That y2k-era techno-optimism - Illustration by Micha Klein
(Wired Magazine, July 1997)
bpd-anon said: “Slavery is that thing where I have to do things I don’t want to, right?”
slavery is that thing where I’ve made choices but then grumble about them
slavery is that thing where unavoidable compromises result in arrangements that aren’t 100% ethically pure
slavery is that thing where we have to make decisions with limited information and bounded reasoning power
Slavery is that thing where people uses threats of violence (backed by actual violence in case of non-compliance) to make me do work I don’t want to do.
That’s not taxes. Taxes aren’t work. Taxes are theft.
Taxes are rent.
Force is the fundamental nature of property. The State is the real owner.
It’s the glorious post-scarcity future in Star Trek Discovery but they still have open plan offices. Some fucking utopia that is.
I think that means the crewmen need to start a revolution, overthrow the officer
bourgeoisie and establish a classless society.
This is a pretty fantastic example of how Star Trek has always been about a specific utopian vision based in our current capitalist (one might even say “neoliberal”) world.
You should have me write Star Trek inste-
wait, where are you going?? come back!
Anonymous asked:
mutant-aesthetic answered:
no, they have suicidal utopian ideals, very different.
Yes, they’re going to fight over abortion, since it involves terminating human life. You can argue whether it constitutes “persons” - which is indeed my position, not having a brain means something can’t be a person even if it’s otherwise human - but you can’t argue that a fetus is not human.
Other than that, no, it’s not going to get rolled back barring a major reduction in material prosperity. Not unless something really dumb happens, like one of the nastier forms of Islam taking over - which, I might add, the same Social Justice activists that say they are in favor of women’s liberation, effectively insist we do nothing to stop.
The reduction in child mortality due to advanced medicine and household labor due to automation basically guarantees that the old order won’t really return.
Who is going to cause it to return? Social conservatives? They’ve been losing the battle for social conservatism for at least a century. The definition of what counts as “social conservative” is still shifting leftwards.
“Patriarchy” such as it was arose out of material conditions, including kids dying at a ridiculous rate, so unless we’re dumb enough to bring those material conditions back, the support for it is just not going to be there.
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.
Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism. Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association. On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations. On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.
Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people. Telling anyone else is vile racism. (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)
For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.
…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.
Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either. Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.
Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
Screaming ‘that’s racist!’ whenever anyone mentions it seems to be how they deal with a lot of issues
For the left, environmentalism is just thinly disguised anti-capitalism, and for the globalist elite, environmentalism is about creating a world state. Actually trying to protect the biosphere from potential threats is not something anyone in politics is really sincerely concerned with - kind of a frightening thought
I don’t know that high population growth is necessarily such a terrible thing, though, having more people in the world has a lot of positives to it that usually winds up outweighing the negatives, even for impoverished Africans. Most of the time the people who are concerned with population growth have a skewed zero-sum view of the economy that only lets them see more people as more mouths to feed, but especially in the future that won’t be the right way to look at it
Setting aside that not everyone wants to live in Coruscant, that depends enormously on energy prices, and I’m not optimistic about medium-long-term energy prices.
Much less a bunch of chronically malnourished people don’t give you as many of the benefits of high population. There’s a lot of argument about the heritability of intelligence, but it’s less controversial that it isn’t that hard to damage intelligence development with environmental factors.
I’m actually really curious what environmentally-minded lefties plan on doing about the fact that people in Africa are having way too many goddamn babies
Like Macron just recently pointed out that this was a huge problem and a lot of lefties went bonkers and got really mad but the African population boom and all the resulting effects are going to be more or less catastrophic for the planet
The plan is to migrate them all here, because developed nations have infinite money and structural reinforcement. Or there is no plan. Just cross your fingers and hope it all works out.
Hitler is the Satan figure of modern progressivism/liberalism. Anything that even has the slightest whiff of something he might maybe have once possibly considered doing for a few seconds is tainted by association. On top of that, there have been previous racist actions in the developed nations. On top of that, it has been decided that the majority whites of the developed nations bear the original sin for racism.
Telling people to have fewer kids is worth celebrating by progressivism, but only if you’re telling white people. Telling anyone else is vile racism. (Even, of course, if it would lead to terrible conditions in majority-PoC countries.)
For the progressives that actually notice that you can only consume what is produced, and that while the wealthy have a pretty good-sized amount of money it isn’t anywhere near unlimited, embracing any discouragement of population growth is considered too dangerous, a slippery slope to eugenics and baby licenses.
…even to the ones that “jokingly” suggested swapping everyone’s babies to end “genetic chauvinism”, I would imagine.
Of course the Conservatives keep trying to kill abortion in those areas with their controls on American government aid funding, so mostly they don’t really care, either. Catholics I’ve encountered seem to believe that God Will Provide or something, one of them talking about the Earth supporting a potential population of 100 billion.
Only a few villains see this as an issue, like you, me, and Emmanuel Macron.
I believe the progressive line on this is “education and improved public health lower the birth rate.” And it’s also the neoliberal line and not too far removed from the libertarian line.
@squareallworthy‘s reading is probably a fairer one, and it’s what they’re hoping for with the crossed fingers.
To add on, it should be noted that the birthrate is falling there, even if it’s still crazy high and may end up exceeding the carrying capacity anyway. World population is forecasted to stop growing somewhere at something like 9-11 billion.
SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to reduce the number of unprovoked hostile communications on the social media platform, Twitter announced Monday that it had added a red X-mark feature verifying users who are in fact perfectly okay to harass. “This new verification system offers users a simple, efficient way to determine which accounts belong to total pieces of shit whom you should have no qualms about tormenting to your heart’s desire,” said spokesperson Elizabeth James, adding that the small red symbol signifies that Twitter has officially confirmed the identity of a loathsome person who deserves the worst abuse imaginable and who will deliberately have their Mute, Block, and Report options disabled. “When a user sees this symbol, they know they’re dealing with a real asshole who has richly earned whatever mistreatment they receive, including profanity, body-shaming, leaking of personal information, and relentless goading to commit suicide. It’s really just a helpful way of saying to our users, ‘This fuck has it coming, so do your worst with a clear conscience and without fear of having your account suspended.’” At press time, Twitter reassuredly clarified that the red X was just a suggestion and that all users could still be bullied with as little recourse as they are now.
