Oh I saw a great quote about this, but I can’t remember who it was. It said something like:
Orwell worried about a future of censorship and thought control, but [???] worried instead of a future where we have every distraction we could ever wish for, that we just get too distracted to combat our own exploitation.
We’re already going through the great depression v2.0, so FDR v2.0 should be coming up next, right?
The Dems had a proposal in the works giving hedge fund instruments 10 years to divest from single family residential homes.
That would have helped immensely but it was blocked by corporate backed representatives.
Maybe then we can finally just focus on improving ourselves instead.
There was a time when I would have accepted to go back for 3x the pay, or just go back and slack my ass off until I got fired, laughing my way to the bank.
But what changed for me is that I realized they are a bunch of self-serving liars-- and if they screwed me over once, they will totally do it again.
I would be stupid to put myself into that position and be stressed out the whole time trying to anticipate when they are going to pull the rug from underneath me again.
Instead, I rather move on to a new job, meet some new people, get paid to watch training videos which are often interesting and valuable (and if they are not, I just play Balatro on my phone while I half listen to them).
I also almost always get a pay raise when I move on to a new job, but not always. Moving from public accounting to state government accounting was a significant pay cut for me, but now I am going to get much better benefits, work less hours, my coworkers I’ve met so far are awesome, and the work I am going to do actually helps protect my state and my community. I know I’m going to be much happier in this new role and I value that more than I value money. And if I’m not, I’ll just bounce and find something else.
And I know we often think that’s easy to say when you don’t have kids to feed, and while it is true that I do not, I would much rather explain to my kids that we will all have to learn how to plant a veggie garden together and make do with less before I teach them to accept being abused and exploited for the extra money.
There’s been quotas and monitoring at every single one of my jobs, and all they do is alienate the talented staff and leaves the loyal morons & the money-driven behind.
The last two firms I worked at are still desperately begging me to come back, three years after I resigned, because the ship is rapidly sinking since their AI replacement strategy did not plan out.
I just resigned my latest position, and I’m gonna take a week or two to get back into making art and music, and then I’m going to take my talent and energy to the organizations fighting back against fascism.
Art and music.
Science research.
Trump: TARIFFS ON EVERYTHING
Market: * crashes *
Trump: * acquires crashed stock at bargain prices *
Trump: LOL JUST KIDDING. TARIFFS PAUSED!
Market: * rallies, because full of gambling addicts *
Trump: * realizes massive gains on acquired stock *
Is that clearer, or are you choosing to continue to participating in your own destruction?
Facts:
DXC fired ALL of their IT technicians servicing the Redmond Microsoft campus and replaced them with “Phoenix”, an AI chatbot that would guide users into troubleshooting their own IT problems.
The Phoenix chatbot was immediately rejected by users and completely useless at executing its intended purpose.
DXC then scrambled to rehire the technicians they fired with no success, as they quickly moved on to new jobs. New hires struggled to understand the building layouts and room devices because there was no one to pass on that knowledge.
Soon thereafter, DXC lost their multi-million dollar contract and all the new hires who worked really hard to try to were summarily dismissed.
I’m always torn when I see comments like this because I agree our country needs all the shaming and rejection in order to drive the average American to act. The shaming DOES help-- it cannot be denied.
But at the same time, being working class American is so fucking brutal, and it’s FAR worse when you are part of a marginalized group.
I am American but I did not grow up in the US, and it’s so obvious they all have been robbed of their sense of community because we are all being constantly bombarded by fear mongering narratives meant to drive up profits.
For example, kids are expected to move out at 18 because parents are weirdly concerned that their children wil turn into lazy and unproductive members of society. In reality, life is much easier when multiple generations live in the same home because even if you get on each other’s nerves, they are all at least in the same team like helping raise the children together.
Instead, they want everyone to be independent from their families because that’s more people paying rent, buying cars, products and services-- same reason why Netflix doesn’t want you sharing your account: so they can sell your friends and family their own to drive those profits up.
What is happening to America is happening to other countries as well. It’s not a moral failing unique to Americans.
It’s just that Americans already had weak public institutions as a younger nation and a very painful history full of racism, genocide, and exploitation that already was causing us great difficulty coming together to make the country a better place for everyone, and billionaires saw that as an opportunity to turn us against each other and profit from our fears.
If you don’t help the good parts of America in our battle against the bad parts of America, we will lose and you will have yet another Russia making the problems in your own country worse and worse until find yourself in the exact same position as we are.
Get involved in local politics in your country now. Don’t wait.
We all need to unite and fight against the worse parts of humanity. We’re all so tired of capitalism and exploitation. We want better. Please help us put an end to it wherever you can.
It is related to the increased calls to encourage the adoption of free and open source software, which are alternatives to corporate products. 🙂
Linux is finally becoming mainstream. I love it.
Do not conflate the people with the corporations.
And let’s not ignore the fact that many nations were happy to buy and profit until the USA government turned into a bargain sale for billionaires.
That’s the one, thank you!