PoliticalAgitator @ PoliticalAgitator @lemm.ee

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Reddit does absolutely nothing to combat shills and vote manipulation because it all looks like ad impressions to investors.

They're probably here already, since the buy in is so low. But realistically they'd be focused on the bigger sites for something like this.

If you don't want to be called a shill for banks, try and avoid sounding exactly like a shill for a bank.

With even a second of reflection it should have been clear that not everybody has the same luxury as you do. Forget to look both ways before crossing the street and you might find that a 200 IQ isn't the protection you thought it was.

Is it just me, or do most top comments on this post read like astro-turfing?

You should always be extremely wary of any post that presents a topic and then has comments offering you a ready-made opinion of that topic to make your own.

In this case, it doesn't matter how many people furiously suck themselves off over how responsible they are with their credit cards and how their bank strokes their hair as they fall asleep, credit card companies raked in billions.

A non-trivial amount of that is going to be from who didn't have the luxury of being "smart" or "careful" with their card because they were broke and desperate.

A billion dollars would buy a lot of sock puppets and wouldn't even be 1% of their profits.

If he had a speck of integrity he'd be a completely different person.

Realistically, "the algorithm" is just an elaborate "people who like A also like B so here is a video popular with B watchers", so it can't be too difficult to manipulate.

I just don't feel that lines up with his behaviour anywhere else.

He has a pathological need to be seen as "best at everything" and will publicly say embarrassing, easily exposed lies.

He claimed he had the biggest inauguration. He claimed to be in incredible physical and mental health. He claimed the head of the boy scouts called to tell him "he gave the greatest speech they'd ever been given".

He took a sharpie to a hurricane map because he knows better than meteorologists. He told people to inject bleach because he knows better than experts in medical science. Butch manly men walk up to him crying tears of gratitude because they love him so much.

The "stolen election" excuse is another of these excuses. He can't admit he lost because only losers lose, so he started a lie that blamed anything except his personal failings.

Either way, he should be held accountable for his actions in both situations.

He might, since he was caught outside America, where claiming "I lost track of where my gun was" is an insane defense that would get your gun license revoked forever.

Once back in the US though, we worst he'll face is some disappointed tutting in his direction. The pro-gun crowd works very hard to ensure the "responsible" part of "responsible gun owner" stays entirely optional.

I think he's much too fragile of ego to intentionally lose. I doubt he even let his kids win at games as children.

Partly because I doubt he ever actually played with them but also because he's a complete cunt.

Some of that is "starving people will take crumbs and scraps over death" but unfortunately, some of it is "people who hit their family also vote and it turns out they like abusing and controlling those people too".

And what's doubly ironic is they're INCREDIBLY selective about what they want free market for.

It's because neoliberals don't genuinely believe in neoliberalism. If it actually worked as promised even half the time, they'd openly oppose it because they get rich off it's failure, not it's success.

It's just a book of excuses that sound plausible to the average person and keeps their messaging consistent without needing secret, leakable, probably illegal meetings to discuss corporate collusion and managed democracy.

"Are my wages illegal?“ "No, it's the workers who are wrong"

Unfortunately, not really.

Whatever country you're in, the right-wing (or center-right if you've got fascists) tend to be a bit more shameless and psychopathic with their neoliberalism.

So tax cuts for the rich, deregulation until disaster, cut social services but keep letting your friends and donors overcharge tenfold for government contracts, hand them monopolies by privatising critical services then line their pockets further by letting them demand ransom payments on top, open hostility towards unions, that kind of stuff.

This is the Reagan and Thatcher way, they've just learned to never use the word "neoliberalism" in public because if people don't know the word, they can't find the studies that show it never actually works.

But unfortunately, in most wealthy countries, the left-wing parties are doing the same thing, just slower and with a well practised frown.

They'll still give tax breaks to the rich, but they'll throw in some crumbs for the middle class. They won't read their climate policy directly from an oil company email, but they'll still prioritise millions of dollars over millions of lives.

Often, they work as a holding pattern. They pick a small number of social issues that won't touch the rich and work on those. Things like gay marriage, legal weed and helping the native people who weren't genocided. Some infrastructure here and there (which still lines the pockets of friends and donors, but we actually get something back in return).

But they won't actually undo any of the previous neoliberalism. They won't nationalise critical infrastructure or significantly expand social services (for example, expanding universal healthcare to cover dental). They'll keep most of the previous budget cuts, maybe undoing half of one here and there as part of the "pretending to be two different parties" pantomime.

