#posting an entire fucking book without a cut and sponsoring it
Text
just got the fucking john galt sponsored post on my dash and oh my god im deleting this fucking app fuck you guys
#spuddy potext#this feels like a hate crime tbh#posting an entire fucking book without a cut and sponsoring it#genuinely gonna commit a violent atrocity over that goddamn post#it makes me so irrationally angry
0 notes
Note
I'm curious about Cruise!
Oh, thanks very much for asking about that! That’s actually a covid fic. In the early days, there was this one cruise ship where covid broke out and they weren’t allowed to land in Japan, I think (I think it was called Diamond Cruise). So, the fic is essentially a fake-dating mission where Natasha accompanies Bucky on the cruise because of some Hydra thing only he can recognize. And then covid breaks out and Natasha catches it (Bucky is immune because he’s a super soldier), so he has to nurse her while she’s sick and even after she gets better, they’re still stuck all day in their cabin and they get veeeery close. I wrote a solid beginning (which I’ll post below a read more) and then skipped all the fake dating to jump to the end and it’s basically abandoned now, though I hope to catch motivation again some day.
"Hell no. You can't make her do that."
Her doesn't even twitch, feet on the table, chin propped up on her palm, elbow propped up on her hip. She waits, lurking, and at some point she's going to come out swinging, whichever way. And she won't miss.
Fury rolls his eyes, except he doesn't. It's a skill Bucky admires. "Make her what, Barton?"
He used to find her kind of unremarkable- she's only human, after all, and a small one at that. Now he doesn't understand how she could ever not make the hair at the back of his neck stand. She exudes danger. It's on another frequency just out of earshot but it's deafening once you get attuned.
"Make her play cuddly with- no offense but maybe you should get out for this. With the guy who tried to murder her multiple times."
He doesn't get out and nobody seems to care. Nobody pays him any mind at all. Her still hasn't moved an inch. Like the mafia boss while everyone around argues and fights. He's seen some movies, it's just all a wash to him.
"I'm not making anyone do anything," Fury returns. "It's a fucking cruise. That's just the obvious cover. And I'm not letting a fairly new agent run a weeks long undercover operation without experienced backup."
"And how exactly do you imagine that going?" Barton asks. "Is she supposed to sleep in a small, windowless room? With him?"
"I'm sure we could work something out," her suggests surprisingly, not taking her chin out of her palm. "Build some trust."
She's not looking at him but he knows she's watching him. They're on the same frequency. The one for murderers and psychopaths. He doesn't get the feeling she's talking about her trust in him, like it's not her issue, which is eerie.
"Are you serious?" Barton questions in disbelief. He gets the feeling he wants to give her an easy out most of all, so she doesn't have to be the one who says no. "Come on, Nat. That's a swimming prison. Nowhere to run."
"I'm just saying," she adds casually, as if she hasn't already made her decision. "Who goes on a cruise with his sister? Separate cabins? It just doesn't make sense."
"You could go separately," Steve suggests carefully. "Without connected covers."
Maybe it was when she went off the comms that one time, off the grid, and Steve said she would be fine and Barton said she was exactly where she wanted to be- and then she later walked out of the bunker, with the thing they'd been looking for the entire fucking time, crooked smile. Maybe that flicked the switch, maybe that's since when he can't see her as anything else than what she is, which is all sharp edges, all teeth, all danger. Maybe that's when it was.
"He has no experience," she points out, as if she needs to argue. "Fury is right, he needs supervision. And I can do the talking part."
Not his strong suit. "And you can sell that," Barton remarks dubiously, not specifying that.
"Sure," she replies, shrugging non-committedly. "And if he can't, I will."
He starts doubting he's actually here, with how they're all talking around him. "And I'm not making you," Fury remarks.
She grins, letting the sharp and blank shine through. "Have you ever?"
"That's settled, then," Fury finishes. He wonders if anyone ever asked him. "We'll work out the details. Ship leaves next week and then you're on your own."
They all get up and so he does, too, following Steve towards the elevator, but the hair on his neck signals to him she's there, right behind him, even if inaudible. He turns and she rolls to a stop, smoothly. "Scared?"
He shrugs. As if he would tell her. Throw her that kind of meat. "Well," she remarks, rocking up on her feet. "Better get used to it."
She's all up in his space all of a sudden, pressing his head down to her lips, and he just goes with it. There's nothing else on the other frequency than before, not that he expected it to be. It's weirdly silent around. At least he didn't startle.
"Mhm," she makes, pulling back. "Try again."
He leans down, thinking about the sharpness, nothing but the sharpness, like he's making out with a Kalashnikov, weirdly apt metaphor. But she's not that blunt an instrument, of course, more like a scalpel. A dagger. Anything that can cut someone's heart out.
She's grinning when he pulls back, sharp teeth. "Okay. I can work with that."
Barton looks half worried and half amused. He just gets on the elevator with Steve who looks at him weird, of course. Closes his eyes as soon as the doors glide together. Man. A fucking cruise. Just because he's the only one who's ever seen the stupid key they're after. And the book. Now he has to play a fucking tourist.
"Sure you can handle it?" Steve asks, sounding awfully worried, now that they're alone.
"It's just a cruise, Steve," he replies. "It's just a fucking cruise."
They figure out a thing for his arm, they do his hair and they write him a comprehensive cover. He gets to pick what business school he went to, not nameless but not too famous, gets to pick his family background, his pet peeves. They try a few different things and end up sticking to glasses. He shaves.
He gets a briefing about her cover, too, and immediately, one of the photos slips out of the folder. She's on the cover of a magazine, supposed to look soft but he only sees the sharp edges. There's a handwritten note from her, in nice cursive, that he doesn't have to learn it by heart, that it's actually more convincing if he doesn't know everything. He reads the whole night.
She's… he's actually not quite sure. Something between a model and an actress and the kind of person a rich guy would call if he needed some arm candy. She's on Instagram, too, with a remarkable amount of followers and posts going back over three years. Nice to have such a machine at your back. She probably has fucking sponsoring deals. He read about that kind of thing.
They quiz him about his cover until he can recite the whole thing forward and backward and sideways. They quiz him about hers, too, but when he mixes it all up, the woman smiles and says that it's maybe even better this way. Better explain superficiality than try to fake it away.
He has to learn about his supposed job, too, daytrading and the commodity markets and fintec and junk bonds and all that kind of shit. That's probably what he's going to fuck up first. They teach him stupid managerial speak and quiz him about the political views he's supposed to have. When he's not talking about work, he needs to know everything about his fancy hobbies, tennis and mountain climbing and sailing. God, he hates himself.
