You Will Own Nothing. You Will Be Happy.

[Einzige]

Socialism is a historical movement, bound and determined by the prevailing objective conditions at the end of capitalism - "not the will, but the economic conditions" determine this. Marx describes these conditions most succinctly in 1845's The German Ideology, Chapter 3:

Quote:For it (i.e. capitalist alienation) to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development.

htps://www.weforum.org/great-reset/


The notion that "you will own nothing and be happy" has a direct antecedent in Marx, who anticipates this as the final world structure before global Communist revolution. This immiseratory process has a primary economic component Marx describes in a Letter to Friedrich Engels of 1868:

Quote: ... Then it turns out that, assuming *the rate of surplus value*, i.e. the exploitation of labour, as *equal*, the production of value and therefore the production of surplus value and therefore *the rate of profit* are *different* in different branches of production. But from these varying rates of profit a mean or general rate of profit is formed by competition. This rate of profit, expressed absolutely, can be nothing but the *surplus value* produced (annually) by the *capitalist class* in relation to the total of social capital advanced. E.g., if the social capital = 400c+100v, and the surplus value annually produced by it = 100m, the composition of the social capital = 80c+20v, and that of the product (in percentages) = 80c+20v | +20m = 20% rate of profit. This is the *general rate of profit*.


What the competition among the various masses of capital — invested in different spheres of production and differently composed — is striving for is capitalist communism, namely that the *mass of capital employed in each sphere of production* should get a fractional part of the total surplus value proportionate to the part of the total social capital that it forms

The rationale for the reset is simple: offset the climate crisis onto the shoulders of the proletariat, thereby justifying their immiseration (which would occur anyway - it is the nature of capitalism to strip property from the proletariat) whilst leaving the bourgeoisie unscathed.

This process will be presided over, ironically, by the bourgeois Left, whom Marx constantly scathed for justifying the perpetual existence of capitalism through their rhetoric. The conservatives fear of "eat bug, live in pod" are wholly justified, but his solutions will be ineffective - the struggle against it will by necessity have to be converted into a global struggle of the proletariat.

This struggle almost certainly begins on petit-bourgeois/nationalist lines - witness the French Yellow Vest Movement, January 6th, etc. On Twitter, on Facebook, etc. is is only the Right, representatives of the smaller petit-bourgeois and the bigger labor aristocracy, who are taking this seriously. They will almost certainly begin the armed resistance to this - and be crushed. But like coal converting into a diamond under pressure, their struggle will by necessity shift into an openly internationalist one.

[pbrower2a]

That is my impression of Marx' dream of Communism -- ownership of stuff will no longer be a source of power or gratification. All that people need for sustenance will be available for little effort. The full assertion of personal individuality will take considerably more effort. Just imagine the individuality that one could express in one's pet performance of the suites for solo violoncello of J S Bach -- if one is a true master of the 'cello. That will take about 10,000 hours of preparation, according to Malcolm Gladwell. Because people won't have to spend so much time on mindless efforts they might get the time for that. Or to master gardening on that level. Or painting. Or writing. Or acting. Or knowing the subtleties of the great religious text.

I can't imagine people really getting into milking cows, doing oil changes, or selling underwear.

[Bob Butler 54]

The primary problem with representative democracy is that the representatives see themselves as members of the elite. Thus, government comes to favor the elite creating the huge division of wealth Marx was upset about. The solution is direct vote computer democracy, to take the representatives out of the picture, but we seem not to be ready for that given security and cultural issues.

Revolution is not a way to get there as the revolutionaries are too tempted to become the new elites. Thus far, every communist revolution has resulted with a new group of elites replacing the old. They have an affinity for the owners of the means of production just as much as the old nobility that preceded them. As none of the Neo Marxist groups have suggested how to solve that problem, the intuitive rejection of Marxism as yet another autocratic system that favors an elite gets rejected. How far can Marxism go if not trusted by the people?

