MerryJaneDoe

You can watch some videos on YouTube, if you really want to learn. It’s interesting, sometimes in a full-dystopian nightmare fuel kind of way. Yes, we are at the point where some of these robots can climb and jump.

It’s a gimmick, though, for sure. Just like human-mimicking androids are a gimmick. The money for robotics is in manufacturing.

But I’ll bet there will always be an obscenely wealthy person who is willing to pay for a cool looking robot prototype.

…and they’re so rich…

I hear ya, and I agree - but I think there’s a huge number of not-so-wealthy Americans who are just as culpable. People who happily empower the billionaire class, hoping to catch a crumb of their wealth. And I don’t claim to be different - when I was younger, I would have sold my soul for the right price.

The average ICE employee, for example, probably isn’t so different from younger me. When a young person without a college education is offered a six-figure salary - they will accept first and ask questions later. Any moral or ethical qualms are quickly overcome by the realization that their bank account is steadily growing every week. They can enjoy life instead of struggling. They can take care of their loved ones. Meanwhile, the screams of children become part of the normal workweek. It’s crazy but that’s human nature. We are cruel creatures.

Focus on midterms, my friend.

Don’t think about 3 years. Think about 6 months.

“Time for a new constitution”

Maybe.

The American Constitution is the oldest national codified government constitution in force. No other constitution has lasted so long. Ergo, either it’s a really solid document that can still serve us - or its time has passed.

Or, I guess there’s a third possibility. The Constitution might be like a virus - not an entirely wholesome organism, but very good at surviving. A document that can sometimes serve the masses, but also a tool for the elite when properly weaponized. Perhaps it’s a document that perfectly balances authoritative power with social conflict.

I think, though, that our forefathers should have addressed a balanced budget in writing. If the budget isn’t balanced and if the debt is above a certain percent of the GDP, then emergency elections should be held. This would avoid a lot of the looting from our coffers.

For the record, carrying a gun while marching in the street while eating apple pie is the most American thing you can do - as long as you’re wearing red, white and blue. This is true for people of any political persuasion, left or right.

In all seriousness, though, it’s our Constitution that brought us to this point. The laws aren’t being fixed - and gaps in the budget are kicked down the road. The government pays corporations in tax breaks, and corporations use their profit to pay politicians their bribes. All of this has been sanctioned by the Supreme Court, directly decided by cases brought before them (Citizens United, for example). The Supreme Court also has “stolen” elections, where the objective winner was not chosen. (Gore vs. Bush)

What we are seeing up to this point is no checks, no balances and no plan for the future. That’s a failure of the Constitution on a massive scale.

IMHO, I think the only chance for salvation is the economy. All middle-class Americans have one thing in common - the 401k. If the economy crashes, especially if the stock market takes an extended dive, then the opposition voices will get loud. The average American will draw a line at destroying their retirement income.

I honestly don’t know which is worse - an authoritarian government that provides a stable economy or an incompetent government that destroys the very country it’s trying to loot.

without having to sacrifice your wealth, energy, or life.

That hits so fucking hard. I feel that, deep deep deep down inside my soul.

America has spent the last couple of decades building prisons. They have recently accelerated the process, and thrown up huge confinement centers. There’s plenty of room to house all the boisterous dissidents.

Then look at my comfortable life. The electricity is on, the water is clean, the roof doesn’t leak, I’m using the internet to speak my mind. There’s a Walmart around the corner.

What’s the point in throwing a rock at a window, figuratively speaking? Why be the first lemming off the cliff?

Now, when those services are interrupted, people WILL take notice. Rolling blackouts and internet interruptions will get people off their asses. But unfortunately, until that happens on a massive scale, most people will look out for themselves and ignore the big picture.

…get busy asap and fuck it up from the inside…

Easier said than done. Security and risk mitigation is one of the first (if not the very first) concern of any IT company in this day and age.