When they travel to Okinawa, where they will board, he's so full of it, expert information and biographical details and mannerisms, he's never going to get all of that straight. Someone's life pressed into a week. How is he supposed to remember all of that, not mix it up? He'd have to be a totally different person.
"You know, I'm not particularly picky about who I make out with," she remarks. "If that helps. Not a big deal."
Of course. She'll just get it done. She's just worried he'll be difficult about it. "I'm not worried about that."
"Yes, you are," she replies seamlessly. "But I really don't care. You know, I even made out with Steve once."
That immediately sears itself into his brain, whether he wants it to or not. "Yeah. Okay."
"Different thing," she adds, starting to go through her handbag. "Sleeping arrangements. We could try shifts but that's probably not going to work. Are you claustrophobic?"
He shakes his head. He's scared of many things, though. Probably couldn't name them all if he tried. "Okay," she says. "Then it's probably easiest if one of us locks themselves in the bathroom overnight and we switch every day."
Great. Sleeping in the bathtub. "It locks from the inside, though."
"Yeah, but I'll definitely wake up from that," she replies. "You too. I considered the balcony, too, but that looks super weird if one of us sleeps outside."
Oh, no. Not at all. He wonders how long she thought about that until she felt safe with it. With him. "Okay. Bathroom."
"I'm sure it's fancy so we'll be fine," she says. "It looked fancy in the pictures."
There are so many people. All getting on one ship. And she's talking the whole fucking time while he's just trying to find out where they're supposed to go, getting mad at him when he doesn't listen or reply or whatever shit, and at once he snaps at her. She pouts, sort of duckface if that's still a thing, turning and starting to complain to random people around them, which is fine by him as long as she leaves him alone-
It scares him to realize he's really angry, he didn't want to, certainly not to the point of losing control, snapping- yet he snapped perfectly in character. Without even trying. A few people around look at him sympathetically. It's weird but it feels sorta… good?
"Oh honey," she interrupts his calm. "Don't we have priority boarding? It's so humid out here. I'm sweating like a pig, I really need a shower. Do we have the suite with the bathtub? I'm dying out here, really. We should go for the pool first. No, shower, the shower with the…"
He stops listening after that, rolling his eyes before he even thinks about it. Wow. But he spots a sign soon after, different line, hopefully priority, the sign's golden-
She's talking with an elderly lady about the horrific heat. He takes a deep breath and just drags her that way, through the crowd, not letting go of her wrist because then he'll definitely lose her. He hears her giggle as she wiggles through the crowd. "Oh my. Oh my. You are certainly very hands-on today."
He has no fucking patience for that. Or Benedict has no fucking patience for that. Or both. "Could you just, for a second, shut up?"
She opens her mouth, gasping for a brief moment, but out only comes an angry hum. Sure, her lips are moving but he can tune the words out perfectly. The golden sign comes within reach and it's indeed their category, thank God. Now he just has to find the end of the queue. Benedict has studied in England, he would never cut in line.
They finally come to a stop, at the end of the quickly moving line. She pushes her gigantic glasses up her nose, huffing. "They better not lose our baggage. Once, on a flight, they lost my suitcase even though it had a new exclusive shawl by Hermes in it! Can you imagine? I was phoning after them for weeks and I never got anywhere, they just lost it. Never showed up again. I bet one of those shady flight attendants stole it. She was staring at me so jealously, you know, even though I barely had any makeup on, just a touch of rouge and-"
"They won't lose our baggage," he interrupts.
She stops and smiles, behind her enormous glasses, should be hard to make out but it's not, gets on her toes and quickly presses her lips to his, but he catches her head and keeps her there and- until someone clears their throat behind them, right, right, the queue, must move. He apologizes backwards, without really looking. She's smiling, moving forward, mood changed so quickly.
He doesn't really get why they would go on a cruise together when they already get so annoyed with each other. Why he would take her. He's pretty sure he's taking her, though no one told him that explicitly. The usher is staring at him expectantly, she's staring at him expectantly, and he fumbles for the tickets while she complains that he never keeps his things in order.
The usher's smile widens when he sees the price category on the ticket. "Oh, welcome on board, Mr. Darkwell, Miss Bigard. Let me escort you to your suite."
#buckynat#bucky barnes#natasha romanoff#winter soldier#black widow#my writing#sorry I can't do breaks somehow
6 notes
·
View notes
Note
If Tumblr shuts down, where do you go?
Most likely nowhere. In my good-bye note on onehallyu I said I might decide to answer questions somewhere. Then I regged this tumblr, but after a while decided to not do that as I wrote in the first post on this page. But with my usual “luck” in timing, Jessica left SNSD just some days later so I ‘had’ to post a bit.
supermofficial.*com/#events weren’t you bragging SM never forces their artists to do free events
Sigh. All artists of course have to do promotional events for new releases. And this is even some new group. And not just artists. If an author has a new book coming out, he’ll have to be on TV shows to promote it. If there’s a musical, the cast need to promote it on TV etc. Heck even the very top star Hollywood actors have to go all around the world and be on TV shows and events to promote their new movies.
What I’ve complained about is how many shitty idol companies make their celebrities constantly do lots of promotion for free, and also especially when they use very big established celebrities for events to which fans get “free tickets” by buying CDs.
What would happen to Taeyeon’s music if she were to leave SM? Would she still be able to perform these songs or she’d literally have to start anew?
She (and anyone else) can continue to perform her music however she wants, but she (presumably) can’t make new recordings without SM’s permission. Look here: when it comes to music, there are 2 different types of intellectual property rights:
The first is for, so to say, the ‘creation/invention’ of the song, and belongs to the composers/songwriters.
The second is the copyright of a specific recording. This typically belongs to a record label. That’s literally what record labels do: they organize the recording of music, then market and sell copies of that recording. And the record label will typically sign deals with songwriters, producers and singers to make a recording from which these get a royalty % cut of the total sales of that recording.
Anyone can perform whatever song anywhere without needing anyone’s consent. But if you do it for commercial purposes you need to pay the songwriters. This is handled by collective agreements and organizations such as ASCAP in the US, JASRAC in Japan and KOMCA in Korea which work to collect money for song usage and distribute it to the songwriters.
But to make a new recording of the song (for commercial purposes) you need explicit permission of the songwriters. However, whenever any record label signed a contract for a recording to start with, that agreement would typically stipulate that the record label now has the right to determine who can make new recordings of the song.
So, surely, if you’re a fan of a kpop group, you must have experienced that members of the groups have performed covers of other songs in concerts (because they can perform whatever song they want) - but if there’s a DVD release of the concert some of those covers might be missing (because record labels have refused the right to make recordings of the song).
