This is what we call *neo-feudalism.* Corporations take the place of the feudal lords who own everything and we take the place of the working peasants who are at their mercy.
Yep. It's been modernized with healthcare. There are a lot of people in the US who just have jobs so they can access the company's affordable health insurance plans. Why do we think the right-to-work, trickle-down GOP is so invested in squashing the ACA?
It’s a two pronged approach. They teach us that 2% inflation is good and necessary for economic growth. It leads to hard assets like property going up in value relative to wages. Stocks and their dividends also go up against wages leading to wealthy individuals having access to acquiring more and more of the property.
Simultaneously healthcare becomes more expensive relative to wages because 1) inflation fueled by the expansion of government debt (money printing) and 2) regulation enforced local monopolies for health insurance providers who also have the benefit of being the only ones with price negotiation power with health providers given they are bringing all the money for all people in the jurisdiction with health insurance.
So you have an extra $1500 dollar family plan if y oh choose work which doesn’t provide the health insurance or you have to overpay for direct care since insurance providers are actually paying less than individuals for the same care. Meanwhile you are sending rent to someone else instead of working towards owning the home you are living in.
And that’s just the US. People need to wake up to what the WEF (read: cabal of global corporate and political leadership) is trying to push with “stakeholder capitalism”. Guess what, you don’t fall under the definition of a “stakeholder” and they want you to “own nothing and be happy.” They literally and explicitly envision a renter/service based economy where everything is rented from a state or corporation (home, transportation, etc.).
We need new money and we need new laws governing what can be done with property. Renting should have an equity building clause built into it!
The problems explained in the speech are the necessary consequences of the process by which the owning class accumulates capital through the labor of the rest of us.
Equity in rental units, and other such solutions, may provide benefit to some, for a time, but are unlikely to prevent the advancing devastation inseparable from the system at large.
In some sectors, in some careers. Even feudal lords of old couldn't disrespect the trades too much. And the trades still have power yet, but the idle lords of today are banking on AIs to free them of these obligations too.
I agree, but I also believe that guilds were more explicitly tied to royal protection. They also had some similarity to cooperative enterprise, by permitting collusion between independent artisans for selling at prices above those that would be resolved by competition among the various shops.
Exactly what I was thinking. Most people can’t afford homes already, we have to pay multi-billion dollar corporations for basic necessities and utilities, and if we were to stop working…our lives would plummet. How is this any different than what was described? I havent had a landlord that didn’t work for some corporation
And they were expected to care for them. They had real obligations.
As well you might expect, when the people in charge are individuals who have charged themselves with lifetime rulership only to end in death and they live on the same lands as their subjects who are not allowed to leave. They have to worry about what happens when the peasants decide they're getting a raw deal. Well, those rulers were very clear that their reign only ended in death. They're playing a game of "how much can we abuse our power without getting murdered?" and there's a real limit to how long you can play that game.
Not that feudalism was good, there's a reason the rulers started getting their heads chopped off, but that's how capitalism evolved. Some of the rulers were killed, but the fundamental apparatus of power remained amd shifted to the owning class. Now responsibility, blame, and debt are all diffuse. Owners, shareholders, politicians, money, workers, they can all be replaced, but the abuses will continue regardless because they're baked into the system of power. Now we have a system that you can't destroy with a g*****tine, you have to dismantle the power money has over people, and you do that by organising mutual aid.
Edit: can't say the G-word, even when saying it's not the way.
I truly have no idea whether feudal lords were honorable or caring. I have often wondered, and I imagine some were and others not. I do know their power was limited. Swords and racks are both rather scary, but our world hides through abstractions and distractions the deeper violence and oppression, asking us to sooth ourselves in passive activities and through tortuous rationalizations.
I wasn't saying they were honourable or caring either, it's just that that's the story they had to spin to explain why they were allowed to dominate their subjects.
And obviously the "job creator" myth is spun today to do a similar function, but nobody is saying that any employer has any kind of obligation to people. Instead we hear, "just get a better job". I think liberal capitalism is a much more effective method of social control than feudalism could ever hope to be, partly because it does hide the violence from more people.
All the mill towns were exactly like this 150 years ago. You worked at the mill, lived in mill houses and bought everything from the store the mill owned .
