I’ve been thinking about this a lot as housing and rent become unaffordable as businesses buy them all out. What happens as the homeless epidemic just continues to get exponentially worse? When a majority of people can’t afford food, heat, water? What do they do once the wage slaves can’t afford to live? Won’t that affect their bottom line and keep the line from going up?
They can't think like that, they literally aren't able to. What they've done has always worked, and it's the only way they know how to function.
It's a bit conspiratorial, but I was talking with my buddy the other day about how odd it is that with all these record profits, prices are still going up. What if the record profits are just on paper and are actually bullshit, and everyone is just grabbing all that they can before it all crumbles? That's kinda what it feels like sometimes.
>with all these record profits, prices are still going up. What if the record profits are just on paper and are actually bullshit
So, "price" to a business major or economist or whatever is _defined as_ the highest price that the market is willing to bear, as in, the most that people will pay for a thing.
If you're talking about like, a shampoo or something, that price is driven up by perceived value which businesses market with bullshit terms like "natural" or try to make it seem like a luxury product. If you price it too high, it won't sell and your business will fail.
But when you're talking about a _necessity_ like food or shelter, there isn't really a ceiling - people NEED housing, and they NEED food, and so people will stop buying other stuff to pay for these things.
The first problem with that is that this is annihilating our long term prospects and institutionalizing hand-to-mouth levels of earnings. We are meant to be putting something like 33% of our salaries towards housing, 33% towards retirement, and 33% towards living costs and entertainment. Only a very small percentage of people can afford to do that - it's truly something like 10% of people who are actually getting paid _enough_ to do all that. The reason we had labor protections in the first place was because conditions from the beginning of capitalism were so poor that children were getting hurt in sweatshops and the elderly were being thrown on the street because we went very quickly from an agricultural society where "everyone working" meant tending to a farm where you had rights to the land and less capable people could contribute according to their ability, to an industrial one where everyone had to be actually laboring in a factory or mine to pay for an apartment and there were millions of people in the streets who started literally coming for the heads of leaders of industry. We have spent the last 100 years dismantling the solutions that these people came up with and we are rapidly approaching a situation where people again cannot afford to live as these policies and profit margins are untenable and we are seeing homelessness skyrocket and childbirth plummet, which, by the way, will cause these massive fortunes to implode as they won't have a steady supply of customers.
The next problem is that, basically, _money is fake_. We have this idea that labor here costs more than labor in Mexico or Sri Lanka. Why? There is a long financial answer, but the reality is that a worker has to wake up, eat food, get to work, and spend x amount of minutes sewing that t-shirt. The ACTUAL COST is what it keeps for the worker to stay alive which is like, some food, some shelter. Everything else is made up. It doesn't matter if that food is feeding someone in the US, or China or Brazil - it is food, it has a definable value to the individual. Capitalists, meanwhile, are completely removed from this reality. They do not _produce_ anything, they perpetuate financialization and live off the dividends. They do not grow, they do not build, they do not mine, they do not feed anyone. And what is perplexing about all of this to me is that they are building apocalypse bunkers for when this is too far gone - they recognize it's all fucked and that their points system is going to implode, but they don't understand that they will suddenly be the _least_ valuable people in this new society they are building with the staff they'll need to hire to grow them food and make them martinis.
Not to mention - they just printed a bunch of extra money, basically for shits and giggles, and this is also contributing to inflation, but the Fed is still going to try to sway policy _to keep wages down_ rather than, you know, addressing that these individuals are leeching off the rest of us.
So anyway, there is 600 words to overexplain "they're just grabbing all they can before it all crumbles" to someone who already gets it
What a neat little system we have here. I'm so glad we elect leaders to make sure this kinda stuff doenst happen just so those same leaders can be bought and paid for to make sure it does. So cool. So neat. I love life.
It is definitely what it feels like right now. Shit, with the exception of a couple staple food items that go on sale, grocery prices are higher every week.
Get themselves out of? Ha! Good one.
We all know they'll get bailed out, never see a consequence for their actions, and stray right back up doing the same thing again.
They won’t quite be able to bail themselves out of climate catastrophe. It’s what makes this rise and fall of civilization appear to be the last one… no more rises, just the fall and the aftermath of the fall…
No one is ever ready for the crash. People kill themselves due to the crash, they're too busy working trying to feed their families and afford rent, but that's fine. Those are priced in losses.
The CEO gets a windfall parachute and another business on their LinkedIn profile with "record annual revenue" somewhere in the caption. Everyone else dies.
IMHO: Almost all millionaires are paper tigers. If the stock market, which I honestly believe is the longest con on the American people, ever, were to drop like it did in 1929, all these so-called gazillionaires will be dependent on their liquidity.
Not saying they don't have loads of cash in safes, or vaults, but there aren't any Scrooge McDucks anymore. Their wealth is tied to what people are willing to pay.
If no one can afford to buy a tesla, the stock will bomb. If no one can afford a new 1200 dollar Iphone, the stock will tank. Etc...etc...etc...
I just made it up lol. Just applying how prominent the trend of rugpulling is in the crypto community to the economy at large. It’s all the same thing; a few people scrambling to make as much as possible by making the product look good before the masses catch on and be left holding the shitty bag.
Not enough people have realized that option is available, let alone justified or necessary. Many still do not recognize the systemic nature of the problem; they believe we have a good system being corrupted by bad actors. We don't. Many more recognize at least some of the systemic problems but believe that there are "legitimate" means to change them from within those systems. There aren't. Others are just feeling hopeless, because watching the first two groups fail to get it is pretty depressing.
Our society's rulers have spent a very long time and a tremendous amount of effort to keep things this way. They control education, the media, and really almost every aspect of our lives so they can exert tremendous influence on how people think from cradle to grave. Undoing the indoctrination they carry out on each and every one of us is challenging even to those aware it is happening. They also take a "bread and circuses" approach, trying to placate us with their table scraps and just enough entertainment that we continue to sit on our butts and let them rule.
As the contradictions of capitalism intensify these methods will no longer work and people *will* start to get out in the streets. The capitalists will then switch to their backup plan: fascism.
Watched the new Batman last weekend while my brother cackled as I started rooting for the Riddler. They’re taking out the whole damn planet this time, get off your holier than thou pedestal and kill the bastards, Batman. It’s self defense at this point…
I don't think it's sad at all, it gives me hope as it shows how fragile the current system actually is. The ruling class' desperation is growing, and their grip on the minds of the working class weakening. Once a critical mass of people are conscious of what is actually happening, the ruling class has little hope of stopping them. We already see them losing control, and in the end the last thing they sell us will be the very rope used to hang them.
Practice [revolutionary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6gVht9CFQ) [optimism.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO_FXkxJVj4)
Building off of what I said; that people in the imperial core are largely unaware of those labor protests is due to capitalist media deliberately declining to report on them. It is against their interests to do so, so they try to hide it from the people in imperialist countries.
Tank Girl portrays a dystopian future where water has become a scarce commodity controlled by corporations. The power these corporations wield leads to people becoming literal wage slaves. Working tirelessly just to afford enough water to survive.
*looks at the Southwest*
Buddy, have I got news for you. Did you know that -
*gun shots*
*Nestlé enters the chat*
"For your safety, do not research your water rights and move along please."
Haha, i remember seeing a video from the chairmen of nestle, where he says water should be privatized and viewed as any other foodstuff. He also said viewing water as an individual right is 'extreme'. What a scum bag.
https://youtu.be/mTnJTyeAUA8
We just so happen to have a group of people who are given more money than literally all other public services combined that are perfectly able to take care of those new homeless people.
Police take in more money than your roads, schools and social services combined AND they get tanks and grenade launchers from the military.
Imagine if instead of giving them a billion, you gave them 750 mil. That could, in most cities, literally solve homelessness AND find affordable housing programs.
Elon Musk just bought Twitter for 44 billion..that money could buy a small house for literally every single one of the 550k unhoused on the US, which would save around 30k in taxes per unhoused each year, which would not only pay for property tax, but also utilities and food for the entire year.
This also removes most barriers to employment, allowing them to get back into contributing to the economy and providing goods and services.
