Fair, but social media shows that enshittification doesn’t have to result in them charging money. Advertising and control over the zeitgeist are plenty valuable. Even if people don’t have money to pay for AI, AI companies can use the enshittified AI to get people to spend their food stamps on slurry made by the highest bidder.

And even if companies have conglomerated into a technofeudal dystopia so advertisement is unnecessary, AI companies can use enshittified AI to make people feel confused and isolated when they try to think through political actions that would threaten the system but connected and empowered when they try to think through subjugating themselves or ‘resisting’ in an unproductive way.

Where the left leaning practitioners are unable to do so, they will be forever tyrannized by the banded majority.

You are assuming no ideological changes of opinion are possible or useful.

People that vote right wing aren’t better off just because they voted that way. They’re not tyrants oppressing the left, they’re fellow citizens who get oppressed just as much. Their vote for the winning team doesn’t win them anything.

The solution to right-wing banding isn’t left wing banding, it’s disbanding the right wing by showing its voters that they’re being had. And that takes a cohesive and functional alternative.

Leftist “infighting” is healthy. It’s a process of discovering these alternatives, and it regularly churns out consensus issues such as consent-based queer rights, veganism, not funding genocide, and how the US government is now fascist.

Over time these issues get normalized through leftist action until liberal centrists rewrite the histories as if they are responsible for producing them through liberal democracy.

To put it more succinctly, the enemy of my enemy is my friend (when freedom is on the line).

Daily reminder that the DNC does not acknowledge that the US government is now fascist. Uniting under a common front doesn’t mean we fight fascism together, it means we canvas for votes until we’re black bagged one by one.

Ultimately it is important to vote in every election for a candidate that has a good chance of actually getting in to represent you, but that is just one day every year or two. Everything else should be dedicated to finding and testing these alternatives.

If large corporations have zero empathy for their competition, why do they have such an easy time coordinating raising grocery prices well above the free market optimum?

Large corporations are owned by capital holders. Often it’s the same set of capital holders owning different corporations because they’ve diversified their assets. It is not in the interest of their owners to have a free market race to the bottom.

So they make deals. And when socialists force the government to forbid those deals, they find Schelling points where they can make deals without making deals. It’s not collusion; it’s covid supply issues; ask anyone. And with neoliberal/neocon dismantling of regulatory agencies they can just do it.

So they have empathy for other large corporations. But it goes further than that. At least for now, capital assets are still managed by people. Those people are flesh and blood. They eat, they socialize, they make friends, and they care about their friends and acquaintances. And this caring is embedded into the choices that they make at work, where they compete against their friends and acquaintances.

So large corporations have empathy not just for other corporations, but also for rich people in general. Golden parachutes, nepotist appointments, favors, massively overpaid C-suite execs and expensive consultancy jobs from each other’s hobby projects.

Corporations bleed trillions of dollars for the sake of empathy with their competitors and with private individuals, they just won’t accept a competitor to bourgeoisie hegemony.

I would gladly sacrifice modern conveniences as part of a societal shift towards degrowth, but it’s psychologically and socially taxing not to choose convenience when it is available. I want these conveniences taken away from me, or taxed into inconvenience.

And perhaps most importantly, when these conveniences are taken away at scale we can replace them at scale with other good things, the way we can’t when making individual choices.

I do not want to drive but I can’t buy a place in a walkable neighborhood when capitalism refuses to build them. I want to save on heating by living in an intentional community but society is so atomized and group housing so rare that I can’t find one to call home.

The solution to a tragedy of the commons is not to have a few people still pay into the commons, it’s to rebuild the system around the commons that makes it the best choice for you personally to support the commons and take sustainably.

but pragmatically and philosophically. They’re like 60 years old, and even if it affects them in their lifetime, they’ll be “dead in 20 years”.

Imagine saying this as if human prosperity wasn’t built on people building places for their children and grandchildren.

Capitalism is one of very few philosophies that pretends that selfishness is good, and it would be silly not to blame people that believe in it for the consequences of that philosophy when implemented.

Ordinary western citizens are to blame, because ordinary western citizens could have changed this merely by being morally offended and voting for something else. Most of them personally chose to support capitalism over any alternative. To not even explore the space of possibilities, but to get paid off by corporate-government partnerships that were robbing both the future and the rest of the world.

Borders did not save Afghanistan from NATO sending over a million soliders who got all settled in before carrying out the rest of their orders. Nevertheless, 20 years later, NATO left with their tail between their legs because Afghans just wouldn’t stop fighting a guerilla against the occupation.

Borders did not save German Jews from Nazis radicalizing over a million people who got all settled in before carrying ot the rest of their orders. Unfortunately, they had trusted their state’s monopoly on violence and without the ability to defend themselves most did not survive.

Borders did not save Ukraine from Russia invading with over a million soldiers who, despite not getting to settle in, occupied a large amount of land and killed tens of thousands. However, those borders do prevent Ukraine sympathizers from retaliating against Russia with their full might, because despite Russia just flat out sending in an army to subjugate random people without justification, that border means they supposedly didn’t attack the likes of us.

Without borders, the Russian state is an organization. You can only be part of the organization or not. If you are not part of the organization, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in Melitopol or New York City, inexcusable violence against one is inexcusable violence against all. So if Russia were to attack, you only have two choices: sign up to be part of the Russian state or be one of their potential targets.

Now, it’s a valid choice to let yourself be subjugated and hope they don’t kill you to save on integration paperwork. It’s a valid choice to put your head in the sand and wait for another Russia to pop up closer to you to subjugate you with nobody to help you. But if you like being a free person, the only option is to defend anyone who comes under attack as you would want them to defend you.

I, personally, live under the aegis of nuclear-powered mutually assured destruction. A foreign state attacking me likely isn’t possible without a volley of nuclear weapons laying waste to that state. It seems fair if Ukrainians had the same, though perhaps guerilla or conventional military action would be better from a geopolitical de-escalation standpoint. Either way, anyone who doesn’t want to be the victim of genocide would have to treat a Russian invasion of Ukraine as an attack on their neighbor, and retaliate proportionally. The combined might of everyone in Europe and North America and everywhere else that respects human rights would be comparable to that of NATO and would come to the defense of the ones attacked.

So the Russian state and its leadership would likely not survive, and they would know this for a fact when deciding whether to attack anyone. So what would be stopping Russian leadership from committing any acts of violence? Basic self-preservation.

And sure, those soldiers getting a nice beach head might make destroying the Russian state a bit more costly. But that doesn’t make Putin any less dead by the end of it.