What does it mean for an idol to have a lot of copyrighted songs, like the ones on those lists?
Per the above answer: it means he/she is listed as one of the ‘creators/inventors’ of a song as composer and/or lyricist. So whenever that song is used for any commercial purpose (such as played on TV, played on radio, performed by at any concert/event, etc) he/she will get paid some money.
However, as I’ve said countless of times before: for any really successful artists the payments from songwriting are really small compared the very big money they can get paid in other ways, particularly from performing at concerts and from doing CF/endorsement deals.
Also, I’d like to point out that it’s difficult to know how much an artist really have contributed to creating a song. Sometimes I get the feeling that YG lists whatever people that happened to sit next to Teddy while he composed a song. And it’s well known that many big western artists throughout history have demanded to be credited as songwriters even though they didn’t actually contribute anything at all.
Does Jessica have the right to use Girls’ Generation’s name to promote herself? Other girls who left SM - left the group as well (at least for now) but they all still use GG’s name when promoting their new projects. OT8 stans believe GG should never be mentioned anywhere near Jessica but I don’t think their situations are that different actually? but maybe I’m wrong?
I doubt that there are any legal constraints, but really, your question is strange because she’d be laughed at if she went around saying she was still an SNSD member. Any ‘group’ in society is defined by how the members of the group recognize each other as part of the group. The other 8 members have made it quite clear that they define SNSD as 8 members without Jessica, so it would be ridiculous for her to call herself as SNSD. Of course, she could if she want have journalists write news-articles calling her ex-SNSD Jessica and she could do interviews talking about her time in SNSD etc. I’m not sure if that would help her or not.
How so many bands and solo acts in japan are able to survive for a long time even though they don’t have good digital or physical sales?
But the Japanse music sales have been completely fucked up for the last 15 years as I’ve ranted about plenty of times before.
Can those bands and solo acts actually sell decent amounts of concert tickets in Japan? If yes, they’re living a good life no matter what their music sales are.
what is more important for a company, the success of their newer groups or their established artists? sorry if it’s a dumb question
Err, it’s not entirely black and white. But for a company to make really big profits (as in money for the owners of the company) it’s most important to get a new group to become really big really fast. This is partly about how new groups are on worse contracts and partly about how fans of these new fresh trendy groups spend huge money on buying albums and streaming like maniacs etc which are things from which the company gets most of the money (unlike for example concerts).
But it’s not all about contracts. Several of these smaller companies have absolutely horrible contracts. That doesn’t mean the companies make any profit. Because their acts simply aren’t successful enough. They spend so much money on everything from music videos to stage outfits and make up to road managers and security guards so there’s no money left.
And so on the flip side, for most of the normal employees who work in these companies to sort everything from music videos to stage outfits and make up to road managers and security guards, it’s really just important to have successful acts period (no matter if new or old) in order to make sure they get paid safely.
It is true that GD alone bring as much money as blackpink?
Per above: yes, GD alone would generate much more revenue than Blackpink. But they are both profitable in the sense that they generate much more money than what’s spent on music videos, outfits and managers etc. And obviously Blackpink has a much worse contracts than GD, so after splitting profits per their contracts YG probably makes bigger profits on Blackpink than GD.
Why do you think YG did a fanmeting in seoul for blackpink instead of another concert?
Well, considering the amount of negativity YG has ended up in recently:
I thought it had been well established that much of the audience at their previous Korean concert was in fact not paying for tickets, but people who had been given tickets through corporate sponsorship of the concert. In this current situation, there’s probably not a single company willing to sponsor a concert.
Secondly, even with regards to that fans actually would pay to go, I think it’s likely that media would have put out critical articles about YG doing concerts in this situation. By calling it a fan-meeting they’re pretty much making it impossible for journalists to write such negative articles.
Did that super junior member really leave because he got married or there is something more to it?
As I’ve always expressed: save humanity - disband Super Junior.
So no I really have no idea about what they’re doing. But I used to say some 7 years ago that there will probably be a Super Show 10. And we’re soon there. Because members seem to be aware of their own short-comings and their joint success and are OK with doing group activities.
But it was my understanding that this member not only didn’t really contribute with anything to the group, but that he also really pissed off the few fans he had with his actions (such as drawing symbols for his girlfriend when signing autographs for fans).
Is Mnet bigger than SM and YG?
If you just mean Mnet as in the cable-TV channel, the answer is that SM/YG are bigger. But this question is not straight forward to answer. First off it’s difficult to define what one mean with ‘bigger’ company:
By profit? By market cap (value)? By number of employees? By revenue?
My take would be to in most cases (such as this) go by revenue as the most relevant measure of ‘big’ company.
Secondly, in Asia in general and in Korea in particular they have this horrible habit of building conglomerates and interlinked companies. And it just runs in their culture/society. Both SM and YG were new small independent startups initially. But look at them now. They have used all the profits they’ve made over time to start all kinds of businesses very vaguely related to their core businesses and invested in a myriad of other companies and started to become big conglomerates in entertainment.
And Mnet goes way back and to the very top. Mnet is just one cable-TV-channel. The actual company here is CJ ENM. CJ ENM also has a lot of other cable-TV-channels and a huge home-shopping-channel. CJ ENM are also very big in for example producing musicals and concerts in Korea. CJ ENM once upon a time also almost had a monopoly on music distribution in Korea, but nowadays the music distribution business (now called Stone Music Entertainment) is far from the leading distributor. CJ ENM is also the biggest producer of Korean TV dramas and films. That was spun off into a separate company (Studio Dragon) but CJ ENM own like 75% of that company still. CJ ENM has also spun off its music streaming business (but they own like 15% of Genie Music) and its gaming business (but they own like 25% of Netmarble). So CJ ENM is a very big and powerful company in the Korean entertainment industry and much bigger than SM and YG.
And CJ ENM is in turn owned by and part of the CJ Group. The CJ Group also own a whole lot of other companies primarily into food production, restaurant chains and entertainment. Most known to kpop fans is probably that they also own the biggest cinema chain in Korea, but the main businesses are food related.
And CJ Group was in turn part of the absolutely gigantic Samsung chaebol group. CJ was one of the parts of the Samsung chaebol that was split off around 1990 following the death of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul. It’s a separate group now, but basically, CJ Group is run by 2 siblings who are grandchildren of Lee Byung-chul. Other parts of the former Samsung chaebol are run by other relatives of Lee Byung-chul.
