Here in anthracite PA, the term "patch" is used for a mining company town, the mining company's" castle in the sky,":complete with a company store that residents must buy from at extortionate prices. After the mines closed down, these "patches" were inhabited by the poorest workers and became grimy, broken down, sad bits of the local economy. Most are now almost ghost towns. The past is father to the present, and in anthracite country, that father is abusive and absent -- as tech billionaires will be.
i would thank you for this comment, but this is fucking terrifying and very poignant. I fear that we may live to see every techno-dystopian doomer's predictions come true and we will end up living in deserted cities with malfunctioning AI overlords as the rich and powerful skip around to the newest and most interesting new 'patches' while we are left behind dying of toxic death, herded like digital cattle and dying unimaginable deaths.
Eventually, the amount of money at one’s disposal will exceed one’s common sense. For some people, this is a low bar, but everyone has the potential to get there eventually.
Just a silly question: If DOGE achieves their goal of destroying the IRS, how will Palantir and Starlink get paid for their government contract work? And what happens to their cash flow if the rest of us are reduced to landless peasants and can’t buy their goods and services.
I’m still wondering how, if we’re all subsisting on homegrown veggies and backyard chickens, with wood heat in the winter and fans in the summer, having been forced to cancel our cable and internet & our Amazon Prime accounts due to (depending on one’s age) the end of labor unions or the end of social security, they’re going to fund all this corporate overlordship. They’ve forgotten that every business relies on its customers for its existence.
We won’t be able to do those things. When they say you will “own nothing” they don’t mean we won’t have anything. They mean everything essential to living will be metered out and “rented” or commodified in such a way that all of our money goes towards that.
They don’t need us for our money, they don’t need us at all. Money is a fictional idea to create haves and have nots. At some point they just move over to digital money and use it as a basic transaction mechanism within their walled gardens. 90%+ of all the money in the world is in the hands of a select few already.
Would you consider that the current - very wanton - destruction/sabotage of the American State and its institutions is part of the play to get this going? That it'll push it to a place where there is no other option, but for the form of residual government to capitulate to this and act as accessory?
Once the tech community began to rally around the Trump candicacy and then fully engaged after the election, I have wondered if Trump is in concert with the tech leaders, simply giving them rope as they pay for every foot of it understanding his transactional nature, or just a useful pawn in their endeavors to reshape society. As Musk appears to be removing himself, I am curious to see how the pieces move on the board. Lying in wait, Vance appears to be ready to buy in fully to the tech plans. How this will play out with the Fundamentalist Christian Nationalists and the blue color Maga contingent may still be up in the air.
trump is a sloppy puppet. Almost all sides from Russia to Nrx to Yarvin to Israel have all but publically called him a blathering idiot and are so confident in his hubris, arrogance and greed that they know they can say that out loud but as long as they keep lining his pockets, he really doesn't care.
Yarvin was the most vocal (I wrote about this somewhere already) basically said he didn't care who won as long as they would seek absolute power. I think it was obvious to everyone that the most likely candidate would be republican.
yes, absolutely. It is much more nuanced than that, but I would agree with this on the high level premise of it. Mainly because the people perpetrating this very wanton destruction and sabotage are the very people who profess these ideas and share the same end goals.
It seems like George Romero anticipated much of this in his 2005 allegory “Land of the Dead”. Suffice to say, the fortress city and the oligarchs who control it…fail.
Here in anthracite PA, the term "patch" is used for a mining company town, the mining company's" castle in the sky,":complete with a company store that residents must buy from at extortionate prices. After the mines closed down, these "patches" were inhabited by the poorest workers and became grimy, broken down, sad bits of the local economy. Most are now almost ghost towns. The past is father to the present, and in anthracite country, that father is abusive and absent -- as tech billionaires will be.
i would thank you for this comment, but this is fucking terrifying and very poignant. I fear that we may live to see every techno-dystopian doomer's predictions come true and we will end up living in deserted cities with malfunctioning AI overlords as the rich and powerful skip around to the newest and most interesting new 'patches' while we are left behind dying of toxic death, herded like digital cattle and dying unimaginable deaths.
