This hits the nail on the head with me of the progression reddit has undertaken to be the dehumanized version of Facebook. The anonymity allows users to feel hidden while reddit and whoever they...
Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon)
This hits the nail on the head with me of the progression reddit has undertaken to be the dehumanized version of Facebook. The anonymity allows users to feel hidden while reddit and whoever they sell your info to are able to scrape together all the bits and pieces we drop to know more than most probably realize.
I suggested that their best bet would be to treat those people really well, right now.
This part also struck me as interesting. The author doesn’t quite grasp that these men became the richest/most powerful by marginalizing not only their peers and workers but also their family. These men don’t care about anyone other than what they can get from you that will benefit them.
Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon) I think this is the wrong comparison,...
Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon)
I think this is the wrong comparison, Amazon is walmart. Amazon was just hip, it was cool to shop at Amazon instead of Walmart. And then an eaiser webpage and now app to make it mass appeal
The even more example that we need to discuss is places like Uber. They have destroyed the Private driver/Taxi market. How many articles/youtube videos are there on how much you really make on Uber
The trick about Amazon is that its exploitation is hidden. With Uber, you at least meet the people working the precarious 'jobs'. Amazon customers don't see inside the warehouses where people work...
The trick about Amazon is that its exploitation is hidden. With Uber, you at least meet the people working the precarious 'jobs'. Amazon customers don't see inside the warehouses where people work with headsets on through which they're being told by computers right down to the second what to do as if they were literal robots, or see the stress of delivery people trying to keep up their quota.
Sounds like my job in a call center. Everything in a call center is trackable, and being tracked to the nearest second and put in to a report for further review on x issue Long calls To Long on...
Sounds like my job in a call center. Everything in a call center is trackable, and being tracked to the nearest second and put in to a report for further review on x issue
Long calls
To Long on Breaks
Slow day, Not taking enough calls, which is the most computerized part. Every hour they review the calls in the last hour along with the days calls overall and then review the average time reps are taking on the calls and adjust staffing based on what that means for future calls (to many people sitting around without a call for more than 30 seconds just reroute a cross trained call over. Or the favorite send staff home. All behind the scenes.)
Everytime you ever called in for customer service the rep was only thinking how to end the call. And not for lazyness, but because the faster they are the better they look on multiple reports. Or as a long call the worse they look on even more reports
The thing with amazon and call centers is due to high turnover there's a pretty big word of mouth on work expectations in the small towns they are located in, and they pay a set and above average wages for other jobs in the area
That sounds awful. It's crazy to me that this is still a model of operation when there's been a metric tonne of research showing that happy workers are motivated workers and surveillance makes...
That sounds awful. It's crazy to me that this is still a model of operation when there's been a metric tonne of research showing that happy workers are motivated workers and surveillance makes people unhappy. The only time I worked a job like that was for a few months doing judging search engine results. All throughout the training they emphasized that if you were too slow or made too many mistakes you'd be fired. I was contracted to work something like 18 hours a week, but it ended up being way more than that because you'd have to sign out every time you needed to go to the bathroom or even to check a text, lest you be fired for being slow. I worked in restaurants for years and if given two options I'd work in a dish pit over doing that again. At least in the dish pit your employers acknowledge your humanity.
I found this article on reddit. It highlights how the wealthy view the future, and why we absolutely can't count on them for it. The more we understand them, the better we can stop them.
I found this article on reddit. It highlights how the wealthy view the future, and why we absolutely can't count on them for it. The more we understand them, the better we can stop them.
Very worrying. But to be expected. To be ultra-rich, you must also have some kind of idea of what was required for you (or your ancestors) to get there. You would distruct 'normal' people, because...
Very worrying. But to be expected. To be ultra-rich, you must also have some kind of idea of what was required for you (or your ancestors) to get there. You would distruct 'normal' people, because you would think 'normal' people distrust you, because you are rich. Kind of self-reinforcing.
I often wonder how we got here and how this will end.
The problem (I think, partyl, at least) is that society (the non-rich majority) has failed to unite and has failed to use technological progress to stay as united as they once were (during new deal times).