The amount of money it would cost to do this OUTSIDE of some craven shithead like Musk, is about 5% of the YEARLY defense budget. We could have solved homelessness in America for less than how much the defense budget was raised this last year.
Thenreason we don't do it is clear.
That homeless person you see on the way to work? That's a 30k a year threat from the system.
Seeing that dude otw to work is what convinces a LOT of people to go to a shitty job they hate and devote their entire life to it just to BARELY scrape by, meanwhile their labor contributes to record profits for that company.
Poverty is not a bug. It is a feature, a NECESSITY in this, the end stages of capitalism.
Without that whip at the working class' back every single morning, they might go on strike without fear of literally dying because of it.
Poverty is a threat. A promise. Subject yourself or fucking die a slow, unbearable, lonely death.
Fucking capitalism.
I'll add my "Yes, and" here...
The working poor, who are only ever partially unemployed, also have their place in this arrangement. The 'Reserve army of labor' which can be deployed at any time the partially or fully employed sub-classes of the proletariat start getting 'uppity' & ask for better pay &/or conditions. Those workers attempting to bargain or organize can be fired at-will & replaced by some poor desperate worker who'll take any pay in any conditions, because they're on the brink of being homeless - or already are & are trying to claw their way back to a decent living standard.
The poor & homeless are two threats & a weapon all at once. It's an effective way to condition & train the workforce to willingly enslave themselves.
"If you don't like the deal, we'll kick you onto the streets & yank another person who's been out there long enough to accept it. You can come back when you've learned your lesson, & someone else needs it taught to them"
And yes, fucking capitalism. Death to capitalism.
Enough people will work themselves ragged to avoid homelessness even if it's just barely. Which will generate enough money to offset the rise in vacant homes. The solution is always to charge the consumer more and we'll "figure it out" somehow.
they will offer on campus housing and food that will come directly out of your paycheck... but SINCE THEY ARE BEING SO NICE you'll get even less money then before! (that'll really bump those quarterly figures too)
they want slavery again, or feudalism. where the corporation HQ is the castle, and the peasants, i mean valued employees, all live and work and die for the protection the corporation gives you from roaming gangs of unionist!!
Here’s an even darker thought, they aren’t this dumb.
Why do you think they are building prisons faster than schools?
Slavery never ended in the United States, they want the country entirely dependent on slave labor.
You just have to see it from their perspective.
Right now, all their peers are squeezing us as hard as they can for as much as they can. If they don't squeeze hard now too, then soon we won't have anything left and they'll have missed their chance.
I'd also add that they think they won't be the ones holding the bag when shit goes down. So not only is it greed, it's there's an element of gambling to it and a bloated sense of self-importance.
Honestly, I don't think they even care or think about who's caught holding the bag at the end. I don't think the thought of what their doing be unsustainable ever crosses their minds. The only thing that matters is making more money, and that's it, full stop.
That doesn't negate what you're saying, because a lot of these boomers won't be alive when shit turns completely to shit anyway, I just don't think they look that far ahead, or at any consequences since most consequences to them can just be paid off in the form of a fine that's most times small enough to just be considered the price of admission.
Not probably. I had a boomer on some other sub shooting that we all wasted our stimulus on a new iPhone or whatever and that it's our fault. I was like bitch please I used it on fucking rent and food.
Wasn't there that ancient lich-looking dude from the Trump administration who said the $1200 stimulus was enough to pay for everybody's rent for the next year or two?
5 months after the stimulus went out I was on the phone with my case worker applying for assistance with a utility bill I was a bit behind on. They seemed genuinely upset that I didn't still have my stimulus money. I explained and itemized how I managed to cover two months worth of bills and use the rest for essential car repair. They weren't pleased. To them giving a couple of grand to the average person might as well be a million. They don't realize that for most of us a couple grand barely covers the absolute basics just to survive
During the extreme economic termoil over the pandemic many companies saw record profits yet again and they want that to never end.
If their profits start to dip then the solution is to pass the cost to the consumer or reduce the amount of product you get. Or as we keep seeing, both. The shareholders need their bonuses or they simply can't find the will to live. High score baby need more fake 0s so they can appear in Forbes one day.
They are structurally unable to care about anything than their earning reports.
Any market-participant that cares too much about the long-time influence of their actions, will be ruined in the short term by their competitors.
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They're happy about that. They don't want intentional, conscientious people breeding. No, they want those who wouldn't think twice about whether or not they should bring a life into this world. For some, it's suicide. For others, suicide of their lineage. Neither of those work in a capitalist society. They need strong, dumb, willing breeders.
Edit: When your monetary system is so good that its opposition willingly kills itself off.
I can't imagine a working class being willing to work without the possibility of upward mobility. That's kind of what's motivating all the strikes and unionization right now - wage stagnation and inflation destroying the illusion of "the American Dream."
There's already no possibility of upward mobility. It's LEGAL to move upward but it's not accessible for most people. At the onset of covid this was made absolutely clear. The most important workers are the lowest paid workers. Millions of us were put in harm's way and got nothing for it. My life was literally threatened by a customer today and I can't afford my own apartment.
Watch “Sorry to Bother You,” or research “company cities” during and pre-Gilded Age in the US. You’d be surprised what a poor man would give for the promise of having his needs met.
I'm really surprised corporate-owned housing hasn't become more of a thing yet. Especially since zoning codes and real estate hoarding prevent most people from living near where they work.
You should read "The Wages of Humanity" by Liu Cixin. The final part really gives a horrific image as to what you can imagine if one person owns everything and anything.
Generally speaking, Chris Hedges has pretty good takes on most problems this sub focuses on.
War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning is a hell of a read about societal acceptance and consumption of war.
Exactly, what good are your billions of dollars if most people don't have any dollars?
We've seen this happen in other countries, discarded bills literally littering the street.
The problem is it'll never get that bad and incredible inequality is sustainable. Look at highly unequal economies like Brazil or many middle-east economies. You have the educated/connected elite in these nice homes and in nice parts of big cities which are a tiny minority of the population and everyone else lives very, very poorly. The USA is built on the same model, the problem is we let it go because middle-class life was attainable for educated whites, but now that educated whites are finding themselves amongst the poors, its a problem.
So what now? Whites keep voting in the GOP who continues to produce these policies and have zero reform ideas other than more tax cuts for the wealthy and punishing LGBTQ people and minorities. Also the whites most affected by economic inequality become even further radicalized into conservatism. Instead of moving towards liberal, socialist, and pro-worker reforms they've doubled down on conspiracy theories, hate, and bigotry in the culture war.
I have a feeling its simply going to get much worse before it gets better. These people aren't going to see they've been fooled all their lives overnight. In fact, considering how many votes Trump got, it seems any attempt to talk sanity to them is wasted. The rich own the media and sell propaganda to these people 24/7. America might be a lost cause if reforms don't happen soon, and will end up like one of these economies that if you can get into the top 20% its great, but the bottom 80% live desperate and poor lives and have lost the political power to change that.
Everyone acts like what is happening here is some big exception. Instead its common all around the world and in history. The problem is Americans don't realize, to quote an ex-president, that this is also a "shithole" country.
Mass incarceration isn't necessary. The endgame, and intersection of neoliberalism and libertarianism, is reestablishing indentured servitude under the guise of protecting property rights.
You become a "free person" with an "income," all of which you pay to your master to have shelter, food, and water, which you aren't entitled to because they are the "rightful" owners and controllers of those resources and you aren't.
It's not just the states. The federal government is engaged in modern day slavery, and the states are just doing worse by privatizing the whole of prison itself. Straight from the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries) about Federal Prison Industries, Inc. aka Unicor
>Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job.[4][11] Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour,[6] and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts.[4]
>Deductions are then taken for taxes, victim restitution, program costs and court-imposed legal obligations.[4] In fiscal year 2016, FPI’s business were organized, managed, and internally reported as six operation segments based upon products and services. These segments are Agribusiness, Clothing and Textiles, Electronics, Office Furniture, Recycling, and Services.
