Fascism needs existential threats. Nobody in their sane mind will accept their hateful ideology if they were not desperate, and in panic. > A millenarian econo

Fascism needs existential threats. Nobody in their sane mind will accept their hateful ideology if they were not desperate, and in panic. > A millenarian economy is necessarily a paranoid one. The economy does not need to be paranoid, it becomes paranoid with inequality increases the stakes on everything, when you can be obscenely rich or depressingly poor and there is no in between. That makes reasonable people paranoid. High equality with opportunities for everyone makes people reasonable and wanting to work for the common good. > “Merely regulating it is insufficient,” wrote Pope Leo XIV in a 40,000-word essay on AI last month. “It must be disarmed.” Of all the messages, the Pope was far from "apocalyptic". He was trying to defend the working class and avoid discrimination and xenophobia embedded in the models. No, end of times bullshit. > If things are so dire, why are American stocks so expensive? Because it is disconnected from the average working class experience. "Everything is good because stocks are up" is a non sequitur (except for the people that only care about their portfolio).