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Plutonomy: A Leaked Citibank Memo

Started by Cramulus, May 11, 2010, 05:10:20 PM

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Jasper

My agenda: Death to money.

The wallet is evil.  It must be punished.

Captain Utopia

Quote from: Jenne on June 26, 2010, 10:52:35 PM
Get your meddling kid posse to care enough, and we'll talk.  I think they're fast realizing, though, that tho they helped put Obama in power, he ain't doin' NOTHIN' to show for it so far, other than tap dance.

:)  I'm not talking about left vs. right though, I'm talking a different system of governance.  More accurately though, until there's a viable solution in the form of working code, I'm just talking vaporware.


Cosine 5

Quote from: Sigmatic on June 26, 2010, 10:57:00 PM
My agenda: Death to money.

The wallet is evil.  It must be punished.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that be a communist viewpoint? The abolition of capital?
not quite there yet.

The Johnny

#18
Quote from: Cosine 5 on June 27, 2010, 02:04:11 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on June 26, 2010, 10:57:00 PM
My agenda: Death to money.

The wallet is evil.  It must be punished.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that be a communist viewpoint? The abolition of capital?
                           /
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:mullet:

ETA: im not implying that i think that the abolition of capital CAN be done or SHOULD be done, just the kind of people that would phrase it that way...
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

Golden Applesauce

Quote from: Jenne on June 26, 2010, 10:52:35 PM
Get your meddling kid posse to care enough, and we'll talk.  I think they're fast realizing, though, that tho they helped put Obama in power, he ain't doin' NOTHIN' to show for it so far, other than tap dance.

I worry that if Obama goes out with the perception of not getting much accomplished, then the younger generation that helped vote him into power in the first place will feel that all the energy and enthusiasm that they put into that campaign was wasted, and that getting involved with politics at all is a waste of time.  We might not see such high turnout again for a long time if his presidency bombs - and without an engaged citizenship, nothing will change for the better.
Q: How regularly do you hire 8th graders?
A: We have hired a number of FORMER 8th graders.

Captain Utopia

#20
Well the irony is that they voted him in expecting him to take care of everything by himself.  If there was a progressive arm with the energy and commitment of The Tea Party, then they would have likely hit all their agenda items already.  Of course, it might have split the country apart, but you can't have everything.  But you know, the long-haul ain't sexy, and it might well be invisible to those with a short attention span.

But if shit like the OP can't mobilise the apathetic, then what can?  Remember when Petitions had some gravitas?  When it was difficult and noteworthy to get a substantial number of signatures - not so much because of a lack of general support amongst the population - but because it was difficult for that tiny top% of people (who would actually get off their ass and get organised and sacrifice a shitload of time for a good cause) to meet each other.  So when a politician received a heavy petition, they knew they should really do something - it was a fairly clean signal that "general support amongst the population" was higher than previously thought.

Then there is Petitiononline.com: "more than 87 million signatures collected — tens of thousands of active petitions!" -- wowee, that's now impressively meaningless.  Well done.

Back to the Obama Youth - what are they doing now?  Fuckin flashmobs and g20 protests about whatever.  I just remember something which seemed to really piss off the right during the 2008 election.  It was the crowds which Obama drew.  They even tried to attack and dismiss it with the "celebrity" meme.  So it's kind of funny now that they're busy creating crowds of their own.  But perhaps it's the other side of the coin?  That like petitions, the internet makes it really easy to create a crowd if you have a good cause.  It's also really easy for that crowd to disperse once it's reached what it considers its goal.  And perhaps, like petitions, being able to create impressively large crowds will lose its political gravitas?

To that end, what about ridiculous anti-protest protests, to demonstrate the political invalidity of protests?  Now if only I could get several thousand to march for the "Prime Minister Harper stop humping Llamas NOW" cause, I might go some way towards proving that point.

tyrannosaurus vex

I don't actually think people are as apathetic as everyone says. They care, they want to change things, but they are confused, misinformed, and trained to hate each other. There's a lot of shit that's gone sour with our system, and every one of those things that have gone bad has a few thousand people who are pissed off about it. But everybody picks one thing that's gone wrong, and they blame everything else on that, instead of seeing everything that's gone wrong and use all those things to deduce what's Really Going On.