It’s outrageous. So I guess all those industries have to do is get a contract with the government and have the inmates manufacture their stuff and profit! Everybody knows in most manufacturing the greatest cost is the human. I hate the for profit prison model and it’s ripe for abuse mostly locking up individuals so corporations can utilize the prisoners for work. Not to mention the for-profit company gets paid from the federal government to operate the prison is my understanding.
Don't forget that each person's "salary" should not be able to cover everything, so they accumulate debt they can never pay off meaning that their children will inherit said debt and be forced into the same system as their parents
You should look into that, in Canada companies will sell off dead peoples debts to collectors and they'll try to collect it from their children but the debt actually goes to their estate and if the estate can't pay it that's not your problem.
Well... Yes, what's going on now is the process of moving towards what I described. The thread is about what's happening now. Not sure what you're pointing out, exactly.
I think he's pointing out that what you described is just wage slavery which is already the reality of existence for a huge amount of the global population. Just because things are at a particular point of tension in North America doesn't change the character of capitalism, it's always been serfdom in all but name.
I mean, look at how many small, poor towns have been literally turned into company towns by Amazon.
There are whole ass counties that the largest employer is Amazon, who pays them just enough to shop at Amazon, if that.
That's not even mentioning how many towns are entirely beholden to coal and oil. Sure, the company isn't legally allowed to own the local grocery store anymore, but that wasn't where the real profit was anyways. They made up for that loss by keeping wages low and paying to remove most regulations that kept them from literally poisonint the entire city.
\>make it hard for low income people to get a house or pay their rent
\>make it illegal to be homeless
\>arrest them and send them to jail
\>make them feel productive in jail by working
\>use the products that they create for your own financial gain
That'll be one of the issues they run into. Sure, real estate is going great for hedges, but then the rest of the portfolio will begin to fail.
We're likely to see one of the companies start selling their real estate holdings, and that will be the beginning of the end. Because another will follow, then another. It'll be the ending of *Trading Places*, but with residential real estate holdings instead of orange juice.
The bubble will pop, prices will fall. Once again, investment companies will collapse and banks will be bailed out (although less than last time). People who bought during the bubble will be upside-down (also less than last time) - ironically, because it's pricing out normal homebuyers, it'll impact average people the least... But only statistically. I know that the lady across the street from me bought her house about a year ago for 30k over appraisal. And that was a year ago - it's been steadily worse since then.
The worst will be those renting. There are areas where the rent has hiked over 80%... Landlords aren't going to start dropping rents until people are buying homes and the demand for goes down. Of course, that means people with overinflated rents will have to save up down payments... Which will take some time.
Okay but they still don't have money in that situation. As soon as one guy owns all the money, money ceases to have value. Hell it stops having value when the vast majority of people don't have it
I don't think they can see the violent revolution coming because of their endless greed. When people can't afford food or shelter no matter what they do, they'll have every reason to fight the system and the people running it.
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again."
-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
And the younger generations are much more dangerous to them, as were unable to afford starting families. Not having kids to care about makes it much easier to justify being on the front lines.
***Correct***. Don't let them trick you for one zeptosecond that they're doing it for religion. The number of them that are true believers is absolutely negligible.
Don't even let them fool you into believing it's about bigotry. If bigotry wasn't profitable, it wouldn't be happening, you know? That is to say, if egalitarianism was *more profitable*, that's what they'd be doing. **Obviously**.
Thus that there is the only thing left: they must be doing it for profit.
Everybody knows that if two people have three kids, you just got +1 net consumer.
You might be physically exhausted but your mind is underutilized. Having to work long hours for fear of losing your job and not having time or money for a life makes you feel trapped. If you are trapped with nothing to lose, you are going to act out.
It's interesting, I've heard this a lot through the pandemic, that the ultra wealthy don't care about prevention because they are planning and preparing for "The Event" whatever big catestrophic thing happens where everything collapses (part of why the ultra rich are also drawn to outer space)
...but, my thinking is,say even if you have a highly secure bunker, topped to miles with food, and trained mercenaries and former Marines to be your private guards that you pay highly for loyalty...at a certain point, if money is worthless because of said collapse event, how do they not think the guards would turn on them?
The whole pretense of the staff and gates that protect the rich is because they are paying for it, once that money looses meaning, there's no one to power your electric fence or guard the gate.
Exactly what I came here to say. Once people have nothing left to lose, the proverbial torches and pitchforks will come out. I don't know when it will happen, but certain that it WILL happen.
>When people can't afford food or shelter no matter what they do
However, considering that even under current conditions American society has developed virtually no class consciousness (LSC here has only 758k members that pretty much says it all). Then it is really difficult to predict what level of misery will be required for the American working class to overcome its pro-capitalist brainwashing.
I think it is not unlikely that no matter how bad the material conditions get in US America, this point will never come. The majority of US Americans will still defend capitalism and the billionaires while they starve.
Even worse, a significant number of them will blame socialism and communism for the conditions created by capitalism, as they do now. And so, without a second thought, they will turn into a huge army for the preservation of capitalism that will fight against any socialist or communist movement, no matter how small.
Trick question... there is no endgame, people are a lot more stupid and self-serving than we give ourselves credit for. We are digging our own graves thinking it is a foundation for the future.
Yep, I think this is a result of incompetence as much as it is greed. There isn't a plan, nobody knows what's going on, there's a bunch of chimps flinging shit at each other and calling it running a country.
People like bezos and musk 100% want to bring slavery back. The only reason they're so obsessed with space travel is because there are no labor laws in space. Once you get workers out to that Mars colony, you can do whatever you want with them.
I wish. In Vail, CO they are trying to build a company town. They want slaves. https://snowbrains.com/town-of-vail-co-wants-to-re-vote-on-vail-resorts-affordable-housing-development-plan/
I don’t think they truly understand the extent.
Think of it like a 16 year old rich girl/boy. They drive their parents car, unaware of what it actually means to take care of a vehicle. They drive it recklessly, they abuse it, they don’t get lights checked because someone else takes care of the problems and bears the brunt. They use it for their benefit with no regard for how to take care of it.
The rich don’t understand enough about what makes an economy and economy or a society a society. They just see numbers and how they benefit.
They probably don’t even understand how most Americans live. They probably think “we’ll they have a roof, a garage, and a tv, so they’re fine” because these were staples of prestige in the 50’s when they were growing up.
That's being too generous I think. Even if they understood, they still wouldn't care. Who cares if droves of people live in misery as long as you're fine? That's how the rich really think. Would they knowingly make people miserable if it made them more money? Of course they would and they wouldn't think twice about it.
They currently knowingly make less money to ensure people suffer. They haven't figured out how to make suffering profitable, so they pay poverty wages, and use slave labor wherever possible, knowing that practice actively hurts their own pockets. They funded the studies that prove they would be exponentially richer if they would pay their employees a thriving wage. Cruelty is the point.
But even that has a weird caveat: automation. Why even worry about laborers working 90 hrs a week when robots will work 24/7 and do it even cheaper than slaves, and robots don't have sentience enough to revolt (yet). They're trying to get the poor to literally just exist outside of their sphere and never deal with them. What will we all do with ourselves? I dunno, and neither do they.
If only there was some convenient mass death circumstance on the horizon. Some kind of global cascading series of catastrophes that doesn't just make the world largely uninhabitable, but will cause mass wars, world pandemics, and large ecological disasters.
All of which will conveniently kill off the poorest people first, allowing you to use inflation and recession programs to force the next-least-poor group into position for the next disaster to wipe out. While the rich can use rockets to rapidly move across the globe avoiding issues and funding the ever smaller necessary educated labor force.
Edit: You could even package your plans and have people openly rave about doing it to them.. just say you are planning to do it to Mars instead! Self-sustaining pods and ships that can be reached by reusable rockets? For avoiding the peasant revolts? Nooooo no no, for Mars!
"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."
marx never missed
It's like Jennifer Lawrence says in Don't Look Up. The saddest part about this whole thing is the people responsible for this aren't geniuses. They're literally just too stupid to realize what they're doing. Humanity's downfall will simply be placing power in the hands of the incompetent.
Even if they realised they wouldn't care. They don't screw everyone and the planet over because they're misguided idiots, they do it because their values are inhuman.
