely for his service) said it was.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

The US (Nixon) made an agreement with the Saudis that the world buy their oil in dollars in exchange for the US providing protection - thus extending the dollar's period as global reserve currency beyond the time the US unpegged the dollar from gold. Known as the petrodollar agreement, this extended the period the US gained an unearned portion of global wealth beyond the 70's.

America was, Americans were paid handsomely for its agreement with the Saudis. [Edit - this is a little bit reductive, but] Bretton Woods then this is why boomers were able to buy a house and live well on one wage.

I understand not every American benefited from this, and that from Reagan, and neo-liberalism onwards, all the wealth went to capital. In fact I think American capitalist ideology largely squandered this period of wealth enriching the likes Tump, Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg etc. I guess 'a rising tide raises all boats' and 'trickle down economics' turned out to be big lies after all, whouldathoughtit.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago

Probably sacrifice some road kill.

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