kit ✅ 🌞😷 @wlonk@mastodon.transneptune.net

To the people essentially saying that “wealth inequality has existed before” it has never been to this extent before. There have never been this many living in poverty. The rich have never been this absurdly rich before. Billionaires have only existed since last century. And there’s an entire genre of really shitty food which exists purely for the sake of being expensive.

Rich American douchebags and 21st century wealth inequality are putting people like Amenhotep III and Louis XIV to shame.

i cannot find the old post where i said this so i'm gonna write it again:

everyone intuitively already knows that the economy is already planned. it's centrally planned in boardrooms of massive corporations to get the largest value for their shareholders. this is why you can google and find nerds excitedly speculating about marvel movies that will come out in 2025. it's only when we're asked to think about it that we revert to the grade-school propaganda idea of the market, supply and demand, and capitalism as something that just "happens," without conscious outside prodding.

the difference between capitalism and socialism isn't central planning, it's that under socialism the planning serves the needs of the whole population, rather than increasing the profits of a tiny few.

that the police have interpreted Black Lives Matter as an anti-police slogan is really just them telling on themselves

fully accountable sustainable decolonized earth communism

Two eBooks about police violence are currently available for free from their respective publishers:

"Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect?" - A book about the history of police violence on PoC in the US.

https://haymarketbooks.org/books/941-who-do-you-serve-who-do-you-protect

"The End of Policing" - About why policing is inherently flawed and why reforms don't work.

https://www.versobooks.com/books/2817-the-end-of-policing

TBQH I also can't believe we live in a world which has essentially decided that war is actually ok as long as you're not *too* much of a dick about it.

I can't believe it's legal to use tear gas on protestors. According to international law, using tear gas in military conflicts is literally a war crime.

I need you to consider the possibility that describing people as heroes is a way of making their deaths look like a socially palatable choice that they made themselves, and not a systemic institutional failure in which survivors have been complicit.

One of the things the current oil market should cause us to do as a society is consider economic interdependencies the way we consider software interdependencies: among other things, as a potential attack surface. If your job market structurally relies on oil costing more than, say, $20/barrel; then any country or consortium that can unilaterally drive the price of down to $19/barrel is quietly but effectively holding your economy - and hence, your political apparatus - hostage.

Cryptocurrencies are already nothing more than a way of turning cryptolibertarian masturbation fantasies directly into climate change, but hey hey, that blockchain technology means we can also build all sorts of other tools of oppression while the world burns down. And our hands are clean, so clean, because code is morally neutral, right?

Can you imagine being so comfortable that you'd look at this and not be able to recognize it as a weapon. To be so naive in you ease that it would not even cross your mind that you're helping load one more gun pointed at the marginalized, poor and disenfranchised. Can you imagine being so ignorant that it might never occur to you to ask why the confidentiality of medical records might matter.

Jesus, if you've ever wanted to watch the blockchain crowd at their most ignorant, naive worst, if you have ever wanted to watch peak white-privilege techbro in action, take a look at https://www.covidcreds.com where the solution to this global pandemic is to put people's medical records on a globally-visible, non-repudiable database.

So people having money stimulates the economy? You know, maybe there’s something in this. Maybe people could receive this regularly as some kind of income at a basic level, and it could be applied universally. 🤔

Interesting how all the capitalists are all perfectly happy to get “free money” from the government when it’s called a stimulus check and not called socialism.

CHINA: Builds new hospitals from the ground up in Wuhan to treat the patients they’re expecting

WESTERNERS: lol china is wild imagine that happening here

CHINA: Goes into lockdown, deploys drones to sanitise public spaces and remind people to stay inside

WESTERNERS: omg lol how dystopian i'm glad i don’t live there

CHINESE DOCTORS: record a happy new year message while wearing their protective gear, to reassure people that they’re working hard to keep people safe

WESTERNERS: it’s like a horror movie lol

VIRUS: Reaches western countries

WESTERNERS: OMG WHY DIDNT CHINA WARN US THIS IS ALL THEIR FAULT