I would rather work on getting rid of the representatives than convince the violent people not to use violence to make elites of themselves.

[David Horn]

(07-30-2021, 11:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The primary problem with representative democracy is that the representatives see themselves as members of the elite.  Thus, government comes to favor the elite creating the huge division of wealth Marx was upset about.  The solution is direct vote computer democracy, to take the representatives out of the picture, but we seem not to be ready for that given security and cultural issues.

Revolution is not a way to get there as the revolutionaries are too tempted to become the new elites.  Thus far, every communist revolution has resulted with a new group of elites replacing the old.  They have an affinity for the owners of the means of production just as much as the old nobility that preceded them.  As none of the Neo Marxist groups have suggested how to solve that problem, the intuitive rejection of Marxism as yet another autocratic system that favors an elite gets rejected.  How far can Marxism go if not trusted by the people?

I would rather work on getting rid of the representatives than convince the violent people not to use violence to make elites of themselves.

I have to agree with all of this, and add the following. Anti-elite movements never succeed because some form of elite force is needed to bering them into being.  Marx's withering away of the state is and always has been a form of wishful thinnking that is about as likley as the sun rising in the west.  The only truly egalitarian societies that have ever existed were among hunter-gatherers or within the context of a religous order.  I don't see either as a model for society in general.  If I'm right on this (and I think I am) a different model that will work is needed and soon.  We're moving toward total oligarchy or some as yet undefined better option,  We need to be in a hurry to find it.

[Eric the Green]

(07-30-2021, 11:54 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: The primary problem with representative democracy is that the representatives see themselves as members of the elite.  Thus, government comes to favor the elite creating the huge division of wealth Marx was upset about.  The solution is direct vote computer democracy, to take the representatives out of the picture, but we seem not to be ready for that given security and cultural issues.

Revolution is not a way to get there as the revolutionaries are too tempted to become the new elites.  Thus far, every communist revolution has resulted with a new group of elites replacing the old.  They have an affinity for the owners of the means of production just as much as the old nobility that preceded them.  As none of the Neo Marxist groups have suggested how to solve that problem, the intuitive rejection of Marxism as yet another autocratic system that favors an elite gets rejected.  How far can Marxism go if not trusted by the people?

I would rather work on getting rid of the representatives than convince the violent people not to use violence to make elites of themselves.

As far as I can tell, the representatives are pretty much what the people vote for. So the primary problem with representative democracy is with the voters who send the representatives; voters who see themselves as potential members of the elite.

But as their representatives continue to uphold the elite, and keep the voters happy with slogans insisting that their policies provide "freedom" for them to become the elite, or by appealing to their prejudices and fears, the only hope is for enough of the voters to perceive the results of their own votes, ditch the deceptive freedom ideology, and change their votes. Usually it is easier for younger people, and some of the more-oppressed people, to see through the sham.

Another major aspect of the sham, is to convince people that both current political parties are the same; just different aspects of the elite. The people so convinced are also the primary clientele of the conspiracy culture. They are deceived into thinking that those who offer the best policies are just dividing the people and causing polarization. This way they will either not participate, so the elite can continue to dominate, or just go along with the status quo, or else submit to the sensational slogans of phony demagogues like Trump who promise to smash the system to pieces.

Of course, votes only can be shifted far enough, if enough people are allowed to vote. In many countries, a few elite tyrants have erased this ability, and in the USA the system was originally set up, and continues to be shaped, in ways that give the advantage to those who uphold the elite, so there needs to be a supermajority of voters who see through the sham; such as when Biden had a 7 point lead among the voters; just enough to barely win the electoral vote and create a 50-50 senate; a new regime that, being not completely free of the deceptions and the power of the elite, may provide better but still inadequate policies to meet the real needs of the people.

More direct democracy such as initiatives like we have in some states would allow the people to bypass their representatives and create laws. But for this to be productive, the money needs to be taken out of this process, just as it needs to be taken out of the election process.