(PS, Lee Byung-chul had TEN children who in turned had a lot of grand children, hence why his gigantic corporate empire is nowadays a bit of a drama mess)
2 notes
·
View notes
Text
Reblogged from the prior tumblr. This was posted on 07/30/2017, though now without a cut For Reasons.
So there’s someone who frequents my feed, and we have…opposing political views. Normally we sort of politely ignore each others’ political posts, and I appreciate that courtesy, but for whatever reason, today’s added commentary bugged me enough that I’m responding. If nothing else, it will help during inevitable verbal clashes with some of the extremists on the fringes of my family, and dangit, I need to step up and educate myself first. I am deliberately not naming the person because there’s no need to be a dick, and I certainly don’t want to seem like I’m dogpiling. They made a comment disagreeing with Drumph’s latest support of police brutality, but added:
Trump is not a fascist. no one actually knows what a fascist is. However, if you want real Fascism just look to WW2.
Ok, let’s do just that. I’m sure there are plenty of posts about this matter out there, but I’ll take a stab at it. (folks on mobile, there’s a cut here, because this gets long)
Now, there is a bit of a point to folks not agreeing about the exact definition of fascism. Wikipedia has like, 19 of them, so we’ll take the easy route and go to John T. Flynn’s definition from 1944 (heeey, WW2, as requested!) – it’s also one of the shorter ones, so I’m happy to be a bit lazy about matters.
Based on Mussolini’s Italy, Flynn defines fascism as:
Anti-capitalist, but with capitalist features
A move towards a system of wage slavery, defined as: a situation where a person’s livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person.
The term wage slavery has been used to criticize exploitation of labour and social stratification, with the former seen primarily as unequal bargaining power between labor and capital (particularly when workers are paid comparatively low wages, e.g. in sweatshops), and the latter as a lack of workers’ self-management, fulfilling job choices, and leisure in an economy.
Economic demand management…
“Demand management in its most effective form has a broad definition well beyond just developing a “forecast” based on history supplemented by “market” or customer intelligence, and often left to the supply chain organization to interpret.” – Drumph did indeed sell his campaign as getting a businessman in charge, didn’t he.
…through budget deficits
As a resident of a state that is looking at a budget crisis, I’m not sure I really need to spell this one out. Look at Illinois. Look at how the other branches of government can’t remove their heads from their asses long enough to come to terms about anything. We’ve been spending money hand over fist for years, the potential safety nets keep disappearing (repeal of Glass–Steagall Act, anyone?), and the problem with “pay now or pay later” is that later eventually arrives. Given Drumph’s history of bankrupting businesses and selling them off for spare parts, this one isn’t much of a stretch.
Direct economic planning, reconciled with partial economic autonomy through corporatism
Staffing many of the important Cabinet positions with business types – many of whom have expressed interest in dismantling the regulations that are now under their direct control – isn’t suspicious at all. Trying to loosen the regulations on monopolies, or giving heinous tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest individuals can’t possibly be a part of this.
Militarism and imperialism;
‘Make America Great Again.’ Get rid of all those foreigners. We’re gonna build a wall and we will defend our borders with so many powerful weapons, they’ll be the best defenses you’ve ever seen.
Suspension of rule of law.
Having his own protection squad even during the campaign isn’t raising any flags. Rabble rousing and inciting riots at other Presidential candidates’ rallies isn’t something to worry about. Or, you know, encouraging cops to rough up prisoners because who cares about that due process thing, or innocent until proven guilty. We’re not there yet, but given the flagrant attitude he’s had towards law – particularly how he’s claimed the Judicial branch should have no power over him – I have no faith in this.
“But wait!” you might say, “that’s just Wikipedia!”
‘Kay. I went attic diving, and found a Funk & Wagnall’s Encyclopedia from 1952 (I can provide photos as proof, or verification, or the longer forms of these articles). From their entry on Fascism:
As a form of social organization, fascism is characterized by the following: (1) extreme centralization of the government which, theoretically, has absolute or unlimited powers, and which is identified in law, as well as in fact, with a single party and its leader…; (2) regimentation of the entire population (except for an elite ruling class) ; rigid control of all economic, political, social, intellectual, cultural, and recreational activities ; use of the educational system ad of all media of mass communication to inculcate in the population principles of extreme nationalism and racial hatred, and to extol war and imperialist designs on weak countries ; and toleration of organized religion only to the degree that it is subservient to fascist policies ; (3) retention of private-property rights but elimination of free enterprise though the centralization of industry and finance ; subordination of the production of goods for civilian consumption to the manufacture of armaments and munitions ; the development of industry and agriculture in the direction of national self-sufficiency as preparation for war ; (4) incorporation of the economic organization of society in the apparatus of government, in the form of the “corporative state” or “corporate state”, as in Italy, Portugal, and other countries, and of the “new order” as in Germany and (5) abolition of civil rights, and of free trade unions, collective bargaining, and labor and famers’ co-operatives; outlawing of all other organizations not sponsored by the state and the fascist party ; systemic use of terrorism in the interest of the security of the state ; and subjection of the entire population to espionage.
More importantly, it mentions:
As a national movement aspiring to power within a country, fascism originates and grows rapidly in periods of deep social unrest. It takes the form of a mass political party with affiliated semimilitary organizations. The membership of the fascist movement is socially heterogeneous, consisting for the most part of such discontented elements as shop-keepers, farmers, professional persons, and civil servants, all of whose means of livelihood have been destroyed by years of economic depression and turbulent labor and political struggles, and who hope for economic security and social advancement through a fascist reorganization of society. The fascist movement is financed by powerful business interests. It is intrinsically opposed to democracy and labor. According to the exigencies of the situation, a fascist party issues propaganda representing itself as a revolutionary, and even at times an anticapitalist movement, or as the leader in a crusade of civilization against communism. It preaches hatred of other nations and races. In the struggle for power, a fascist party participates in elections but relies chiefly on force and on violent tactics: it suppresses meetings held by its critics and opponents, smashes demonstrations, and raids and destroys the headquarters and printing plants of opponent organizations.
Yeah, that sounds totally unfamiliar right about now. Particularly about the Koch brothers financing the Tea Party, which paved the way for this recent fiasco of an election. Or perhaps that bit describing coal miners who now are looking at not getting health benefits, or Joe (the plumber) Average who’s just trying to look out for their job.
