https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophic_cascade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keystone_species

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The broligarchs have a vision for the new Trump term. It’s darker than you think. | Vox

Wikipedia - Charter Cities

Wikipedia - Effective Accelerationism

Trump’s weird new ‘freedom cities’ and the Network State cult | The Nerd Reich

great YT explainer for anyone unfamiliar with the Yarvin style techno authoritarianism to which Thiel and Musk subscribe: DARK GOTHIC MAGA How Tech Billionaires Plan to Destroy America | Blonde Politics - YouTube

me missing your point doesn’t make your arguments correct. you are factually mistaken in your framing.

Life doesn’t give an F about balance

you speak with the confident wrongness of someone who has no scientific understanding of natural cycles, equilibriiums, self-limiting reproductive rates, ecology, or biology. have you heard of chemistry? equilibriums?

you are confusing a linguistic object , the word “balance” (like from an Oxford dictionary) with empirically observable, falsifiable hypotheses which are well established in environmental science. humans are late arrivals to the millennia of life systems on earth, and the first thing they did was begin destroying balanced ecosystems to grow surplus foods, exert population pressures on other species, reshape rivers and lakes, clearcut forests, and general terraform the shit out of everything, other creatures be damned.

your comment suggests a stunningly anthropocentric hubris and a total ignorance to eons of geological time preceding homo sapiens which humans came along and completely fucked by rapidly terra forming the planet. go tell a black rhino or a dodo that only humans care about balance.

humans cause imbalance in nature, it’s literally our whole thing we do. transform the environment by whatever means possible, dominate other life forms to extinction if we feel like it, overcome natural limits or push others to extreme boundaries.

he deserves much much worse.

amen.

once these assholes are dead by whatever means necessary, we can solve the whole Social Security problem (and many others) by restoring top marginal rates to the levels that built a strong safety net and prevented runaway wealth accumulation in the 1%

during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

great analysis. worth the time to finish and absorb. it’s not enough for them to dismantle “woke capitalism”, they are reshaping the notions of what the state is and using it to clear the way for a new economic order which a select few capitalists control.

when the state has become so captured by private interests, whoever controls the state can use it to carve out their own fiefdoms. this may be the beginning of an era where cabals of elites take turns scorching the earth, vying for supremacy using government as a bludgeon against each other.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the war on “woke capitalism” was more than just theater. Trump’s minions really are prepared to take down whole economic sectors—the very summits of neoliberal capitalism—to elevate their own faction of private investment partners, company founders, and controlling shareholders.

How far the war on “woke capitalism” can be pursued without provoking an all-out recession (or intra-capitalist revolt) remains to be seen. What we can be sure of, however, is that Trump’s business allies will be spared the DOGE austerity treatment. As Musk’s raid on the Treasury and Trump’s attempts to interfere with the Federal Reserve make clear, libertarians don’t actually want to abolish the state, much less the massive fiscal and monetary powers embodied in the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Instead, they want to drastically narrow the scope of beneficiaries to a small group of ultrawealthy private capitalists (company founders or controlling owners) and private fund managers in the world of crypto, security, real estate, and fossil fuels. This group of people is so small that we know their names; their faces are literally stamped onto their own privately issued coins, which will no doubt require propping up by the Federal Reserve in due course. Rarely has capitalist power been so personal, yet so massively inflated by the public purse.

sorry but I think you’re dead wrong. also, we have more than 2 options. we can choose to support the progressives who the DNC has been actively suppressing. that’s a different conversation though.

supporting the DNC only happens when they start supporting The People. I’m old enough to have personally observed just how the national Democratic party operates and how corrupt, ineffectual, and apathetic they are when regular working class Americans need lasting structural changes. all the programs and progress they made has been undone with a half dozen supreme court nominations and a wave of a pen executive order.

they don’t take adequate action and don’t break rules to achieve goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand that sometimes obeying the rules (even in a democracy) is morally wrong. in a society rapidly spiraling towards fascism, they fail to recognize that “trust the system” actually means “just follow orders” and that’s a very bad very dangerous thing.

it’s not a group worthy of my support, not until they do better.

relevant links if you’re at all interested in understanding my perspective better (or just follow my comments):

The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)

The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)

you’re right, unfortunately, we live in a time when people won’t take action until they either experience the consequences personally or they’re pushed beyond a breaking point.

perpetual gradual harm reduction and backsliding is imperceptible and slow enough to be normalized. but sudden changes cannot be ignored and often radicalizes people in response (or at least forces them to ‘take sides’ in a battle).

one of the major challenges of liberatory movements is not enough people join the cause and instead wait things out. these so-called centrists and moderates only have this option because they have socioeconomic privilege compared the most oppressed groups.

therefore we must then consider strategies to capture their support, including shocking their sensibilities with outrage, or even potentially stoking fears that they could be next. “what if they close my alma mater too or what if my kids’ college gets shutdown also?” etc etc

I have a different view. he had two bad choices available and he chose the worse one.

he and the establishment Dems (hehem, Biden) as well as turncoats like Lieberman/Sinema/Machin/Fetterman who were inexplicably allowed to caucus with the party) are precisely why we’re here today watching the rise of fascism and oligarchy. from failing to seat a supreme court justice under Obama, sabotaging Bernie (twice), fielding awful presidential candidate after candidate, allowing the military to expand endlessly, not codifying Roe (and doing nothing in response to it’s overturning), to censoring Al Motherfucking Green…

the entire “opposition party” looks weak and disorganized and incapable of fighting every time a crisis arises. the party needs more progressive leadership and they need to realize that sometimes it’s appropriate to break a few rules and take risks on big power plays. and forward popular plans that will actually energize the base.

these ‘play it safe’ supposedly harm reducing tactics are why we’re here today. they had 8 years since 2016 to come up with ways to combat trumpism and the best they could do, after flopping on the election and then peacefully handing over power to a sociopath and a nazi billionaire - was… write an op ed in the New York Times.

I’m done with this group of shit heads. there are better senators who should be in charge. we need people getting mad and breaking shit, not another patronizing speech about having patience until the next midterm.

supporting a cause in person shouldn’t be underestimated. freedom of assembly is our constitutional right, it is a powerful way to connect with others and sends a message that you won’t just hide in your house while our communities are being attacked by the ultra wealthy.

thank you for having the courage and determination to make the drive and participate by yourself. hope you’re able to convince some friends and family to come with you next time there’s a chance to stand up and exercise your rights.

i think the commenter is just baffled at how drastically overvalued (over hyped) so many stocks are - a well known problem where speculative over investment can and does distort the whole economy and has power over the whole population. see for example, speculation bubbles like the dotcom overvaluation or subprime mortgages, or Theranos, or Bitcoin, or even how Tesla stock was being traded higher than the next 6-8 major car companies combined.

in other words, stock prices are a bunch of bullshit.

stocks arent exactly the same as “money” in the common sense so it confuses people when headlines say money was lost or wiped out. but stocks are similar to money in that they are placeholders for value, however much more susceptible to wild devaluations. because ultimately they’re just speculative bets on what something is worth and can fluctuate rapidly, as rapidly and suddenly as human emotions.

seconded. big fan of pro publica right now. actually digging into the roots of corruption and abuse of power.

instead of subsidized the rich, we should be taxing the fuck out of them. they either comply with wealth redistribution by taxation or we seize their assets.

Eggs.

Eggs.

Eggs.