At the end of this video which explains the primary delusive, deceptive ideology of "freedom" that oppresses the people, George Monbiot says that "undefined better option" is being developed.

[Eric the Green]

Description: In this interview George Monbiot explains some of the ideas behind his new book, Out of the Wreckage: A New Politics for an Age of Crisis. He argues that the "society-crushing system of neoliberalism has destroyed our natural capacity for altruism", and that we must fight against it to create "a politics of belonging that revives community and returns land to the people as a source of common wealth". We need meaningful participatory democracy, finer-grain involvement in politics, and power given back to people so that wealth isn't continually distributed to the rich.

What occurs to me is that although we need to make some systemic and policy changes in our current 4T so that we have a chance for a sustainable planet and a more just society in the future, the more fundamental changes such as land distribution and local community economics may be developed during the next Awakening, which will also be the peak and fulfillment of the cycle of revolution that began in the 1960s, as charted by the Uranus-Pluto conjunction and opposition cycle of revolution (conjunction 1966, opposition circa 2047). I have called this the Green Revolution (the more commonly-known meaning of that term also began simultaneously), because as Monbiot says we need, it places ecology and protection of our planet at the center of politics and policy.

[pbrower2a]

The transition to the age after scarcity will not be easy. Scarcity itself creates some certainties, and not only for monopolistic gougers. Some people are conditioned to fit the norms of an early-industrial society in which severe, unmet need structures all reality including the class interests of economic elites. Think of the reality of K-12 education as the conduit of children from working-class home to factory. As the factory jobs disappear, K-12 education often becomes something cynically described as a preparation for incarceration as the "school-to-prison pipeline).

Marx' prediction of the future of economic relationships may be an oversimplification (hunter-gatherer world >> classical, agrarian slavery >> feudalism under rural magnates >> capitalist plutocracy >> socialism >> Communism. Marx contends that Socialism, as government ownership and operation of productive capacity, is essential to ensuring that the boon of ever-increasing productivity go back into plant and equipment instead of into the sybaritic indulgence of economic elites of the plutocrats so that Marxist Socialism be more effective in creating prosperity for all than capitalism which serves only capitalists.

We need remember that Karl Marx was not a good historian; for example, feudalism did not evolve out of Roman conditions but instead came into being as a defense against barbarian invasions. He was also terribly naïve about human behavior and motivation (for human behavior and motivation one can turn to the likes of Freud, Maslow, etc.)A reminder to Einzige: Karl Marx did not give us the whole picture of human nature any more than Freud did. Marx was not a psychoanalyst and Freud was no economist. I might also suggest Malcolm Gladwell, who explains much about human achievement. Excellence does not come easy, and there are no "naturals" at any field.

Revolution or not, people in the advanced industrial world are headed to the post-scarcity age. Maybe people who truly enjoy their work will spend extreme hours on their work because their work defines them, as is so with artists, musicians, actors, writers, attorneys, journalists, scientists, engineers, academics, teachers, physicians, veterinarians, and accountants. (Accounting is an excellent career for many on the autistic spectrum). I question whether such is so with the convenience-store clerk or farm laborer, who may be delighted in working far fewer hours to meet the productive needs, let alone to sate monopolistic landlords and other profiteers. There would still be room for small-scale entrepreneurs... they typically spend long hours for modest pay to keep a business going.

We will not need the monopolists, the mobsters, the shysters, and the bureaucratic elitists to meet our needs. Such people have done more to retard human progress than to promote it. They will fail. For most people, doing twenty-five to thirty hours of work will be adequate for survival. So what do people do with the rest? That will take some imagination and determination to achieve.

[Einzige]

(07-30-2021, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: That is my impression of Marx' dream of Communism -- ownership of stuff will no longer be a source of power or gratification. 