The Tea Partiers are assholes but they have a few good points. The ACLU are crazy but they have a few good points. Everybody has a piece of the puzzle but they'd all rather lose the whole country than admit they don't know everything, and they sure as hell don't want to end up cooperating with the enemy, which is of course other people who are suffering like they are, not the elites pulling the strings. We've been divided and conquered.

I don't think it's impossible to fix the system. That's the genius of our system. It's always possible to fix it -- it just never happens. It never happens because there are always a thousand ways to try to make it happen, and we're always going down those dead-end roads because the next protest might fix it, the next election might fix it, the next ballot measure might fix it, the next upstart political party might fix it... of course, none of those things ever make the slightest difference, but we're Americans, damn it, and Americans don't just give up.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Jasper

Quote from: Cosine 5 on June 27, 2010, 02:04:11 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on June 26, 2010, 10:57:00 PM
My agenda: Death to money.

The wallet is evil.  It must be punished.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that be a communist viewpoint? The abolition of capital?

You've mistaken me for someone who wishes to replace it with something that's supposed to work.

Cosine 5

Quote from: Sigmatic on June 27, 2010, 04:53:06 PM
Quote from: Cosine 5 on June 27, 2010, 02:04:11 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on June 26, 2010, 10:57:00 PM
My agenda: Death to money.

The wallet is evil.  It must be punished.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but would that be a communist viewpoint? The abolition of capital?

You've mistaken me for someone who wishes to replace it with something that's supposed to work.

So capitalism without the capital, basically?
not quite there yet.

Jasper

You keep trying to frame what I'm saying.  It's not making me want to explain myself.

But I'll try.

I'm in support of any kind of change that absolutely fucks the entire lives of the top ten thousand richest people on earth.  Anything but an all-out destructive hate erection for them is basically a failure of realism, in my eyes.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Captain Utopia on June 27, 2010, 06:27:13 AM
Well the irony is that they voted him in expecting him to take care of everything by himself.  If there was a progressive arm with the energy and commitment of The Tea Party,

Un, the Tea Party fizzled this spring...About the time the media got sick of them, and they learned the horrible truth that the liberals took 35 years to learn.
Molon Lube

tyrannosaurus vex

i wonder what the constitution would have been like if it had been written by discordians.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Jasper

It would say, in shaky handwriting, YOUR handwriting: "Don't mess with time travel".

Captain Utopia

Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 27, 2010, 08:18:58 PM
Quote from: Captain Utopia on June 27, 2010, 06:27:13 AM
Well the irony is that they voted him in expecting him to take care of everything by himself.  If there was a progressive arm with the energy and commitment of The Tea Party,

Un, the Tea Party fizzled this spring...About the time the media got sick of them, and they learned the horrible truth that the liberals took 35 years to learn.

The only point I was trying to make is that in our current environment, where it has never been easier to form groups, it also devalues the assumed meaning we have historically granted large organised movements.  The Tea Party is the perfect example of this, regardless of their current political fortunes.  In the same way that the first few large internet petitions may well have carried more weight, before the system adapted to the new political reality which technology enabled.

Which Horrible Truth are you thinking of?

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Captain Utopia on June 27, 2010, 11:23:55 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on June 27, 2010, 08:18:58 PM
Quote from: Captain Utopia on June 27, 2010, 06:27:13 AM
Well the irony is that they voted him in expecting him to take care of everything by himself.  If there was a progressive arm with the energy and commitment of The Tea Party,

Un, the Tea Party fizzled this spring...About the time the media got sick of them, and they learned the horrible truth that the liberals took 35 years to learn.

The only point I was trying to make is that in our current environment, where it has never been easier to form groups, it also devalues the assumed meaning we have historically granted large organised movements.  The Tea Party is the perfect example of this, regardless of their current political fortunes.  In the same way that the first few large internet petitions may well have carried more weight, before the system adapted to the new political reality which technology enabled.

Which Horrible Truth are you thinking of?

1.  It's so easy to form groups now that the groups are all small and ineffective.  And silly.  Factionalism is a funny thing.

2.  The fact that protesting doesn't work anymore, because nobody's paying attention.  After a while, they realize that they're the only ones buying the hype.  Did you see the numbers for the last teabagger rally?  Likewise, the Gay Pride day I witnessed on Boston Common was exuberant and well organized...but SMALL.  And there were many signs being held that showed that even a relatively small group as that couldn't stay on message.
Molon Lube