As an added bonus, my attic diving also turned up a 1926 set of The Source Book encyclopedias, which I had to flip through (photos also available). It’s not WW2, but hopefully that’s ok. There’s an entry on the Fascisti that exists, but nothing on fascism itself, so I took the book’s suggestion and looked up Benito Mussolini. I’ll spare the biography, but the entry ends on an interesting note:
Bolshevism no longer threatened the country, but Mussolini visualized a new peril in the body of the state itself – a sick state, corrupt, impotent, which needed to be transformed and revitalized with the young blood of the nation. On Oct. 24, 1922, when he declared war on the government he ha the country so organized behind him that victory was certain. He said: “Either they give us the government or else we fall upon Rome and take it.” They fell upon Rome and took it bloodlessly.
Drumph might be a work in progress, but yes, I do feel comfortable calling him a fascist.
I’m also fucking terrified for the future of this country.
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
You know what I don't want to take away from the message of a valid post so I'm gonna make my own. but I put myself in danger by coming out at 14 too and yet I don't regret a fucking second of it.
(TW discussions of homophobia under the cut)
I got every biphobic stereotype in the book shouted at me by my mother. I started that conversation believing she would be supportive and it ended with me crying myself to sleep that night thankful that at least she didn't kick me out because I wasnt prepared for that possibility and I had just started going to a new school and I didn't know anyone well enough to ask to stay with them. I got fetishizing vaguely threatening comments from boys at school, a friend told me I was going to hell, and school administrators threatened to write me up for every platonic act of affection with any female friend.
A little over a year later one of my teachers outed my girlfriend to her very religious mother, who confiscated her phone for three months and sent her to informal conversion therapy with their pastor, while giving me an ultimatum to come out (again) to my mother or she would do it for me. That time I had a bag packed, $100 cash ferreted away, and plans to walk to a friend's house for the night. Thankfully I didnt need it. Thankfully mom came to terms with it overnight the first time and just neglected to tell me that or, you know, fucking apologize.
That year the school administration issued a rule that you could not bring a same sex date to the prom - meaning gay students with a partner who was younger than a junior or attended a different school could not bring their partner. I was a sophomore. They also made a rule that anyone wearing "attire not appropriate for his/her gender" would not be allowed entry to the venue. Various "girls" in my friend group, including me, had been joking loudly in the cafeteria about wearing tuxedos.
But when classmates or family said homophobic things I wanted them to look me in the eyes and know that was me they were talking about. And I wanted to be loud enough about it when it was just me to make life easier for others. The only regret I have is that my girlfriend got outed when I had tried to be so cautious with PDA. It was one thing for me to be loud and out-in-theory but entirely another when that could hurt someone else.
Like, once I had come out to my mom the first time and didn't get kicked out, then wearing as many rainbows and talking about being bi as much as possible was supposed to be about using my relative privilege and home stability to act as a shield to distract admin and teachers from other students. I had almost no emotional support except from a chemistry teacher (to whom I owe my fucking life. Thank you Mr V you I literally would not still be here without you.)
But if I had it all to do over again, I probably would have pushed it farther. I tried to get a GSA started but any sympathetic teachers were too afraid the administration would fire them in retaliation to sponsor it. If I had it to do over again I probably would have contacted the state ACLU on my own over that and the prom thing. Fuck a emotional support from parents whats that. If I could do it again 16 year old me would not have been concerned about making her mom proud in the fucking slightest.
0 notes
Text
Part 8: New York New Me
Requested by: Sort of @ocean-marina
Line Request: “No fucks given. Next please,” and “Just come home alive…okay?” @i-cant-even-superwholock-anymore
A/NL yes, this was formerly posted on @imagineimeliza but was removed-I am ImageineI’mEliza but because this fic was going on for so long, it doesn’t belong on a one-shot maybe 2 parter blog!
Word Count: 2,800ish
Chapter 7
Table of Contents
Chapter 9(link also at bottom)
When Lin had gotten on a plane bound for London, you were certain that you’d never see him again, you doubted you’d ever contact him again, and you found it unlikely he would even hold true to his offer of listening for better job openings for you to apply to. You were wrong on all accounts but one. Email became your friend once again as you talked to him while he was across the sea he would complain about this and that but then tell you a piece of overwhelmingly excited news and for the first few months there was a link to so a friend he had somewhere that had an opening for a job he thought you might want to take and you sent in your resume to all of them, you got more calls back than you had dreamed of.
You weren’t surprised when July came with a letter saying that you had been let go from the school. You got the letter the same day that you were due to set out for a fancy schmancy museum up north that seemed fairly promising. Knowing you weren’t going to have a check coming in anytime soon was worry some but motivated you all the more to exceed expectations and land this position. It had excellent opportunities for growth, it was by far better pay than what you made now even factoring in the higher cost of living, hopefully, it would be something you would do for a long time.
With a lovely letter that summed up to say “you’re out of a job,” on the counter, you threw your bag into your backseat and hit the road, a fifteen-hour drive to a fifteen-minute interview that hopefully would come through. You had a small hotel room booked in advance that you wouldn’t get to until 1am at best but it would be somewhere to sleep and then freshen up for the interview and wait at for the next three days while attending a few other promising interviews in the area. Lin promised that the people at all four for the places you had on this trip were relatively fast working and you would know if you’d made the cut within the week.
It was with confidence and hope fueled by reopened dreams you had all but abandoned that you had landed your job as a curator for the New York Historical Society. You had a week to get settled here before you started. It turned out to be more of an overpaid intern position beneath the real curators, but you would grow and prosper here. When you got the call saying you had the job it was disheartening to realize that you didn’t have anyone to share the good news with. All you did was send an email to the friend who got you here, a friend probably asleep due to time zone differences, a friend who now that he had fulfilled his promise to listen for an opening for you would fall out of touch. But it was a friend for now and that knowledge only strengthened your resolve to make this new position in this new city something you would share with others
“T 23 15, ivory and ink, hand-crafted maybe late 18th-century cup, 3 cm tall five cm diameter at rim and base seven cm diameter at largest,” you looked at the small sketch you had made beside the location and description biting your lip. You had been trying to find this piece for a good twenty minutes, it wasn’t on the shelf it was supposed to be, not the entire case that it might be, you’d gone down the case in front of, behind, to the left, and the right of where it was supposed to be just in case it had been originally put in the wrong place but now you were going to have to add it to the list of artifacts that you would have to look for when you searched the entire room top to bottom for items that had been completely misplaced.
Three years you’d been in the city, two and a half years you’d fit in with your coworkers and enjoyed life, two years without talking to anyone but them - people from your teaching days had faded out of your life just like people from college had. Almost immediately.
“Hey Y/N, we’re all headed out for lunch today, you coming?” Tanya called popping her head in, she had become one of your best friends quickly and easily.