The question is now whether someone can create the tool or vehicle required (be that an app or a website or something similar) to allow people to unite once again.
One of the cornerstones of being able to unite is temporarily being able to support each other while nobody is earning any income.
Because, my friends, that is the only way to affect any change at this point in time. We, as a society, have to stop working, possibly for a very long time, and do nothing other than protest. In the most peaceful and quiet manner imaginable: A longterm general strike.
That is all that is needed. The ability to guarantee that enough of us stop working all at the same time for long enoug that the 'elite' or powerful / rich people are bled out.
That could take months or years. And they would try every strategy in the book to undermine us.
We would have to create some kind of parallel society with its own economy basically. Where people create and trade food among themselves, etc. in order to survive, until this is all over.
The USA is actually uniquely capable of pulling this off. This would be much harder to do in other countries.
BUT, and this is where I see the reason for this never happening, this will mean a drastic reduction in the quality of life for, what, 200 million people? For many months, easily.
All that in order to stay organised through the psychological stress that comes with trying to keep such a gigantic resistance alive for long enough for it to really have a meaningful effect?
There is almost no chance of this happening.
Therefore, the system will have to consume itself. The USA has to turn into 1930-1940s Germany, drag the entire world into a world war and things will be reset afterwards. Whatever remains of humanity at the time gets another stab at establishing a world with safeguards strong enough that this doesn't repeat itself.
The problem is that human nature itself tends to lead to this kind of outcome, because consolidation of power is a natural and almost inevitable process.
It's not like they didn't try setting up bullet-proof, watertight safeguards after the 2nd world war. Those have been eroded through a process of incremental, persistent lust for power and riches by the individual. The cumulative effects of which always point to this situation right here re-emerging.
None of the individuals along that 70 year long, billion-people-strong timeline ever thought they were causing much harm. But each one of them grabbed another small piece of the pie we call progress / individual rights & freedom or liberty, and exchanged it for personal gain.
Done long enough, you end up with this. It will happen again, and again, until a less corruptible system is instated.
The most likely outcome, IMO is Elysium. The ultra-rich finally build a space station to live on, while humanity enslaves itself in their service, until those humans can be eradicated through automation.
Eventually only the rich will remain, who will then tier themselves into 'more rich' and 'less rich', where the less rich are also eventually exterminated and only one, very, very rich person remains for all of eternity.
I would love to see this happen, but I'm more likely to win the Hugo award. The sort of class consciousness necessary for a long-term nationwide general strike probably isn't there. If you...
Because, my friends, that is the only way to affect any change at this point in time. We, as a society, have to stop working, possibly for a very long time, and do nothing other than protest. In the most peaceful and quiet manner imaginable: A longterm general strike.
I would love to see this happen, but I'm more likely to win the Hugo award. The sort of class consciousness necessary for a long-term nationwide general strike probably isn't there. If you suggested to most working-class Republican workers that Big Government and Big Business were working together to shaft him and his family and that the answer was to down tools and stop working, they'd probably think you're either a Martian, a Communist, or both.
The funny thing is, more people would probably be interested, or likely to join a violent revolution than a comparatively peaceful one which simply requires a little bit of cooperation. But like I...
The funny thing is, more people would probably be interested, or likely to join a violent revolution than a comparatively peaceful one which simply requires a little bit of cooperation.
But like I said, it's extremely unlikely to happen. Humans simply cannot organise on that scale. Capitalist corporations and militaries (so, the most fascist structures ever created) are the only way to get a large number of people in line. And even then we are "only" talking a few million per entity.
It's just that the principle (capitalism) requires these abusive hierarchical structures, so there are many entities of many millions and that's why we are not getting rid of this.
Do they have to? Did Gandhi directly inspire all of India to engage in non-cooperation with the British occupation, or did he inspire a few people who went on to inspire others in turn? While it...
But like I said, it's extremely unlikely to happen. Humans simply cannot organise on that scale.
Do they have to? Did Gandhi directly inspire all of India to engage in non-cooperation with the British occupation, or did he inspire a few people who went on to inspire others in turn?
