I am being absolutely serious here with the Weimar Republic comparison. Because people are fucking miserable and it’s fucking terrifying.
A hundred years ago, broke people in big cities would go to fascist rallies because they were free, and because sometimes the organizers gave out free food and beer, and because people had nothing better to do.
And they stayed because hate feels good when you’re hurting and simple violent solutions appeal to the angry monkey parts of our brains.
And the fewer community connections you have - the more the economy strips your life down to work and sleep, or to job hunting and sleep, or to scrounging in the gutter to survive and sleep, and the less you go out and socialize with actual human beings - the more appealing the fascist illusion of unity, of being part of a powerful group, becomes.
And the only difference today is that the fascist rallies are beamed directly into your home.
The sad thing is all of this can be easily accomplished but we went all in on War, Theft, Greed and Organized Pedophilia. I’m in a holding pattern until the new Renaissance or Spiritual Revolution beats the shit out of capitalism. C’mon people of the globe…Unite!
Another thing that pisses me off about it all is that more and more of our money leaves our communities and goes to billionaire scum that use it to lobby against our interests.
That’s why for YEARS, I have been saying that Campaign Finance Reform is the issue from which ALL other issues flow.
Billionaires pay a miniscule, totally unnoticeable percentage of their fortunes to strongly, relentlessly lobby for laws,.rules, regulations, loopholes, tax breaks, etc. that will bring them even more money, many more times than what they invested.
Lobbying, and trading favors for campaign donations, has to end, it is literally the reason behind nearly every bad thing in our country, and it is only getting worse.
easier to kill the billionaires
Or - hear me out - we could do BOTH!
Even when people put great effort into a tiny win you know what the lobbyists do? Go back to work on Monday and try again.
Oh, yeah. In the 90s we had the McCain-Geingold Campaign Finance legislation, and Republicans immediately went to war against it, and piece by piece, they chipped away every bit of it, until it was gone. They did the same thing with health care.
MAGA needs to be prohibited as a National Security Threat.
I’m right with you.
Political money needs to be regulated with an iron fist.
We need a Constitutional amendment to strictly define the framework for campaign contributions and violating those laws comes the highest criminal punishments imaginable.
My rent has gone up 25% over thr last 5 years :/
That’s only 4.5 % per year. You are beating inflation!
The city appraisal of our house increased $100k since we bought it 5 years ago. We’ve made no improvements :/
Don’t forget, the fascist rallies also had one incredibly important thing that drew in more people than the free food and free beer - a simple, targeted reason WHY they’re in the shitty situation.
You can throw as many economists and scientists and such at the problem and they’ll (properly) show the reasons, but there won’t be a simple solution. There won’t be a singular “here do this and it will magically fix all your issues” point. Even the simplest fixes to the situation will be overwhelming for most people.
And most people just want that: a leader who promises to solve the crappy situation, without making them feel stupid, without convoluted long drawn out plans. A simple solution, a simple fix.
For Hitler that was “get rid of the Jews”. For mango mussolini that’s “get rid of the illegals”.
And people liked the simple solutions so they signed up for the ideology.
Oh yeah, we left the EU and that fixed all our problems. Wait no that didn’t work it actually made things worse, ok but trust me lets blame all the immigrants now.
I mean, the solution is easy: remove billionaires or dismantle capitalism.
or? AND.
This is also a simple solution meant to magically solve all problems, at least the “end capitalism” part is. Not that there aren’t other systems out there that societies could switch to. But capitalism is what’s currently keeping everyone alive. If you want to end it, you have to present a viable solution and a plan to get there.
“End Capitalism” works as a slogan, but it’s a fix all just the same.
Exactly. I believe capitalism must end, but if you aren’t working to build something better, trying to figure out what went wrong and how to prevent such issues in the future… then you’re setting yourself up for a lateral revolution at best.
Learn about how other societies have tried to resolve the issues you’re trying to deal with.
What’s keeping people alive is logistics and other peoples hard work. Not money.