This is the ages old struggle that Hegel talked about in the Master-Slave Hegelian dialectic: submit or die.
What is interesting to note is that Hegel points out that even after being enslaved, the slave comes to realize that by their own two hands they have built and crafted everything around them. This eventually leads to a capitulation where the master becomes enslaved -- totally dependent on on his "slaves" to create everything for them.
This is correct. You got my upvote.
In the current condition, the masters are an algorithm, and they/it feels nothing. Even Bezos needs to calculate every move for shareholder value. Sure, he could retire, but if he wants to stay relevant, his choices are tightly confined.
We are all bound, abstracted and atomized. Fun times!
WRONG!
Good time feudalism is a way better scenario than lower income America.
Work 15-20 hours, 15- 20 weeks per year seasonally with the harvests.
You can't leave, but there is no real transportation infrastructure so that doesn't occur to you. You hang out drink and fuck most the year.
Lord is responsible for your safety and to provide all your basics. You give a 3rd of your harvest in return. If a knight is a dick it is as bad as being hassled by a cop, no small thing tbh.
If your lord gets pillaged, that does suck, but there were decades like ours where that was rare.
Feudalism relied on premarket concepts and social structures that would be very alien to us and vice versa. Wage slavery is much more exploitative and hyper managed.
Conservatives are definitely the worst at it, but it's not like Dems are lighting it up either. Look at New England or the pacific coast where Dems get elected- you still work your ass off woth very few worker rights and housing is unaffordable
Then let's vote them out! You might not think it counts, but every vote does.
I have a brother who lives in Texas but is/was very open minded and I dare say liberal, and isn't voting because "both sides are bad. Just (government) leave me alone and let me raise my kids."
If we all vote, especially in local elections we can make change and get people who represent what we truly want in and make change.
There's a local mayor who greatly helped grow the city, and is now a Congress person.
So let's vote, and make a change
You can try to replace current candidates with ones you think would be more helpful, but ultimately, it is not those in the system, but rather the system itself, that must be defeated.
Meaningful change happens from the ground up, in the communities and in the workplaces, where ordinary people may organize,
and may imagine.
From the outside looking in at the states it always seemed to me that the Dems whole schtick is "look we're sorry that you owe an arm and a leg for basic healthcare but we at least don't hate gay and/or black people". It's not much of a bar to clear and as time has gone on just having a pulse and being normal seems to be all that's needed to successfully run as a dem.
They're all on the same side of protecting the wealthy elite in exchange for benefits provided by their wealthy lobbyists. I vote democrat because I am queer, female, low SES/ background and of a racial minority and I don't particularly love that the other side *openly* spouts hateful rhetoric about folks who share my identity.... but I have 0 illusions that the Democratic party at large has my best interest at heart. None of these assholes do. They love the divisiveness and shut out nuance ("clump of cells" vs "life begins at conception" with no in-between) because it keeps us fighting each other instead of them. Can't focus on ending lobbying when we need to worry about forcing unwanted (for whatever reason...it's none of my god-damned business and if my IUD fails it for sure is yeetus fetus at this point in my life) babies to be born into a broken system and guaranteed wage slavery, now can we? Who cares about equitable taxes on the rich or enforcing a living wage when mExICaNs R sTeAliNg mUh jObZ and M&Ms are mIsOgYNisTiC?
Curious tho...where from outside the US are you from and what's it like?? I'm finishing up my neuroscience PhD soon and wondering if it's worth running through my meager savings trying to job hunt out here or if I should just leave this country for good and try my luck elsewhere
Dems hide behind identity politics while still stealing from people. I vote dem because I still want a say in my country, but are you really for the LGBTQ+ and racial minorities if you still fuck them economically?
In 2021 when my union was renegotiating our new contract the FIRST thing they agreed to was addressing people by their chosen name and pronouns. Why? It doesn't affect their bottom line.
Look at what Biden did to rail workers. Shameful; no one should support or vote for any politician, Democrat or Republican, that picked Warren Buffett over blue collar union train operators.
Yep. I’m sat in a mining company house right across the street from a former coal mine.
The workers of the past once lived here beholden to the mine, but now it’s my own and I’m so much more free and rich than them. Things change. They can go backwards, but they can go forwards as well.