This in itself is insufficient. Marx to Arnold Ruge:

Quote:I am therefore not in favor of our hoisting a dogmatic banner. Quite the reverse. We must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their ideas. In particular, communism is a dogmatic abstraction and by communism I do not refer to some imagined, possible communism, but to communism as it actually exists in the teachings of Cabet, Dezamy, and Weitling, etc. This communism is itself only a particular manifestation of the humanistic principle and is infected by its opposite, private property. The abolition of private property is therefore by no means identical with communism and communism has seen other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, rising up in opposition to it, not fortuitously but necessarily, because it is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism.

For Marx, Communism is, as I have shown, a historically determined process, requiring the immiseration (de-propertization) of the proletariat, as held forth by the Great Reset: own nothing, go nowhere, rent everything. It is the bourgeois Left and what has been called the "PMC" who will usher this in.

Our contention is that the bourgeois "solution" for Covid/climate change will contribute to this immiseration- it will be "bourgeois socialism", stripping proletarians of property rights whilst retaining them for the bourgeois and their select servants. The proletariat have no interest in this and it predates a general revolution, producing legitimate socialism.

Again, compare and contrast:

Quote:Then it turns out that, assuming *the rate of surplus value*, i.e. the exploitation of labour, as *equal*, the production of value and therefore the production of surplus value and therefore *the rate of profit* are *different* in different branches of production. But from these varying rates of profit a mean or general rate of profit is formed by competition. This rate of profit, expressed absolutely, can be nothing but the *surplus value* produced (annually) by the *capitalist class* in relation to the total of social capital advanced. E.g., if the social capital = 400c+100v, and the surplus value annually produced by it = 100m, the composition of the social capital = 80c+20v, and that of the product (in percentages) = 80c+20v | +20m = 20% rate of profit. This is the *general rate of profit*.


What the competition among the various masses of capital — invested in different spheres of production and differently composed — is striving for is capitalist communism, namely that the *mass of capital employed in each sphere of production* should get a fractional part of the total surplus value proportionate to the part of the total social capital that it forms.

Now witness the forthcoming Great Reset:

Quote:feudalism did not evolve out of Roman conditions but instead came into being as a defense against barbarian invasions

The latifundia predate most 'barbarian' incursions into Roman territory.

[pbrower2a]

(07-31-2021, 07:51 PM)Einzige Wrote:

(07-30-2021, 10:45 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: That is my impression of Marx' dream of Communism -- ownership of stuff will no longer be a source of power or gratification. 

This in itself is insufficient. Marx to Arnold Ruge:

Quote:I am therefore not in favor of our hoisting a dogmatic banner. Quite the reverse. We must try to help the dogmatists to clarify their ideas. In particular, communism is a dogmatic abstraction and by communism I do not refer to some imagined, possible communism, but to communism as it actually exists in the teachings of Cabet, Dezamy, and Weitling, etc. This communism is itself only a particular manifestation of the humanistic principle and is infected by its opposite, private property. The abolition of private property is therefore by no means identical with communism and communism has seen other socialist theories, such as those of Fourier and Proudhon, rising up in opposition to it, not fortuitously but necessarily, because it is only a particular, one-sided realization of the principle of socialism.

In this Forum, you are meeting people who do not see the path of Humanity as invariably "onward and forward". Humanity has had its ups and downs from the eruption of Mount Toba (which reduced the human population to about 3000 -- people who could survive only by beach-combing along the coastline of modern-day South Africa) about 78,000 years ago to glacial maxima (get another glacial maximum to the extent of about 20,000 years ago and there would not be enough food for the world's canine population, let alone ours) to the onset of Dark Ages that destroyed almost all of pre-classical civilization (like Mycenae) and classical (around AD 536, when the last traces of classical civilization vanish in western Europe in Rome and Celtic Britain -- the Arthurian legend comes from just before that calamity) -- to the Mongol invasions and ensuing massacres from Korea to Silesia and India to the Black Death... thermonuclear war is always a possibility, AGW will take a mess of just about everything, and should COVID-19 morph into something as lethal as the Black Death, then we have a huge loss of human population and institutions as a certainty. In the event of monumental stupidity involving thermonuclear warfare, super-viruses, and AGW and the extreme myopic stupidity in which the Holocaust or the Killing Fields of Cambodia are multiplied by a thousand, which is a possible when we develop missiles and environmental destruction without developing the conscience and wisdom for dealing with such potential.