Ultimately ecomic systems are a way to organizing production and distributing the products. So in other words logistics. Capitalism is a way of doing that. It has quite a few downsides, but for example fewer people have died due to starvation globally in the last 50years combined, as due to the Great Leap Forward alone. Capitalism is just not the worsed system we have tried.
It is, by far, as it will kill billions in the coming decades.
I can’t imagine people spouting this shit seriously.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
-LBJ
And it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about different races, different sexualities, attached vs detached earlobes, whatever. Point to a group and tell everyone “They’re the problem” and you’re going to have an automatic following.
And that includes cishetero white men. Lots of cishetero white men out there struggling like everyone else, and to be told that they’re the oppressors because they look the same as most of the oppressors, kinda leaves no room for class solidarity.
I’m not saying that’s the only problem or even the biggest problem, but it is a problem, and it seems to be the only one we’re not allowed to talk about.
Everyone loves to hate on cishetero white men. Why don’t we all just hate on billionaire oligarchs and corrupt politicians instead? That seems to transcend race, gender, and sexuality. If you don’t believe me, look at Clarence Thomas, Kristi Noem, Peter Thiel, and Caitlyn Jenner.
Being a minority does not automatically make one a good person or immune from accountability. And being a majority doesn’t automatically make someone a bad person, or prejudiced, hateful, bigoted, or intolerant. There’s nuance to everything.
Racism is bad, period. But not every white person is a racist, and not every racist is white. The same applies to all the other intersections.
We really need to stop oversimplifying the problems and solutions, because it’s the same tactic and the same trap that the fascists use. We need to be better than the fascists, not fight fascism with fascism. Hate begets hate.
Gender war, race war, sexuality war: it’s all a distraction from the class war. Let’s not fall for it.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
We should use mass AI propaganda to direct all our hate to an imaginary group of people that don’t actually exist, and are distinct enough that no living human could ever be mistaken for one of them. Like, let’s just invent an entirely new racial phenotype from whole cloth, with unique physical features no one has. And then just create a storm of AI stories, images, and videos of these evil bastards doing all sorts of heinous things. All of humanity can unite behind hating a group of people that don’t actually exist.
If we’re going to live in a post-truth dystopia, let’s try using it for good for once.
Pretty much, yeah.
Fascism, at its core, is Us versus Them. Under all the complexities and layers is one simple idea: Our problems are because They have Our resources, and we need a strong leader to go to war (figuratively or literally) against Them and take Our stuff.
And I think this is incredibly seductive because it triggers our old hominid instincts, from back when we lived in small tribes on the African savannah, and when our territory was hit by drought, or fire, or natural disaster, and we didn’t have enough resources, the solution really was to go into another tribe’s territory, drive them out, and take their stuff.
Lebensraum is as old as stone knives and bearskins.
And the more desperate people are, the more frightened and hungry and angry they are, the stronger those old animal instincts become.
But, you know, a good leader can simplify complicated issues. A good leader can identify problems, articulate actual solutions, and direct people’s angry monkey brains towards fighting for those solutions instead of persecuting scapegoats. Not Us versus Them, but All of Us, together, fighting poverty and climate change and economic hardship and building a better future.
Unfortunately, in the United States and the “free world” as a whole, we have a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people who benefit from all the economic and social failures that are causing the problems we suffer from. And they want people to believe in a simple violent solution that blames the wrong people and doesn’t actually fix anything, because they don’t want the problems fixed.
And you don’t get elected unless these extraordinarily wealthy people give you enough money to win an election.
So we don’t get any good leaders. We get a choice between fascism and the status quo, which is also fascism.
Yay, democracy.
People are really going out of their way not to see the demand destruction phenomenon for what it is. My experience is that older people think the economy is doing great because they all had explosions in their asset values over recent years. The youth on the other hand complain about being broke and finding it difficult to keep up with basic living costs. There is a total breakdown in communication between these two groups.
The K-shaped economy in action.
The rich get richer, the poor get poorer.
And when young Americans finally lose their fucking temper - when we get “Occupy the Suburbs” instead of “Occupy Wall Street”, when the rhetoric is turned against the 10%, whose stocks and bonds and 401Ks ballooned in value as a side effect of the hyperbillionaires looting and pillaging the American working class in the greatest wealth transfer in history - those old fucks aren’t going to have the slightest idea why most of America hates them.