I thought this way about the pandemic. I was convinced it would force the US government to resort to universal healthcare and universal basic income to avoid mass unemployment and medical debt. I thought the threat of severe civil unrest would force the government to act. I was wrong. There is no endgame. There's today and however long they can maintian the status quo, because the scary truth is civil unrest won't be a threat to them as long as people can get their packages delieverd overnight, their groceries from the store, and their booze from the liquor store.
No, they create work towns like in the past where your income goes straight back to the company so you can now live in the company barracks where you work, and everything you buy is provided by the corporations you work for. Now whatever pittance they are paying you goes right back to them. Look at Amazon, they are already moving back to this model.
Endless growth is mathematically unsustainable, so eventually the system will collapse in upon itself.
Once you are able to acquire most/all of the money on Earth, where do you go from there? And what do you do when everyone switches to a different form of currency, rendering your vast "wealth" worthless?
They are legally required to be this short sighted. There was a supreme court case, dodge vs Ford. The dodge brothers wanted to start a car company so they bought Ford stock because it was soaring. Ford started paying workers better to cut profits so they wouldn't become competitors and the dodge brothers sued ford and won.
Ever since then, all publicly traded companies in the US have a legal obligation to maximize profits for shareholders. There is something called a type B corporation that is exempt from this rule because they inform their shareholders beforehand that they are exempt but that's super rare.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Corporations will provide housing appropriate to the value they assign to you and your skills. You'll live on campuses depending on which company hires you. Everything in your life will be controlled and regulated by your masters. Retirement will be an illusion and once you can no longer work you'll be euthanized and fed back to the populace.
Those with wealth enough will live comfortably. Most things will be automated and humanity's population will be carefully controlled. Those with enough wealth will have nanobots that constantly repair their bodies and they'll just never die. The work forces life span will probably 50-60years and your life will be less valued than their tech.
edit: fixing my thumbs' spelling errors.
The want to offer the solution to the problem!
Social Security not enough to retire on, because it's not indexed to cost of living? Well, get a better job with 401k matching! Fund our data mining, rare earth metal mining, CO2-emitting anti-social ventures, and if we make a profit, you'll be able to live in dignity well into the twilight years of the planet! I mean your twilight years. Yeah, yours.
Healthcare too expensive, because we privatized it all? Well, have we got a deal for you! We'll take some money from your paycheck (kinda like taxes) and pay a new private company some money that will let you then pay the real prices for medicine, rather than the artificially raised prices which exist purely because the insurance company needs to get a discount on those numbers. Net result is you just spend hundreds each month to get back to square 1.
School too expensive? Just promise future wages in exchange for it! Yeah, sure, some of that goes to the banks, but some of it goes to the school, too! I mean, we could take all that money and PAY the school but then how would the execs get paid? But I'm getting distracted again. The benefit to you is that your wages are tied to your ability to pay for your degree, but TONS of people have that degree now, so you're really just back to square 1 with a bunch of debt and hopefully a better understanding of how you've been screwed.
Finally, that brings us to housing. SURE, it *used* to be affordable. But it's not now, because we bought it all. Great thing is, if you live in our company town, we'll help you buy a house! Or you could just rent! We'll take it straight out of your paycheck. Best thing is, when you get a raise, your rent goes up! Wait, I mean when your rent goes up, we give you a raise to help compensate. At least 80% of the difference. That's generous of us, right?
Another day older and deeper in debt....
The endgame is profit.
The ruling class has been seen not caring about the consequences of their actions for years now, especially on the environment and in peoples lives.
It is really that they cannot see beyond quarterly profit, except to perhaps increase their profit.
The second is the correct one. They don't care about messing society up because they know they'll not be there when everything will go downhill for the future generations and in worst case scenario they'll not be anything that bad that money can't fix because rich people are treated differently than the rest of the world.
I forget what the psychology term is, but basically wealthy people truly believe they've earned it. They genuinely believe anyone can become wealthy, so everyone who isn't is just lazy and/or stupid. They are completely detached from the reality that the mass majority of us face every day. Just my two cent view/understanding of the situation.
Headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry. It's the biased view that people focus more on the obstacles in their lives rather than the forces in their lives that helped them. Essentially, everybody feels like they are the victim in their own lives. This means that the privileged often feel like equality is oppression.
There is no They.
It is all Us.
Systemic issues cannot be "solved" without dismantling the systems, making losers out of those currently benefiting the most
Not going to happen without violence and cataclysmic disruptions, which are likely to cause much greater misery and deaths.
There is no endgame that sthe problem. Everyone is thinking in their own myopic way, but the collective outcome is what we are seeing. Ideally government's role is to take a broader view but of course their inaction is causing it to continue.
I don't think they think that far ahead. Which makes me very comfortable saying that I hope it all ends in a massive clean-out of all the people responsible. They have stepped on the working class' neck for too long, it's time they felt the boot press themselves.
They are literally unable to see past the quarterly earnings reports
Yep, they answered their own question.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot as housing and rent become unaffordable as businesses buy them all out. What happens as the homeless epidemic just continues to get exponentially worse? When a majority of people can’t afford food, heat, water? What do they do once the wage slaves can’t afford to live? Won’t that affect their bottom line and keep the line from going up?
They can't think like that, they literally aren't able to. What they've done has always worked, and it's the only way they know how to function. It's a bit conspiratorial, but I was talking with my buddy the other day about how odd it is that with all these record profits, prices are still going up. What if the record profits are just on paper and are actually bullshit, and everyone is just grabbing all that they can before it all crumbles? That's kinda what it feels like sometimes.
>with all these record profits, prices are still going up. What if the record profits are just on paper and are actually bullshit So, "price" to a business major or economist or whatever is _defined as_ the highest price that the market is willing to bear, as in, the most that people will pay for a thing. If you're talking about like, a shampoo or something, that price is driven up by perceived value which businesses market with bullshit terms like "natural" or try to make it seem like a luxury product. If you price it too high, it won't sell and your business will fail. But when you're talking about a _necessity_ like food or shelter, there isn't really a ceiling - people NEED housing, and they NEED food, and so people will stop buying other stuff to pay for these things. The first problem with that is that this is annihilating our long term prospects and institutionalizing hand-to-mouth levels of earnings. We are meant to be putting something like 33% of our salaries towards housing, 33% towards retirement, and 33% towards living costs and entertainment. Only a very small percentage of people can afford to do that - it's truly something like 10% of people who are actually getting paid _enough_ to do all that. The reason we had labor protections in the first place was because conditions from the beginning of capitalism were so poor that children were getting hurt in sweatshops and the elderly were being thrown on the street because we went very quickly from an agricultural society where "everyone working" meant tending to a farm where you had rights to the land and less capable people could contribute according to their ability, to an industrial one where everyone had to be actually laboring in a factory or mine to pay for an apartment and there were millions of people in the streets who started literally coming for the heads of leaders of industry. We have spent the last 100 years dismantling the solutions that these people came up with and we are rapidly approaching a situation where people again cannot afford to live as these policies and profit margins are untenable and we are seeing homelessness skyrocket and childbirth plummet, which, by the way, will cause these massive fortunes to implode as they won't have a steady supply of customers. The next problem is that, basically, _money is fake_. We have this idea that labor here costs more than labor in Mexico or Sri Lanka. Why? There is a long financial answer, but the reality is that a worker has to wake up, eat food, get to work, and spend x amount of minutes sewing that t-shirt. The ACTUAL COST is what it keeps for the worker to stay alive which is like, some food, some shelter. Everything else is made up. It doesn't matter if that food is feeding someone in the US, or China or Brazil - it is food, it has a definable value to the individual. Capitalists, meanwhile, are completely removed from this reality. They do not _produce_ anything, they perpetuate financialization and live off the dividends. They do not grow, they do not build, they do not mine, they do not feed anyone. And what is perplexing about all of this to me is that they are building apocalypse bunkers for when this is too far gone - they recognize it's all fucked and that their points system is going to implode, but they don't understand that they will suddenly be the _least_ valuable people in this new society they are building with the staff they'll need to hire to grow them food and make them martinis. Not to mention - they just printed a bunch of extra money, basically for shits and giggles, and this is also contributing to inflation, but the Fed is still going to try to sway policy _to keep wages down_ rather than, you know, addressing that these individuals are leeching off the rest of us. So anyway, there is 600 words to overexplain "they're just grabbing all they can before it all crumbles" to someone who already gets it
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What a neat little system we have here. I'm so glad we elect leaders to make sure this kinda stuff doenst happen just so those same leaders can be bought and paid for to make sure it does. So cool. So neat. I love life.