America can go from a place that celebrates that it can put an end to Jim Crow practice to voting in Donald Trump and, which reflects a level of human stupidity and delusion that I could never imagine possible allowed that horrible man to come close to getting re-elected despite showing so many despotic tendencies unprecedented in American history. 

One need not be a Marxist to recognize the dangers that arise from greed, cruelty, and selfishness among economic and bureaucratic elites that know no moral constraints -- even the desire for self-preservation -- from supporting a fascist pig. Donald Trump demonstrates that the American People today are no better than the Germans of ninety years ago. Maybe the only difference is that we Americans have several Model Minorities instead of one. A hint: there was nothing wrong with the German people that Judaism would not have solved.     

Quote: For Marx, Communism is, as I have shown, a historically determined process, requiring the immiseration (de-propertization) of the proletariat, as held forth by the Great Reset: own nothing, go nowhere, rent everything. It is the bourgeois Left and what has been called the "PMC" who will usher this in.

Only ex post facto is history an obvious certainty. We can now all see why the Axis Powers were doomed to lose the Second World War, but that was far from clear until the Allies got to roughly the borders of Germany today that the Third Reich was doomed. If you are thinking of those science-fiction scenarios in which the Axis powers prevail, I see them losing for one main reason: atrocities. I can imagine an Axis victory as a science fiction scenario, but that requires a veritable inversion of Good and Evil as identifiable post facto in canonical history. A hint: the KKK prevails in the US, the BUF seizes power in Britain, Laval's fascist clique takes hold in France, the Weimar Republic survives, and the infant democracy in Japan doesn't get smothered. There is no redemption of Stalin. I might be tempted to start such a novel.  

Quote:Our contention is that the bourgeois "solution" for Covid/climate change will contribute to this immiseration- it will be "bourgeois socialism", stripping proletarians of property rights whilst retaining them for the bourgeois and their select servants. The proletariat have no interest in this and it predates a general revolution, producing legitimate socialism.

I see in the post-scarcity world the demise of the car culture, McMansions, education strictly as 'hire' education without any other improvement of the student, and of course the neocon assumption that the common man exists solely to make those already rich and powerful even more rich and powerful. I see the disappearance of status symbols as a personal objective. If you want to know what was part of the Age of Scarcity that won't be, then visit some dollar store or used-goods place. My mother had a large collection of Precious Moments ®  figurines --  you know, those cloying images of children in adult roles -- and I wish I could sell those on Ebay or whatever.  

Quote:Again, compare and contrast:

Quote:Then it turns out that, assuming *the rate of surplus value*, i.e. the exploitation of labour, as *equal*, the production of value and therefore the production of surplus value and therefore *the rate of profit* are *different* in different branches of production. But from these varying rates of profit a mean or general rate of profit is formed by competition. This rate of profit, expressed absolutely, can be nothing but the *surplus value* produced (annually) by the *capitalist class* in relation to the total of social capital advanced. E.g., if the social capital = 400c+100v, and the surplus value annually produced by it = 100m, the composition of the social capital = 80c+20v, and that of the product (in percentages) = 80c+20v | +20m = 20% rate of profit. This is the *general rate of profit*.


What the competition among the various masses of capital — invested in different spheres of production and differently composed — is striving for is capitalist communism, namely that the *mass of capital employed in each sphere of production* should get a fractional part of the total surplus value proportionate to the part of the total social capital that it forms.

The falling rate of profit results in industrial processes when the markets for stuff expand as prices fall. 

