Kichae

Would you be surprised to learn that business is actually a network of cargo cults, where the thing they’re trying to superficially mimic is other businesses that don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing?

I work for an online edtech company that saw massive organic growth during lockdowns, and has been chasing that dragon since lockdowns were lifted. They spent millions expanding their workforce at the time, while they severely pared down their school outreach team. They made multiple moves that only made sense if you assume lockdowns would last forever.

I raised this with management a couple of times, and their only response was “everyone else was doing it, too”.

“We’re the front page of the Internet!”

“No, not like that…”

The reasons why the wealthy like liberalisation matters, though. The reasom the wralthy want more wealth matters.

Money is power. The wealthy are competing to have the most power. Eventually, that turns to taking control of the state. So, the wealthy will back free trade and deregulation right up until they, personally, are in a position to attempt a coup. After that, regulation and trade barriers work for the particular rich folk who have taken control over the state.

I think it’s dangerous to imagine people follow these folks, or let them run rampant over society, because they aspire to be like them. That makes it so much harder to really understand why people support them, or even just refuse to tell them “no”, and makes it impossible to do anything about it.

People believe that life is a meritocracy. Even when they themselves can look around at the people near them and see that those in positions of power don’t deserve it, they still view society as a whole as “fair”. Yes, they personally have may have gotten screwed over, but, in general, the people who float to the top got there because they were smarter and more capable. Therefore, we should sit back and just let them cook.

They need some kind of trigger to see the billionaires not as people who have earned their place, but who have stolen it.

Trump, and many of his supporters, think that America is China’s biggest client. They’re totally blind to the idea that China is China’s biggest client, and that it’s not even close.

Their total lack of understanding of the world outside their little exceptionalist bubble is hilarious and depressing

You answer your own question.

You have to soft launch your fascist dictatorship. People need time to accept the possibility.

It took a lifetime to turn the Roman Republic into the Principate. You gotta ease into these things to keep peope from shanking you on the senate floor.

I have a colleague who knows someone working at Tesla. Apparently Musk would walk the floor and declare “this isn’t cyber enough, make it more cyber” like the awful client in every freelance webdev joke of the last 30 years.

Threaten the students, and the universities join right in. Threaten their money, though…

“Democrats didn’t believe that the genocidal regime they sent bombs to would use those bombs to commit genocide.”

This is just his left hand paying his right so he can claim Twitter’s value is comparable to what he initally paid for it. He’s getting fixated on people talking about his losses again, and is getting ready to call someone a pedo on main again.

Techbros killed me, Mal.

It’s probably not cheaper than just shooting orphans for sport.

Gotta go further south this time. Warching Mar-a-Lago burn will be fun.

No, it has been. There hss just been disagreement on who is considered “the people”.

You could spin one up this evening if you wanted. Or go use catodon.social.

That’s not the point. The point is, there are reasons Mastodon is being rejected, just like there are reasons you seemingly cannot pay people to use a Misskey-based or Hubzilla-based website.

It’s not where the people are going, and the public or semi-public figures are going to follow the people.

Why switch to Mastodon when there is Misskey?

Why use Misskey when there is Hubzilla?

Trump may not be aware of P2025. Not because he hasn’t been told, repeatedly, about it, but because he has the awareness of a pile of sterilized garbage.

They call it a ‘Boston Left’ for a reason.

There is no “here” here. They’re being removed on some websites, and not on others.