Right-o, then: Protesty protest. Whoops, I got bagged by facial recognition and sent to El Salvador by gustapo. At least the media completely ignored the protest and no one even knows it happened.
A guy just got kicked out of Madison Square Garden. He was banned for life for a shirt he sold online that called for the removal of the MSG Ceo. He didn't buy the tickets he was using, and hasn't been to an MSG property in 20 years. They picked him out of the crowd using facial recognition, which was linked to his social media, which was matched to a list of banned people. This is just the actions of a private entity, how deep do you think the governments abilities reach?
Protesting these days is a lot bigger ask than it was even 20 years ago. Proper resistance even harder still. I agree we need action, drastic action, and soon. But I don't fault ordinary people for being afraid to lose everything for what they believe.
True. But we have other leverage. Some 70% of the economy is consumer spending. Stop buying things and the complicit corporations that are dependent on quarterly growth will change their tune quickly. Even if they don't get to have another tax cut.
Sounds like it’s time to try something that isn’t as easily ignored.
This is the part where Americans shirk responsibility by telling me “you first” and then telling me “then keep your mouth shut” when they hear I’m not from the states- which is 1) hilarious coming from Americans and 2) helps them to go on pretending someone else will come to save them.
As a European who studied in the US and since moved back to Europe after working in Silicon Valley for a while I am actually more and more ashamed about the US section of my CV.
I don’t even mention my time in the US in my cover letters anymore when applying for jobs.
When HitlerPig's wars start, he's going to need a draft to fill the ranks, and in the past, college students were deferred. By destroying the age and role of colleges in pur society, he can lay the groundwork of not allowing them to be an excuse to avoid mandatory military service.
There will still be ways to opt out, but they will all be extremely expensive, and require other qualifications such as proof of ideology, clean social media record, a loyalty oath, etc. But mostly money. Pay enough, you can avoid the draft. They might even resurrect the Civil War era custom of hiring someone to take your place. The bottom line is that the wealthy won't have to go, if they are willing to pay enough to save their children's lives.
The only reason to join the military to invade Canada, is to defect once you get there.
That could be a great strategy for "The Enemy." Just make it known to the American military draftees that if they defect, they will be richly rewarded with amnesty and assistance in settling in their new country. If my son was drafted, and was heading off to war, I would encourage him to defect the first chance he got. He wouldn't be alone, thousands would do the same thing, crippling any strategies the military was attempting.
Never thought stupid comedy relief movies about college life were going to be historical records of how US society used to be before becoming a hellhole that doesn't value higher education.
It's not just "DT"... Genocide Joe was attacking students too. They're both just continuing decades of pro-genocide policies. Basically every politician is on the AIPAC payroll. Almost zero politicians are standing up for these students.
If one cannot learn from history, it will repeat. The actions that led to this moment are important to understand if one wants to be able to counter them and avoid them in the future.
As to my understanding of the background behind this and the greater context:
Economic growth on Earth is slowing down significantly; that is because quantitative growth is not possible without damaging the planet, and qualitative growth (such as infotainment, IT) are slowing down as well (consider "enshittification" as a symptom of poor vision for the IT industry).
For one, that is why people want to go to Mars. I'm definitely not a Musk fanboy, but people have wanted /thought about going to Mars before Musk. (consider Robert Zubrin 2000 "The Case For Mars"). If it is doable, and it probably is considering there's enough water on Mars to sustain a civilization, they are hoping/predicting that it might become a booming market. I don't want to be a "lunatic" or whatever you'd call me; but i'd argue i've done more research about this project than you, in case you've watched a YouTube video that says "it's dumb/impossible".
But back to the article:
Since growth of Earth's economy is slowing down, demand for human labor is decreasing. Since the labor market is a market, less demand at equal supply leads to lower prices (wages). That is why "cost of living" appears to be skyrocketing. Food prices have not gone up in the recent years (because the means of food production did not change much in recent years), but real wages have gone down, if you subtract inflation. That is how it should be looked at.
Lower wages lead to a significantly lower quality of life for workers, as they are arguably one of the most decisive factors for quality of life. That is why "everything seems to get more difficult" over time.
I honestly don't see a solution for this; demand for human labor could not easily be stimulated more than has already been tried in the last 15+ years. If automation still replaces labor, it will not lead to mass unemployedness (such is a thing of the past, when people were either employed or unemployed), but instead to drastic drops in wages (which makes it more attractive for companies to employ people or keep them in employment). I know laborers are proud of their labor, and are going to feel it as a "shock" that wages go down. I still think it's necessary for the Quality of Life (which is very important, maybe the most important thing that politics should talk about) to introduce some sort of subsidy (like Universal Basic Income). I know some people are gonna be against it (notably without giving a good argument); but i do deem it necessary. That would give more buying power to the people and people could more easily deal with the rising cost of everything, including education.
No, either companies have to pay higher wages or we spiral into depression. There's no other way out of this. At least according to this regime. A new public works to tackle employment and cure our aging infrastructure, higher taxes and wealth redistribution would actually be the way to go. But there's a snowballs chance in he'll that will ever happen.