Quote:This set was the first color set for sale, in March of 1954. It was priced at $1,295. Westinghouse ran a full page ad in the New York Times introducing the set, for sale at 60 stores in New York. Not one of the stores reported a single sale.
We have acquired a second Westinghouse 15 inch color set. This one appears to be a prototype for the H840CK15.
Consumer Reports reviewed the new Westinghouse in their April, 1954 issue. They concluded:

CU is as optimistic as the next man about the future of color television. But on the the basis of the evidence at hand, it appears that only an inveterate (and well-heeled) experimenter should let the advertisements seduce him into being "among the very first" to own a color TV set.

In April the price was cut to $1,110 after only 30 sets had been sold. Only 500 were built, and most were never sold, because there was very little programming in color at the time, and the set was expensive and temperamental. This is one of only a few of these sets still in existence.

https://www.earlytelevision.org/westinghouse_color.html

..............................

Even at a 50% profit between the manufacturer and the retailer, $555 for thirty TV sets is not as good as $20 profit on a TV retailing for $120  if one sells a billion TV sets. $1100 in 1954  

A hint: prices are up by about a factor of ten today from 1954. $13000 might not buy a new car now, but can buy a poor person out of much trouble. His and her complete dentures, maybe? 

The technology gets better -- more reliable and more usable, and less capricious. Production runs lengthen, so fixed costs per unit tumble.  "Me-too" competitors enter the industry to offer cheaper knock-offs, some of which might even be good. Prices fall, and more people buy. The rate of profit falls, but capitalists more than make up on that with volume. Improving technologies allow people to do more with less, which explains why a 60" flat-screen TV today costs much less than the dreadful first color TV that sold for $1295 in 1954.*    

Quote:Now witness the forthcoming Great Reset:

Quote:feudalism did not evolve out of Roman conditions but instead came into being as a defense against barbarian invasions

The latifundia predate most 'barbarian' incursions into Roman territory.

Nothing so compels change as does failure. When COVID-19 or heat waves the result of global warming start decimating the working poor and forcing pay increases, the maybe the dimwits who assume that we live in a perfect universe because the economic elites can live very well find reality pounding them. One of the best constraints against thermonuclear war was that the economic elites of nuclear powers recognized that their pampered ways of life, if not their lives, would come to an end. Or worse -- they might be obliged, should they somehow survive, to face harsh judgment for war crimes. The elites going into the Crisis loathe how things turn out if the Crisis goes badly. 

I want people scared of COVID-19 and of AGW. I prefer evolution to revolution because revolution often fails in overthrowing a rotten social order and makes a brutal Reaction a near certainty, or the winners of the revolution prove no less corrupt and cruel than the Old Order.  I look at the struggle between the Reds and the Whites in the Russian Civil War and regret that either side won.

Maybe we need to do away with the car culture, a diet heavy in meat, and commodity fetishes. Maybe? I can imagine giant apartment complexes with no real windows for those who live inside; they will have to settle for giant television screens that offer them a view. Maybe the Golden Gate from Kansas City? Outer space from an orbiting telescope?  Lake Como from Las Vegas? Mount Fuji from Roswell, New Mexico?  The Brandenburg Gate from Stuttgart... Arkansas? Single-family residences are obviously something for a time when the world had three billion, and not ten billion, people.  

Zero population growth is the necessary start. 

* An oddity: as social critic Vance Packard put it,

"Television is not a patrician medium". 

TV antennas proliferated not so much among high-income, well-educated people like the family of a "Ward Cleaver" (an engineer) but instead among ill-educated, low-income people like the bus driver "Ralph Kramden". In the 1950's, evening television was mostly a stream of vaudeville, newsreels, stale movies, violent dramas, sporting events, and daytime TV was  washday weepers and  programs on cooking (men were not watching these shows) until the kids came home from school when cartoons would appear. On rare occasions a network might broadcast an opera, symphony, or play that might have some intellectual appeal, but that was rare. The sporting events were often boxing and wrestling which have little appeal to people with triple-digit IQ's. If a TV antenna appeared at a high-end house it was a fringe benefit for the (domestic) staff.