While it would be ideal if the entire population of workers and students in the US were to down tools and remain on strike for the duration, is it really necessary? Would half the population on strike be enough? What about a quarter? How about a tenth?
This is a very good point. A strong and determined leader can make a huge difference. I read somewhere that for a group to change, 25% of the group has to be united in wanting that change and the...
This is a very good point. A strong and determined leader can make a huge difference.
I read somewhere that for a group to change, 25% of the group has to be united in wanting that change and the rest is network effects ensuring the change happens.
But I am not sure how much that has been proved, or how accurate this is. But, to your point, it would therefore probably take a quarter of working adults. Looks like there's about 200 million of them. So that's 50 million people.
Not sure what it would take for that many people to agree on something and enact change in unison.
Does it have to be in unison? Suppose the populace of a single city went on strike, and it spread as workers in other cities also went on strike out of solidarity.
Not sure what it would take for that many people to agree on something and enact change in unison.
Does it have to be in unison? Suppose the populace of a single city went on strike, and it spread as workers in other cities also went on strike out of solidarity.
Hmmm, I think it would make a big splash in the news (one would hope). I mean if we're talking LA or NYC, then it would be huge. At the same time, I think there are companies that could survive...
Hmmm, I think it would make a big splash in the news (one would hope). I mean if we're talking LA or NYC, then it would be huge.
At the same time, I think there are companies that could survive for quite a long time without workers and are spread far and wide enough to not need the odd town. In fact, there is precedent of whole groups of workers simply being fired in one go for going on strike.
True, but we need to start somewhere and somehow. That's true, which is why we need to organize and plan ahead of time and in secret. If one city goes on strike, we need to watch the reaction and...
At the same time, I think there are companies that could survive for quite a long time without workers and are spread far and wide enough to not need the odd town.
True, but we need to start somewhere and somehow.
In fact, there is precedent of whole groups of workers simply being fired in one go for going on strike.
That's true, which is why we need to organize and plan ahead of time and in secret. If one city goes on strike, we need to watch the reaction and use it to encourage solidarity in other cities and expand the strike.
I think Reagan got away with busting PATCO because the pilots, flight attendants, and airport staff didn't join in either at the beginning of the ATC strike or in retaliation for and solidarity with Reagan firing the striking air-traffic controllers.
Thatcher also played a pretty brutal game in the face of miner's strikes
We need to be even more brutal. For every worker fired, a hundred more should down tools and hit the picket lines. We need to stop worrying about whether strikes are "legal" or not. They can't arrest us all.
Agree with all your points wholeheartedly. So, what surprises me is that the tools needed to organise seemingly don't exist. Where are the strike action or unionising mobile apps, for example? If...
Agree with all your points wholeheartedly. So, what surprises me is that the tools needed to organise seemingly don't exist.
Where are the strike action or unionising mobile apps, for example? If that existed, there might be a slight chance to get something started.
We've got to be careful with using mobile apps to organize. Hell, we need to be wary of the entire internet. Using apps that don't provide anonymous or pseudonymous end-to-end strongly encrypted...
Where are the strike action or unionising mobile apps, for example? If that existed, there might be a slight chance to get something started.
We've got to be careful with using mobile apps to organize. Hell, we need to be wary of the entire internet. Using apps that don't provide anonymous or pseudonymous end-to-end strongly encrypted comms for any sort of activism is probably bad #opsec. Identifiable leaders can be targeted by the authorities.
Ideally, any strike action not sanctioned by a union should appear to be spontaneous resistance, a "stand alone complex".
That's very true. There is also a good chance something like that ends up being made by corporations or law enforcement, specifically to track such activities. We'd have to obviously make it a...
That's very true. There is also a good chance something like that ends up being made by corporations or law enforcement, specifically to track such activities.
We'd have to obviously make it a very strongly anonymised system. But again, a multitude of technologies would have to come together. There has to be a whole support network for this to work and I doubt anybody has the time to create such a thing.