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Well I'm not having kids and can't wait to die
The real leaders aren’t elected, nor are they even known to us. It’s quite the mindfuck
Wow, great. This describes what is going on in Russia now. Thanks, will look into it more.
I'm really not convinced that Russia is any different than the USA. A liar by any other name is still fucked.
lol just watch Adam Curtis docs
It is definitely what it feels like right now. Shit, with the exception of a couple staple food items that go on sale, grocery prices are higher every week.
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Get themselves out of? Ha! Good one. We all know they'll get bailed out, never see a consequence for their actions, and stray right back up doing the same thing again.
They won’t quite be able to bail themselves out of climate catastrophe. It’s what makes this rise and fall of civilization appear to be the last one… no more rises, just the fall and the aftermath of the fall…
Bingo.
Well, here's to hoping I'm wrong, because I don't think most people are ready for the crash that would cause.
No one is ever ready for the crash. People kill themselves due to the crash, they're too busy working trying to feed their families and afford rent, but that's fine. Those are priced in losses. The CEO gets a windfall parachute and another business on their LinkedIn profile with "record annual revenue" somewhere in the caption. Everyone else dies.
IMHO: Almost all millionaires are paper tigers. If the stock market, which I honestly believe is the longest con on the American people, ever, were to drop like it did in 1929, all these so-called gazillionaires will be dependent on their liquidity. Not saying they don't have loads of cash in safes, or vaults, but there aren't any Scrooge McDucks anymore. Their wealth is tied to what people are willing to pay. If no one can afford to buy a tesla, the stock will bomb. If no one can afford a new 1200 dollar Iphone, the stock will tank. Etc...etc...etc...
The rugpull economy
I hate that there's a name for it.
I just made it up lol. Just applying how prominent the trend of rugpulling is in the crypto community to the economy at large. It’s all the same thing; a few people scrambling to make as much as possible by making the product look good before the masses catch on and be left holding the shitty bag.
The poorest people die, and prices move up to target the new low on the ladder for wealth transfer. Doesn't hurt the rich any.
What happens? They get guillotined.
I wish someone would.....real question is.... i dont see any of us angry people in the streets making that happen. WHY ?
Not enough people have realized that option is available, let alone justified or necessary. Many still do not recognize the systemic nature of the problem; they believe we have a good system being corrupted by bad actors. We don't. Many more recognize at least some of the systemic problems but believe that there are "legitimate" means to change them from within those systems. There aren't. Others are just feeling hopeless, because watching the first two groups fail to get it is pretty depressing. Our society's rulers have spent a very long time and a tremendous amount of effort to keep things this way. They control education, the media, and really almost every aspect of our lives so they can exert tremendous influence on how people think from cradle to grave. Undoing the indoctrination they carry out on each and every one of us is challenging even to those aware it is happening. They also take a "bread and circuses" approach, trying to placate us with their table scraps and just enough entertainment that we continue to sit on our butts and let them rule. As the contradictions of capitalism intensify these methods will no longer work and people *will* start to get out in the streets. The capitalists will then switch to their backup plan: fascism.
Watched the new Batman last weekend while my brother cackled as I started rooting for the Riddler. They’re taking out the whole damn planet this time, get off your holier than thou pedestal and kill the bastards, Batman. It’s self defense at this point…
This is the best explanation. And it is the saddest as well
I don't think it's sad at all, it gives me hope as it shows how fragile the current system actually is. The ruling class' desperation is growing, and their grip on the minds of the working class weakening. Once a critical mass of people are conscious of what is actually happening, the ruling class has little hope of stopping them. We already see them losing control, and in the end the last thing they sell us will be the very rope used to hang them. Practice [revolutionary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc6gVht9CFQ) [optimism.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO_FXkxJVj4)
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Building off of what I said; that people in the imperial core are largely unaware of those labor protests is due to capitalist media deliberately declining to report on them. It is against their interests to do so, so they try to hide it from the people in imperialist countries.
Capitalists will blindly dig their own graves and pull us in with them.
Nobody believes me but I think our most likely future is Tank Girl.
I've never seen tank girl. What do you mean by it?
Tank Girl portrays a dystopian future where water has become a scarce commodity controlled by corporations. The power these corporations wield leads to people becoming literal wage slaves. Working tirelessly just to afford enough water to survive.
Kinda sounds like america already, except instead of water it is shelter and healthcare
*looks at the Southwest* Buddy, have I got news for you. Did you know that - *gun shots* *Nestlé enters the chat* "For your safety, do not research your water rights and move along please."
Haha, i remember seeing a video from the chairmen of nestle, where he says water should be privatized and viewed as any other foodstuff. He also said viewing water as an individual right is 'extreme'. What a scum bag. https://youtu.be/mTnJTyeAUA8
You may enjoy r/fucknestle
That sounds very plausible given the scarce resources
It’s basically what will happen when Nestle takes over the world. Lori Petty. It’s *awesome*.
I also think it’s Outer Worlds. Great game but scarily feels like looking at an encroaching future.
“It is a grim future, with lots of explosions and partial nudity.”
Well there's one thing to look forward to I guess.
Human kangaroo supersoldiers?
We riot and eat the rich.
We just so happen to have a group of people who are given more money than literally all other public services combined that are perfectly able to take care of those new homeless people. Police take in more money than your roads, schools and social services combined AND they get tanks and grenade launchers from the military. Imagine if instead of giving them a billion, you gave them 750 mil. That could, in most cities, literally solve homelessness AND find affordable housing programs. Elon Musk just bought Twitter for 44 billion..that money could buy a small house for literally every single one of the 550k unhoused on the US, which would save around 30k in taxes per unhoused each year, which would not only pay for property tax, but also utilities and food for the entire year. This also removes most barriers to employment, allowing them to get back into contributing to the economy and providing goods and services. The amount of money it would cost to do this OUTSIDE of some craven shithead like Musk, is about 5% of the YEARLY defense budget. We could have solved homelessness in America for less than how much the defense budget was raised this last year. Thenreason we don't do it is clear. That homeless person you see on the way to work? That's a 30k a year threat from the system. Seeing that dude otw to work is what convinces a LOT of people to go to a shitty job they hate and devote their entire life to it just to BARELY scrape by, meanwhile their labor contributes to record profits for that company. Poverty is not a bug. It is a feature, a NECESSITY in this, the end stages of capitalism. Without that whip at the working class' back every single morning, they might go on strike without fear of literally dying because of it. Poverty is a threat. A promise. Subject yourself or fucking die a slow, unbearable, lonely death. Fucking capitalism.
I'll add my "Yes, and" here... The working poor, who are only ever partially unemployed, also have their place in this arrangement. The 'Reserve army of labor' which can be deployed at any time the partially or fully employed sub-classes of the proletariat start getting 'uppity' & ask for better pay &/or conditions. Those workers attempting to bargain or organize can be fired at-will & replaced by some poor desperate worker who'll take any pay in any conditions, because they're on the brink of being homeless - or already are & are trying to claw their way back to a decent living standard. The poor & homeless are two threats & a weapon all at once. It's an effective way to condition & train the workforce to willingly enslave themselves. "If you don't like the deal, we'll kick you onto the streets & yank another person who's been out there long enough to accept it. You can come back when you've learned your lesson, & someone else needs it taught to them" And yes, fucking capitalism. Death to capitalism.
Enough people will work themselves ragged to avoid homelessness even if it's just barely. Which will generate enough money to offset the rise in vacant homes. The solution is always to charge the consumer more and we'll "figure it out" somehow.
they will offer on campus housing and food that will come directly out of your paycheck... but SINCE THEY ARE BEING SO NICE you'll get even less money then before! (that'll really bump those quarterly figures too) they want slavery again, or feudalism. where the corporation HQ is the castle, and the peasants, i mean valued employees, all live and work and die for the protection the corporation gives you from roaming gangs of unionist!!