[Einzige]

You bourgeois socialists absolutely despise the proletariat.

[pbrower2a]

(08-01-2021, 02:20 AM)Einzige Wrote: You bourgeois socialists absolutely despise the proletariat.

The ill-educated white people did vote heavily for the sociopath Donald Trump. The majority of addicts of meth and opiates in America is the white working class. I'm not going to excuse tycoons and bureaucratic elitists for oppression of workers.

Something is perverse in the upbringing of working-class white people. I can't see any virtue that the K-12 educational system offers future toilers except deference toward economic elites that one can describe easily with the word "oppressors". Maybe the white working class still is so naïve as to think that white Christian privilege still has some tangible value or moral virtue when it is nearly worthless. Non-white and non-Christian Americans have no such illusion. 

The great divide in America on politics is "debtor" and "creditor"... and "creditor" makes an easy and obvious rhyme with "predator". Net ownership of large assets makes one a creditor (cash is itself public debt in America), and borrowing of any kind makes one a debtor. To be sure, small-scale creditors have a stake in a vibrant economy to ensure that they remain on the "creditor" side by not losing their shaky hold on savings, real property, and personal belongings. They want reliable income from work or the ownership of a small business (and small-scale entrepreneurs are not oppressors if they are largely getting paid for their toil. Their profit is their income, and divide the profits by time put in, and the economic reward is often little higher than that of assembly-line workers). Big creditors have always sought to put working people into debtto pay off under as harsh terms as is possible. Just think of sharecroppers in old Kukluxistan, serfs in medieval times, or (this is now practically unique to America) anyone who takes out large student loans to have a chance to be something other than a very-marginal member of the working class: farm laborer, retail clerk, domestic servant, or unskilled laborer. For unskilled workers in a plutocratic America, life really is nasty, short, and brutish. 

The creditor-debtor relationship has typically been a relationship of predator and prey in most of human history; in neoliberal. plutocratic America it is particularly so. Not owning anything but being in debt makes one a lessee, which ensures that one will never be able to accumulate wealth. Do you not believe me? Then just visit some rent-to-own emporium in America and look at the gaudy, shoddy stuff available as furniture, appliances, or entertainment devices. Or buy a decrepit used car from a tote-the-note lot. Such looks completely irrational from a bourgeois standpoint, but the people who own and operate such places are getting their hooks into poor people who have no viable alternatives. To have no viable alternatives makes one a debt-bonded serf in all but name. 

People who work in such places as salesmen are expected to make as many people as possible into abject debtors. The stuff being sold generally has a short life, so it is worth little... but the revenue stream is precious.

[Einzige]

https://gizmodo.com/home-depot-wants-to-...1847407180

Quote:In n a bid to crack down on organized retail crime, Home Depot is piloting a program where power tools must be activated via Bluetooth at checkout—or they won’t work. It’s a clever solution to deter theft, but it also highlights how technology can sometimes change gadget ownership in unintended ways.

ADVERTISEMENT

Apparently, power tools are an attractive and lucrative target for retail shoplifters. Earlier this year, a Florida man stole more than $17,000 worth of power tools from various Home Depot stores in the state. A MarketWatch report notes that the Bluetooth tech is on the device itself, not the packaging, so even if a thief was successful in filching the tool, it wouldn’t turn on. Home Depot is also working with other partners on the program and may extend it to other items like smart home gadgets. Business Insider reports that Home Depot has already tested this tech in a few stores, and will now be rolling it out more widely with the aim of eventually introducing it to every Home Depot in the U.S.

The thinking behind adding the extra step of Bluetooth activation is it turns items with a high resale value from an “easy score” to something more troublesome. The other added benefit is Home Depot can avoid having to keep these items in locked display cases.