“Ummm I’m actually a bit behind, who’s turn is it to stay today?” You asked, “Joe right?” she nodded, “Tell him I’ll cover him today if he’ll take it from me next time,” you offered and she gave you a thumbs up, before darting out the door while you went back to inventory. There were so many amazing things here and they were always rotating in and out so there was always more to find. You thought that the idea of enjoying your job was nothing more than that, an idea, but you were wrong. You enjoyed coming to work every day, when you skipped going with friends to lunch it wasn’t because if you left you would be miserable the whole time knowing you had to come back, it was because you didn’t want to leave. Of course, there were downsides, but you loved enough of it that those didn’t matter. You had a routine and you were happy with it.
Looking back at your clipboard you began looking for the next item which was where it belonged thankfully. As were the next several, you had gotten back into your rhythm when you heard the bell over the door jingle, they shouldn’t be back so soon,
“Hello, is anyone in here?” you heard someone call, not many people knew about this door,
“Yes, I’ll be with you in just a moment,” you told them wondering who was using the back door that didn’t already know the place like the back of their hand.
“How can I help you today?” You asked as you rounded the corner,
“Yes I was wondering if-,”
“Lin?” you gasped in shock when you looked up at his face for the first time and he looked you over in confusion for half a second before you found yourself engulfed in a smothering hug, “oh my,” you yelped in shock but hugged him right back
“Y/N? I can’t believe you’re here, what’re you doing? How’ve you been? Are you-”
“Woah one question at a time, I can’t handle three years of questions in one breath,” you said pulling out of his hug, he smelled exactly like you remembered,
“God I’ve missed you,“
“Same here, wow three years. Doesn’t feel like three years,” he said blinking rapidly
“It feels like just a minute has passed but at the same time, I was teaching down south at least a lifetime ago, maybe two. What’re you doing here? Last time we talked you were finishing up in London and off to work in animated films - getting an EGOT with that. Hell, you were sponsoring on toothpaste and cereal commercials for a while and then you just stopped. Fell off the face of the earth. What happened for almost two years that had you hiding in some sort of underground cave?”
“You can ask me to sum up, three years in one breath but I can’t ask that of you? That’s not fair, I’m wounded,” he teased and you rolled your eyes, “If you must know, I’ve been doing research and writing,”
“How many months worth of paychecks is it going to take for me to get tickets?” You sighed,
“I don’t have any idea yet, but how are you doing?”
“Pretty great, I’ve actually fallen in love with the city and the job and, you’re going to be proud of me, they’ve got me playing at charity dinners and things, and wait for it,” you paused, “Introductions, presentations singing and playing in the background, the whole nine yards,” suddenly your feet were off the ground and behind you spinning, “Lin! Put me down,” you laughed, smacking his shoulder as he spun you,
“I am so happy for you, that’s wow,” he paused and seemed to think for a second, “You wouldn’t happen to be playing at a ceremony Thursday night would you?” you narrowed your eyes,
“Actually, I am, the coordinator of the ceremony is supposed to come in later today,” he grinned wide at your answer, “Why,” he pursed his lips trying to suppress a smile and shook his head, “Lin-Manuel what is going on in that brain of yours?”
“Later today might be sooner than you thought,” he said and your eyes went wide as you looked around frantically as if someone was going to suddenly appear from behind one of the many artifact shelves, you hurriedly patted your hair down and straightened your shirt that Lin’s hugs had wadded up,
“What? I can’t mess this up Kathrine’ll kill me if I lose this one, its some big deal hotshot that we need to keep things going and not get wiped off the pages. Some guy probably filthy rich probably so full of himself he can’t see right from left” you groaned in frustration and he laughed heartily at your worry,
“I think you’ll be okay, You’re such a goof,” he said, “’sometime after 11′,” it’s almost 12, isn’t it?” he checked,
“What? They’ll be here sometime after 1,” you ran over to the computer that was at least as old as some of the objects in the back of this room, “Nononono,” you groaned, “the screen’s fuzzy I misread it Oh god ah okay Lin,” you took a deep breath and shook your head, “Okay sorry, I’m a mess. What did you come in here for in the first place?”
“To talk about a ceremony Thursday night,” it clicked in your mind all at once and you wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor
“You can’t be serious,”
“as a heart attack,”
“I uh..oops?” you giggled, “can we forget that I said anything? Like pretnd you just walked in the door and I didn’t stereotype the no-name leader of Thursday Nights ceremony at all?”
“Oh you mean the pat where I’m rich and so full o myself I can’t see up from down,” you thought he was joking but you were very hesitant and unsure,
“yes?”
“I don’t have any idea what you are talking about, I just got here,” he told you smiling and you breathed a heavy sigh immensely relieved to know that you hadn’t just ruined everything.
“So anyway, I got called in to do something because of Hamilton again, and it’s lost a bit of its hype, not much but some so why not? Plus I might be planning a bit of a surprise like one I did a while back,” he grinned, "You know how I promoted Hamilton at The White House when I was supposed to do something for Heights,”
“You are not!”
“Oh I am so!” his smile was infectious, “But you can’t tell anyone - it’s gonna be a surprise and if I chicken out I don’t want people hounding me about it,”
“You’re not going to ‘chicken out,’” you promised, “Now that you’ve told me this, you’re stuck,” you stuck your tongue out at him, "If you want to sit down we can go ahead and start going over the plan for Thursday night, it needs to run with as few hitches as possible, you’re going to throw it off a bit if I’m the only one allowed to know about your plan of change of plans but no fucks given, next order of business would be the order of introductions, we have a pretty standard template of order of importance but…” and just like that you managed to get down to business and plan out the evening,
“That sounds perfect. I don’t think a meeting like this has gone this smoothly in…I don’t even know how long. What are my chances of having lunch with you now, to catch up and interrogate you?” he asked and you smiled,
“Everyone else should be getting back from lunch any minute now, it was supposed to be Joe’s day to stay back and watch over stuff back here but I offered to stay instead,” you said, “But how would dinner sound?” and he nodded,
“I was planning on meeting up with a bunch of old friends tonight, that’d be excellent,”
“Great, I can’t wait,” he wrapped you in a short hug that lasted only a few seconds, you both already pulling back when Tanya and the others came in all laughing until they froze in the doorway seeing the two of you locked in a hug,
“Well, it was really nice seeing you again,” you said your face scarlet red, as you looked between Lin and your coworkers
“Yeah, back atcha Socrates,” he said and hurried out the door,
“What. Was. That?” Tanya asked,
“That was an old friend who helped me land this job in the first place dropping by for a visit…and to go over the plans for Thursday night,” you told her as calmly as you could in your flustered state, the others had all scattered almost instantly but would hound you later.