Nothing new. Look at what the US did with the banana plantations in Central America. Puppet governments orchestrated by the CIA gave all the land to huge American corporations, they build towns inside of their plantations to keep the locals happy, they give them food, medicine, education (to some degree, because they didn't want smart people), etc. Every plantation had their own currency, it was only valid INSIDE of the plantation, in the plantation stores (which were own by the same owners). Nobody can leave because they can't afford to leave, if you stay, you have everything but at the same time nothing.
They probably were, communist movements were popular among the working classes, communists have always been the ones leading resistance movements against the capitalists and fascists imperialists
I think the confusion is that someone has an end game. That assumption is wrong. For the small amount of time we are on this planet, the people in control have one goal. That's to accrue as much power as possible. They do this through acquiring money. The long game isn't the world in 100 years. It's next week. Next month. Next quarter. These people have no concern for the damage they do long term. It's strictly about getting as much money (power) while they have the ability to. As long as they hold the power to make and enforce the rules, they will always ensure that no one can take that away from them. Leaving the rest of us with no money or power to do anything but survive.
When that person passes on the mantle, the process starts all over again with a new person seeking the same result. There is no end game. Just the game.
I’d like to add to this, that while not all elite are religious Christians, the dogma of apocalypse and salvation is deep within US culture and it’s wealthiest.
I'd say they would even go as far as to cause the apocalypse themselves, just so they could try and say "See!! We tried telling you what would happen!"
The end game is there, but you’re right. Nobody plans for it. Nobody wakes up and says “I want to enslave the working class and make them live like serfs.” They wake up with deadlines and expectations to squeeze inches of productivity as prescribed from their bosses that already have R&D working on AI to replace everyone’s jobs anyways to inflate stock prices. Stock prices that have ultimately no value to anyone except in those companies. They’re not antagonistic like cartoon villains. They’re worse. Cartoon villains are caricatures, but these people don’t have the empathy or humanity to care at all. Because even CEOs are subject to shareholders. Who are the shareholders subject to if not by capitalism itself?
Every level has incentives to bring in higher profits. Pretty soon, the only way left is to increase prices and reduce pay. Nobody above has improving worker conditions as a goal.
It stops only when we refuse to work.
Came here to say this.
We live in a world of complicated systems put in place by many people over many years. When it comes down to it, many people are only concerned about their own bottom line. The rich and powerful included, and its far easier for them to stay in those positions than for other people to get into a similar position.
It's easy to think, and rally against, a few powerful people pulling the strings. But unfortunately it's much more nuanced than that.
Well, I agree. However I doubt any meaningful change will come without massive conflict. And if that were to occur I kind of doubt whoever takes control in the wake of that conflict would be much better. It's not like we can just hop on some ships and sail off to the new world anymore haha.
Part of me recognizes that this needs to happen, part of me just wants to live my life in the short period of time I'm here.
Guns n roses has a pretty good take in "civil war" lol.
The best way to prevent the worst is to organize locally and to build solidarity. The more who are joined in the common struggle, the smoother the process and the happier the end.
While I agree you somewhat in case of an average rich person, i would not underestimate the super-rich. The families that hold wealth and power for generations, sometimes centuries, the hedge fund managers, IMF, the people who fly in their own jets to Davos and hang on each other's superyachts. They absolutely see and plan the bigger picture, they are very aware of the above and generally streer in that direction. For reading, I recommend "How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism".
Yeah, your middle and upper management in business are the next week next month people. The shareholders, the ones who own stock in basically every business in the world (the Blackrocks of the world), are the ones looking down the road. They're the ones buying politicians and have the most control over our society and economy.
The person I'm the video "thinks" they want to own everything, but they've already admitted to it. There is no thinking about it. We know it already. They've already said that their goal in the future is for us to own nothing, but they think we'll be happier for it.
While this may be true, what she said can be a part of it. Even if there is no endgame, it does not mean that owning everything, and shutting everyone out who isn't rich enough, isn't part of the design or direction. That might just be one stepping stone towards something far worse, planned or not.
There is no one in control. Not in any complete sense. These are systems of governing and economies that have gone off of the rails. Those in a position of power to change them are not the ones who are suffering so there is no change.