Thank you, Thucydides, for your research, time, & hard work to connect these dots for us.
Eventually, the amount of money at one’s disposal will exceed one’s common sense. For some people, this is a low bar, but everyone has the potential to get there eventually.
Just a silly question: If DOGE achieves their goal of destroying the IRS, how will Palantir and Starlink get paid for their government contract work? And what happens to their cash flow if the rest of us are reduced to landless peasants and can’t buy their goods and services.
not silly at all. this is the whole game.
palantir & starlink aren’t betting on selling you anything.
they’re positioning themselves as essential infrastructure for the post-democratic regime.
no irs? no problem, someone still needs to manage the rubble.
palantir sells control. starlink sells secure comms.
they’ll get paid by whoever holds power; ceo-kings, network states, private city-zones.
when we’re landless and broke, we’re not customers anymore, we’re resources.
they profit not from us, but on us:
our data, behavior, and compliance become currency.
we don’t own anything. we access it, rent it, or get locked out.
if you are outside of the system, you are not 'free' you’re a threat.
so yeah. no taxes, no democracy, no public anything.
just a cloud of private sovereignty and us, tagged, ranked, and managed like backend processes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You%27ll_own_nothing_and_be_happy
I’m still wondering how, if we’re all subsisting on homegrown veggies and backyard chickens, with wood heat in the winter and fans in the summer, having been forced to cancel our cable and internet & our Amazon Prime accounts due to (depending on one’s age) the end of labor unions or the end of social security, they’re going to fund all this corporate overlordship. They’ve forgotten that every business relies on its customers for its existence.
We won’t be able to do those things. When they say you will “own nothing” they don’t mean we won’t have anything. They mean everything essential to living will be metered out and “rented” or commodified in such a way that all of our money goes towards that.
They don’t need us for our money, they don’t need us at all. Money is a fictional idea to create haves and have nots. At some point they just move over to digital money and use it as a basic transaction mechanism within their walled gardens. 90%+ of all the money in the world is in the hands of a select few already.
It’s all an illusion.
I’ve given your comment some thought, & I realize that is the plan, but still think that the blood/turnip ratio may interfere.
seems like throughout history the turnips always 'turn up'
Would you consider that the current - very wanton - destruction/sabotage of the American State and its institutions is part of the play to get this going? That it'll push it to a place where there is no other option, but for the form of residual government to capitulate to this and act as accessory?
Once the tech community began to rally around the Trump candicacy and then fully engaged after the election, I have wondered if Trump is in concert with the tech leaders, simply giving them rope as they pay for every foot of it understanding his transactional nature, or just a useful pawn in their endeavors to reshape society. As Musk appears to be removing himself, I am curious to see how the pieces move on the board. Lying in wait, Vance appears to be ready to buy in fully to the tech plans. How this will play out with the Fundamentalist Christian Nationalists and the blue color Maga contingent may still be up in the air.
trump is a sloppy puppet. Almost all sides from Russia to Nrx to Yarvin to Israel have all but publically called him a blathering idiot and are so confident in his hubris, arrogance and greed that they know they can say that out loud but as long as they keep lining his pockets, he really doesn't care.
Yarvin was the most vocal (I wrote about this somewhere already) basically said he didn't care who won as long as they would seek absolute power. I think it was obvious to everyone that the most likely candidate would be republican.
yes, absolutely. It is much more nuanced than that, but I would agree with this on the high level premise of it. Mainly because the people perpetrating this very wanton destruction and sabotage are the very people who profess these ideas and share the same end goals.
It helped that right at the start you claimed the system in place, that the "DOGEbags" want to replace, is *democracy*.
I didn't have to read any of the rest.
this is a pretty ambiguous comment. is this the ‘democracy’ vs. ‘republic’ thing or?
It seems like George Romero anticipated much of this in his 2005 allegory “Land of the Dead”. Suffice to say, the fortress city and the oligarchs who control it…fail.
Scarier than the physical cities would be, I fear, an alternate internet that is accessible for believers only. Can you look into that?