this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 136 points 8 months ago (8 children)

You think we're gonna fight corporations as individuals if we strangle government?

No. Government is our protection from those who would want to consolidate power, especially corporations. I understand that the government often fails at that protection, but it's still a hell of a lot better than being completely defenseless.

The whole point of the founding fathers was to spread power and attempt to keep it spread. They wanted to avoid both the abuses of monarchy and the eventual decapitation of leadership (seeing as how that'd be their heads).

[–] [email protected] 56 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It ain't going well for the little guy lately - the thread in my Lemmy right below this one is "Amazon, SpaceX and other companies are arguing the government agency that has protected labor rights since 1935 is actually unconstitutional".

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the working man that labor unions were gasp COMMUNIST

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Government is our megazord. Got it.

megazord transforming

Edit: added wiki link for the curious. In short, episodes of the Power Rangers often end with the rangers battling a monster that inevitably revives as a much larger, Godzilla-scale version.

As the rangers are suddenly too small to fight the larger foe that towers above them, they must instead organize their individual vehicles into one giant “megazord” — a large mech, like a gundam crossed with a transformer — in order to defeat the enemy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (4 children)

That only works if it can be meaningfully said that the working class directs the state, rather than the owner class. In America, the Owner Class dominates the state via lobbying and being able to contribute to election campaigns.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

One might argue that the government is there to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority. James Madison certainly did

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago

Thus the beheading part. Spreading power was good for everyone.

I'd rather have a billion USD as an American citizen than have 10 billion USD as a Russian oligarch. For some reason the GOP doesn't seem to understand why.

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[–] [email protected] 82 points 8 months ago (4 children)

As someone who's self employed, I feel like self employment is a form of rebellion against this system.

My dad teases me that his socialist son is now a capitalist because I give music lessons and host events. I'm pretty sure I'm not because I don't profit from the labor of someone else, I do all the work and anyone who helps me isn't existentially tied to me.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Sounds like your dad has fuck all for a grasp on what socialism is

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yup. The good part about it is that if I know the trip wire words to avoid, I can get him to agree on some really progressive things.

Like I got him to agree that history is uncomfortable and that victors tend to write history, so we should be critical in how we learn it and teach it. We should consider the perspectives of who "the losers" are to get a true grasp of what actually happened, and that the society you grow up in will shape your world view. Our history classes should confront these issues and teach events with consideration of different groups of people and how they were affected, even if it may make us uncomfortable.

Hmmm what does that sound like?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Sounds like The Great Replacement^TM^. BETSY, GET ME MY GUN!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So many people and absolutely incapable of defining socialism or capitalism.

Every damn one of them has an opinion on both.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

We want them both at the same time. We want to be winners, but we imagine that if we were, we would be fair, thereby creating a utopia.

People associate those words with their fantasies, not with the ideological tenets that actually define them.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Socialism=communism. Communism=red. Red looks like blood. Blood means someone might die. Socialism bad cuz it means dead people.

That's usually how conservatives who I have talked to look at it. 💀

So many lost causes...

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There is no badge for not hiring people. Its better to hire someone and treat them better than another employer than pretend like you are virtuous and not "profiting from their labor".

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (4 children)

An interesting thought. A kind of harm reduction. Alternately (or perhaps coinciding) I'm very interested in workers co-ops where the distinction between employee/er kinda goes away. You can still have managers and people setting the quarterly goals or whatever, but they aren't "above" you, except maybe in their skill at managing people.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

I'm pretty sure I'm not because I don't profit from the labor of someone else, I do all the work and anyone who helps me isn't existentially tied to me.

Idk, I'm in a similar boat. I work at a state-run hospital, but I also own a company with my wife and friend and we do all the labour together. I think sometimes to deal with the work load I have a "home me" and a "work me".

Home me is chill, just wants to relax and have a good time.

Work me..... He's a scoundrel who doesn't work nearly hard enough to afford "home me" more leisure time. You can't trust him, gotta watch him like a hawk. I'm going to wring that guy dry until I can retire off his sweat.

So it makes an odd amount of sense to me, but I've constructed an odd coping mechanism i think.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 8 months ago (8 children)

If we're being honest, corporations don't "pay" taxes at all, those costs are instead passed on to the consumer. They collect taxes from you, just like the government, they just hide it better.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And people don't pay taxes either, since they get money from companies to pay the taxes! Nobody actually pays taxes, it is the circle of money.

That is what you sound like.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Circle of money is incredibly important. People get money they spend it, improving their lives.
Goverment spend money building and maintaining infrastructure, and in normal countires education and healthcare.
Companies get money (pay less tax) they give most of it to shareholders to hoard. Who sits on a bigger and bigger pile of societys life blood, draining it to a lifeless husk. Parasites pure and simple.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Also the employees! Your employer and you split your taxes. If the company didn’t have to pay ~15%, they could theoretically increase your salary by that much. They wouldn’t, but they could.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Exactly. They just pass the cost onto consumers because there's no way they could reduce CEO pay.

But please ignore how stock buybacks and c-suite pay was way lower when corporate taxes were high. That's a silly correlation that has nothing to do with price inelasticity.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (5 children)

Am I remembering wrong or is this the first NSF “terrorist” leader’s monologue in Deus Ex?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Yep. Remember, kids, don't talk to terrorist. That's how they get in your head. Always shoot on sight.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Weird how much of it still works just fine 24 years later

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Whats weird about it? The global paradigm is unchanged.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

If anything, it’s closer to Deus Ex now

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

He had to catch a breath.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Mid-syllable hyphen >:(

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

90% was self employed in 1900.

That can't be right can it?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

Yeah, it's correct if by "self employed" you mean "subsistence farmer". The US was basically a third world country in 1900. We only won the Spanish American War in 1898 because Spain was a dying empire.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

50% according to this article. They mention 80% in 1860.

I'm not 100% sure of the source there but I have heard similar numbers around 50%. Think of all the self-employed people doing jobs that just don't exist today in the US - delivering milk, fruit, fish, newspapers, door-to-door salesmen, and that's on top of jobs that still exist today with a lot of self-employed people like AC repair, plumbing, etc...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

From 1860 to 1900 the average size of American farms had declined from 199 acres to 147 acres and the percentage of farmers in the labor force declined from 58 to 38 percent.

No, doesn't seem right.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago

Don't even get me started on the litigation terrorism against states that want to implement green laws

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/feb/12/litigation-terrorism-how-corporations-are-winning-billions-from-governments

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This guy is gonna get laid

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago

Even today, Deus Ex proves to be relevant and provokes discussion. True art.

Who's reinstalling it right now?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

"Maybe you should try getting a job?"

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Yo I wanna hang with you at the parties.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

So whats the context for the original image ???

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (1 children)

A club called Milk in Edinburgh posted it on their Facebook page. Presumably it was taken there.

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