“Y/N, you were broken when you came here, you never said that the Lin that you were friends with that had told you about this job that had faded from your life leaving you dead inside was the Lin-Manuel Miranda. I don’t want to see you like that again,” you tried to protest, you weren’t broken, and even if you had been, it wasn’t because of him in the least, “I mean it, be careful, Thursday night is a big deal for us, important people will be there, important people with deep pockets,” you knew what she meant by that all too well: money was always what things boiled down to in any business and boy could you use some of it right now,
“I’ll be fine, we’re just two good friends that have found ourselves working on a project together. I’m meeting him and a bunch of friends tonight for dinner. Friends.” you stated as many times as you logically could.
“Just come home alive, okay?” she asked, “If you come to work next week like a dead zombie because of him I will personally see to it that he doesn’t get another gig as long as he lives, And don’t you fall for him again tonight, you better be sober and chipper tomorrow morning or I will get Katherine to pull both of you out of the banquet ceremony on Thursday,”
“Yes mom,” you mocked
“Good. Now then, inventory.” Tanya was your best friend. You knew that she only had your best interests at heart and she was right. You couldn’t let yourself get involved with him again because he needed to chase his dreams all over the planet and you just couldn’t do that. You needed a stable environmnet where you knew what was going on and that just wasn’t something you owuld be able to have if for whatever reason old flames re sparked. But it was only a short fling before and besdies, it’s been three years. He probably found someone else and you had both moved on. He was your friend. That’s how it is and that’s how it is going to stay.
Chapter 9
So that’s not what I originally had in mind for “No Fucks given next,” I actually had an audition thing going on that was half-written mentally and I didn’t have any idea what to do, neither of the two characters in this series are likely to be in a particularly high risk situation.
29 notes
·
View notes
Text
The rationalist’s guide to left-wing politics (LONG POST IS LONG)
So firstly, if you were linked here and want some propaganda literature, the Communist Manifesto and Debt: the First 5000 Years make very good sequels to Yvain's "Meditations on Moloch".
Going from there...
The very short summary is: capitalism is the private, profit-seeking ownership of the means of production, and their operation via wage-labor. Socialists are against this! The reason for italicizing that definition is because it's important: almost all economic systems have included elements of communal cooperation, loose social cooperation (as between ordinary friends rather than tribe-mates or family members), trade and exchange, and hierarchical domination (this is parroting Graeber). Capitalism, as such, is a historically recent (1800s, more-or-less) and particularly pernicious arrangement of these elements. In fact, even capitalism has taken varied forms in different places and times, some more vicious and others even somewhat benign. Moreover, all of them were instituted by the deliberate imposition, through violence (usually state violence), of new ways of living and new ownership arrangements on existing populations.
The important thing is, we are not talking about a "naturally-occurring" economy. There is no such thing. All social systems are invented by people, imposed by people, and made to compete for efficiency by people. In fact, the best argument usually made for capitalism is not that capitalism is the most natural economy (or worse, the only possible economy), but that earlier, more natural occurring economies are really fucking poor.
All capitalism's variations, by definition, are characterized by private, profit-seeking ownership of the means of production, and the operation of those means (such as machines and land and such) by wage-labor. The standard anticapitalist criticism is that capitalism contains "internal contradictions", or in other words, it can neither keep its own promises nor preserve itself from economic crisis. This is part of the core Marxian thesis from Das Kapital: capitalism just is defecting in the Prisoner's Dilemma, eating your own seed corn, sacrificing a few more values to Moloch, populating past carrying capacity.
In fact, that's a fairly good way to describe what a crisis of capitalism (depression or secular stagnation) actually is: it is just what happens when the owning class attempts to harvest more wealth from wage-labor than is actually available. Marx's Labor Theory of Value really ought to be called a Labor Theory of Profit. We all know there's always a gap between the cost of raw materials plus the cost of labor, and the final price of goods. That gap is, of course, profits, supposedly allocated to capitalists for their role in risk-management and planning.
However, the goods are almost entirely paid for by other companies' workers: capitalists can't consume everything at a profit themselves. Thus, ultimately, one capitalist's profits must come out of other capitalist's labor-costs. Since each capitalist wants to maximize their profits by minimizing wages, maximizing prices, and maximizing consumer appeal, profit becomes a non-renewable resource.
Worse, as the easy profits get eaten up with low risk by capitalists, and thus accumulate as capital to be reinvested, capitalists are forced to seek increasingly risky investments: investments where the prospect of profit is imprecise (difficult to plan for) or just plain small. Low-risk = low-profit is not a conventional investing principle for nothing: it's a fundamental result of needing to bet (take risks) on ways to obtain a non-renewable resource (profit).
Worse, as even very risky profits from the actual sale of goods become scarce, investors need to turn to even simpler ways of making money: just take money from people. Basically, start loan-sharking, squatting on natural resources, consolidating market shares, or even outright stealing from people. This is called rentiering, and was the major subject of Henry George's Progress and Poverty.
If profit is a non-renewable resource, what stops capitalists from over-consuming it and leaving no new profits available to be made? Well, history tells us: nothing at all. They proceed to do exactly that, again and again and again. This is what an economic depression is: an over-harvesting of the non-renewable resource that is profit, resulting in a mass failure of investors' plans and massive budget gaps for everyday stuff that needs to keep operating.
Now, there is one bright spot, as any conventional economist will point out. "Counter-forces" (to use Marxist terminology) do exist to this tendency towards economic disaster: productivity increases, population increases, and wealth redistribution. Productivity increases allow more or better goods to be made with the same amortized cost for raw materials and labor, and then sold for the same prices. Productivity growth is thus the one true and healthy source of economic growth. Population increases add to the supply of labor -- but they only add to consumer demand when productivity growth or redistribution is high enough. Wealth redistribution recycles profits: it takes them from the rich and gives them to the working classes, who proceed to go ahead and spend them, turning them back into profits.
Sufficient wealth redistribution to sustain capitalism has been done in the real world. It was called various things: left-liberalism, Keynesianism, or (most of the time) social democracy. It's actually a very good system for its available level of technology, but also contains its own internal contradiction. Generous redistribution to consumers, workers, and retirees requires consistently high productivity growth and consistently low rentiering. Without both those factors (the latter of which requires vigorous state action to break up monopolies and oligopolies), all that redistribution cuts into investors' rate of profit as taxes, and investors "go on strike". This was what happened in the 1970s stagflation: the oil cartel spiked rentiering rates up, the productivity growth from rolling out industrial implementations of WW2-era inventions tapered off, and working-class militancy (an attempt to bargain a larger share of revenue for wages) was high. Thus, investors took their money to other countries and sponsored "neoliberal" political forces who would do what needed doing: Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher.
