Imagine how much good could be done if we just took Elon Musk’s stuff and used it to fund public education, public healthcare, poverty reduction, drug abuse treatment, and the like. Instead that shit strain is hoarding all that money that came from our pockets.
EDIT: Like…instead of letting him DOGE NASA for the benefit of SpaceX, what if we just took SpaceX and folded it in to NASA?
I am going to be extremely sad considering the amount of research and science that’s about to become privatized. Not just NASA but other government agencies and research grants.
Ya, Bill Gate started the trend with “donating” to research for “exclusive rights to everything coming from the research”, with Zuckerberg et al all doing it now.
Sprinkle in a million dollars in publicities and people believe they are the good guys too. So infuriating.
Yeah, that’s not donating, that’s buying.
We’re in something akin to the latter days of the Soviet Union, in my opinion. Most Americans just can’t see it, because our bureaus/oligarchs, etc…have different titles.
Oh I see it, these fucks are going to try and sell off OUR infrastructure and lots of everything else against our best interest to a bunch of billionaires for pennies on the dollar.
Austerity is the term, punishment of the masses to enrich a few. Read Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein.
#doubt
Most people live comfortably enough that they won’t radicalize, we’re far from France before the revolution
Yes the median income is something like 80k. The mode however is still firmly buried in the 35-40k segment. Fun fact, you only need 1% of the population for a region to conduct a viable insurgency. Less for highly concentrated places like NY and LA. You need 10% to provide material aid like money and shelter. Which is a different, lower level, of radicalization.
So NYC by traditional standards would need 82,000 people to be radicalized enough to commit violent acts. In reality because it’s so dense they could easily do it with a thousand, and several thousand supporters. And this is for big boy insurgency stuff where the police have to engage in extended firefights just to get into a neighborhood. For terrorism campaigns the numbers are even smaller. 2 people paralyzed the entire state of Maryland and Northern Virginia in 2002. A couple hundred dedicated people not trying to hold territory could easily shut down wall street until the NYPD turned it into the Baghdad Green Zone.
The rich haven’t even begun to find out yet. And they sent the working class for a 20 year premier education in asymmetric warfare. This is why some of us are so pissed at them. We’re going to be living in the next Afghanistan if they don’t take their boot off the neck of the working class.
About the mode, which you gave as $35-40k. I latched onto that because it doesn’t mean a lot.
For those who don’t know what a statistical “mode” is, it’s the most common data point in a sample. Mode is most useful when there are a small number of possibilities, like answers to multiple choice questions. Incomes from zero to billions have so many individual values, the single one that occurs most often is meaningless, so statisticians usually give a modal range. I couldn’t find data on the exact range $35-40k, but on statista only 10% of Americans are between $35k and $50k, so your range is more like 3% of the people. The point is, saying half of Americans make more than $80k and half make less seems a lot more significant than saying a small number are “buried” in a very narrow zone.
Anyway, I totally agree that the wealthy call the shots in America and it sucks. But really what’s the point of some exciting stuff that happened in Maryland and Northern Virginia in 2002 when it’s 22 years later and those place don’t look any different? People can fantasize about action-packed clashes with NYPD in the streets, but the long-term result (or lack of it) is what we should be thinking about. Most people are law-abiding and don’t want to live in the Wild West. When your radical heroes start shooting, the vast majority won’t be dodging bullets and cheering, they’ll hide indoors and call the police. Lasting change has to be done in an organized way. I don’t know how to make that happen either, but a bunch of badass video game characters ain’t gonna do it.
I saw it in BLS data. And it’s important because of the insurgency numbers I brought up too. 3 and 10 percent are high enough numbers. Plus everyone below that range as well.