I’ve been a system engineer. Digital assets are locked down, meaning that I couldn’t access anything outside of my scope (which was small and midsize banking websites). Physical assets (servers) sat in three remote locations, highly secure and staffed by a different team. Everything is backed up 5 different ways in 5 different places. Every keystroke is logged. Every door uses a passcard.

It’s built to be a trustless system of sorts, where no single person holds the keys to anything too important. Regular audits and individual accountability for every outage are the norm. About the only way to fuck it up would be to somehow incite a mass exodus of seasoned engineers.

I think what people often miss about these systems (not just IT, but all of our systems from finance to healthcare) is that they are supported by very intelligent, motivated individuals. These people are fighting hard to make sure that nobody can fuck up their work. They aren’t sitting ducks - they are nigh impenetrable sentries.

Giggle. We’ve been playing “wait and see” for a decade now.

Elections don’t solve this. We’ve seen that high-level Democrats are no different than high-level Republicans. Biden refused to investigate the Epstein files, he refused to prosecute Trump, and he refused to target gerrymandering/election interference.

There’s no version of this where the old America magically returns. That’s the same logic trap that ushered in this entire mess. There are plenty of MAGA who truly believe that they are shaking up the system and that just one more election will solve everything.

THIS. IS. THE. FUTURE.

We are living in it. The trajectory is set. We didn’t stop militarization of the police when they stepped on our rights. We didn’t stop data collection when we were warned. We didn’t stop gross financial mismanagement, corporate influence, gerrymandering and all the other things that make a democracy work.

We aren’t living in a fascist takeover. That happened years ago. We are living in its aftermath. We are frogs in a simmering pot, watching the bubbles float past us and wondering how to turn off the heat. It doesn’t matter now, the damage is done. The momentum takes control.

WWII changed everything about the USA. Everywhere else in the world, manufacturing was bombed to oblivion, the populace unable to rebuild without a coordinated effort from governments and NGOs.

The US became a hub of manufacturing. We exported our culture, and our products, all over the world. Our currency and our language became the standard in business.

Everything since then has been a slow walk backwards, so that the ultrawealthy could exert more control and line their pockets. A return to the “real” American values of exploitation.

I think he’s just trying to further normalize the outsourcing/underpaying/devaluing of programmers.

Love that movie!

My mom hated the “boob tube”, and restricted our viewing heavily. But, on the other hand, she had excellent taste when it came to family films. Gods Must Be Crazy was another one she picked that we all loved. (Not that the two are at all similar!)

Big Trouble in Little China.

I don’t even know how or why we owned this movie. I was in high school and working 30 hours a week on top of that, so I was a bit out of the loop regarding current household events. I came home one night, and there it was. I popped it into the VCR and was gobsmacked. Such a fun film, I still watch it occasionally.

Saturn 3.

This was one of the first movies my dad brought home after he bought his first VCR. Such a cheesy film as an adult, but terrifying to a 10 year old child. Also, I fell in love with Farah Fawcett that night.

I love that you took the time to make this analogy. I’d like to share another example, and then explain why I think the above analogy maybe won’t appeal to working class folks. First, a bit of history:

Years ago, I was broke and jobless. My neighbor needed an odd job or two done. So, I tightened a few screws and painted her kitchen. She loved my work. I loved working for myself. I started painting houses. Interior only, because all I needed was a tarp and a paint brush. The customer was responsible for buying the paint up front.

Eventually, I worked my way into buying a really shitty truck and a ladder and it kept snowballing. My equipment got better. The jobs kept rolling in. I had more work than I could handle.

Now…what should I do? Should I hire someone? Try to find an equal partner? Or just turn down the work? I talked it through with several friends, and decided to hire a friend of a friend. I didn’t know the guy, so it didn’t make sense to immediately offer him a partnership. The guy didn’t know me, and wasn’t about to commit to a partnership.

So, at this point, I’m the same as “Fred”, right? I’m the owner, I’m looking for an hourly employee. Why am I the bad guy? I’m just working hard. If business is good and I can pay someone who wants the money, isn’t that a good thing?