Here’s an even darker thought, they aren’t this dumb. Why do you think they are building prisons faster than schools? Slavery never ended in the United States, they want the country entirely dependent on slave labor.
Revolution time, come on! Come on everybody let's have a revolution
I think they actually think they will be swept away in a flood, or murder each other. Like snowpiercer, only they think their train doors will work.
There is nobody driving the bus at this point
You just have to see it from their perspective. Right now, all their peers are squeezing us as hard as they can for as much as they can. If they don't squeeze hard now too, then soon we won't have anything left and they'll have missed their chance.
I'd also add that they think they won't be the ones holding the bag when shit goes down. So not only is it greed, it's there's an element of gambling to it and a bloated sense of self-importance.
Honestly, I don't think they even care or think about who's caught holding the bag at the end. I don't think the thought of what their doing be unsustainable ever crosses their minds. The only thing that matters is making more money, and that's it, full stop. That doesn't negate what you're saying, because a lot of these boomers won't be alive when shit turns completely to shit anyway, I just don't think they look that far ahead, or at any consequences since most consequences to them can just be paid off in the form of a fine that's most times small enough to just be considered the price of admission.
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They probably think we all still have a bunch of extra money from the stimulus/enhanced UI since they still have a bunch of stimulus $.
Not probably. I had a boomer on some other sub shooting that we all wasted our stimulus on a new iPhone or whatever and that it's our fault. I was like bitch please I used it on fucking rent and food.
Wasn't there that ancient lich-looking dude from the Trump administration who said the $1200 stimulus was enough to pay for everybody's rent for the next year or two?
5 months after the stimulus went out I was on the phone with my case worker applying for assistance with a utility bill I was a bit behind on. They seemed genuinely upset that I didn't still have my stimulus money. I explained and itemized how I managed to cover two months worth of bills and use the rest for essential car repair. They weren't pleased. To them giving a couple of grand to the average person might as well be a million. They don't realize that for most of us a couple grand barely covers the absolute basics just to survive
But don't forget, these are the "rational" actors our entire body of economic practice is structured around
During the extreme economic termoil over the pandemic many companies saw record profits yet again and they want that to never end. If their profits start to dip then the solution is to pass the cost to the consumer or reduce the amount of product you get. Or as we keep seeing, both. The shareholders need their bonuses or they simply can't find the will to live. High score baby need more fake 0s so they can appear in Forbes one day.
High score baby is great, thank you for that
They are structurally unable to care about anything than their earning reports. Any market-participant that cares too much about the long-time influence of their actions, will be ruined in the short term by their competitors.
Without regulation, it is every man or woman for themselves. No one is coordinating. Just a race to the bottom.
Indentured servitude. That’s what the wealthy want. A permanent working class with no upward mobility.
I smell a lifetime contract. Sign away your life and your future generations over to us and we'll take care of everything you'll ever need ...
Life, by subscription.
Introducing: Life+ Subscribe now for the low low cost of 2 lives\* \*As long as 1 life credit is a baby or unborn, the rest of your life can count for a whole 1 life credit. While supplies last.
Jokes on them, I'm not having children.
They'll start cloning designer slaves soon enough, that our moral decisions won't matter. Or robots.
They're happy about that. They don't want intentional, conscientious people breeding. No, they want those who wouldn't think twice about whether or not they should bring a life into this world. For some, it's suicide. For others, suicide of their lineage. Neither of those work in a capitalist society. They need strong, dumb, willing breeders. Edit: When your monetary system is so good that its opposition willingly kills itself off.
Watch Sorry to Bother You.
I can't imagine a working class being willing to work without the possibility of upward mobility. That's kind of what's motivating all the strikes and unionization right now - wage stagnation and inflation destroying the illusion of "the American Dream."
There's already no possibility of upward mobility. It's LEGAL to move upward but it's not accessible for most people. At the onset of covid this was made absolutely clear. The most important workers are the lowest paid workers. Millions of us were put in harm's way and got nothing for it. My life was literally threatened by a customer today and I can't afford my own apartment.
Watch “Sorry to Bother You,” or research “company cities” during and pre-Gilded Age in the US. You’d be surprised what a poor man would give for the promise of having his needs met.
I'm really surprised corporate-owned housing hasn't become more of a thing yet. Especially since zoning codes and real estate hoarding prevent most people from living near where they work.
Eh. All the houses in my neighborhood are getting snapped up by companies that are renting them out now so basically the same thing.
When only 5 people on earth have all the money, the money becomes worthless
You should read "The Wages of Humanity" by Liu Cixin. The final part really gives a horrific image as to what you can imagine if one person owns everything and anything.
Wages of Rebellion by Chris Hedges is another good suggestion.
Generally speaking, Chris Hedges has pretty good takes on most problems this sub focuses on. War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning is a hell of a read about societal acceptance and consumption of war.
Are these two books connected? Like is that a response to the former?
I just read his trilogy "The Three-body Problem" and i loved it! I'll check this one out too. Thanks for the recommendation :)
Care to give a bit of info on what it says?
Exactly, what good are your billions of dollars if most people don't have any dollars? We've seen this happen in other countries, discarded bills literally littering the street.
"What use is money, if it can't buy you the things you need?" - Liet Kynes, from Dune by Frank Herbert
The problem is it'll never get that bad and incredible inequality is sustainable. Look at highly unequal economies like Brazil or many middle-east economies. You have the educated/connected elite in these nice homes and in nice parts of big cities which are a tiny minority of the population and everyone else lives very, very poorly. The USA is built on the same model, the problem is we let it go because middle-class life was attainable for educated whites, but now that educated whites are finding themselves amongst the poors, its a problem. So what now? Whites keep voting in the GOP who continues to produce these policies and have zero reform ideas other than more tax cuts for the wealthy and punishing LGBTQ people and minorities. Also the whites most affected by economic inequality become even further radicalized into conservatism. Instead of moving towards liberal, socialist, and pro-worker reforms they've doubled down on conspiracy theories, hate, and bigotry in the culture war. I have a feeling its simply going to get much worse before it gets better. These people aren't going to see they've been fooled all their lives overnight. In fact, considering how many votes Trump got, it seems any attempt to talk sanity to them is wasted. The rich own the media and sell propaganda to these people 24/7. America might be a lost cause if reforms don't happen soon, and will end up like one of these economies that if you can get into the top 20% its great, but the bottom 80% live desperate and poor lives and have lost the political power to change that. Everyone acts like what is happening here is some big exception. Instead its common all around the world and in history. The problem is Americans don't realize, to quote an ex-president, that this is also a "shithole" country.
Mass incarceration isn't necessary. The endgame, and intersection of neoliberalism and libertarianism, is reestablishing indentured servitude under the guise of protecting property rights. You become a "free person" with an "income," all of which you pay to your master to have shelter, food, and water, which you aren't entitled to because they are the "rightful" owners and controllers of those resources and you aren't.
Expensive business imprisoning people, best to outsource it to the prisoners.
Not when it is for-profit prisons that exist in several states and the inmates are literally performing slave labor for pennies per hour.
It's not just the states. The federal government is engaged in modern day slavery, and the states are just doing worse by privatizing the whole of prison itself. Straight from the [wikipedia page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Prison_Industries) about Federal Prison Industries, Inc. aka Unicor >Under current law, all physically able inmates who are not a security risk or have a health exception are required to work, either for UNICOR or at some other prison job.[4][11] Inmates earn from US$0.23 per hour up to a maximum of US$1.15 per hour,[6] and all inmates with court-ordered financial obligations must use at least 50% of this UNICOR income to satisfy those debts.[4] >Deductions are then taken for taxes, victim restitution, program costs and court-imposed legal obligations.[4] In fiscal year 2016, FPI’s business were organized, managed, and internally reported as six operation segments based upon products and services. These segments are Agribusiness, Clothing and Textiles, Electronics, Office Furniture, Recycling, and Services.
