We have lost all sense of self preservation. Almost like we the gipity. Which came first the gipity or the ape? I swear chain smoking monkeys driving cars.
This is a nice sounding sentiment but in practice you get the same system anyway.
Who is the “public”? It might start with councils, co ops, group discussions, but eventually it always gets consolidated by the most cunning people, doesn’t matter the system, it’s a long standing historical cycle.
Democracy with peaceful transfer of power is new, America was always considered an experiment, and it seems like that it might be failing because the forces of accumulation, power, and control are too pathologically overwhelming.
The cycle always ends with bloody revolution, new government, the new government is usually an autocracy wrapped in a flag of something populist sounding, things get marginally better for people for a time then the accumulation cycle kicks in again because a new set of cunning people enter that can take action on a freshly born populace and around and around we go.
The only thing that has a prayer of keeping anything in check is a citizenry that stays aware, mistrusts whatever the government is, understands the cycle, and continuously fights for rights by making it a credible threat that the people WILL revolt unless the leaders do the right thing.
Modern day leaders have incredible tools available to passify and stupefy at scale, I’m not sure how this can be fought back against now.
Bottom line though is socialism, democracy, capitalism, communism, monarchy, despotism they are all just systems run by people. It’s up to people to hold people accountable no matter what you’re running. If people aren’t willing to keep fighting for justice and they stay complacent ALL systems trend towards corruption.
I’m so sick of this patronizing head-pat “everything else is just as bad, we tried” response.
The fact of the matter is that the easiest way to do this under our system is making companies employee owned.
I worked for one for several years, and yes it was subject to many of the same administrative issues as every other company, but every single employee earned stock every month that kept increasing in value. A guy who had worked there for about 30 years as a worker -not a manager- was retiring with a stock portfolio worth millions. They also had the normal crappy 401k and social security they could have earned anywhere else, but because it was employee owned, they had all that company stock too.
So we have shown it can work to have the workers own the means of production. Is convenient to present government ownership as the same thing so it can be easily criticized, but it isn’t really.
Hey employee owned companies I agree with. I agree with trying something new for sure, my main point isn’t to patronize it’s to highlight that we need a system that keeps everyone engaged and educated.
Elites will always try to tell people not to worry, to sell their shares to them, the trust them. This needs to be prevented and discouraged structurally and culturally.
Let’s try, it’s worth trying always, I’m not saying to give up, I’m saying the cycle will cause another revolution, what we do with that new chance is important to understand what is turning the wheel.
It’s not a crazy idea. It’s the one true, undeniable, self-evident truth that has always been hidden by the greedy and the powerful, and all of the smoke and mirrors they possess.
Because the ruling class ideas are the ruling ideas, they control education, public spaces and media (and also the repression apparatus in case the former is insufficient). It’s not about the sense of self preservation, we are not so different than ancient or medieval commoners who found questioning the divine rights of kings to own everything, a crazy idea.
The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.
― Karl Marx
We do to the extent you own stock.
Communism is when we all share a toothbrush
No seriously I had an old woman, good friend of our family, tell me that democratic socialists wanted to make illegals live with us in our houses that we paid for. Like that was their plan, they were going to force homeowners to house migrant families.
What the fuck have they been smoking in this country? That’s not how ANY of this works!
My grandfather actually had to share his own house with five other families in Bulgaria in the forties after the revolution.
My great grandpa had to give up all his slaves in Cuba after the Revolution 😢
Rich people don’t want to give anything up.
Assholes don’t want their out-group to have anything nice. Even if it means they suffer.
Many people don’t know shit about fuck, and they’re just trying to get through the week.
The people who currently own the means of production really really like having control over everything.
🤠 they sure do
Because more than half of people don’t really understand what the means of production is in the first place.
I do think the terminology resulting from “German translated to English in the late 1800s” does not help.
It looks like the future is gonna be some people don’t even know where babies come from…They lost the ability to know how to grow food. This is the new dark ages
A lot of current people don’t know thanks to a lack of public education on the subject.
Not all is lost though. I recall seeing an interview with an American World War 2 veteran describing his understanding of how babies were made prior to getting married as “I recall thinking it had something to do with the belly button.” So “we” have been there before.
In case anyone here doesn’t know, babies come from the butt.
Equality gives a feeling of helplessness. There is no hope for a high status person with the knowledge and skills to solve the hard problems.
The more global warming and nuclear threats create uncertainty the more people feel the need to find somebody who resolves their problems. With their power and status symbols billionaires trigger the feeling that they are what we need to create a better world. If we distribute their power it feels like we destroy our only hope.
We could start resolving our problems by ourselves, right here, right now. With digital goods the means of production can be created from nothing. (But) Who dares to say how we should start?
What is a gipity?
“AI” shortened version of chat gipity 🤣
I highkenuinely thought it was an ancient species of ape that came before the monkeys you mentioned.
In Germany we say (schett) skibbidy. I kinda like it.
ChatGPT -> GPT -> GiPiTee -> gipity
Bosses did a really great job convincing us otherwise
Who’s this “public” guy?
