“The economic void generates a financial horizon for nihilism. When money escapes into infinite debt, it obliterates the basis for any account of value grounded in the classical categories of land, labor, and capital.” — Currency of Nihilism (54)
Robert Owen
@petit-a.bsky.social
Gen X phd, thrown into the briar patch of commerce. Pseudonym.
“When no way out is left, the destructive drive becomes entirely indifferent to the question it never posed quite clearly: whether it is directed against others or against its own subject.” Minima Moralia (67)
the liberal dilemma: you hate donald trump but you love the conditions that led to donald trump
“Luridly the horror of the ending lights up the deception of the origin.” — Adorno, Minima Moralia (145)
Democrats are a party of capital over labor — with a smiley face added. It’s all been a charade. Leadership would rather die than become a Party of the People.
Democrats won’t decide if they are a party of capital or labor. Being neither clearly, they get mauled, over and over again, by absolute lunatics.
Revenge porn is the only thing Trump really has delivered for MAGA.
Dawkins is a great example that when you have a naturalistic view of "real patterns" but don't have a process ontology, you will end up in metaphysical dualism unintentionally. Minds are not software, they are what specific bodies are doing as they engage with the world.
It’s like this: Why perceptions are our realities - Flux
Minds do not create experience, experience creates minds
flux.community
human beings expect the world….to be set ablaze by a universal power which they themselves are and over which they are powerless.” — Dialectic of Enlightenment
Reasons to be alarmed #162. You may recall that in DR STRANGELOVE a crazed US general launched WW3. Well now we have religious nutcases in the US military who want to induce the Rapture / Second Coming. We also increasingly have AI control of weapons, and AI will believe whatever you tell it…
US troops were told war on Iran was ‘all part of God’s divine plan’, watchdog alleges
Religious freedom group says 200 troops sent complaints of superiors using extremist Christian rhetoric to justify war
theguardian.com
Enshitification (Cory Doctorow) is just a specific example of sabotage (Veblen). The best and most competitive American companies do everything they can to sabotage markets and collect rents. This is the foundation of the America way of life.
liberals don't want 💀FASCISM💀 liberals want 🌈fascism🌈
The reason the Democratic Party is incapable of fighting fascism is that fascism is itself a way to resolve tensions between capital and labor. Republicans have found their path to resolution (fascism), Democrats still don’t know what the question is.
If the stock market keeps going up, Trump is free to do anything he wants. Lots of folks are angry, but how many are selling US equities? Those precious "portfolios" are pulling the kids into a fascist abyss.
America can build more housing, but the existing financial system will keep prices out of reach. The financialization of assets moves faster than construction. www.brookings.edu/articles/qua...
Quantitative easing and housing inflation post-COVID | Brookings
Aaron Klein and Alan Cui assess the impact of the Federal Reserve's actions during the pandemic on the price of housing
brookings.edu
Skyrocketing inequality created the material foundation for mass disillusionment with the American system. Assets get bailed out (market go up), and most people get left behind. Mainstream Democrats still have no theory/critique of that political economy.
If lumpen proletariat is understood as a social location of resentment, then Trump is clearly in the mold of Napoleon III. He has assembled the same cross-class, grab-bag collection of disaffected lumpen that kept Napoleon III in power for decades.
Probably a good time to be reminded that Disney has been a hell-hole for a long time now. thebaffler.com/salvos/the-m...
The Magic Kingdom | Sarah Marshall
Capitalism, like all abusive relationships, creates a sense of learned helplessness in its victims. We are complicit in what it makes of us.
thebaffler.com
"A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud." ~ George Orwell
"The concrete wealth of America is vanishing into a black hole of pure financial destruction. Nothing is created from this destruction, while the financial class is expropriating the outcome of the general labor force and the general intellect." Berardi, Uprising
The American idea of a perfectly free market is a practical and theoretical lie. Working Americans got carved up by rent-seeking financial professionals — who know better.
Nothing says "Chicago School of Economics" better than losing all your real hard money investing in fake soft money.
The bottom 50% of wage earners in the US have an average savings of $4805, in China it’s $9760. So, 50% of Americans have nothing at all. These folks need radical change and fast. I don’t think corporate Dems grasp the urgency of this level of inequality — it destroys democracies.
“We are promoting catastrophic policies, for only catastrophe — that is, the collapse of the liberal system — will clear the way for the new order…. Every weakening of the system is good, very good for us.” Gregor Strasser (1929)
Is it a party of labor or capital? Republicans papered over their labor-capital divide with ethno-fascism — and that works pretty well for them. Until the Democratic Party resolves its labor/capital divide — or finds a gimmick to paper that over — it will continue to decline.
Democracy in America began to make its exit when the USA abandoned its industrial middle class and let entire cities collapse. A decades-long bipartisan consensus made this disaster. This moment is simply the end of a story we told ourselves about capital and labor.
America shifted to privately-owned retirement accounts in the 1980s. Educated professionals were best positioned to take advantage of that and many have huge stock market gains. Thus, they are structurally more aligned with capital than labor. This is why the Democratic Party never does anything.