BitsyNov 13, 2022

I saw a graph that Gen-X went Red this cycle, and I really do feel like it's because our boomer parents shoved Ayn Rand novels on us WAY early.

I mean, I was a full-on Randroid for most of my young adult life, until the 2004 election. Shamefully late. I should have gone hard left in 2002.

But the brain-laundry I had to do to get there was a years long process.

Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

I first read Atlas Shrugged when I was 16 years old.

I'm an avid reader. I was reading so many grand masters of science fiction at that age.

And then Ayn fucking Rand was a rock thrown at the window of my mind.

An engine that runs on magic! A miraculous metal never conceived before! Oh, all these sci-fi notes that hooked my brain!

Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

Those sci-fi hooks hooked me but good.

It took me a good decade to finally go......oh, she was genuinely fucked up.

There's a reason I didn't come out as queer until my father died. Because I subconsciously knew that he'd disown me, shun me, kick me out of the family.

Show threadBitsy

I'm happily out now, happily myself, happily radical and leftist and queer.

But I *get* why Gen X is tilting right. The best minds of my generation have been co-opted by Objectivism.

Nov 13, 2022 at 4:38pmWeb
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

PS: The old saw that "you get more conservative as you get older" is hot bullshit. The older I've gotten, the more I've realized that a well-educated, well-compensated community is a good thing.

We need to unionize. We need to have a general strike against our owners. That's the only thing that could possibly get things moving, get things changed.

Show threadSuzyanalyst1Nov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf Ugh—Gen X here, went through an Ayn Rand stage at 17, quickly realized I was becoming immoral and antisocial, and that was the end of it.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@Suzyanalyst1 I read *EVERY* Ayn Rand book before I was 20, tried for the essay scholarship like I said, argued with complete strangers about it.

And then I went "Hang on, I have no friends. WTF??"

I woke up real fast after that realization.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf I think we need a revolution of collectivism where we realize that if employees owned all the businesses and if consumers chose to only spend at businesses owned by their employees, then citizens could own the market and decide what to pay ourselves. That just sounds more sustainable to me than unions constantly fighting w capital and those same consumer-citizens continuing to give them all your $$.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella To steal from my improv classes: *YES AND*

Yes, and we also need to recognize that the systems that make corporations possible are untenable. We need to rally to overthrow Citizens United, and force politicians into rejecting corporate donations. Unions are ultimately a good thing...*IF* we can tell the corporations to kick rocks.

Unions have had their issues, certainly. The jokes about Jimmy Hoffa tell that tale. But if we can get corporate money out of politics? The people win.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf Corps are just one biz structure but there are others. #coops are not top down, they’re one man one vote. #Esop have proportional ownership. The crucial thing we don’t get is #captialism actually works really well if there aren’t monopolies. (Like how here we can always choose a different server) If we made tax law that encourages these models and discourages big biz & taking $ out of communities the biz will change on their own. We could use #mastedon to do it.
Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf if we had a server-marketplace where we could tag biz by hashtags and the tech made buying from them easy then for example we could replace Amazon with strategic spending on our household goods. Like we could choose products that come from local, EE-owned, etc if everyone were listed in that forum. I would love to be able to spend really strategically and just take that $ away from the big corps and spend it wisely. I think we just need the tech to enable us to do it.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Okay but like...talk about pie in the sky, hon.

There are systems in place that encourage consumption. Amazon is one of those systems. Saying that maybe, just maybe, we should question those systems shouldn't be an entire dismissal of how consumption works.

I get it. I use Amazon...because Amazon has made it impossible to shop anywhere else. That doesn't exempt me from going "Hey! Maybe we should find another way?"

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf We just helped tank twitter. We did. because we chose to leave. and advertisers see that. Every time there is a credible threat of corp boycott, watch, they respond instantly. They cannot afford for us to wake up and spend smart. But it’s really inconvenient to spend smart. I think if we had the tech to help make it easier we could take that $. And if taxes are targeted at big out of state corps & they’re offered an off-ramp if by becoming EEowned… many will take it.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Look. I deleted my FB page in 2017. I was a very active LiveJournal user. You have NO IDEA how much money I spent on LJ. I've been active on social media since before it was called social media. I have been terminally on line, don't quote the old magics to me, etc. etc.

Bo Burnham said it best: "They're trying to colonize your life."

I'm an anti-colonist. You should be too.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf idk who owns LJ or what that’s about but I am profoundly anti-colonialist if you’re likening capital to imperialists. And I think what I am saying would revolutionize our economy and give the profit and the power to the workers. I’m talking about workers taking over the economy from the ground up.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella The Russian media. They own LJ. They have since 2015.

I feel like we're on the same side...but not, since you're anti-union. You say you're pro worker but anti union which........what??

I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, I do. But girl, if you're anti-union you're not a leftist, hard stop.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf lol I’m not anti union! If you’re working for a top-down corp the union is the only thing that gives you as much power as capital has. In that context we damn sure need unions. I’m deconstructing the whole corp model and saying we don’t have to do it that way. We can change that. We can tell capital the only way to save on taxes is to convert to EEownership. We can demand that govt invest in building EEowned solutions that offer competition so we can own the industry
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Okay so I see what you're saying, the power of the "free market" driving things.

Here's the problem: *PEOPLE.*

We've seen, in real time, what the free market has done to Twitter. A single person made a fake Eli Lilly account, causing the market share to tank to the tune of almost 20 billion.

People's actual real lives are more important than money. That's a plain fact.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf I don’t get how the impersonations are an example of the free market. The example here is we all just chose to leave a monopoly and join a federation (marketplace) of distinct but interchangeable small servers. If we replaced monopolies w co-ops or esops then even the big entities would be under worker control. Like so if twitter were EE or user-owned, the profit on that ad money comes to every user as a dividend check.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Okay, let's break it down.

Let's say tomorrow, social media was a co-op. And everybody was happy and cool and on board with how everything went.

What's to stop another bro-tech billionaire going "THAT'S MINE NOW" and just trouncing every rule of the collective.

That's my point. Nobody should have the power to come into a space and do that, no matter how much money they have. That's the corruption of capital.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf If twitter were employee or user owned no “one guy” is coming in doing anything if we don’t authorize it. We would vote in the management and we could vote them out. We could vote on what kinds of ads we take/don’t take. I think representational democracy is a good model for how a bigger ee-owned biz could be managed. But an open social media w lots of choice like mastodon is even better than one monopoly social media company.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Girl. Again. You're missing the point. The systems in place are the problem. Representational democracy is great......but the systems in place actively work to suppress it.

You want to make an ideal world? Fight against Citizens United, and the capitalists who undermine that status quo.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf I totally agree we need the $ out of politics. 100% I am not so sure the systems you think are so rigid are as rigid as they seem. Corporations are money whores and we choose to give them our $ every day. All I’m saying is if we organized ourselves and leveraged the tech well, we could change that pretty fast and dramatically.
Show threadBitsyNov 13, 2022

@dawnatella Okay but like...Unions *ARE* how that works. I'm a union employee, have been for two decades. #IATSEstrong

So tell me again how we're supposed to organize ourselves without a union.

Show threaddawnatellaNov 13, 2022
@bethlynnf some industries are going to be easier to take over than others. I’m arguing we shift our mindset and begin doing it. Online shopping for household goods is an easy one. We have the tech so there’s no reason to give that $ to bezos. In your industry capital owns the venues and the production companies, right? That’s what needs to be deconstructed to understand what segments workers can start running themselves first, drive customers to spend there and build from there