There will be genuine progressives among them (much like fascists in the conservatives) but they never weild real power, always being outnumbered by faceless neoliberals at all times. But they're basically PR, making the party look more (or less) progressive than it really is and serving as a litmus test for "how many crumbs will it take to keep us from the guillotine".

One of the most high profile examples of this was Bernie Sanders, a genuine progressive that had a genuine shot at the presidency and once there, might make actual changes.

So left-wing politicians, right-wing politicians, left-wing for-profit media empires, right-wing for-profit media empires, progressive business leaders and conservative business leaders all joined together to undermine and attack him in an act of class solidarity that socialists and communists can only dream of.

Instead we got Hillary who offered crumbs or Trump who offered racism. Now we have Biden, offering slightly larger crumbs than expected because polling showed that "eat the rich" was gaining momentum.

Which is probably more than you ever cared to know about neoliberalism (and definitely more than I care to edit), but it's important to identify it and challenge it.

With social media astro-turfing now being the most effective way to win an election and AI poised to be the most effective propaganda/mind-control tool ever created, we have a very small window to end this "endless financial growth forever" insanity before it kills hundreds of millions of people.

As far as neoliberals are concerned, the only immoral act is standing in the way of profits.

So slice by slice, they pared a wage that would have once been enough to buy a family home into a wage that barely lasts to the next one.

They pocketed the difference, but it still wasn't enough.

So they moved the jobs overseas where they could pay people even less, happily working with brutal authoritarian regimes.

They pocketed the difference, but it still wasn't enough.

So they drew in "illegals", exploiting their vulnerability like an abusive partner so they could pay them below minimum wage.

They pocketed the difference, but it still wasn't enough.

So now they want to use children, so they can exploit people who are even more vulnerable by paying them even less money.

They'll pocket the difference and it still won't be enough.

So they'll start eyeing up slavery, astro-turfing for fascists so they can pay their workers in bread and water.

And with nothing left to take from them, it still won't be enough.

But the dirty secret is that this isn't cutting edge of exploitation, this is the middle of the road.

The trailblazers are already there and have been for a decade. Nestlé uses child slaves, distant and brown enough to be swept under the rug. Walmart and Wendy's use prison labor, paying less than a dollar an hour.

The claims of "the free market will solve it" were bullshit. For-profit media companies don't cover it because the unspoken rule is that you can push and shove for market share but you never, ever attack neoliberalism itself.

But even if we do hear of it, it won't do us any good. Ethically produced goods are a luxury that few people can afford because their first move was suppressing wages.

Need a kitchen knife? A good one that will last forever is $300 dollars you don't have. A slave made one that will be landfill in a year is $3 that you do have. Two years from now the ethical company will be buried beside it for refusing to play the game.

Regulations did (and still could) solve it, so they groomed their own children for politics, capturing both sides of the aisle and building an illusion of choice, letting us decide if we want to be slammed into a wall at 100mph in a red car or 98mph in a blue one.

But it's also the only way back out of this hole, so vote better I guess. Progressive politicians are the only solution and if you can't find one, as disgusting as they might have made the job, you might have to become one.

Unless it's to a family member, including non-immediate family like cousins and uncles, or the spouses of cousins and uncles.

Not exactly water tight but it looks like Oregon's gun laws are better than most places.

Which of course means that gun-lobby groups pour millions into fighting them and sheffifs proudly declare they won't uphold the laws, despite those laws being democratically decided and literally their job.

That's why the gun lobby nails it -- the propaganda they use to sell guns creates more issues to use as propaganda to sell guns.

Fortunately for them, the public and for-profit media are back to ignoring Aboriginal issues.

That's incompatible with corporate greed. They will look at a billion transactions for $0.05 and start thinking "What if each of those was $0.50? Or $5.00? Or $50.00?".

Without a regulating force (such as laws or consumer power that isn't just neoliberal lies) , it will always grow to absorb every available dollar it can.

And realistically, charging people 0.045€ for the service they actually use won't make them nearly as rich as charging people $50 each month for the $3 dollars they use.

They've already done the maths to prove it. It's why it's never happened.

Not hurting the guns feelings is more important than the lives of innocent families.

Functionally a ban on buying guns from gun stores. He can still easily buy an arsenal of semi-automatic weapons by buying them privately without a background check -- again, thanks to the pro-gun community.

The gun stores weren't. Additionally, the pro-gun community opposes the measures that took his guns away.