And the hyperbillionaires who maintain their power by dividing Americans against one another are going to laugh all the way to the bank.
Dang, when did we inflate 1% to 10%? People driving BMWs but still working for a living are easier to throw rocks at than real villains?
They’re the enablers.
John Kenneth Galbraith’s excellent book “Culture Of Contentment” speaks to this
https://bookwyrm.social/book/1805003/s/the-culture-of-contentment
When the 10% who have savings and stock market investments and 401Ks are getting richer and richer, seeing their personal net worth rise, and feeling pretty good about it.
And the 90% who don’t have savings and investments and are working paycheck to paycheck are seeing mass unemployment and salary cuts and hyperinflated rents and grocery prices and are struggling harder and harder and just getting further and further behind.
And then the 10% tell the 90% “I don’t see any problem, the economy is great”.
I don’t think we’re there yet. Hopefully the American economy pulls back from the brink. I don’t want to live in a country where being upper middle class means living in walled compounds and having armed bodyguards escort your kids to private schools to keep them from being kidnapped for ransom. But frankly, I think that’s where we’re going - a United States where the people lucky enough to own stock see those stock prices go up, and up, and up, while the wealth of the people goes down, and down, and down, enjoying their enclaves of wealth while surrounded by more and more of the desperate poor.
Because, I mean, you may not have helped the hyperbillionaires screw over 90% of America to pad their stock prices, you may not have orchestrated the biggest wealth transfer in history from the poor to the rich, but you sure as fuck didn’t try to stop them.
There is no middle class. There’s labor and capital. Confusing the two only helps capitalists
My screen was absolutely not free. This stupid thing was goddamn expensive as fuck.
You can get a phone for pretty cheap though, if you want to get an expensive one that is your choice.
But you need it for life, unfortunately, so it’s already there. Even many homeless people have smartphones, though they’re a little busy trying to stay alive to get to stuck on a phone.
This 100%. Growing up my blue clollar janitor dad paid a mortgage on a 5 bedroom house to raise kids with my mom. someone could work just weekends at a bar or restaurant and afford an efficiency and get by.
Think of the art that isn’t getting made. Seriously. This is a genocide against culture.
It’s not just that. Economy in my country isn’t that bad (yet. the increased energy costs are going to fuck us up real soon). Clubs just never got back to the pre-covid numbers. Like even with most of the competition closed down, the biggest one in the capital still didn’t have enough visitors to warrant staying open (having to heat up a goddamn castle with 40-50 meter high ceilings in the winter months may have been a contributor). They’re now an “event center” and will open for special events only.
Turns out we all learned you can just buy drinks and enjoy them at home for much less money, with less noise, etc.
Additionally, statistics are showing that young people are just living healthier lives and consuming less alcohol. And who’d want to go to a nightclub without alcohol?
Concerts, stand-up shows, etc, are still booming though. Stand-up comedy is bigger than ever here, since the scene only started developing some 10-15 years ago (Comedy Estonia had a show called “Esimene eesti keeles!” (“First one in Estonian!”) in 2014). But partying, as in going to a night club, getting wasted, embarrassing yourself in an attempt to pick up a potential partner for the night, is just dead. It’s an old people thing now. Most of the popular “dance music” bands here have been around since the 90s.
It’s a general trend as far as I can tell all over the West.
I saw the steady empoverishment already back when I lived in Britain in the 2010s and am seeing it right now living in my native Portugal.
It is especially obvious by all the stores that closed and never opened again or did open and then closed again not long after, the more away from city centers the more common.
The realestate bubble that really took of after the Zero Interest Policies that were chosen as “temporary” measurs to “recover” from the 2008 Crash (and were never fully undone) is eating the parts of the Economy which are not Rentierism and concentrating wealth in fewer and fewer hands (of those who own the most assets, i.e. the Owner Class) and doing so via multiple pathways:
- Businesses which before could survive and generate a steady trickle of income now can’t because rents (which pretty much doubled in the last decade) eat up too much of revenue to the point of wiping out all profit.
