Mastodawn

A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆

Pretty wild to be living in a time when humans are being forced to work in order to even be considered deserving of life or even to be considered human at all, while simultaneously human labor is being systematically eliminated from the concept of work.

A.R. Moxon, Verified Duck 🦆May 28

If I could change one thing about US culture, it would be this unshakeable and absolutely backward belief that life must be earned, and generating profit is how you earn it.

Life is a human right. Profit must be earned, and those who want to earn it must respect human rights in order to do so.

BradleyKSherman May 28

@JuliusGoat Ten million species on the planet and only one has to pay rent.

Fluffy Kitty Cat Jul 10

@bks @JuliusGoat you ever look at a squirrel in the tree and think damn he has it nice he doesn't even have a credit score

@JuliusGoat "Italy is a democratic republic founded on work" First article of our Constitution.
Makes me foaming mad every time I think about, especially every time some one says to me "we have the most beautiful Constitution in the world" (this is an actual line that was taught in school, and is repeated at every opportunity)

@bovaz @JuliusGoat maybe it's beautifully printed and typeset on the finest paper with gold inlays...

@mmby @bovaz @JuliusGoat
I was in a military school program because highschool,, anyway a black guy came from South Africa and spoke to us about his experience there and the new constitution they made. He said something about how they had the best constitution in the world and a dude next to me got very angry that America wouldn't be the home of his favorite Constitution.

Like, dude! The American constitution codified how to count slaves for representation that they could not exercise and you want a survivor of apartheid to praise you for living with that? YOU DIDN'T EVEN DO ANYTHING YOU WERE JUST BORN HERE 🫨

Cats Who Code (cursed)May 28

@JuliusGoat as we like to say at home, "You can't 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' if you don't have any to begin with." That's not what the phrase originally meant anyway, but it's been adopted by right-wing groups to attack the poor, essentially.

Cavyherd May 28

More to the point, generating profit for •somebody else•. Not even profit that one can access oneself. It's depressing af.

Pistolenkind May 28

@JuliusGoat I am from europe, austria and it is the same thing over here, sadly.

cognitively accessible math May 28

@JuliusGoat It took me a while to learn not to measure a person's "value" in assorted ways -- how smart are they, what skills do they have, all from my perspective of course!

HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot May 28

@JuliusGoat @kims Oh hell yeah. Relatedly, I think the biggest folk belief in America is that there are some easy-to-get super-secret fountain-of-plenty benefit programs that are only available to “unworthy” recipients.

But … What if we weren’t Calvinist?

PirjaPaa May 29

Fluffy Kitty Cat Jul 10

@JuliusGoat we're slaves to the capitalist system where Leverage is gained over Us by withhold of him every necessity of life and we can only get them back by laboring for the overlords

fear is not a Weltanschauung May 28

@JuliusGoat turns out the unspoken corollary to "in the future, technology will mean you only work three hours a week" was "you will therefore have to live on a three-hour-a-week paycheck"

Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦May 28

@wouldinotcallmyselfahumanbeing @JuliusGoat

Not a deal-breaker, as long as I'm on min £300/hour after taxes.

fear is not a Weltanschauung May 28

@bytebro look, if you could command that sort of salary in our glorious thechnologically-facilitated future you won't have to work at all, merely collect rent for whatever human rights your grandparents monopolised. @JuliusGoat

Daniel Brotherston May 28

@JuliusGoat You forget, there is another way in which humans can be considered deserving of life...and that is by owning (capital, land, whatever).

You can draw the relevant conclusions as to which people certain groups want to be considered human.

Martijn Vos May 28

Yeah, we really need to change our economic system. At the very least, give everybody a liveable basic income. Better would be to ensure the productivity of AI benefits everybody instead of just the owners.

Japonica May 28

@mcv @JuliusGoat this seems very far removed from the whole purpose of AI. It's designed to do the opposite of what you hope for. It is designed wholly to generate profit for the fascists, and to secure their power. It doesn't exist without them.

Martijn Vos May 28

That depends entirely on who you ask. Entire generations of SciFi writers completely disagree, and think AI should take over our work so we don't have to work anymore, and can enjoy the fruits of the robots' labour while we make art and play games.

And that's certainly how I think AI should be used. It's the only way it can be used once it starts taking over people's work. It's that or revolution.

Japonica May 28

@mcv I'm not asking previous generations of sci fi writers , I'm just looking out at the world we have, here, now.

I don't see the billionaires granting people 3 day weeks on 5 days pay. I see them driving us beyond the climate event horizon in a rush to control and own the most and treating people as fodder.

Martijn Vos May 29

And that's the thing that needs to change, not get accepted as normal.

Sharp Leaves May 28

@JuliusGoat it's the secret sauce that makes capitalism sell. We could easily engineer full employment, but it takes away the real special feature of capitalism, the victims.

Don't speak out too much, don't threaten the structure, we all aren't too happy with things but you don't want to end up on the street like..."those people". One of them.

Big, illegal swings in direction need more visible unemployment or homelessness - to remind you, you could be next.

@JuliusGoat Almost as if dehumanizing people was the point ...

https://youtu.be/Y0PZQfFUxTw

An Invitation from the Communist Party USA

YouTube

@JuliusGoat The species is headed for a wake-up or permanent go to sleep, and regardless, a serious adjustment on how we perceive our lives should be and proceed. The StarTrek Socialist Utopia seems a bit illusive right now being replaced by the Capitalist nightmare.
And you could spend months watching Trump grubbing billions out of the economy until the implosion boots him out. Might be a colorful show. 🌈

RiaResists May 28

@JuliusGoat we’re not “real people”. Only billionaires are human.

Alison Wilder May 28

@JuliusGoat that is some damn fine nutshelling.

It looks like Billionaires want to solve global warming by killing off everyone else.

UkeleleEric May 28

@alienghic @JuliusGoat Actually themselves, too.

@UkeleleEric @JuliusGoat

They appear to think they can build bunkers they can survive in.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

Which turned into https://www.nprillinois.org/2022-09-06/in-survival-of-the-richest-author-douglas-rushkoff-examines-the-escape-plans-of-the-tech-elite

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

The Guardian

Mandy Mac May 28

@JuliusGoat it's the slavery that has to stop all the forms of coercion

@JuliusGoat it seems like insanity - an inability to connect the dots. 44% of Americans do not earn a living wage Yet one individual has more wealth than 130 countries. The average national income per capita for the USA is $65,000 per person so you can draw your own conclusion. Pretty much the same everywhere.

Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder May 28

Thank you: it needed to be said.

@JuliusGoat let's GPL everything!