(We can now conjecture: what is a secular stagnation today? When productivity growth is low, population growth is low, risks are accurately assessed, and the primary investment incomes come from rentiering.)
In overall summary, capitalism promises cheap consumer goods, but then creates glut/depression/debt-crisis conditions in which the overwhelming majority of the population can't afford those consumer goods. So you end up with "poverty in the midst of plenty". This is the natural attractor state of the system!
So what about socialist movements, the responses by the working class to capitalism? Well, at first, different terms were used for the same things, and then divisions developed. Broadly, socialist and social-democratic movements aim to reduce or eliminate those internal contradictions by changing to a substantially different economic system, one we aim to make more sustainable, rational, and humane than capitalism.
Historically, "social democracy" overlapped with both socialism, communism, and labor liberalism (the kind of "liberalism" you're familiar with from FDR-LBJ). Parties called themselves "social democratic" just to indicate they were more-or-less left-wing and stood for labor concerns. So for instance, the Leninists/Bolsheviks originally formed as a faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. The place where social democracy has been most fully implemented is in the famous "Nordic model", though nowadays it's subject to the same headwinds as everyone else.
Historically, "socialism" referred to almost any form of society or economy premised on common ownership of stuff. Back in the day, everything from 19th-century "utopian" socialism (ie: 19th-century communes) to Marxism (which Marx himself called "scientific socialism") to anarchism to syndicalism was called "socialism". This usage persisted into through the present day: the nonviolent Socialist Party of Eugene Debs were democratic socialists (today's Democratic Socialists of America descend directly from them), the Israeli kibbutz system was socialist, today's Mondragon cooperatives were socialist, nationalization of major firms in otherwise capitalist countries was considered socialist, etc. In general, self-proclaimed socialists consider the word to mean "radical democracy" or "economic democracy": the extension of democratic participation into not only governmental institutions, but all institutional components of daily life, especially the workplace.
"Communism" meant one thing when Marx and Engels wrote the Communist Manifesto, and then came to mean another thing in the 20th century. When Marx wrote about "communism" in 1848, it referred to destroying the major empires and early nation-states that existed at the time, in favor of networks of worker-controlled municipalities. In fact, Marx's core idea was precisely that After the Revolution (capitals because the phrase is a traditional refrain!), the socialist state would wither away and control over life would be decentralized to precisely those worker-controlled localities. This would be "full communism": a stateless, classless, money-less society in which labor is planned out to create appropriate levels of abundance and leisure for everyone.
However, once the Russian Bolsheviks got their movement really underway, they adopted the name "Communist" for themselves, founding the Russian Communist Party. For the rest of the 20th century, "communism" referred specifically to the Bolshevik movement, and all other left-wing groups had to take stances on whether they were communist (Soviet-controlled), pro-communist (pro-Soviet but not themselves Soviet-controlled), anti-communist (actually opposed to the Soviet Union), or non-communist (neither particularly for nor against the Soviet Union). The derisive name for these Communists on the Left ended up being "tankies", after the Soviet Union deployed tanks to crush a left-wing uprising in Communist Hungary.
The other major question created by the Russian Revolution was: to what degree could Soviet Russia be considered "actually existing socialism", a form of socialism that had really been achieved and from whose example we can learn? To the Russians themselves, the phrase "actually existing socialism" became a bitter joke: their lives were miserable, and the phrase was constantly used as an excuse for why the widespread prosperity and personal freedom of "full communism" (see above) never actually arrived.
Anarchism was a major distinct current in socialism, often acting in contradistinction to revolutionary socialists. They share the goal of a stateless, classless society, but differ on how to get there: anarchists believe that "workers' states" cannot be trusted to "wither away". They therefore believe in trying to dismantle the state apparatus as the first step towards democratic, participatory human freedom.
Further, as the 20th century went on, the distinction between democratic socialists, social democrats, and revolutionary socialists (with communists as a strict subset of the latter) grew harder. Social democrats were those who worked to get elected to government in liberal-democratic countries so as to reform or tame capitalism to make people's lives better. Democratic socialists were those who also worked to get peacefully elected in liberal-democratic countries, so as to replace capitalism with socialism via legislation rather than violence. Revolutionary socialists were those who believed formal politics under a capitalist system was useless, because the government would always be corrupted by money, and thus that they needed to overthrow the capitalist state by force.
That brings us to neoliberalism, a particular form of capitalism which grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, and really came into full swing in the 1980s. We've been living under neoliberal capitalism since then, and still are. A simple way to think of neoliberalism is as a chiefly political program: to dismantle social democracy and render it impossible, leaving no alternative to a (relatively) pure, unreformed form of capitalism.
That basically gets us up to today, and everything else would involve going into minutia. Now that I've got the terminology, I can at least say, "This is what I ACTUALLY BELIEVE", South Park-style.
I believe the best actually-existing societies/economies have been, variously, social-democratic and democratic socialist. I believe that these societies worked particularly well because they maintained the negative freedoms of liberalism, the positive freedoms of socialism, the capacity for experimentation inherent in autonomous firms, and the diverse mingling of interests and values characteristic of democracy. I believe the sociological research I've seen showing that peaceful changes of government, be they formally labeled elections or revolutions, lead to stabler societies in the long run, and in complex modern societies, are actually more likely to work. Finally, I believe with perfect faith (let me know if you get that joke) in the coming of Fully Automated Gay Space Luxury Communism ;-), as described by the prophets Iain Banks and Kim Stanley Robinson.
I profoundly hate neoliberalism, and fear that its effect is precisely, "[to] make peaceful revolution impossible ... [and] violent revolution inevitable." Both social democracy and democratic socialism have existed in the real world and worked well, but neoliberalism reconfigures things precisely so as to make those actually-existing good systems impossible figments of the past. I worry that we are now living through a crisis in which neoliberalism has, to a great degree, run itself into the ground and started "eating its seed-corn", trying to profit by simply discarding human beings instead of finding profitable work to do. I also worry that we may well be living through a "revolutionary moment" in which the broad population will grow so discontented that violence can break out and completely overthrow the existing society, with... high-variance results. We seem to be past the time when one could safely contemplate politics from afar. I therefore sometimes, but not always, support revolutionary socialists and anarchists.
0 notes
Last Seen Blogs
sporbs
(spore orbs)
hunhanber
ϟIT IS KNOWNϟ
jabberwaddleisland
JabberWaddle Island
savealifesavannah-blog
Save a Life Pet Rescue
sugarpopcult
A Lonely Little Pudding Cup