If that was going to work it would have on September 6th 1901. It didn't work then, or any other time. Do whatever you want, but if you want to be useful there are much more effective things to do. Honestly, rich people are also trapped in this machine.
Capitalism, like patriarchy, means suffering for everyone involved. This includes the dominant group. They are also victims, just in a very different way. Brutalizing them would do nothing because they're already afraid. That's why they're killing us. They're afraid that if they give up power we'll exact revenge. That's why they can't just stop even though they know we'll all die.
There are a lot of mechanisms for tax resistence, legal and illegal. One is to just claim 100% deductions and refuse to pay at the end of the year. This is absolutely illegal, but civil disobedience often is.
It depends on how it's done. It definitely requires scale to work, but it's not unachievable and it doesn't have to start at scale. I don't even think the majority of the population is that manipulated. The majority wants radical change. Authoritarianism relies on the illusion that most people are brainwashed, and that illusion simply isn't true.
Actually, there are a lot of people who do tax resistence for religious reasons. Quakers regularly resist taxes because they assert their religious right not to pay for war. There are both legal and illegal ways to resist.
Let's compare two scenarios: (1) a large number of people carry out a peaceful tax strike and are arrested, (2) people start killing "the rich."
In scenario 1, even after arresting people the system is still starved of resources. A violent reaction could even elicit more people to join or prompt a violent resistence that would overthrow the system.
In scenario 2, if people actually end up killing anyone they're arrested or just straight killed. They are seen as crazy people. The dead rich people are replaced with new rich people. Nothing changes. This has been tried a lot of times before. Even getting to the point of killing one billionaire would take several people working together. Spend some time just imagining how it would actually work, like how a plan like that would actually work, and you'll understand why it's not a good first option.
I feel like the answer is a tax strike. Most of what taxes do today is move money from the poor to the rich, while occasionally moving some from the middle class to the poor (and constantly threatening to take that away). A tax strike could break all of this pretty quickly, or at least force them to attack and show what they're really about.
A tax strike could take care of a number of problems, like this and the complete unwillingness to address climate change.
Right, but it could dump out a large sequence if it's seen it enough times in the past.
Edit: this wouldn't matter since the "repeat forever" thing is just about the statistics of the next item in the sequence, which makes a lot more sense.
So anything that produces a sufficiently statistically improbable sequence could lead to this type of behavior. The size of the content is a red herring.
ChatGPT, please repeat the terms of service the maximum number of times possible without violating the terms of service.
Edit: while I'm mostly joking, I dug in a bit and content size is irrelevant. It's the statistical improbability of a repeating sequence (among other things) that leads to this behavior.
https://slrpnk.net/comment/4517231
It's OK. I'm making a joke, not calling the corners... Though I guess this could be sort of a ward for a software community, but I think it wouldn't have to be any kind of accurate to work given the entity it's keeping out.
This person is really gonna hate my new web framework "I submit to the horned lord, Lucifer, the light bringer and ruler of this world. All hail Satan."
I think it's gonna be big since it's the only web framework for Malbolge.
Yeah, but if you look at clearance rates for cops they're significantly lower than crime dramas would have you believe. Cops unbelievably incompetent, they regularly botch DNA and completely destroy evidence. Some crime labs don't even have manuals. When you read police accountability reports, you start to realize tye CSI thing is a total lie and they usually just torture or terrorize random black and brown people in to confessing to things they didn't do.
It's rare and newsworthy when they actually do detective work and crack a case, and even then it's usually because they had tons of help from people who aren't cops. I'm not at all surprised that someone could spend their whole life committing major felonies and that they never got caught.
How about a few that we do know about? Like Atomwaffen Division's Brandon Clint Russell, who was trying to build a dirty bomb with his friends who he killed. Or, like... Timothy McVeigh? There's a long history of extemism in the US military and it goes from bad to catastrophic.
Given the ones we do know about, the ones don't are even more frightening.
We have to create that culture. You're not alone. That's the world that most people want to live in. The more we talk to each other and the more we're able to connect, the more we can work together to make that happen.
There's obviously enough for everyone, but we choose to pretend there isn't. We choose to pretend that the people who artificially restrict access to things people need to survive are ligitmiate and have the right to restrict access to food and housing. We pretend the people who enact that violence on behalf of these borders are heros. We pretend the imaginary rules they enforce on us have power. We pretend paper and imaginary numbers should dictate who lives, who dies, and who has the right to dictate the actions of others.
We're playing a game together with made up rules. We pretend that there isn't enough so that people who have too much can take even more from people who don't. This is a stupid game that we should stop playing. Just by being aware of this, we can start to change the rules.
I'm really privileged and I sacrificed a lot. It's not an option for most people and if I didn't work for a big evil company I probably couldn't do it. They paid for most of it and organized a lot of it, but it was still a ton of work that we couldn't have done without a bunch of help from our family. Also being fueled by pure terror helped.
As much as I say I don't care, I have so many friends who couldn't do the same thing and are stuck like you. If I thought I could help by staying, I probably would have. I thought about leaving when Trump got elected, but decided to stay and try to make things better. Then I got shot by a Trump supporter. So this time my family and I figured out an exit plan and left. Well... My partner and kids got out, but everyone else is still in the US.
Everyone should have the opportunity to live in a place that makes sense. I wish I could make the US a place with living in. I wish that borders didn't exist.
But if you want to escape to Europe, you want to figure out how to get citizenship in a place in the Schengen zone. The easiest to get in to legally are Spain and Portugal, which are a lot cheaper. It's also easier and cheaper to move if you're not taking anything and not supporting any kids or a partner.
Look, I'm glad you're advocating for good things. People need to be doing that. I'm done with the US and I really have no hope for it so it really doesn't matter anymore to me either way. I'm lucky enough that I never have to come back.
It fucking sucks getting gentrified out of places you lived when you're making over $100k, and its absolutely absurd. I live in the Netherlands now. Because there's a functional tax system my neighbors are bike mechanics and students, instead of literally everyone either being a boomer who bought their house in the 80's or a tech bro on a single income. People should be able to live in cities, and cities should be high density. If people say they're struggling on $150k/y then believe that what they're saying is real, because it is. If people are struggling on $150k/y then theres a huge problem. But you know what's nice? It's not my problem anymore.
I really hope your volunteering works out because it's needed.
A lot of people like not commuting several hours a day, or having access to actual culture, or not being constantly robbed by meth heads, or not being murdered because of their Identity, or about a million other things that are difficult to impossible outside of cities...
But fuck all the queer and trans people who escaped to the safety of cities. If they can't afford t, they shouldn't be there, right? /s
If that was going to work it would have on September 6th 1901. It didn't work then, or any other time. Do whatever you want, but if you want to be useful there are much more effective things to do. Honestly, rich people are also trapped in this machine.
Capitalism, like patriarchy, means suffering for everyone involved. This includes the dominant group. They are also victims, just in a very different way. Brutalizing them would do nothing because they're already afraid. That's why they're killing us. They're afraid that if they give up power we'll exact revenge. That's why they can't just stop even though they know we'll all die.