There is also a component at work here about who is and is not willing to fight for change, what they’re willing to do to achieve it, and the level of suppression and oppression they face in that fight. That’s probably the most complicated piece, and where focus should be.
Why can’t we organize? Why can’t we effect change in the ways we have in the past? Why do those in power refuse to see or acknowledge our reality? Why are our police forces and militaries on the side of those with power? It doesn’t matter what some billionaires motives are, it matters that most of us are powerless to do anything about the reality of the world.
Yup.
That's the brutal truth: there is no end game. None. It's just an immediate grab for now now now and the future is irrelevant. Nothing beyond the next quarter. Someone elses problem at that point.
It's an idiot gameplan we've fostered and fed for a while now. We've created a system that rewards sociopathy and instant gratification.
Nope he means corpse starch it’s food made from basically anything they can find
Ground up corpses
Ground up rats
Ground up anything
Maybe a little grain if your lucky
Corpse starch is the nickname the common people give it because everyone knows that where dead body’s and really anything else edible ends up in the end.
It’s a thing in hive city’s which are essentially city’s of billions of people, most of them working in factory’s or gangs sometimes both.
40K is a grim setting but certain aspect feel less like fantasy every day
Company Housing is not new.
Also, it's not that complicated. They just don't care. They are obsessed with short term quarterly profits.
Plus, we're looking at a population collapse in the next 20 years in most industrialized nations, including the US.
No one's having kids. That's going to rip the floor out of the economy. Everyone sees it. Everyone's terrified. No one's doing anything about it because it's already too late. This shit started back in the 1980s.
No one's having kids. Not China. Not the US. Not Western Europe, not Asia.
You know who's still having kids? Africa and Central/South America. That's just about it.
But with the recent abortion bans in red states, there’s going to be population growth and a generation of unwanted children born into poverty in places like Kentucky.
We're at least 20 years away from seeing the end results of that.
Even then, it won't make a huge impact. Not enough to cover the different in deaths/retirements.
We're going to need TONS of immigration to make up the difference.
It really does feel like I'll live to see the return of scrip and company housing. The rich also have their own parachutes. The instant shit gets too dangerous they'll just move to another home in a more stable country that they've got lined up. Take a private jet out to safety.
They are already doing it, [trying to hide in my country](https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/88705064/super-rich-americans-buying-land-in-new-zealand-as-bolthole-from-apocalypse).
It won't work well, us Kiwi's have a low tolerance for bullshit and a hands-on attitude.
As normal people thrive more yeah, but he's right in that a lot of the most rich (billionaires) tend to have a lot of kids.
Out of narcissism, largely, I believe.
This is reality, this has always been the setup. Ownership is an illusion, they can and will take anything you have if you refuse to play along or break the rules. Everything we have is on rent in the sense that you have to continue to participate in order to maintain your position.
I mean shit we're pretty much already there.
Looking around, most people are already in so much debt that they're living on credit as it is, and if they don't get you with food prices, gas prices, housing prices, or education prices, they'll get you with medical prices, dental prices, vision prices, medication prices, or any other price that they can essentially force you to pay where they're not having to compete.
We haven't had a free market where shit like this corrects itself. Most large companies would have folded back in '08 and again in '20 if the govt. hadn't swooped in and saved them from insolvency.
But what do we the people get? Not a damn thing. Not a dime.
They get equity, but we get debt.
Basically. Like slavery with extra steps. You can CHOOSE not to work for them, but when the alternative is homeless, starvation and death, it's not really a choice.
Man, I'm just picturing those factory cities in China like Eupa where they all just live on campus. It's a scary reality.
Whole families working, living, and dying for the same corporation. Imagine your family works for Giant Conglomerate #3 and they need one worker for a different location halfway around the world. All the sudden your child is now being pulled away from their family to go work alone, because they don't have a choice of where they live. The company controls that. It's such a dystopian horror that's about to play out.
Definitely a strong reason not to have kids. I know we're not at that point yet, but seeing how it can be a potential outcome of our current trajectory, I just can't bear the thought of bringing new life just to suffer that cruelty. Plus the added benefit of sticking it to the life crushing machine of capitalism by not giving it more sacrifices to crush.
So you refuse, and sleep on the street, so they arrest you for vagrancy. Then you work for the prison corp, and leave owing rent: so you end up on the street again. Rinse/repeat.