- People are having to allocate a higher and higher fraction of their income (which has been going up below inflation, because salaries aren’t increasing as fast as living costs) to housing, have less money to spend on anything other than essentials. The steep increase in consumer debt has for a while compensated for that, but that’s reaching its limits again (just like it did pre-2008).
The other side of the coin is visible in the rise of the Far-Right - as people feel more and more squeezed, the Owner Class funds parties which “explain” the pain as being caused by foreigners, be it “immigrants” (in the words of the farthest Far Right) or “foreign interference” (in the words of the more Neoliberal Far-Right, especially in larger countries which in my experience tend to have higher levels of nationalist delusions of grandeur) - the implicit message is always one scapegoating foreigners to dismiss the responsability of those who by far have and had for all these years the most power and hence shaped things to be as they are now: the very much local power elites and the politicians who are either themselves part of it or willingly act as their minions.
(This is why, for example, Britain ended up with Brexit)
This trend was already visible and the increasingly shitty state of thing was already painfully predictable a decade ago for those paying attention to Economic subjects, but naturally that’s not most people and the Owner Class very purposefully bought most of the Press (were they could, hence why places with a huge Press ownership concentration like the UK and US being even worse than most of Europe) and used it for Propaganda purposes such as spreading the above mentioned “it’s the fault of foreigners” messaging as most people increasingly hurt and got angry, so those doing the pillaging were free to do it as much as they want and kept doing it and even accelerating (as Economic growth slowed down, they went from mainly eating up the gains of Economic growth to increasingly taking away existing wealth from the rest)
Tell me the Pussirohukelder in Tartu is still going…
Püss is definitely still going, though personally I haven’t been there in about a decade. Was more my kinda jam back in university, but it was just so loud I couldn’t stand it anymore at some point.
I can tell you though that Rüütli street feels dead compared to a decade+ ago. Like there’s still bars, there’s restaurants, they all seem to be doing well enough to stay open… But at least when I last visited it on a spring evening a few years ago, it wasn’t as swarming as it used to be in say 2014 or 2015. Of course I guess that was when we still faintly remembered that COVID exists, maybe 2021 or 2022, so perhaps it’s changed for the better.
There’s also plenty of great bars to visit that have been open for a while and are still going. Möku (in the rooms of Genialistide Klubi for well over a decade now), Pirogovi Lokaal and of course Barlova. They all seem to be doing well, the nightclub scene has taken a much bigger hit than the bar scene IMO. I may of course be biased as well, I’ve never liked night clubs and I don’t overly like socializing with the type of people that love night clubs, I like bars and I like people that like bars. If that makes sense at all lol
At least the Weimar Republic had amazing jazz and the Bauhaus
Don’t worry, since art has no intrinsic value to shareholders they’re okay with culture dying off. Soon enough the algorithm will be generating new hyper-individualized content for everyone, increasing viewer retention.
Every waking hour not spent at work will be squeezed for ad revenue.
What, I wondered, did people do on these islands? The answer was surprisingly banal. These were partly debate societies, where members could gather and talk about local issues, such as a factory that was polluting the countryside, or whether the village medical center was well stocked. The groups also organized litter pickups and painted bus benches. There was talk of movie nights.
Under one subreddit query from nine months ago that asked, “What are the Tisza islands doing?” the responses mostly showed people coming together and being neighborly. “Things we’ve done,” began one post: “Water distribution in the heat, we collected school supplies and clothes for the family support center.” Also, “we organized a cooking competition.” This was a perfect illustration of Robert Putnam’s idea in Bowling Alone, his book about growing atomization in America—that civil society depends on people simply doing things together.
Mutual aid groups. Prefigurative politics. Starting local with boots on the ground, finding little ways to make your community better, actually pays off.
(Nobody tell the MLs.)
We are NOT practicing anarchism, we are having potlucks and have a favor board.
Sure. And fair. There are tons of people out there practicing anarchism-style community organization and mutual aid who get mightily offended at being called anarchists - e.g. the Zapatistas.
That’s the cool thing about anarchism. It’s focused on building community, so its ideas work to build community, whether you’re an anarchist or not.
