My dudes, you have nothing to lose but your Chains.
Hence why some of the US simply CAN’T protest. If they miss a single pay check-- or get fired for missing work-- they’re fucked. Insurance is also tired to work.
Or get injured and end up with a bunch of medical bills. Or about any number of other things that can go off the rails.
Financial slavery
it all started in the city of Wurms in the year 1000
Fuck it. Chips on the table, china taking over america would be a net positive at this point. I’ve never bought into the “country bad because ideology different” bullshit we’re fed here in the us. As I can see from here, just about any other large nation assuming control would bring me everything I ask my government for as a default.
Trading late stage capitalism for mid stage capitalism and a pre-existing merger of state and corporate power doesn’t sound like a permanent fix. Also, deposing a strongman in favor a system that has reestablished it’s leadership as a strongman is not an improvement.
Please, president Xi, the Statesian public yearns for liberation
Maybe the Chinese proletariat can launch a concurrent revolution to overthrow Xi.
is xi santa now?
No but they’ve met up irl
If one paycheck is all that stands between half of the people and homelessness, can it really be called the “middle” class?
Its right in the middle, between homelessness and billionaire.
So I learned it this way:
Upper Class - can live a luxurious life without working at all, and even have domestic employees etc.
Middle Class - can live comfortably but only if they work
Lower class - cannot live comfortably even if they work, and can very easily end up homeless (no social safety net)
The dude who taught me this was my Sociology of Work teacher over twenty years ago.
This isn’t particularly helpful, though, as it doesn’t explain why these classes exist. Class traditionally refers to how we engage with societal production and distribution, like wage laborers, business owners, sole proprietors, artisans, etc. By focusing on the outcomes of this class distinctions, you obscure the mechanisms by which they persist and are reinforced.
Class traditionally
It only refers to how we engage with societal production in a handful of belief systems such as Marxism. These are different from how Anthropologists view class which is different from how sociologists view class and all of the above are different from how many older societies viewed class.
There was an article with a pretty compelling argument a while ago that basically said the true poverty line in the US is over 100.000$/year family income (when you look at what that number was originally supposed to measure). Below that you’re getting fucked left and right.
Every dollar a family earns between 40k and 100k makes them poorer, because it triggers benefit losses (like health care & child care) that exceed income gains.
So what the US reports as “the middle class” are actually the working poor
I was reading Michael Roberts’ blog the other day, and he pointed out something similar. The official calculations for inflation significantly understate it for various reasons. However, if you look at actual labor hours needed to cover the essentials of life, and you use the median income amount from 1950 (for the US), then that number comes out about $102k per year. Said another way, for a standard of living based on real life, to have the standard of the median American in 1950, you would need to earn over $100k today. But if you take that 1950 median income and just adjust it for official inflation, you only get to like $42k.
It’s helpful to divorce class from simple material wealth, and return to how we engage with production and distribution. The true “middle class” is the small business owner, in reality most people are working class.
I certainly don’t disagree, but I think it’s very useful to highlight how this has changed (IMO) in recent decades. I think there was a time when the boomer generation was earning relatively good incomes that allowed them to live comfortably and accumulate wealth (mainly in houses and the stock market). I think this arrangement between capital and the (predominantly white) working class created a situation where even those workers without much wealth could be “bought off” and swear allegiance to capitalism. This wasn’t sustainable of course, as the postwar industrial boom and then the gains from neoliberalism were never sustainable. Couple that with the fall of the Eastern Bloc and with it the “threat of a good example”, and I would say that this arrangement lasted as late as the GFC at most. I think this helps explain how older people today - even if they are solidly working class - might still be hostile to anything they think is “socialism” while younger generations do not share those opinions, it seems.
Yep, you’re referring to the “labor aristocracy.” The working classes in the imperial core are bribed by the spoils of imperialism into complacency. What’s causing the rise in radicalization is a decline in imperialism, due to global south development (largely due to projects like BRI and trade with China). This is why the US Empire is surging to the right, as imperialism is being brought inward and austerity forced on the labor aristocracy. This is causing radicalization:
So it’s important not just to look at the local, but also the international aspects of class. There’s also the fact that the US is a settler-colony, and this is the primary contradiction within Statesian society.
Middle: in between homelessness and millionaires
Nor even “the working class”.
The precariat.
Median class? Mode class?
Yeah cuz the lower class don’t get paid at all. Homelessness is rampant all over the states
Just keep working harder! It’ll trickle down!
Brits and Germans too.
Canadians and Australians too while we’re at it. … And and and and and…
But sure. First rule of triage, tend to the most in danger first.
I’m not in/from the US. I haven’t been one paycheck away from homelessness since I was a student.
Enough savings to last half a year without income has always been a rule of thumb.
I go with 10 year rule of thumb
I totally understand having a world view like this but it’s the rampant censorship of any opposing view point on this instance that made me reconsider my monthly donation to the development of Lemmy and move it to piefed instead.
PieFed is worse when it comes to censorship, though, as a platform. There’s all sorts of tools for “reputation,” replies from blocked users outright aren’t sent for anyone to see, and more. Lemmy as a platform is less susceptible to censorship outright and is more transparent about removed content.
You’re misunderstanding the blocked user issue. If every instance was Piefed, you simply wouldn’t be able to reply to anyone who has blocked you. “Reply” is essentially faded out. The difference is that Lemmy doesn’t implement the block function in the same way, so Piefed just throws out replies by blocked users to the person who has blocked them coming from Lemmy.