I want to be very clear about something. I am not trying to recruit for the barricades. I would like to avoid this scenario very much. I agree that most people are going to stay indoors and call the authorities. That’s how these things go at the start. But humans are weird. The longer it goes on and authorities seem unable to keep order, the more support an insurgency gets, as long as they keep bystander casualties low enough and they stay on message. So doing things like abducting and killing police officers with a history of complaints would be productive to their cause. No matter how horrifying it is on it’s own. Things like blowing up the Stock Exchange are productive to their cause.
What happened in Maryland was a punitive campaign of terrorism. I bring it up, not because it changed anything, but to show how easy such things can be. If you can lock down an entire state, then you can certainly lock down the executive class in an area; make it deadly to commute to work in a suit, town car, or helicopter.
But these things never stay on track. Just like extremism, there’s always more, because it’s not a monolithic group. Even the Taliban was four large groups and hundreds of smaller ones. Especially when other radicals perceive it to be working. Groups like ELF are already established and may decide to join the violence instead of just targeting property. And that’s nothing to the KKK and Neo Nazi groups deciding it’s the race war they’ve been preparing for. All we need after that is any one of fifty Governors going full dictator to fight back with state sponsored terrorism and the descent into failed state will be complete.
These fucking idiotic rich people think they’re above consequences and they’re going to drag our country into a pit from which it cannot ever emerge intact. They’re going to blow the lid off all the extremism in our country because they just had to buy another trip to space.
Those targets are pretty broad - personally I’ve always made sure I can wear aloha shirts to work, but lots of perfectly nice people have jobs that require suits. The people you’re after don’t actually have to commute anywhere if they don’t want to, If they feel endangered they’ll just work from safe places and make their lackeys cannon fodder. You can paint a nice morally perfect scenario where the well-meaning shooters “keep bystander casualties low enough,” but once they get frustrated and redefine “viable target” as whoever looks the part, people will die for the crime of not being able to afford getting fired. And like I said, in 20 years the world will look the same.
Yeah they’re broad because I’m not trying to do planning work for someone who wants to do this. But I spent a decade of my life fighting and training to fight insurgents. They aren’t going to let a little bit of travel stop them. And when the angry people with guns say to stop wearing suits, you stop wearing a suit.
When people with guns say jump you jump - and then when those badasses win their moral victory they stop saying jump? Yeah good luck wit dat.
Well if you don’t like them you hope they lose or you join the effort against them. You don’t commit suicide by challenging them as a civilian.
That median is for a household, median per person is under 50k if I recall correctly
Median per person is tough to find from year to year. It seems to be inconsistently reported or just given as household median/2 which isn’t a rigorous method.
Panem et circenses. It worked for thousands of years.
Or just rich people getting stronger and ever more lethal security teams…
We still out number them by hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, to one.
There are 2781 billionaires in the world. I say we eat them.
So we need a new money?
The money we have now works for Luigi defense funds
Musk has all of the new money too. We need a new new money.
Ya, not some crypto shit too
Musk’s feds would like to know your location
The rich already control the narrative and peoples mind. They effectively got whole nations to vote against their own interests. They are absolutely fine. This is copium.
I hope so. I really really hope so. If not, then we’re headed for an incredibly terrible future of the kind that used to exist in dystopian fiction.
X for doubt
OP is fucking delusional.
They barely mix with us, peasants. They will probably follow this trend and live in inexpugnable, extremely well defended citadels. Apartheid, in a word.
I work in the municipal office of a tiny city that’s an enclave for the super rich. We’re entirely surrounded by a major city, but we’re a different jurisdiction.
Of course, I don’t get to live there. Literally every resident is a millionaire or better. The average new house being built there is about 8 million dollars, and we have a lot of housing churn.
That is, people will buy a 5 million dollar house and tear it down to build a 12 million dollar house.
All that to say that I interact with these people all the time. They almost invariably don’t realize how out of touch they are, because their neighbors are also millionaires.
You’d think it’s a super nice city, but other than the houses it’s fairly run down. They don’t want good roads or sidewalks because then people would use them. The city was essentially founded to prevent bus lines from the major city from having stops near the fancy district.