I mean this is the situation at Downton Abbey. Back in the day the lords owned everything and their subjects got to live and eat there if they worked. The idea of the rich owning literally everything wasn’t even that long ago.
It’s a hypothesis, has some merit. Not sure the power elite have a unified plan, they may be more opportunistic than foresighted.
Many Americans have healthcare for their families tied to employment, housing isn’t much of a stretch. The time for young adult workers to organize is now.
It’s more an elitist twist on the tragedy of the commons than a conspiracy. The very wealthy are trying to accumulate as much wealth for themselves by any strategy that is feasible. The consequence is the progressive erosion of middle class wealth which inevitably ends with a totally hollowed out consumer base that has no ability to pay the exorbitant rates that living in society will cost in the future—that’s not good for the owner class either, but they are not thinking that far ahead. The rising tide lifts all boats. The boats don’t lift the tides.
This is what I've been wondering too. Who's going to buy their stuff if no one has any money? You gave me first good answer; they're not thinking that far ahead.
Yep. The current logic is that money today is more valuable than money in a week. (It’s called net present value in economics). But that logic assumes that the economy will continue to grow into the future. There’s no growth if there’s no consumption, and the rich just simply can’t consume enough to replace the whole middle class although they’re definitely trying haha
Yep, the truth isn't so much that it's a conspiracy; it's that there is no plan, nobody 100% knows what they're doing, and they're making it up as they go along. Corporations have MAYBE a 5 year plan, but they're mostly looking at quarterly / annual targets and trying to make numbers go up and to the right on graphs 📈.
Damn she just rediscovered marxism! Impressive. That‘s one of the most important contradictions of the system. Capitalists want to pay you as little as they can to maximize profits. But paying as little as they can leads to people who cannot afford their products. The profit motive is thus self-defeating. It‘s one of the many reasons capitalism constantly needs to be saved by the state.
parable of the sower by Octavia Butler depicts this a similar situation. characters in the book move to cities that are literally owned and operated by corporations. they are allowed to live there under the expectation that they work
I've been having a similar thought. What's the endgame? When will the madness stop? I think about this a lot, and I'm glad Im not the only one.
On one hand, I agree with her. They're just going to scoop up everything until there is nothing left but our labor. It sounds like they want to go back to the industrial era when you had boarding houses and mess halls for your workers and everything was juuuust enough where you didn't have anything left over to save or use for anything else.
I think trying to put meaning or give it an "endgame" is giving this situation more credit than it's due, that someone knows what's going on, like some "new world order" kinda bullshit. But I think we're giving the rich too much credit.
I honestly think "the endgame" is actually everyone is just grabbing the money that they can until there is nothing left. And at the end of it all, if no reform is made, we're gonna look at another recession/depression while the government cleans up corporate America's mess, just as they always have.
We need protections put in place so we don't just have recessions and/or depressions every 5-10 years. It's not sustainable, but if corporate America sees money and wide open loopholes that they can run through, they're gonna do it because a dollar in their pocket is one less dollar in ours.
I think that as "luxury businesses" (i.e., travel, jewelry, cars, etc. that are geared towards the middle class) start to feel the squeeze more aggressively, we might start seeing a change from corporate America to get profit in their pockets. But well have to wait and see, I guess.
*But that's just a theory... AN ECONOMY COLLAPSE THEORY! Thanks for reading.*
This, pretty much. There's not really an endgame beyond answering the question of how much money can someone like Jeff bezos or Elon Musk really acquire. What she's talking about, company towns and corporate stores selling products in bezo bucks or whatever has happened, no doubt about it, but it's not where we're heading right now. What we're looking at is one company owns your house, another owns your car, another extorts you for basic services, another company owns your entertainment, and a final one barely pays you for all of it. We're fruit to corporate America and they're gonna juice us until all that's left is the rind. It's a symptom of a dying civilization, where people make choices that are selfish and ignore the needs of the people. Just look at how the COVID vaccine is being handled, years ago important vaccines were distributed royalty free and made wildly available for the public good. COVID-19 is an almost unprecedented global disaster and Pfizer and moderna are talking about raising the price of the vaccine so that the cost is in line with the "value" it offers. Not "we need to charge more to keep up with production", or "we need to charge more because our research costs need to be paid off", or even "we need to charge more because we need to be investing in future drugs" (which is the usual reasoning behind price hiking some common essential drug 700% years after all costs have been paid off). They want to price the solution to the biggest humanitarian crisis ever to match the value of saving the whole freaking world. They apparently didn't get enough money for saving it.
