Se [Fabiano] aprendesse qualquer coisa, necessitaria aprender mais, e nunca ficaria satisfeito.
Say what you will about capitalists owning the railroads, utilities, etc., I and most people reading this don’t work for these companies for free and therefore give these companies egregious valuations.
You probably pay for the bus, internet connection, phone, as well as the imposed value of transportation and infrastructure on your consumer goods, rather than get it for “free” in exchange for some valuable data. And your employer probably also pays that rent in their literal workspace rents, software licenses, security contracts.
And in the odd case your main income comes specifically from these social media corporations as a “content creator”, you’re still not a serf, you’re more like an entertainer or a marketeer.
Historically, serfs are bound to the land, produce collectively for their own consumption and are “taxed in kind” on that produce for the lord, who wields absolute authority over that land, secures it through his own personal militia, and neither party significantly engages in commerce for their social reproduction.
Wage labourers work for a propertied employer for money, which they use to buy their consumption off of the market. The employer can buy and sell more property and the worker is “free” in the sense they can be fired and seek employment somewhere else. In capitalism, the absolute authority over that worker is the state, as well as the “security” force, and not only is the worker expected to rely on commerce for social reproduction, but every single aspect of society (like the aforementioned security) is tendentially reduced to commerce.
I don’t see how any rigorous definition of serfdom would define corporations extracting surplus from their property of surveillance systems — as, if extracting your data cost no labour, it’d have no value — as somehow closer to feudal lords than landlords, or their targets as serfs.
It’s just monopoly capitalism, A.K.A. imperialism as it manifests in the core.
Completely forgot to actually read Varoufakis’s “technofeudalism” and now I’m struck by Marxists starting to fall for that obvious bit of Eurocommunist revisionism too (I refer specifically to RevLeft Radio). Disappointing but not unexpected from the North.
Liberal “democracy” requires a constant forgetfulness and inability to maintain and collect data in order to portray itself as “effective”. From the nonsense “lifted out of poverty” myth, to nonsense measures such as the dollar-based poverty line, one is often restrained from wondering why isn’t the data better, like how many people have access to food, shelter and work.
How many homeless people are there in the city? The competent authorities certainly have enough of a budget to identify and catalogue almost every person living on the street. And it’s clearly in the best interests of all (except landlords) that every homeless person is known, their conditions understood. Yet that data is unknowable because, as Mao once put it, to investigate a problem is to solve it.
So that’s the Super-High IQ new hire. Elon should put some of these teenagers on nuclear programmes, for more efficiency and definitely not because I want somebody to Stuxnet the US.
USAmericans can’t read Spanish, I guess. State Dept has done the same thing with Petro, another false victory announced and then moved on from.
Whenever I fall ill with something, and get my treatment and meds for completely free and in a reasonable timeframe, I think of all the idiots (USians or not) who worship the US as some sort of great country. Fuckers ain’t even got no Sistema Único de Saúde.
Although China will probably not intervene, Russia has already positioned itself as a rival to NATO in other international geopolitical situations. Partnerships with Syria, Venezuela, Belarus, Sahel states. If the war in Ukraine ends, Russian military expertise will probably be the most valuable in the world due to their battle-tested knowledge of modern symmetrical (Ukraine) and assymetrical (ISIS, Al-Qaeda) warfare against NATO.
If Russia finally wins, they have a bright future in military cooperations and training.
No, and they have nothing to gain from interfering in other countries. That’ll sow distrust in minor nations that so far relied on them specifically due to their non-interference (compare it to the IMF), and invite destructive attacks from major countries and imperialist nations.
The most they should do is try to block reactionary interventions through institutional means like the UN security council, and retaliate only against those who attack them. Look to China as inspiration and an example, but do not wait for them to export revolution anytime soon.
How have prestigious publishers of journals that would be severely impacted by this, like IEEE, reacted? I’m no longer immersed in that ecosystem, but I believe that’d seriously disrupt international peer-reviewed publishing of AI research, or even development supply chains in general.
Imagine having to use a VPN to download a Chinese pip package. Or having the US meddle in mirrors of FOSS package repositories in their territory.
