I stand by my distinction.

The CEO argument collapses under the smallest scrutiny. Are we seriously suggesting Elon Musk, Larry Ellison, or Mark Zuckerberg perform labor? Their employees do. The engineers, the warehouse workers, the content moderators, they all generate the value. The CEO class performs ownership, and the ideological justification for their outsized returns is supposed to be risk. But when that risk materializes it gets offloaded onto workers through layoffs, wage cuts, and benefit reductions. They privatize the upside and socialize the downside onto the very people generating the value. That’s risk transfer which is exactly the exploitative relationship the original definition was describing.

The Social Security vs Chinese wages comparison is purchasing power theater. You’re comparing raw dollar amounts across completely different cost of living contexts without PPP adjustment, while ignoring that Chinese wages have been rising rapidly and the social policies that significantly reduce the cost of living for Chinese citizens. And even more absurd is the fact that Social Security payments in many cases, such as minimum payments, can place Americans below the poverty line. Most importantly though, it’s entirely beside the point. American elderly poverty rising in the context of American costs is a domestic policy failure. ‘Someone somewhere has it worse’ has never been a coherent rebuttal to a structural critique. It’s a deflection.

And wealthy pensioners have completely different voting incentives than struggling retirees. Conflating the two obscures a deliberate class dynamic. The generation now calling younger people lazy came of age with defined benefit pensions, strong union density, affordable higher education, and accessible housing. They built their security on a social contract that existed because previous generations fought and died for it then systematically voted to dismantle every piece of it once they’d extracted what they needed. ‘Fuck you, got mine’ basically, which is exactly how modern CEOs operate, amassing their wealth, laying off employees, stock buybacks, corporate bonuses, and abandoning ship on a golden parachute eventually.

Housing is the clearest mechanism. Homeowner retirement security is often directly financed by artificial scarcity. They vote against density, development, and tenant protections because their nest egg depends on keeping supply constrained. Their comfort is structurally contingent on younger generations being priced out.

Then they attribute their own material advantages to hard work and personal virtue, and younger generations’ struggles to laziness and poor choices. That’s just ideological cover for a clear material interest as we continue to be more productive than previous generations. We’re just too tired and burnt out to put on the theater anymore and call out the problems with the system that the older generations benefit from or are too much of cowards to admit. The meritocracy myth in its most cynical form, deployed by people who benefited from collective infrastructure and then pulled up the ladder. This is why the older demographic skews Republican and MASSIVELY so. It’s not nostalgia or confusion. It’s class interest expressed through the ballot box, dressed up as culture war.

“Tennessee officials” aren’t paying shit. Tennessee taxpayers are paying for the officials’ fuckup. Perhaps it should be taken directly from the officials’ private accounts. Why punish taxpayers for the officials infringement on another taxpayer’s rights?

The officer who arrested him should pay for not refusing an unconstitutional arrest.

The police chief should pay for not slapping down such an arrest.

Any officers that were aware of it should pay for not acting to protect the man’s constitutional rights.

The DA and the judge the signed for any arrest warrant should pay for, again, blatantly ignoring the unconstituionality of this arrest warrant.

Hold the people who failed the system accountable so they don’t want to fuck up again. None of them give a shit and the taxpayers have to make this man whole rather than the people that harmed him. Contrarily, the taxpayers brought light to the case to try and protect the man.

American justice at work.

Kagi is one of the better options. It’s a subscription, private, and closed source.

SearXNG is an open source search aggregator that you can set up yourself and self host.

Both are on par in my opinion in getting relevant search results, far better than the mainstream engines for sure.

Make your choice wisely.

Set up your SearXNG instances if you haven’t yet.

And Jellyfin downloads start spiking.

Huh, coincidence I guess.

It’s never an option to tax the megacorporations that force us to use public roads that they don’t pay for to get to work is it?

Good ol corporate socialism. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses.

Tax the megacorps more and use that to maintain roads and expand public transit providing an actual choice for people rather than forcing the individual to buy a car, pay for maintenance, for registration, for fuel, for a license, for tolls, all just to get to work.

Retirees live off deferred compensation from their own labor in the form of savings, pensions, social security, etc. Capitalists live off returns generated by other people’s labor. The distinction isn’t whether you work, it’s where the income comes from.

And if retirees were actually ‘rich’ by your logic, elderly poverty wouldn’t be rising as benefits get gutted. People are committing petty crime in their 70s to survive. Poverty and crime are intrinsically linked, even against the belief that as age increases, the level of crime committed will decrease. That’s not a rich class, that’s a working class that got squeezed their whole lives and arrived at retirement without enough buffer.