This made me happy 🥹
Party is wherever you bring that stolen bottle
Y’all getting free screen?
Lol. Let’s call it a “positive” externality. Pretty much everybody who’s employed, or who wants to be employed, or who wants to stay in contact with friends or family, needs to have a cell phone and Internet access. And if you have to pay for that stuff anyway, you may as well doomscroll on it.
the less you go out and socialize with actual human beings - the more appealing the fascist illusion of unity, of being part of a powerful group, becomes.
This has not been my experience, but I acknowledge my weirdness. The less I’m with people the less I want to be with people.
This is way more due to technology than the economy. It doesn’t cost money to have friends yet there’s a loneliness epidemic. The west is very rich compared to the rest of the world or all of recorded history.
That’s great. Yay. Why do I need 3 jobs to live here then?
Oh is it possibly because the prices are higher here too? And most of that wealth is held by a very few people?
It’s almost like you should also look at cost of living and purchasing power and work hours required to meet basic needs.
Do you need 3 jobs though?
If you can only get part time work, probably. In the UK here and never had money problems if I have had full time work, minimum wage is plenty if you have reliable full time work. Part time or irregular employment could be much harder though.
I’m talking about income relative to prices. The west has it better than everyone else now or ever before except recent history. I know complaining is fashionable but be real. You’re not a serf who can never afford meat or has to work 10 hours 6 days a week even if you do have 3 (part-time) jobs.
That’s such a braindead take. The wealthy are bleeding us dry and you’re response is “could be worse.” A handful of people hold the same amount of wealth as 50% of the poorest Americans, and that gap is only widening, it’s not getting smaller. This is a serious problem for everyone whose not extremely wealthy, and you’re over here acting like its not an issue. How’s that boot taste?
I didn’t say it’s not an issue, but we need perspective. Instead of complaining about the elbow poking us in the ribs right now how about we talk about the branch we’re sitting on breaking and the pit of lava below? Or why we are in this situation to begin with? Not just the elbow but everything else?
You’ve got it backwards though. We’re talking about the lava while you’re over here talking about elbows.
Some relatively minor and arguably temporary economic hardship that still leaves us at an advantage compared to almost anyone else doesn’t seem like a big deal compared to humans no longer being the dominant species and either going extinct or becoming slaves
Incredibly naive to think this is minor and temporary. The forces driving this are what is leading to us going extinct or becoming slaves.
Yeah, the U.S. isn’t falling below the world just falling back in line with it. A family with 1 income supporting a stay at home wife and 2 kids was never going to last forever.
This is way more due to technology than the economy. It doesn’t cost money to have friends yet there’s a loneliness epidemic
Where have you been going to meet people that doesn’t cost money?
Not only that but it needs time. Time that coincides with friends times. If everyone is 9-5 and thats it then thats great, but everyone is working as many hours as they can.
Local hackerspaces or makerspaces have open doors nights and try to be affordable overall. Sometimes even free. Libraries are great. Galleries and museums have free days. Protests and activist organisations are good way to be social and find meaningful life… Grassroots cultural spaces in general. Some cafes and bars have events that don’t require you to purchase anything. There are squats and other social spaces around the world
Don’t know if that helps, but I’ve known people before who didn’t know the place they were looking for already existed. Sometimes the places are hard to find, but they are there. There’s 8 billion of us and nobody wants to be alone.
Our local makerspace has shut down but when I looked before covid it cost more per month then than my allotment does per year now. Put seeds in some dirt, you even get food out of it. Availability might vary, there was a waiting list that took about half a year.
The park? Take the bike to a lake? Idk where exactly you live
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In the year 2026 where being a straight dude approaching people at the park will get you labelled a predator.
No what are you going on about? Nobody cares if you aren’t asking creepy questions or if you for example ask multiple women specifically. Be the creepiest man and ask some lady for a lighter, nobody cares. Be the creepiest homeless person and wish someone a good day, nobody gives a fuck.
Work, social activities, churches, in the neighborhood, at the park. Really lots of places if you’re not trying to be a downer. Of course it was much easier before the internet however.
