this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
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politics

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[–] [email protected] 119 points 10 months ago (5 children)

They're alowly rolling back all the freedoms we gained in the last 100 years.

Sometimes I wonder if the threat of communism was the only thing keeping us safe

[–] [email protected] 80 points 10 months ago

I'm convinced that it was. The USSR wasn't even fully in the grave yet when the NeoCons showed up to start dancing on Communism's grave with shit like stock buybacks and deep social spending cuts.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 10 months ago

this is the correct position actually.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"[The Share Our Wealth Program] is the only defense this country's got against communism!" - Huey Long

You can stop wondering, dear, they said it themselves.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

Also notably, many of the European social programs that American politicians love to screech about were actually promoted by European (and as late as Eisenhower, American) conservatives as a way to keep a lid on communist sentiment. Basically, the idea was that the wealthy could give up a little and in exchange, these programs would keep people happy enough that they wouldn't go and start the revolution. Which, as far as I can tell, actually has worked pretty good so far. I think the US gave up on that because they figured out that using their propaganda machine was a lot cheaper for the wealthy.

But investors are desperate to scuttle those european programs and get those sweet sweet privatization dollars, and I don't think the propaganda machine is quite as powerful there. It would be really funny if the attempts to speedrun removal of social safety nets and implement privatization blew up in their face and led to a brand new revolution.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It definitely was. I wonder when the next "decades within weeks" moment will happen and finally bring about a paradigm shift for the better. The imperial core is deindustrializing and steadily rolling back so many of the guardrails meant to keep capitalism from imploding one wonders if the theoretical endpoint in a couple centuries is some form of neo-serfdom and subsequently the modern reenactment of the fate of the Romanov dynasty.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

The end goal is absolutely going back to serfdom. Keep cranking up rent prices until people agree to work for less than minimum wage but they get housing. This sure seems like a good way tonget the ball rolling by making sure people are already locked into poverty wages with no education at the age of 14.

[–] [email protected] 75 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Field work for the children of American citizens, under the table slaughterhouse and meatpacking work for the children of immigrants.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (1 children)

'sustainably farmed greens' but its harvested by child slaves

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Buy Local, Live Local

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Regression2024

[–] [email protected] 59 points 10 months ago (2 children)

My grandfather was one of the most intelligent people I ever met, he was eloquent and very well read. He did well enough in his O-levels that his school strongly recommended he proceed to higher education. Unfortunately for him, he lived on a farm in rural Wales with seven siblings, and was forced by his parents to drop out of school at sixteen.

He spent the rest of his life as a agricultural worker, which, don't get me wrong, is an important and perfectly fine career, but it always struck me as a waste of potential.

The decision here to effectively deny education to certain children is criminal.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

The world is full of intelligent and skilled people that capitalism grinds down to nubs to serve the Market Gods. You are right to mourne this wasted potential. It's quite tragic, really.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Kind of like my mother in law. She grew up in a poor rural working class family and did well at school. She could have gone to high school and beyond but she didn't as her family told her that doing so meant that she could become a cashier at the local bank, that was the extent of what they imagined someone from their social class was able to do.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Since my uncles had to get up early and milk cows before going to school and then do various chores after school, I want to see some conservative oppose this on the basis of making the children too soft. "Back in my day we did farm labor, walked up hill both ways, and then also had to go to school. You kids just doing farm labor have it too easy."

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Even better, LARP as a business owner angry at how easy corporations have it these days.

"Back in my day, you actually had to work hard to keep a business, now thanks to Reagan my fellow capitalists have gotten soft. We need to bring back regulations to toughen 'em up!"

[–] [email protected] 50 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Oh that's going to put rural areas back at 1930's ass schooling levels real fucking quick. Worse even. Kids in rural high schools in Indiana are already getting very agriculturally focused education largely, and this will just make the poor ones less able to advance in the long run. Presumably only the poorest would drop out to work when better jobs would be related to more education on agriculture. Indiana will easily sail to the bottom of adult education levels if they get that through, I would think.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago

High fructose corn education

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yea going to go ahead and assume they aren't going to pay those 14 year olds what anybody would even put in the same discussion as a living wage.

This will just make sure these kids never advance past what should have been a summer job for a couple years.

This is like if you asked somebody to come up with a way to increase generational poverty as much as possible, especially if it's only for "corporate farms"

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

Yeah they're going to feel it in a decade when all those kids are in their mid 20s and they haven't reached their full education potential and then people wonder why there's a shortage of rural medical workers. Some big disaster rolls through and the wafer-thin margins will get shredded and the disaster response will compound on the original disaster and create a royally fucked situation for all kinds of folk. See: Texas during the winter storm a couple years ago. "Where are all the linemen?" They're baling alfalfa you dipshits.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This is just like Victoria 3 soypoint-2

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

Victoria 3

Swedish Marxism simulator?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Even I didn't expect them to be nearly so honest on the question of what they're going to do once they prevent enough immigrants from coming here to do agricultural work. Did not see them just standing up and proudly going "child labor, duh."

[–] [email protected] 36 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I can see abusive parents forcibly removing their 14+ year old children from school and using them as cash cows. Including parents that are already well off. The rich are often the most likely to throw other lives into the grinder as long as they gain money, and many don't plan to exclude their own children from their plans to do so.

Mandatory public school attendance is sometimes the only protection some kids have from an abusive home life.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago

Fuck this country

[–] [email protected] 34 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Lowering the working age and life expectancy... Gotta get that 19th century absolute surplus value back. 🤑🤑🤑

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

Once again, WASPs act out every antisemitic stereotype they claim that Jews are guilty of.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is the kinda shit my grandparents left Mexico for.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Mexico probably has more upward potential than the United States right now.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Imagining kids driving combines ala short round from indiana jones, with wood strapped to their shoes.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago

Capitalists love lusting after children, in more ways than one

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

"B- but I wanted to start a business and become rich"

"Start farming!!"

It's like the meme but true lol.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Every day it becomes more plausible that the current republican party is actually a wierd Blanquist cult doing left accelerationism.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If they were blanquist they would do more terrorism of capitalists and they're not

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago

"can we have agro-primitivist utopia"

"we have agro-primitivist utopia at home"

[–] [email protected] 25 points 10 months ago

Ay yo that’s something someone should legitimately be killed for.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

this beeing america , they are forced back on the farms by gunpoint .... dark times .

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago

Said Indiana Republican heard that there was a DPRK song called "Young People of the Farm", and promptly thought, "Well America darn well better have the YOUNGEST people of the farm then"

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

Death to America

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

maybe if it was mandatory for one year and then you go back to regular school

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago

trump-moist I LOVE the poorly educated!

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why does Unicef have no data for child labour in the US but apparently has data for notoriously closed, secretive and hidden "north korea"?

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

I feel like there's some sort of witty libpost I should be able to make about Rs going on about what kids should and shouldn't learn in school and then supporting them dropping out, but I'm too tired both physiologically and existentially.

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