Particularly considering you'd be legislated into oblivion almost immediately. Something akin to darknetmarkets feels like the closest we have gotten in terms of creating a digital freedom kind of movement. But, there's always a very ugly rat's tail of CP, weapon sales and fraud attached with anything on the darknet, making it very easy to discredit and outlaw.
Either that, or we get our hands on a shitload of manual typewriters, get them repaired/restored, and do everything via snail mail when face-to-face- meetings aren't feasible.
Either that, or we get our hands on a shitload of manual typewriters, get them repaired/restored, and do everything via snail mail when face-to-face- meetings aren't feasible.
The essence of the capitalist dream is exactly to leave the human condition by appropriating the human artifice. Marx was acutely aware of this from day one. For really good discussion, read...
The essence of the capitalist dream is exactly to leave the human condition by appropriating the human artifice. Marx was acutely aware of this from day one. For really good discussion, read Chapter 4 of The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry.
"Leaving the human condition" is not merely a symptom of "having power". The former is almost synonymous to the latter. In a hierarchical society, those without power are always those who are intensely and emphatically embodied — more immediate to pain, more concrete, more limited by the immediate bodily presence, more describable (i.e. more subjected to the power of language). Conversely, the privileged and powerful lead a style of existence that is more abstract, less conscious of the bodily messiness/susceptibility to pain/vulnerability, and wielding the power of language.
It's no wonder that late-stage capitalism is becoming not only increasingly greedy and bizarre, it's also becoming more ineffable. We'll have less and less words to describe it coherently.
This hits the nail on the head with me of the progression reddit has undertaken to be the dehumanized version of Facebook. The anonymity allows users to feel hidden while reddit and whoever they sell your info to are able to scrape together all the bits and pieces we drop to know more than most probably realize.
This part also struck me as interesting. The author doesn’t quite grasp that these men became the richest/most powerful by marginalizing not only their peers and workers but also their family. These men don’t care about anyone other than what they can get from you that will benefit them.
Digital platforms have turned an already exploitative and extractive marketplace (think Walmart) into an even more dehumanizing successor (think Amazon)
I think this is the wrong comparison, Amazon is walmart. Amazon was just hip, it was cool to shop at Amazon instead of Walmart. And then an eaiser webpage and now app to make it mass appeal
The even more example that we need to discuss is places like Uber. They have destroyed the Private driver/Taxi market. How many articles/youtube videos are there on how much you really make on Uber
The trick about Amazon is that its exploitation is hidden. With Uber, you at least meet the people working the precarious 'jobs'. Amazon customers don't see inside the warehouses where people work with headsets on through which they're being told by computers right down to the second what to do as if they were literal robots, or see the stress of delivery people trying to keep up their quota.
Sounds like my job in a call center. Everything in a call center is trackable, and being tracked to the nearest second and put in to a report for further review on x issue
Long calls
To Long on Breaks
Slow day, Not taking enough calls, which is the most computerized part. Every hour they review the calls in the last hour along with the days calls overall and then review the average time reps are taking on the calls and adjust staffing based on what that means for future calls (to many people sitting around without a call for more than 30 seconds just reroute a cross trained call over. Or the favorite send staff home. All behind the scenes.)
Everytime you ever called in for customer service the rep was only thinking how to end the call. And not for lazyness, but because the faster they are the better they look on multiple reports. Or as a long call the worse they look on even more reports
The thing with amazon and call centers is due to high turnover there's a pretty big word of mouth on work expectations in the small towns they are located in, and they pay a set and above average wages for other jobs in the area
That sounds awful. It's crazy to me that this is still a model of operation when there's been a metric tonne of research showing that happy workers are motivated workers and surveillance makes people unhappy. The only time I worked a job like that was for a few months doing judging search engine results. All throughout the training they emphasized that if you were too slow or made too many mistakes you'd be fired. I was contracted to work something like 18 hours a week, but it ended up being way more than that because you'd have to sign out every time you needed to go to the bathroom or even to check a text, lest you be fired for being slow. I worked in restaurants for years and if given two options I'd work in a dish pit over doing that again. At least in the dish pit your employers acknowledge your humanity.