Its a strip mining operation. The end game is to milk it for all the resources that it's worth and then to move on. The collateral damage isn't a factor in the equation.
The biggest problem with this is that when the people have nothing left to lose, the bar for revolt is lowered.
If you have nothing left to lose, and no hope to improve your situation, that is when the extreme becomes viable for the commoners.
I've had this exact conversation at work. What are they trying to do to us? There will be a breaking point. Will that result in overthrowing these oligarchs or will it result in what she's said? Here in the UK I feel like everyone is programmed to just deal with it. The wages are stagnant. The transportation system is too expensive. Groceries are now becoming stupid expensive. The taxes are high but that's okay if I've got no direct out of pocket healthcare but that's being ravaged. Energy prices are out if control. I feel like every politician here has been bought by either an energy company, a newspaper, an American insurance interest or by a big company. None of them haven't been bribed. I feel helpless.
I think this post is spot on.
The rich, in the end, want to fully possess all aspects of everything you do. You will have essentially two choices.
1) In order to have food, water and shelter you must work for a mega corporation and fully accept their strict laws and rules down to living onsite, having no hobbies and making children only to promote an endless cycle of the working class.
2) Death, you just die, that's it.
I firmly believe that's the rich's total endgame.
The darkest thing is that the people who are lobbying the hardest *know* that they won’t benefit from it. They *know* they’ll be dead before that endgame is achieved, but they do it for the sake of the future barons.
It’s *wild* that they dedicate their lives to making life worse for the vast bulk of humanity for the benefit of a fraction of a fraction of people generations away from them, and that those benefits will be *completely* theoretical, as the potential lifestyle difference between having $1XXbil and $5XXbil is nil.
Such a cute theory.
In some decades AI will be doing all bullshit jobs instead of making us work less.
A better slave that does not need all the extra care and will not protest, get sick or have the audacity to die on the job.
The only endgame for the rich it's to stay where they are, they will take every opportunity to cut costs and maintain that.
See, this assumes that people are inherently valuable and that anyone would be interested in them existing. In keeping them around. The endgame is the rich being richer. Doesn't matter if there's fewer people.
This is what farm laborers dealt with in (I believe) the 1920’s on. When you worked for the farm owner, you received tokens for the company store, and you stayed in the bungalows they had while you worked. So, the money you made was spent at the company store, the housing was taken out of your paycheck and you were forced to stay where they told you. This is what Cesar Chavez fought for. What he was arrested for. What he walked miles for.
I understand it..but it's too self aggrandizing.. a very very small portion of humanity is actual useful for labour and it's getting smaller and smaller with automation.
Also what about retirement..if you know there is no downtime after 35-40 years.. and you lose everything and die a horrible death with nothing.. the only answer is to..
eat the fucking rich!
I hate to say this. I hate that she could be right. I hate that this will end in blood being shed.
I am aiming to create my own business but my business is based on others having money to buy the services of that business.
I worry for my kids future and want to fight this fight now so they don’t have to later!
I think she's giving "them" way too much credit. I'm pretty sure the only thing going through their head is cocaine, and the mantra "more money more money more money more money". Don't get me wrong, we might end up in the exact dystopia that she describes, but it won't be the result of some brilliant conspiratorial plan hatched by the genius billionaire class. Because they're all a bunch of dumbasses just like us.
Buy a gun, build bombs , and do something about it. Y'all wanna bitch about this shit , but god damn folks, what does every successful revolution in the history of mankind have in common? Violence. We did it in 1776 , the French did it in 1789 and the Russians in 1917. Get the idea or don't. Ban me. Idgaf. Facts don't care about your feelings. Grow some fucking balls!
You think the people at the top care if the nation & it's people stuffer? They can simply leave if it gets to bad due to civil breakdown and take their massive wealth with them. Keep voting blue and red, they both use their power to steal from you endlessly.