Let’s skip ahead in your story. Fred retires. Fred Jr. inherits the business and continues to make money for doing nothing. And that’s a very valid objection to the way things work - inherited wealth is poison to a fair system. Nepotism is poison to a fair system.

On the other hand, Fred built a business. Yes, he had someone else running his backhoe. Fred was responsible for other aspects of the business, though. Admin tasks, sales, etc. He worked, there’s no shame that his was a desk job instead of a field job.

The wrap up your analogy is this:

“This is the way we decide who gets the rewards of all the work humanity collectively does (under capitalist systems) and it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have and everyone else scraping by.”

Let’s break down that statement, there’s a lot going on.

1. “This is the way we decide who gets the rewards…” Sorry, but the system we use is SO much worse than your analogy. I buy a share of stock in the company. I never meet an employee. I never meet a customer. I never even see the business. I just get paid when the company profits. The company itself is too big to fail. The government will loan them low or no interest money to ensure that it doesn’t go under. In 30 years, I can sell my stock, or I can pass it to my children. I can take loans against the unrealized value of that stock.

2. “it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have…” Again, it’s SO much worse than that. The poorest person on Forbes 400 list is worth almost $4 billion. (That list is USA citizens only, btw.) A billion dollars is inconceivable wealth to most people. At a 10% return rate, that’s $400 million per year accumulated by doing nothing but investing in the Dow. Imagine that. Enough money to give 50 of your family and friends $4 million per year AND still have $100 million income for yourself AND still have $100 million to reinvest every year. Imagine how much political influence that amount of money buys.

So, yeah. I think using a small business as an analogy for capitalism - especially a single proprietor working-class business - distracts from just how bad things really are. Thanks for reading, and hope that I didn’t offend you by jumping into the comments with this rant. :)

Here’s my breakdown, numbers from Wikipedia, for estimates and purposes of discussion:

Total population: 340 million Eligible voters: 245 million Turnout: 155 million

Children can’t vote, that’s 70 million. Convicted felons and other non-eligible citizens make up another 20 million.

Are you suggesting that children should vote? (I do believe that convicts should have the right to vote, but that’s only 20 million.)

I think the rank and file Democrats would LOVE to see this happen.

But it’s pretty obvious that Congress is mostly there to do the bidding of their corporate donors. Time and again, they’ve shown an unwillingness to go after corruption, because they know they live in a glass house.

It’s a key tenant of several social conflict theories.

I’m no expert, but the way I understand it, many early sociologists focused on the systems and structures of society. They emphasized the order and structure of “civilized” societies, usually with a bias toward European societies.

Then people like Marx and Weber came along and proposed that these societies were not “civilized”, but rather oppressive. They pointed to class struggles and oligarchs. Other sociologists began to highlight the struggles of marginalized groups like women and people of color. They followed the money and power.

SO, as an example, we use a landlord and his tenant. We could describe the relationship as mutually beneficial. The tenant needed a roof over his head, the landlord provided one. The system functions as intended, benefiting both parties. But we might look deeper and see that housing prices are inflated. The tenant can’t afford a house, but the landlord owns 20 properties. The tenant wants to own property, but he’s shut out. The system is still functioning as intended, but the intention is to make the rich person more money and keep the poor person oppressed.

Obviously, there’s no hard and fast rules. There’s no final answer.

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We don’t really have castes in the US. But yes, being poor sucks anywhere in the world.

I was speaking more in terms of infrastructure and public assistance. For example, I was able to get a student loan and an education in the States. I have clean, potable tap water. Dependable utilities. Those sorts of things.

You can disagree all you like, but the fact that we form communities, seek out and connect with others, and feel empathy says otherwise.

I didn’t mean to imply that ALL people are evil and broken. And sure, even an evil, broken person will seek companionship. We are social creatures. That doesn’t make us inherently good creatures, any more than it makes a pack of wolves inherently good.

despite the downsides which we should be doing a better job of mitigating.

This is the part where I lose faith. We have failed to mitigate the downsides. In fact, we have encouraged the monetization of the downsides.