5 ms·

I completely agree with what you are saying, but I have grown too cynical to believe it will ever happen. American capitalism has been very effective at ensurin

I completely agree with what you are saying, but I have grown too cynical to believe it will ever happen. American capitalism has been very effective at ensuring 2 outcomes: - The population is kept just comfortable enough to become complacent, with easy access to intoxicants, brainrot media and fast food. Now there are even robots that can do our thinking for us. A large percentage of people are brainwashed into thinking that all change is bad because it will cause them to lose the paltry, ersatz freedom they have rather than gaining real liberty. - The labor pool is kept large enough that any of us could be replaced immediately with no significant loss to our employers. As the ISP mantra goes, “we have nothing to lose but our jobs”. Yes, we know that they couldn’t replace _all_ of us at once, but combine points 1 and 2 and you will start to understand why there is no appreciable labor movement in the United States.

zackwu 4mo ago
oh man, "we have nothing to lose but our jobs" really cracked me up in a sad way
embedding-shape 4mo ago
What chills me the most, is the self-censorship Americans engage on social media today, everywhere online. It seems Americans today are afraid of talking clearly about general strikes, protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship and more "taboo" topics, and I'm guessing it's because the platforms kind of shadow-ban people quickly for it. Growing up, I always heard Americans bragging about freedom of speech, and how important it is. I'll admit I swallowed that wholesale as a young impressionable person in another country, and I still believe in it, just not the American freedom of speech flavor I suppose. But it's so sad to see the state of affairs compared to just ten years ago, where discussions could be freely held, even on mainstream social media, and people weren't afraid of talking about things with clear words. But the chilling effect is in full effect today, and I think it's having a large impact on how well (or not) the working class could actually mobilize. Because as soon as anyone mentions "general strike" on social media, they seem to disappear into a black hole and that stuff never shows up in people's feeds. Regardless of the size of the labor pool, if you can't organize people somehow, especially across a large country like the US, it's short of impossible to actually get any change in reality.
- watwut 4mo ago
  > Americans today are afraid of talking clearly about general strikes, protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship Americans are talking about protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship all the time ... and I mean literally all sides - liberals, conservatives, leftists, feminists, MAGA ...
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    Using what words specifically? Besides HN, even people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe" just because they've realized they get penalized if they talk about things too clearly, on other platforms. Same with general strikes, censorship and more, even on platforms where you don't get downranked automatically just because you used specific terms, people have now started self-censor in those ways.
    - astura 4mo ago
      >people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe" That's just because reddit is almost entirely children and bots/shills. Yes, a platform full of children is going to be childish.
      - embedding-shape 4mo ago
        I'm not talking specifically about reddit...
        JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > I'm not talking specifically about reddit Using the example of someone typing “r@pe” to get around auto moderation is a pretty specific complaint, and not really an example of self censorship since that person clearly still got to say whatever they wanted to say. At least online, there is a decent argument to be made that a good cohort of people have significantly lost the ability to self moderate.
      - 4mo ago
LocalH 4mo ago
1984 ended up being a playbook rather than a warning
scoofy 4mo ago
It's not "captialism." Sweden is capitalist. Norway is capitalist. It's about America going from a high-trust wealthy society, to a low-trust, mostly lower class society with increasing wealth inequality. If you look around the world, this is effectively the natural state of affairs: India, South Africa, Nigeria, Russia... they all have the same pattern. The US and the West was the outlier in the '50-'90 because we had a lot of wealth redistribution AND free markets. Then the boomers were like, fuck that, we want to all be rich... and they mostly are, but everyone else is fucked. Government is hard, you need people to give a shit. We decided we don't care somewhere along the way.

zackwu 4mo ago

oh man, "we have nothing to lose but our jobs" really cracked me up in a sad way

embedding-shape 4mo ago

What chills me the most, is the self-censorship Americans engage on social media today, everywhere online. It seems Americans today are afraid of talking clearly about general strikes, protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship and more "taboo" topics, and I'm guessing it's because the platforms kind of shadow-ban people quickly for it. Growing up, I always heard Americans bragging about freedom of speech, and how important it is. I'll admit I swallowed that wholesale as a young impressionable person in another country, and I still believe in it, just not the American freedom of speech flavor I suppose. But it's so sad to see the state of affairs compared to just ten years ago, where discussions could be freely held, even on mainstream social media, and people weren't afraid of talking about things with clear words. But the chilling effect is in full effect today, and I think it's having a large impact on how well (or not) the working class could actually mobilize. Because as soon as anyone mentions "general strike" on social media, they seem to disappear into a black hole and that stuff never shows up in people's feeds. Regardless of the size of the labor pool, if you can't organize people somehow, especially across a large country like the US, it's short of impossible to actually get any change in reality.

watwut 4mo ago
> Americans today are afraid of talking clearly about general strikes, protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship Americans are talking about protesting, rape, sexual violence, censorship all the time ... and I mean literally all sides - liberals, conservatives, leftists, feminists, MAGA ...
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  Using what words specifically? Besides HN, even people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe" just because they've realized they get penalized if they talk about things too clearly, on other platforms. Same with general strikes, censorship and more, even on platforms where you don't get downranked automatically just because you used specific terms, people have now started self-censor in those ways.
  - astura 4mo ago
    >people commenting on reddit tends to self-censor words like "r@pe" That's just because reddit is almost entirely children and bots/shills. Yes, a platform full of children is going to be childish.
    - embedding-shape 4mo ago
      I'm not talking specifically about reddit...
      - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
        > I'm not talking specifically about reddit Using the example of someone typing “r@pe” to get around auto moderation is a pretty specific complaint, and not really an example of self censorship since that person clearly still got to say whatever they wanted to say. At least online, there is a decent argument to be made that a good cohort of people have significantly lost the ability to self moderate.
    - 4mo ago

LocalH 4mo ago

1984 ended up being a playbook rather than a warning

scoofy 4mo ago

It's not "captialism." Sweden is capitalist. Norway is capitalist. It's about America going from a high-trust wealthy society, to a low-trust, mostly lower class society with increasing wealth inequality. If you look around the world, this is effectively the natural state of affairs: India, South Africa, Nigeria, Russia... they all have the same pattern. The US and the West was the outlier in the '50-'90 because we had a lot of wealth redistribution AND free markets. Then the boomers were like, fuck that, we want to all be rich... and they mostly are, but everyone else is fucked. Government is hard, you need people to give a shit. We decided we don't care somewhere along the way.