This is not a coup, this is just politics being enacted. USAmericans are not used to things happening, I guess, but Trump and Musk are stomping over all protocol because they can, and unless their opposition is willing to stop them they will do whatever. Because that bloodied parchment has no material force and no matter what your class interests are, “checks and balances” are merely a convention. This is what politics actually looks like.
This keyboard warrior seems to be horrified at the mere notion that the Executive can decide what the state does, or that they’re firing “security officials who follow protocols” (they say that 6 times). I truly hope this is a fake account from an angry laid off USAID worker trying to make a fuss, and not an actual human who believes this.
If “every American need to act now”, he should lead by example rather than cheer from the sidelines. Go get 'em patriot. Pathetic.
The American Constitution represents more than just a system of government—it embodies humanity’s greatest experiment in self-governance through reason and law rather than force and will. When the Founders established our constitutional republic, they created something unprecedented: a government bound by law rather than personal authority, where power flows through democratic institutions rather than individual whim. This inheritance, paid for with the blood of patriots from Lexington to Normandy, gave birth to the very idea of modern liberal democracy.
🤢
Two related news, one follow-up and another in hindsight.
USAID apparently will be merged with the State Dept, which would mean a de facto mask off. That makes it less convincing for soft power but possibly more effective by not having to hide their intentions.
The news in hindsight is that Congress bipartisanly voted a bill to enable the Executive to strip non-profits “supportive of terrorism” off of their tax-exempt status. This gives the Executive legal authority to effectively kill by tax any anti-hegemonic organisation, and I believe this a helpful tool if they wish to consolidate their propaganda arms without having to deal with the pesky “battleground of ideas”.
Edit: horrible grammar.
I think this is the most plausible theory and a good hypothesis test will be Haiti. USAID has been active there since at least the 2004 coup, but now the new dependent government was collapsed through presidential murder and the country became a non-state “ruled” by a collection of bourgeois representatives de facto appointed by US-led CARICOM, with the main US representative being the NED/USAID-funded RNDDH.
Now this council is relying less on soft-power and political influence and more on a foreign legion composed mainly of Kenyans (with other CARICOM nations joining recently) under the leadership of the 51st US state up north. If the hypothesis holds up, this same form of control should manifest itself in other “allied” dependent nations, like Argentina (though obviously in a less explicitly racist manner).
The bourgeoisie and their administrators believing their own propaganda too hard explains a lot of recent happenings. I think that Musk actually believes he’s rich by being a genius and doesn’t need all the salaried managers to develop and exercise his wealth.
Musk did not say what legal authority he believed the White House has to shut down a federal agency without congressional approval, or how quickly the administration planned to act.
Political power comes first from not waffling about like a Democrat and just actually doing the thing you want to do, second from the barrel of a gun.
Concordo plenamente, é pura retórica. As universidades e institutos de pesquisa tão mais tocadas em fazer consultorias pra empresas rentistas ou subsidiar pesquisa pra corporações gringas, porque só aí que tem investimento.
As CNBC reports, up to 15,000 scientists working at the institutions will get access to OpenAI’s latest o1 series of AI models
It’s literally just a bunch of enterprise subscriptions. Big nothingburger, but can create these silly headlines that make it seem like OpenAI does anything at all.
The full amendment, and the previous consolidated text of the consistution, both in Spanish, if anybody wants to take a look.
Being very honest, my answer is “I’m not sure”. I think it makes some sense in Canada, but another user somewhere pointed to how Mexico is actually industrialising. It might only work with definite military vassals like Europe? Trump is certainly not taking the FDR road to fight the new cold war. I’ll gladly admit I haven’t managed to sit down and research this properly, and it’s all just disorganised thoughts for now.
Coincidentally blurted out a post along the same lines. I wholeheartedly agree, it’s a threat to make allies and dependent governments fall in line.
Imagine how much it’d hurt Germany if they get hit with tariffs, they’d do anything to avoid that. Even supporting war against China against their own interests. And if they’re hit, German capital will just flow naturally to the US and it’ll become Poland 2.
Edit: hyperlink ate the parenthesis.
Oh no, you can’t task big corporations here, they’ll leave and take all their property with them.
Their property: all intellectual, 1 office with some laptops