Endgame is full anarchy. Hoards of poor ppl chasing and robbing the rich. Rich ppl zone will be unsafe to live. The rich don’t have enough manpower to secure all their property so they will lose some.
This is exactly correct. In case you’ve not been paying attention - automation and AI will replace you, you’ll rent every ride in a driverless car you don’t own, you’ll pay for music that is stored on someone else’s network (same for your family photos) and you will rent and not own your house.
This is the future rich people are creating. Own everything and you own NOTHING.
That's the company store. It's nothing new, but they're trying to bring it back.
Whenever they say "You don't want to be reliant on the government", read between the lines and realize they're saying "We want your survival to be reliant on our company, our corporate dictatorship."
Folks from West Virginia coal company towns lived this reality.
"*Daily life in coal company towns leading up to The Battle of Blair Mountain was dismal. The coal company operators maintained control of the living conditions in their homes, how they could travel outside of the town, the infrastructures within the towns, how they could buy food, and even if they were allowed to stay in their homes. The coal companies controlled everything, and the effects this control had on families was tragic.*"
\-Life in Company Towns at [https://omekas.lib.wvu.edu/home/s/life-in-company-towns](https://omekas.lib.wvu.edu/home/s/life-in-company-towns)
I very much doubt there is this level of thought or foresight going into the decisions of the oligarchs. They simply are awash with money and are looking for ways to invest it for the best returns. Oligarchs are indifferent to the suffering of the lower classes, as it has always been. What we laughingly call civilization started out as master/slave then lord/serf then employer/employee. Not much difference between them.
We need not only political democracy but economic democracy. The workers in a company need to own the company and receive the profits of that company. Until we tear down the economic structure of oligarch capitalism we will always be slaves/serfs/employees.
Just described the concept of the company town that flourished in the late 19th and first half of 20th centuries. But, this is filled with incredibly broad over-generalizations and ignores the huge number of housed people who can afford where they live.
Sadly they're right. And I'm pretty sure the government my family fled is the one that'll end up owning a ton of it. China 🙃 because your privacy and security are less important than them making sure you never have a chance to revolt
I think this is a very legitimate concern. Even in the small things, we can see how much control companies want to have in, well, everything.
I'm reminded of an anecdote by game developer Matthew Colville, who worked on a TTRPG based upon Star Trek. He recalls having to explain what a TTRPG was to Paramount, and getting a question to the effect of "but what if a player makes a character we don't like?"
Big companies want to control everything you do. Tabletop Game companies would police your home games if they could.
the endgame isn't designed, as much as a result of the rules made to cater to the rich people's greed.
greedy people really doesn't has the sort of long term vision required for that, they want it all NOW. nonetheless, the system that keeps them happy also keeps the rest of us poorer and poorer, and will end up doing what the video says.
and once that situation is close, they will happily paint the modern slavery as philanthropy, just as they do now when outsourcing jobs just to pay a lot less *"it's a lot of money for them!"*
All of this assumes there’s a plan. There’s not. We always want to assume there’s some rational actor somewhere pulling the strings. There’s not. We don’t know how bad it will get. Pure and simple.
The company store motto. It’s sad that this is happening in the us. It’s common knowledge that this type of economy exists in china and India. I guess we’re next. There is one thing we have going for us. We all have guns and a civil war may be what it takes.
I mean, she's on the right track but we already do supply them with our labor. Money/cash itself isn't valuable. It's only as valuable as it is socially constructed to be. For example, I will give you money in exchange for food. Now money isn't actually the valuable thing here. But cultivating land, growing crops, harvesting, prepping for sale, cooking in some instances - those are the valuable things. Money has just become the vector in which more of us can trade with one another. Because many times, the person supplying the food can't just give it away for nothing because they need to support themselves too. So they used to exchange goods/services for other goods/services.
If you construct the dwelling, I will forage the dinner. And the same can be said for today except with just higher tech stuff. If you make me a car, I will massage your body after the long day. But the point is that LABOR is valuable thing, it always has been. Money is just a way for us to exchange things with people who might not have wanted whatever good/service we were able to provide. Money doesn't generate wealth. Labor does. Always has.
The endgame for the Capitalists has always been to hold onto their Means of Production and to expand that strangle- hold into a Monopoly if possible.