I found this article on reddit. It highlights how the wealthy view the future, and why we absolutely can't count on them for it. The more we understand them, the better we can stop them.
I like how this shows up on Medium, with a big "your first three hits of Medium are free" banner at the bottom.
Very worrying. But to be expected. To be ultra-rich, you must also have some kind of idea of what was required for you (or your ancestors) to get there. You would distruct 'normal' people, because you would think 'normal' people distrust you, because you are rich. Kind of self-reinforcing.
I often wonder how we got here and how this will end.
The problem (I think, partyl, at least) is that society (the non-rich majority) has failed to unite and has failed to use technological progress to stay as united as they once were (during new deal times).
The question is now whether someone can create the tool or vehicle required (be that an app or a website or something similar) to allow people to unite once again.
One of the cornerstones of being able to unite is temporarily being able to support each other while nobody is earning any income.
Because, my friends, that is the only way to affect any change at this point in time. We, as a society, have to stop working, possibly for a very long time, and do nothing other than protest. In the most peaceful and quiet manner imaginable: A longterm general strike.
That is all that is needed. The ability to guarantee that enough of us stop working all at the same time for long enoug that the 'elite' or powerful / rich people are bled out.
That could take months or years. And they would try every strategy in the book to undermine us.
We would have to create some kind of parallel society with its own economy basically. Where people create and trade food among themselves, etc. in order to survive, until this is all over.
The USA is actually uniquely capable of pulling this off. This would be much harder to do in other countries.
BUT, and this is where I see the reason for this never happening, this will mean a drastic reduction in the quality of life for, what, 200 million people? For many months, easily.
All that in order to stay organised through the psychological stress that comes with trying to keep such a gigantic resistance alive for long enough for it to really have a meaningful effect?
There is almost no chance of this happening.
Therefore, the system will have to consume itself. The USA has to turn into 1930-1940s Germany, drag the entire world into a world war and things will be reset afterwards. Whatever remains of humanity at the time gets another stab at establishing a world with safeguards strong enough that this doesn't repeat itself.
The problem is that human nature itself tends to lead to this kind of outcome, because consolidation of power is a natural and almost inevitable process.
It's not like they didn't try setting up bullet-proof, watertight safeguards after the 2nd world war. Those have been eroded through a process of incremental, persistent lust for power and riches by the individual. The cumulative effects of which always point to this situation right here re-emerging.
None of the individuals along that 70 year long, billion-people-strong timeline ever thought they were causing much harm. But each one of them grabbed another small piece of the pie we call progress / individual rights & freedom or liberty, and exchanged it for personal gain.
Done long enough, you end up with this. It will happen again, and again, until a less corruptible system is instated.
The most likely outcome, IMO is Elysium. The ultra-rich finally build a space station to live on, while humanity enslaves itself in their service, until those humans can be eradicated through automation.
Eventually only the rich will remain, who will then tier themselves into 'more rich' and 'less rich', where the less rich are also eventually exterminated and only one, very, very rich person remains for all of eternity.
The end.
I would love to see this happen, but I'm more likely to win the Hugo award. The sort of class consciousness necessary for a long-term nationwide general strike probably isn't there. If you suggested to most working-class Republican workers that Big Government and Big Business were working together to shaft him and his family and that the answer was to down tools and stop working, they'd probably think you're either a Martian, a Communist, or both.
The funny thing is, more people would probably be interested, or likely to join a violent revolution than a comparatively peaceful one which simply requires a little bit of cooperation.
But like I said, it's extremely unlikely to happen. Humans simply cannot organise on that scale. Capitalist corporations and militaries (so, the most fascist structures ever created) are the only way to get a large number of people in line. And even then we are "only" talking a few million per entity.
It's just that the principle (capitalism) requires these abusive hierarchical structures, so there are many entities of many millions and that's why we are not getting rid of this.
Do they have to? Did Gandhi directly inspire all of India to engage in non-cooperation with the British occupation, or did he inspire a few people who went on to inspire others in turn?