Is that the best way to handle blocked users, who have indicated they no longer wish to contact you? I don’t know. I can imagine it changing - but in my experience there’s no good way of handling it that won’t upset someone.
I’m not misunderstanding it, it’s a fact of how federation between Lemmy and PieFed works, and it results in comments appearing on Lemmy that do not exist on PieFed. Given Rimu’s clear ideological stances and vocal support for building in censorship into PieFed itself, I think it’s pretty obvious why this is the case: PieFed developers don’t like that Lemmy has a lot of communists, and wish to make a space easier to shut out communists.
I’m not misunderstanding it, it’s a fact of how federation between Lemmy and PieFed works, and it results in comments appearing on Lemmy that do not exist on PieFed.
Correct, but you’re assigning some malicious intent to it - when it’s simply differences regarding how blocking should work.
Given Rimu’s clear ideological stances and vocal support for building in censorship into PieFed itself
What “ideological stances” would these be that relevant here? Anyone can be blocked. You could block me now and I couldn’t reply via Piefed. This specific decision has no relevance to anything here.
I think it’s pretty obvious why this is the case: PieFed developers don’t like that Lemmy has a lot of communists, and wish to make a space easier to shut out communists.
Except that anyone can be blocked. A communist could utilise the block function in the same way and stop the person from being able to reply.
Rimu baked-in default blocking of Lemmygrad and Hexbear, to me this is already proof of malicious intent. Rimu’s ideological stances are reflected in the code itself, including things like a social credit score system that makes it more difficult to see comments from “unsavory users.” I’m aware that anyone can use the block function, but when viewed with the context of how Rimu’s views impact the project and how it relates to the fediverse in general, it’s designed with creating an echo chamber in mind.
Oh yeah, I remember hearing about this. Even apart from instances some community names by default aren’t federated. It’s a really weird stance.
It all makes sense if you look at it from the point of view of Rimu developing a platform that suits their views and interests first and foremost. I don’t agree with it, but it’s logical and predictable with that frame of analysis.
That’s an automated check-system for new piefed instances that specifically ignores communities with specific names. That list has been trimmed down now purely to just insults and slurs. It really isn’t a major component of the system as said communities with those names can still be manually federated to it.
Rimu baked-in default blocking of Lemmygrad and Hexbear, to me this is already proof of malicious intent.
Easily turned-off - and is by multiple other instances, but yes, Rimu doesn’t like them.
Rimu’s ideological stances are reflected in the code itself, including things like a social credit score system that makes it more difficult to see comments from “unsavory users.”
Not sure what this has to do with any particular or specific allegation of anti-communism. This is mostly to catch trolls and spammers, and it works.
I’m aware that anyone can use the block function, but when viewed with the context of how Rimu’s views impact the project and how it relates to the fediverse in general, it’s designed with creating an echo chamber in mind.
I simply don’t follow that at all. It means more accurately that Rimu simply believes that a blocked user shouldn’t be able to be replied to by the person they blocked as that can be used to harass by some.
I don’t think it’s particularly outlandish to say that the facts that Rimu thinks it’s acceptable to build ideological bias into the code itself, and that PieFed specifically has tools designed to more cultivate an echo chamber, are likely connected with Rimu’s own political bias. PieFed makes censorship easier and more opaque, Lemmy makes it harder and more transparent. I’m not saying that there are no good reasons to use PieFed, but that at least acknowledging that it’s being developed primarily to specifically counter issues Rimu personally has with Lemmy, including politically, is pretty reasonable.
As long as you can reply to replies of people who blocked you, I think it’s fine. Reddit’s approach is absolutely insane.
*Which is not what piefed does
Reddit goes further and does the [unavailable] thing.
I’m talking about your instance.
It literally has a list of words that dessalines doesn’t like and are replaced with removed.
Yea, it has a slur filter. I’m okay with that, and it’s preferable to PieFed’s thoughtcrime style censorship with literal social credit scores.
Are you taking about the attitude where I’m currently sitting at 92% even though I don’t ever say the popular thing?
I don’t even know how it works but why is mine there?
Dunno man, I‘ve got the double red triangle exclamation mark for „very low reputation“. Certainly it „warns“ unsuspecting people and I had already at least one commenter, that mistrusted my commentary just for that. Cool. Cool, cool.
Don‘t have an account — do I also have an attitude, it doesn‘t show any publically?
Either way, branding users like that, intransparently, by machine logic, I certainly am not convinced.
There’s a bunch that goes into the reputation score, it’s a combination of upvotes/downvotes as well as other factors. PieFed also has a stronger slur filter, where instead of replacing with removed, it outright doesn’t accept the comment if you type the phrase.
All in all PieFed is built specifically to cultivate echo chambers in ways that go beyond what Lemmy limits itself to, by design.
I’ve never have a comment that hasn’t been posted so can you show me some code to prove what you’re saying?
Here’s a snippet from the code regarding blocking comments if a phrase is set to blocked. Credit to @[email protected] for finding this.
Attitude is just how much you upvote vs. how much you downvote.
But why?
So how’s that a social credit score?
It’s the one that auto hides or warns others on piefed just like reddit is doing.
Well at very high downvote rates, you simply can’t downvote anymore. It’s a mitigation against downvote trolling. There is also a hidden reputation score for instance admins which logs how much you also get downvoted.