Over half the municipal employees are cops, and their main job is keeping homeless people away.
All this work goes into isolating the rich from the poor, and it’s worked so well that most of the rich don’t even realize it’s happening.
That never works though. Like literally it’s never worked.
And they will probably try out of fear to take Americans’ guns, which is going to be hilarifying
So…what you going to do about it?
I’m having a meeting this week to decide what we do next.
Just in case you need: https://mastodon.social/@elonjet
Educate, agitate, organize
I agree with you about sentiment. Idk if actions will be taken but I feel like the CEO shooting did set a certain tone.
Now the question is, will that create further escalating tension or would it be repackage and sold to us as a media trope to show us that “hey, some oligarchs aren’t that bad.”
Mmm I think more will happen. There’s some very organized groups who are armed to the teeth and unafraid.
It really pisses me off that we find ourselves here again https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oKZgXvpm0c&t=263s. (its the Canada asylum scene from handmaid’s tale)
because of the DNC’s corrupt desire to game the electoral system to maximize for the most funding – dirty or not-- rather than whats good for society. Pelosi’s corruption as evidenced by her getting FILTHY rich off insider trading is not a one-off, its systematic and formalized at every leadership level of the party (Exactly the same as it is in the rethuglican party). As is enabling AIPAC’s genocide and land theft, against the wishes of the majority of Democratic party voters.
People need to choose now: fund and enable Progressivism and join the “woke dirty hippies” or more of the same traitorous “woopsie” failure from centrism, and Putin and Netenyahus hands crushing whats left of this country. People may not even have a chance to exercise this choice, much less another after this one-- so the last minute to save ourselves has arrived, if not passed.
Time to choose. Supporting a third party (or a much more progressive dem party where we toss the centrist leadership to the curb) needs to start now, not in 3 and a half years.
Aww cute you think that a 3rd party would ever be viable on a national level at this point.
This is why we need to change our election laws though for real so we can vote for who we want without taking votes from the most likely winner or other acceptable candidate.
I’d rather have a parliamentary system to be honest, the way congress works and electing our reps directly vs voting for parties just lends itself to the two party problem and that’s not stopping anytime soon by the looks of it.
This is why we need to change our election laws
by voting for people who actually support the policy you describe.
I hear you and out of the two major parties by far it’s the Dems trying to get election laws improved. But yeah I know it isn’t easy.
I want to believe that the working class will finally take back its power, the first step of which will be forming strong and effective unions. The second step is ensuring high taxes on the wealthy, coupled with accountability for how that tax revenue is spent
But I look at all the previous decades of failure, and I recommend that young people in particular should make alternative plans in case they have to fend in a hostile social, political and economic environments
1—do nothing else but learn some skill or trade (or several) which you can use to get paid
2—don’t excessively drink, don’t excessively do drugs, don’t excessively sleep around, and get and stay fit
3—create a network of friends and family, but don’t stress if you cannot. Get a hobby, try to get married, but don’t stress if you don’t. Cut out toxic people and family from your life
4—do whatever else you care about if you’ve done the above
Conventional wisdom still helps, don’t be fooled by people who say that it doesn’t work
What’s wrong with sleeping around?
And what’s the point of getting married?
I understand the sentiment, drugs, drinking, and sleeping around is a way to have an enjoyable time, but it’s not a way to create meaningful relationships.
None of those three things are, by themselves, bad. But if you do them to excess, it can replace a real, stable social network.
The point of getting married is that you legally tie yourself to another person in a way that is recognized by larger institutions. If you don’t have a spouse, or LEGAL family, then it can be difficult to make co-decisions. One of the major reasons why same sex marriage was such a huge deal, was that end of life support and care was almost impossible. You could live with someone for 30 years, but then when they’re in a coma in the hospital, you can’t legally visit them, or make medical decisions for them.
<pfft> Let them eat cake.
Oh yes, let there be blood.
If only.
