politics

I disagree flat out. MAGA is fullblown neoliberal. They don't want to regulate corporations, they don't want to raise taxes, they want to cut, dismantle regulatory control and shutter the government, allowing those who can to loot unfettered and unimposed. There's a phrase, it's not a war crime if it's the first time; that feels applicable here.

What am I not seeing, how is MAGA not the trickledown zombie if Reagan corpse? Shit, Reagan used the phrase first.

Whats been built in the past 40 years? In America. I don't see any bullet trains, I see stroads. I see some new high rises, but none that push any limits, except maybe the millennium tower in SF, and I assumed we were good letting Pisa hold the leaning tower title, but maybe I assumed wrong.

I'm wracking my head trying to think of a single American innovation that wasn't A. Created by DARPA and the public got the militaries hand me downs (GPS, IBM, Internet, Hubble) or B. Heavily subsidized to fund research and contracts/ preordered by the government.

Capitalists don't innovate. They build systems for wealth extraction. Let's look at the capitalist golden boy, Apple. There was and is no innovation with the iPhone. Phones already existed. So did cameras and MP3 players. Nothing new about a touchscreen or a GUI interface, the iPhone took all these elements and basic microcomputer parts, put it all together, renamed programs as 'apps', and charged $500 for it at a time when cell phones sold off at $200 high end. There is almost no change between models just stronger conponents, they just bricked old ones with updates and bloat forcing upgrading. Which is beyond fucked up. And since the 5c, at least, Apple has just purchased it's components from Samsungs waste bin. For over a decade buying a new $1000 iPhone was the same as buying a 2 year old Samsung, just with lipstick on the pig.

For a good sized segment an iPhone is a status thing. Those with one judge others and look down on them. It works both ways. Those who have an iPhone, I judge to be suckers and idiots. Because y'all got swindled by the greatest swindling modern history. Paying premium for bargain bin tech. Smh.

What reseach wasn't paid for with public money yet the dividends all end up privately gained? What a fucking shell game capitalists play. We're all taken for fools. They don't create jobs, they took over existing industries, lay offs for efficiency, repress competition, merge into monopolies, then it's the enshitification <- where we are now, where user gets fucked, businesses get fucked, but it's a monopoly so what can we all do? Amazon, Google, 2 textbook examples of get.fucked.inc.

Ever wonder why all the billionaires scramble for government contracts? Seriously. All of them. Show me a rich person not on the teat of the fed. I'm going to go with that's because there are no private contracts at that level. Not that there couldn't be, but that would require innovation and risk, and, again, Capitalists don't do that. Why would they? Perfect example. Take Shell, or Chevron. Why wouldn't they, in the 80s start to pivot towards solar and wind? They were the leaders of the energy secter, positioning emerging technology is R+D mixed with ROI. Surely they had people to crunch those numbers. But instead, what does history show they did? Suppress the climate studies, hire the mercs with PhDs to muddy the waters, and extract extract extract. They already have all this infrastructure paid for by the public in tax breaks. They're gonna use that earning potential until it costs more to operate than they can write off, or get tax breaks for.

All the way until they've fucked the climate for everyone else.

Not that they care. If capitalism has an underpinning catch all catch phrase it's, without a doubt, "I got Mine, Fuck you" silhouetted over a picture of someone pulling a ladder up behind them.