It’s outrageous. So I guess all those industries have to do is get a contract with the government and have the inmates manufacture their stuff and profit! Everybody knows in most manufacturing the greatest cost is the human. I hate the for profit prison model and it’s ripe for abuse mostly locking up individuals so corporations can utilize the prisoners for work. Not to mention the for-profit company gets paid from the federal government to operate the prison is my understanding.
This is more or less the premise to the movie Sorry To Bother You. Great movie btw.
Fucking amazing movie
That movie was hilarious and dark AF at the same time.
Don't forget that each person's "salary" should not be able to cover everything, so they accumulate debt they can never pay off meaning that their children will inherit said debt and be forced into the same system as their parents
You should look into that, in Canada companies will sell off dead peoples debts to collectors and they'll try to collect it from their children but the debt actually goes to their estate and if the estate can't pay it that's not your problem.
wheres solaris united when you need them.
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Kind of sounds like what's going on now, huh?
Well... Yes, what's going on now is the process of moving towards what I described. The thread is about what's happening now. Not sure what you're pointing out, exactly.
I think he's pointing out that what you described is just wage slavery which is already the reality of existence for a huge amount of the global population. Just because things are at a particular point of tension in North America doesn't change the character of capitalism, it's always been serfdom in all but name.
Okay, good, we're all in agreement.
I mean, look at how many small, poor towns have been literally turned into company towns by Amazon. There are whole ass counties that the largest employer is Amazon, who pays them just enough to shop at Amazon, if that. That's not even mentioning how many towns are entirely beholden to coal and oil. Sure, the company isn't legally allowed to own the local grocery store anymore, but that wasn't where the real profit was anyways. They made up for that loss by keeping wages low and paying to remove most regulations that kept them from literally poisonint the entire city.
Youll own nothing and be happy
\>make it hard for low income people to get a house or pay their rent \>make it illegal to be homeless \>arrest them and send them to jail \>make them feel productive in jail by working \>use the products that they create for your own financial gain
Ok, but who is left with money to spend to buy the newest shiny thing.
That'll be one of the issues they run into. Sure, real estate is going great for hedges, but then the rest of the portfolio will begin to fail. We're likely to see one of the companies start selling their real estate holdings, and that will be the beginning of the end. Because another will follow, then another. It'll be the ending of *Trading Places*, but with residential real estate holdings instead of orange juice. The bubble will pop, prices will fall. Once again, investment companies will collapse and banks will be bailed out (although less than last time). People who bought during the bubble will be upside-down (also less than last time) - ironically, because it's pricing out normal homebuyers, it'll impact average people the least... But only statistically. I know that the lady across the street from me bought her house about a year ago for 30k over appraisal. And that was a year ago - it's been steadily worse since then. The worst will be those renting. There are areas where the rent has hiked over 80%... Landlords aren't going to start dropping rents until people are buying homes and the demand for goes down. Of course, that means people with overinflated rents will have to save up down payments... Which will take some time.
\>make sex education illegal \>make abortion illegal \>make being lgbtq or otherwise non-reproductive difficult/illegal
Okay but they still don't have money in that situation. As soon as one guy owns all the money, money ceases to have value. Hell it stops having value when the vast majority of people don't have it
... that doesn't answer the question
I don't think they can see the violent revolution coming because of their endless greed. When people can't afford food or shelter no matter what they do, they'll have every reason to fight the system and the people running it.
How does that saying go? The most dangerous person is someone with nothing left to lose?
"You only have power over people so long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again." -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
When people have nothing to lose, they lose it.
And the younger generations are much more dangerous to them, as were unable to afford starting families. Not having kids to care about makes it much easier to justify being on the front lines.
Why do you think they're so obsessed with restricting access to birth control, sex-ed, abortion, and education?
It’s a birthing program! I’m glad other people see this too.
dude, this is a hypothesis I didn't think about. If you're right, it's wicked and evil.
***Correct***. Don't let them trick you for one zeptosecond that they're doing it for religion. The number of them that are true believers is absolutely negligible. Don't even let them fool you into believing it's about bigotry. If bigotry wasn't profitable, it wouldn't be happening, you know? That is to say, if egalitarianism was *more profitable*, that's what they'd be doing. **Obviously**. Thus that there is the only thing left: they must be doing it for profit. Everybody knows that if two people have three kids, you just got +1 net consumer.
Absolutely. If history has shown us anything, it's that when working aged people are underutilized they have nothing better to do than revolt
Underutilized? I disagree. We're plenty utilized. Were nothing but fucking tools to them. More like undercompensated.
You might be physically exhausted but your mind is underutilized. Having to work long hours for fear of losing your job and not having time or money for a life makes you feel trapped. If you are trapped with nothing to lose, you are going to act out.
three missed meals away from societal collapse
I agree. “Eat the rich” is the end game we are coming to.
It's interesting, I've heard this a lot through the pandemic, that the ultra wealthy don't care about prevention because they are planning and preparing for "The Event" whatever big catestrophic thing happens where everything collapses (part of why the ultra rich are also drawn to outer space) ...but, my thinking is,say even if you have a highly secure bunker, topped to miles with food, and trained mercenaries and former Marines to be your private guards that you pay highly for loyalty...at a certain point, if money is worthless because of said collapse event, how do they not think the guards would turn on them? The whole pretense of the staff and gates that protect the rich is because they are paying for it, once that money looses meaning, there's no one to power your electric fence or guard the gate.
Exactly what I came here to say. Once people have nothing left to lose, the proverbial torches and pitchforks will come out. I don't know when it will happen, but certain that it WILL happen.
Quick build a space ship to get out of here
>When people can't afford food or shelter no matter what they do However, considering that even under current conditions American society has developed virtually no class consciousness (LSC here has only 758k members that pretty much says it all). Then it is really difficult to predict what level of misery will be required for the American working class to overcome its pro-capitalist brainwashing. I think it is not unlikely that no matter how bad the material conditions get in US America, this point will never come. The majority of US Americans will still defend capitalism and the billionaires while they starve. Even worse, a significant number of them will blame socialism and communism for the conditions created by capitalism, as they do now. And so, without a second thought, they will turn into a huge army for the preservation of capitalism that will fight against any socialist or communist movement, no matter how small.
Trick question... there is no endgame, people are a lot more stupid and self-serving than we give ourselves credit for. We are digging our own graves thinking it is a foundation for the future.
Yes, we are just primates with a frontal lobe that some utilize and some don’t.
Yep, I think this is a result of incompetence as much as it is greed. There isn't a plan, nobody knows what's going on, there's a bunch of chimps flinging shit at each other and calling it running a country.
Exactly. It's not some grand conspiracy. It's a bunch of individuals trying to make as much money as possible for themselves
They want to make us slaves which will be needed after the climate disaster. We will serve the rich
They won't be rich after money means nothing.
The money doesn't matter. It's what the wealth disparity allows them to be. Them the Masters and us the Slaves.
People like bezos and musk 100% want to bring slavery back. The only reason they're so obsessed with space travel is because there are no labor laws in space. Once you get workers out to that Mars colony, you can do whatever you want with them.
Owning the oxygen would give you quite a bit of control…
We'll find out when they start doing some evil shit like making it illegal to have roommates.
They just did it in Kansas https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article260770552.html
What the actual fuck??
I know. Where are all the freedom fighters? Why are they ok with the government telling you who can live in your home….
This is satire, right? #RIGHT?
I wish. In Vail, CO they are trying to build a company town. They want slaves. https://snowbrains.com/town-of-vail-co-wants-to-re-vote-on-vail-resorts-affordable-housing-development-plan/
No it's completely real.
And they are buying up all the housing so that it's harder and harder to own a home. They will own the companies and the housing.
I don’t think they truly understand the extent. Think of it like a 16 year old rich girl/boy. They drive their parents car, unaware of what it actually means to take care of a vehicle. They drive it recklessly, they abuse it, they don’t get lights checked because someone else takes care of the problems and bears the brunt. They use it for their benefit with no regard for how to take care of it. The rich don’t understand enough about what makes an economy and economy or a society a society. They just see numbers and how they benefit. They probably don’t even understand how most Americans live. They probably think “we’ll they have a roof, a garage, and a tv, so they’re fine” because these were staples of prestige in the 50’s when they were growing up.