The actual capitalist class never has that problem because their wealth compounds regardless of policy. Conflating ‘not working’ with ‘owning capital’ is exactly the meritocracy myth my previous comment was describing. It obscures who actually extracts value from whom.

This video was very informative on the retirement situation in America imo. When in reality, most of that “retirement money” is for people that would never need it given their vast wealth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRLxcx79OvE

As a leftist, I criticized a politician on bluesky for not taking to the streets with us and helping organize and build alternatives to capitalism if they want to help in this moment like they were posting. Essentially, using the “yes, and” we activists are always hit with that we need to vote amd speak out and organize and protest and go to town halls and make phone calls and and and…

I had no idea I was such a bigoted racist until half the population defending Obama told me.

I don’t want to make generalizations myself, but the accounts were all white women. Some selling lotion? Weird. They called me lazy and to, I quote, “not expect magical negroes to fix your problems.”

When I pointed them to my posts on the same account that I was going to protests and helping establish community pantries and helping our neighbors start backyard gardens that was actually just drawing doodles and playing in gardens they said. I didn’t catch the license plate of those goalposts flying by me.

Liberals/centrists are scary too. They are kinda just helping republicans/conservatives bring in fascism since they’re too busy laying in a chalk outline of themselves. We should be working together but instead I’m a racist when I ask a politician, with power and platform, who says he genuinely wants to help protect democracy, to join us in solidarity.

Division wins again stopping us from a working class awakening.

Thought I’d share the recent experience from the center to the left vs the OP of the right to the left.

Free palestine.

The simplest way to classify “rich” is capitalist class. Those that no longer perform labor. Instead, their wealth passively generates wealth that sustains their lifestyle. There’s no set, defined number. Someone who is “rich” does not need to work and affords luxury.

Which, this is only facilitated via an exploited working class that are not fairly compensated for the labor that they perform and the profits of said labor is traded back and forth amongst said capitalists. Hence why the rich are a parasite class. Socialism for the wealthy and slavery for the workers.

Basic fundamentals of capitalism. Meritocracy is the myth that allows it to function similar to how a religious mandate provided legitimacy to a monarch.

I’d also like a world where we don’t need to survive off charity. Redistribute the stolen wealth and provide for everyone.

Yeah…yeah. We live under authoritarianism no matter how much authoritarians want to gaslight us.

It shouldn’t in theory. Worst case is if bitwarden closes source, just fork the latest current open version and use it.

Ideally, a group, either independent or joining with vaultwarden devs, can build/maintain the frontend for vaultwarden that is bitwarden.

Egads! I’ll have to play other games. The horror! The humanity!

Oh, these indie games are actually pretty cool and much better. Maybe supporting passionate devs is better, huh?

Yeah, fair enough. Most of it is projection too. They are taught to hate and they hate themselves so much because they can’t live authentically and so they drag everybody else down.

Conservatives would be some of the kinkiest mfers if they didn’t hate themselves so much.

It’s both. They actually feared all of that, we all do. Financial insecurity, because we tied it to our survival, healthcare, shelter, food, etc, is scary. They used racism and bigotry as a simple, incorrect solution to complex problems. Both can be true at the same time.

I’ve learned that many of these people simply can’t deal with ambiguity or complexity. If they don’t have an answer it breaks their minds. Hence why they’re so bigoted towards the LGBTQ community. If someone doesn’t fit in their predetermined boxes, even if it doesn’t affect their lives, there must be an answer and they must fit them in a box.

They then hide behind calling it common sense and other things, trying to simplify complex problems with incorrect and bigoted thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCifLzzITRM

According to the wealthy, the phrase tax the rich is akin to terrorism. And/or a racial slur.

Hence why property damage, and even sitting in trees to prevent construction, can have charges of terrorism added, but denying insurance claims that result in death are rewarded.

Violence is only against the state or wealthy, never by the state or wealthy, according to the state or wealthy.

Everything they ever feared about communism is coming true under capitalism.

What they actually feared was authoritarianism. The consolidation of power. And oh fucking boy does a profit motive consolidate power real quick.

And those who are crying about “socialism” and “communism” are often the ones that flock to an authoritarian strongman to give them the answers they seek, which are simply lies, when they face a tiny bit of insecurity.

“Oh no, wage stagnation? Inflation? Gas prices too expesnive? What daddy? It’s the immigrants? It’s the LGBTQ community? You’re right pedo-daddy, it always was.”

Maybe if you weren’t so weak, grew a spine, and joined with your fellow working class members you’d actually fix something.

Whoever says that should provide you with their government identification, credit card numbers, and full personal medical history. Oh, and especially their browser history. Mobile and pc.

They have nothing to hide, right?

This is the better version. Don’t need to go to a gym to exercise.