While it would be ideal if the entire population of workers and students in the US were to down tools and remain on strike for the duration, is it really necessary? Would half the population on strike be enough? What about a quarter? How about a tenth?
This is a very good point. A strong and determined leader can make a huge difference.
I read somewhere that for a group to change, 25% of the group has to be united in wanting that change and the rest is network effects ensuring the change happens.
But I am not sure how much that has been proved, or how accurate this is. But, to your point, it would therefore probably take a quarter of working adults. Looks like there's about 200 million of them. So that's 50 million people.
Not sure what it would take for that many people to agree on something and enact change in unison.
Does it have to be in unison? Suppose the populace of a single city went on strike, and it spread as workers in other cities also went on strike out of solidarity.
Hmmm, I think it would make a big splash in the news (one would hope). I mean if we're talking LA or NYC, then it would be huge.
At the same time, I think there are companies that could survive for quite a long time without workers and are spread far and wide enough to not need the odd town. In fact, there is precedent of whole groups of workers simply being fired in one go for going on strike.
The ATC thing with Reagan is quite famous (https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/reagan-fires-11-000-striking-air-traffic-controllers-aug-5-1981-012292), and Thatcher also played a pretty brutal game in the face of miner's strikes.
True, but we need to start somewhere and somehow.
That's true, which is why we need to organize and plan ahead of time and in secret. If one city goes on strike, we need to watch the reaction and use it to encourage solidarity in other cities and expand the strike.
I think Reagan got away with busting PATCO because the pilots, flight attendants, and airport staff didn't join in either at the beginning of the ATC strike or in retaliation for and solidarity with Reagan firing the striking air-traffic controllers.
We need to be even more brutal. For every worker fired, a hundred more should down tools and hit the picket lines. We need to stop worrying about whether strikes are "legal" or not. They can't arrest us all.
Agree with all your points wholeheartedly. So, what surprises me is that the tools needed to organise seemingly don't exist.
Where are the strike action or unionising mobile apps, for example? If that existed, there might be a slight chance to get something started.
We've got to be careful with using mobile apps to organize. Hell, we need to be wary of the entire internet. Using apps that don't provide anonymous or pseudonymous end-to-end strongly encrypted comms for any sort of activism is probably bad #opsec. Identifiable leaders can be targeted by the authorities.
Ideally, any strike action not sanctioned by a union should appear to be spontaneous resistance, a "stand alone complex".
That's very true. There is also a good chance something like that ends up being made by corporations or law enforcement, specifically to track such activities.
We'd have to obviously make it a very strongly anonymised system. But again, a multitude of technologies would have to come together. There has to be a whole support network for this to work and I doubt anybody has the time to create such a thing.
Particularly considering you'd be legislated into oblivion almost immediately. Something akin to darknetmarkets feels like the closest we have gotten in terms of creating a digital freedom kind of movement. But, there's always a very ugly rat's tail of CP, weapon sales and fraud attached with anything on the darknet, making it very easy to discredit and outlaw.
Either that, or we get our hands on a shitload of manual typewriters, get them repaired/restored, and do everything via snail mail when face-to-face- meetings aren't feasible.
The essence of the capitalist dream is exactly to leave the human condition by appropriating the human artifice. Marx was acutely aware of this from day one. For really good discussion, read Chapter 4 of The Body in Pain by Elaine Scarry.
"Leaving the human condition" is not merely a symptom of "having power". The former is almost synonymous to the latter. In a hierarchical society, those without power are always those who are intensely and emphatically embodied — more immediate to pain, more concrete, more limited by the immediate bodily presence, more describable (i.e. more subjected to the power of language). Conversely, the privileged and powerful lead a style of existence that is more abstract, less conscious of the bodily messiness/susceptibility to pain/vulnerability, and wielding the power of language.
It's no wonder that late-stage capitalism is becoming not only increasingly greedy and bizarre, it's also becoming more ineffable. We'll have less and less words to describe it coherently.
Why didn’t they have him sign an NDA at least? Kind of seems like a no brainer to me.
Maybe they did, but it was only limited to not naming who they were/what companies they owned?