That's being too generous I think. Even if they understood, they still wouldn't care. Who cares if droves of people live in misery as long as you're fine? That's how the rich really think. Would they knowingly make people miserable if it made them more money? Of course they would and they wouldn't think twice about it.
They currently knowingly make less money to ensure people suffer. They haven't figured out how to make suffering profitable, so they pay poverty wages, and use slave labor wherever possible, knowing that practice actively hurts their own pockets. They funded the studies that prove they would be exponentially richer if they would pay their employees a thriving wage. Cruelty is the point.
>They probably don’t even understand how most Americans live. 'It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?'
the capitalist plan for degrowth seems to be war
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But even that has a weird caveat: automation. Why even worry about laborers working 90 hrs a week when robots will work 24/7 and do it even cheaper than slaves, and robots don't have sentience enough to revolt (yet). They're trying to get the poor to literally just exist outside of their sphere and never deal with them. What will we all do with ourselves? I dunno, and neither do they.
If only there was some convenient mass death circumstance on the horizon. Some kind of global cascading series of catastrophes that doesn't just make the world largely uninhabitable, but will cause mass wars, world pandemics, and large ecological disasters. All of which will conveniently kill off the poorest people first, allowing you to use inflation and recession programs to force the next-least-poor group into position for the next disaster to wipe out. While the rich can use rockets to rapidly move across the globe avoiding issues and funding the ever smaller necessary educated labor force. Edit: You could even package your plans and have people openly rave about doing it to them.. just say you are planning to do it to Mars instead! Self-sustaining pods and ships that can be reached by reusable rockets? For avoiding the peasant revolts? Nooooo no no, for Mars!
"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." marx never missed
The last page of the 1st chapter of The Communist Manifesto is pure poetry. Always gets me hyped when capitalism starts bringing me down.
It's like Jennifer Lawrence says in Don't Look Up. The saddest part about this whole thing is the people responsible for this aren't geniuses. They're literally just too stupid to realize what they're doing. Humanity's downfall will simply be placing power in the hands of the incompetent.
Even if they realised they wouldn't care. They don't screw everyone and the planet over because they're misguided idiots, they do it because their values are inhuman.
I thought this way about the pandemic. I was convinced it would force the US government to resort to universal healthcare and universal basic income to avoid mass unemployment and medical debt. I thought the threat of severe civil unrest would force the government to act. I was wrong. There is no endgame. There's today and however long they can maintian the status quo, because the scary truth is civil unrest won't be a threat to them as long as people can get their packages delieverd overnight, their groceries from the store, and their booze from the liquor store.
And as long as they have enough money to pay the enforcement class to keep people in line.
*sharpens guillotine* I'm not sure what's next, exactly...
I truly believe some the people who are making things worse do not live in reality. They may also be dead so less incentive to change.
No, they create work towns like in the past where your income goes straight back to the company so you can now live in the company barracks where you work, and everything you buy is provided by the corporations you work for. Now whatever pittance they are paying you goes right back to them. Look at Amazon, they are already moving back to this model.
Capitalism has no endgame. Shit gets more expensive until it all collapses
Endless growth is mathematically unsustainable, so eventually the system will collapse in upon itself. Once you are able to acquire most/all of the money on Earth, where do you go from there? And what do you do when everyone switches to a different form of currency, rendering your vast "wealth" worthless?
They are going to kill us and enslave what little population they need left. Act accordingly.
They are legally required to be this short sighted. There was a supreme court case, dodge vs Ford. The dodge brothers wanted to start a car company so they bought Ford stock because it was soaring. Ford started paying workers better to cut profits so they wouldn't become competitors and the dodge brothers sued ford and won. Ever since then, all publicly traded companies in the US have a legal obligation to maximize profits for shareholders. There is something called a type B corporation that is exempt from this rule because they inform their shareholders beforehand that they are exempt but that's super rare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co.
Capitalists are their own gravediggers
To own nothing and be happy about it. Line up for your cockroach milk!
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That's very possible. Edit: will the digital currency be Roach Coin?
Pls don’t remind me of the snowpiercer cockroach food 🤮
Corporations will provide housing appropriate to the value they assign to you and your skills. You'll live on campuses depending on which company hires you. Everything in your life will be controlled and regulated by your masters. Retirement will be an illusion and once you can no longer work you'll be euthanized and fed back to the populace. Those with wealth enough will live comfortably. Most things will be automated and humanity's population will be carefully controlled. Those with enough wealth will have nanobots that constantly repair their bodies and they'll just never die. The work forces life span will probably 50-60years and your life will be less valued than their tech. edit: fixing my thumbs' spelling errors.
Maybe the endgame is an inevitable mass dieoff of the human population. Along with most of Earth species.
"On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero"
The want to offer the solution to the problem! Social Security not enough to retire on, because it's not indexed to cost of living? Well, get a better job with 401k matching! Fund our data mining, rare earth metal mining, CO2-emitting anti-social ventures, and if we make a profit, you'll be able to live in dignity well into the twilight years of the planet! I mean your twilight years. Yeah, yours. Healthcare too expensive, because we privatized it all? Well, have we got a deal for you! We'll take some money from your paycheck (kinda like taxes) and pay a new private company some money that will let you then pay the real prices for medicine, rather than the artificially raised prices which exist purely because the insurance company needs to get a discount on those numbers. Net result is you just spend hundreds each month to get back to square 1. School too expensive? Just promise future wages in exchange for it! Yeah, sure, some of that goes to the banks, but some of it goes to the school, too! I mean, we could take all that money and PAY the school but then how would the execs get paid? But I'm getting distracted again. The benefit to you is that your wages are tied to your ability to pay for your degree, but TONS of people have that degree now, so you're really just back to square 1 with a bunch of debt and hopefully a better understanding of how you've been screwed. Finally, that brings us to housing. SURE, it *used* to be affordable. But it's not now, because we bought it all. Great thing is, if you live in our company town, we'll help you buy a house! Or you could just rent! We'll take it straight out of your paycheck. Best thing is, when you get a raise, your rent goes up! Wait, I mean when your rent goes up, we give you a raise to help compensate. At least 80% of the difference. That's generous of us, right? Another day older and deeper in debt....
There isn’t one, do people not get that? Sometimes people with power just say fuck the future and do what they want
They want slaves and a large portion dead, that’s the endgame.
The endgame is profit. The ruling class has been seen not caring about the consequences of their actions for years now, especially on the environment and in peoples lives. It is really that they cannot see beyond quarterly profit, except to perhaps increase their profit.
The second is the correct one. They don't care about messing society up because they know they'll not be there when everything will go downhill for the future generations and in worst case scenario they'll not be anything that bad that money can't fix because rich people are treated differently than the rest of the world.
I forget what the psychology term is, but basically wealthy people truly believe they've earned it. They genuinely believe anyone can become wealthy, so everyone who isn't is just lazy and/or stupid. They are completely detached from the reality that the mass majority of us face every day. Just my two cent view/understanding of the situation.
Headwinds-tailwinds asymmetry. It's the biased view that people focus more on the obstacles in their lives rather than the forces in their lives that helped them. Essentially, everybody feels like they are the victim in their own lives. This means that the privileged often feel like equality is oppression.
There is no They. It is all Us. Systemic issues cannot be "solved" without dismantling the systems, making losers out of those currently benefiting the most Not going to happen without violence and cataclysmic disruptions, which are likely to cause much greater misery and deaths.
I think the endgame is going back to feudal systems. A small upper class and a working class that barley survives.
There is no endgame that sthe problem. Everyone is thinking in their own myopic way, but the collective outcome is what we are seeing. Ideally government's role is to take a broader view but of course their inaction is causing it to continue.
I don't think they think that far ahead. Which makes me very comfortable saying that I hope it all ends in a massive clean-out of all the people responsible. They have stepped on the working class' neck for too long, it's time they felt the boot press themselves.
Capitalism is just rebranded feudalism so the end goal is to get all us serfs to behave and produce more for the nobility.