[pbrower2a]

(08-03-2021, 02:04 AM)Einzige Wrote: https://gizmodo.com/home-depot-wants-to-...1847407180

Quote:In n a bid to crack down on organized retail crime, Home Depot is piloting a program where power tools must be activated via Bluetooth at checkout—or they won’t work. It’s a clever solution to deter theft, but it also highlights how technology can sometimes change gadget ownership in unintended ways.

Apparently, power tools are an attractive and lucrative target for retail shoplifters. Earlier this year, a Florida man stole more than $17,000 worth of power tools from various Home Depot stores in the state. A MarketWatch report notes that the Bluetooth tech is on the device itself, not the packaging, so even if a thief was successful in filching the tool, it wouldn’t turn on. Home Depot is also working with other partners on the program and may extend it to other items like smart home gadgets. Business Insider reports that Home Depot has already tested this tech in a few stores, and will now be rolling it out more widely with the aim of eventually introducing it to every Home Depot in the U.S.

The thinking behind adding the extra step of Bluetooth activation is it turns items with a high resale value from an “easy score” to something more troublesome. The other added benefit is Home Depot can avoid having to keep these items in locked display cases.

Many items are now designed so that they must be activated (or de-activated) at a register. Clothing stores have long had devices that ensure that a thief or a buyer of stolen merchandise cannot use the item if one takes it. High-value electronic goods are often held in Lucite containers that display the goods to a potential customer but that can be unlocked for the release of the merchandise in a usable form at the register. Cell phones and refill cards are so designed that the phone or card are unusable unless cleared at the register. 

Power tools are valuable, and as such merchandise as electronic gadgets become dirt-cheap, power tools remain valuable. Maybe they can cut through the Lucite cages for a Blu-Ray collection of the entire Game of Thrones or Downton Abbey series. Maybe this could be applied to exercise machines, bicycles, furniture, stereo equipment, or televisions. OK, so you manage to purloin a flat-screen Zenith* TV from a loading dock, and you take it home. So you connect it to pirated cable TV (what else would one expect a thief to use as a source?). So you turn the TV onto a premium channel -- let us say "XXX Unlimited", which is porn (again, what would you expect? C-SPAN?), and you get a message from the manufacturer:

"Zenith Corporation will not authorize the use of this television because it was not properly purchased from an authorized reseller. If you believe that you are receiving this in error, then contact the retailer or on-line merchant who sold it to us or call 1-800-BEC-LEAN. If this item has not been properly purchased through authorized channels, then call 1-800-TUF-LUCK".  

Of course, Big Business is finding ways to get people to pay more, as by compelling one to rent a service than to buy software as a one-time purchase or to commit one to proprietary aftermarket products such as printer inks.

[Einzige]

You don't need to drive, just Uber. You still wanna drive? Well then you don't get all the features unless you pay monthly for the premium subscription for the software for your car. You wanna drive undisturbed? Fine, but we're gonna use cameras in the car to analyze your facial expressions as you drive by billboards and hear ads on your spotify.

You want to be left alone? We're just going to track your location at all times. You want to wash your clothes? Just pay someone else to use their washing machine or subscribe to shared washing machines.

You want a house? Sure thing, just pay monthly rental fees. Can't afford it? Just "co-live" in a house with 8 other people, bro. Want to have your rented lawn mowed? You know the drill. Did you want dinner? We'll just charge you by the meal, grocery shopping is for boomers.

Why would anyone even want to own anything? Just pay rental fees for everything, instead.

Do you people really not see how this is the material manifestation of Marx's immiseration thesis? But this is not amenable to DUHHHHH VOTE DEMOCRATIC braindeadism as a solution. It produces revolution.

https://www.reddit.com/r/stallmanwasright/

Again: 

Quote: For it (i.e. capitalist alienation) to become an “intolerable” power, i.e. a power against which men make a revolution, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity “propertyless,” and produced, at the same time, the contradiction of an existing world of wealth and culture, both of which conditions presuppose a great increase in productive power, a high degree of its development