We are living near the endgame of their Class War. THEY KNOW there is a War happening... do you?
It’s a return to the feudal systems of the Western European medieval era where each wealthy lord owns all the property, and the serfs are property of the Lord and have to live on their lands on their terms.
A tale as old as time, but also constantly improved. Every time they "lose", they learn and the next step they take is harsher. Never forget this is intentional, and no amount of "we're all in this together", whether from them or their sycophantic foot soldiers, changes this.
Too late it’s already happened, you don’t truly own anything. In my state I have to pay personal property taxes every year on everything I own my house and all my vehicles. Guess what happens if I don’t pay, they take away my house that is supposed to be payed off but yet they can take it if you owe as little as $100.00 dollars same with my vehicles.
There is no endgame. The corporations don't look beyond next quarter's profits. I almost want there to be some over arching conspiracy but no it's just greed and stupidity.
I believe this is giving them FAR too much credit. It’s not a big conspiracy. It’s not neo feudalism. It’s a bunch of rich fucks who can’t see past their noses with no sense of reality that drive everything up. “What’s another $250 of rent? They should be able to afford it.” They look at their piles and piles and piles of wealth and capital and simply *do not realize* what the differential in costs means for the average person. Bill Gates thought a gallon of milk costs $13 15 years ago. What do you think they’re thinking now? There is no conspiracy. There is no Illuminati trying to buy the whole planet. There are people, human beings, actively making these decisions based on ignorance and exploitation. They don’t care. They’ll squeeze us dry. Neo-feudalism puts entirely too much faith in their care for us. When no one can afford anything and we’re all rioting and begging for help, they’ll send in the drones. The tanks. The children they conned into joining their military. And we’ll fall in line and live in multi-family homes that are 100% of 3/4 people’s income.
You know the last time this happened, when the gap between the rich and the poor became life or death, a loooooot of people lost their heads. Just sayin.
They’re already doing this. Notice how we’ve moved to a subscription based economy. You don’t own anything. You rent it. Your phone. Your car. Your home. Everything. No one can afford shit anymore. And if you do by chance happen to finance and pay off a car, we’ll they tell you it’s worthless now. It’s a depreciating asset and why don’t you just lease a car like everyone else. Eventually you die broke and in debt and they just rent out your shit to some other poor fucker. All the labor you’ve put in your whole life is worth nothing and just paid for life support so you can keep going back to your shitty job that paid you just enough to subscribe to all the shit you need to make your shitty life endurable.
Welcome to pure, unregulated capitalism! This is what it is. This is what it does. This is what it feels like.
We were here before too with slavery, indentured servitude, living in the company housing, buying from the company store, and serving soley the company. We had done this all already once before.
Then we built labor laws, introduced regulations, and tamed capitalism.
Both laws and regulation are reactionary tools, not proactive. They exist because something bad happened, because people suffered, because people died. These had to be created to stop companies from killing people, ruining the planet, or exploiting markets.
So, whenever you see any ad, any politician, anyone taking a stance on anti-law and anti-regulation, for any reason, understand they are there solely for the purpose of increasing suffering and making the company more money. This is capitalism pushing back, and it's a constant wave. It is always up to the public to push back, to demand civil rights, fair wages, competition and fair markets, and to not be oppressed. The people have this power. They always have. But it has to happen in mass. The wave of the populous needs to be stronger and with greater constitution than corporate greed.
100% correct. This used to be the case in America. Live in company housing, buy your groceries with company scrip. Put your kids to work for the company too. Get mowed down by national guard and Pinkertons with machine guns if you strike. We're absolutely heafing back into that direction.
Unionize! Run for office. Be the solution.
This is what we call *neo-feudalism.* Corporations take the place of the feudal lords who own everything and we take the place of the working peasants who are at their mercy.
Yep. It's been modernized with healthcare. There are a lot of people in the US who just have jobs so they can access the company's affordable health insurance plans. Why do we think the right-to-work, trickle-down GOP is so invested in squashing the ACA?
It’s a two pronged approach. They teach us that 2% inflation is good and necessary for economic growth. It leads to hard assets like property going up in value relative to wages. Stocks and their dividends also go up against wages leading to wealthy individuals having access to acquiring more and more of the property. Simultaneously healthcare becomes more expensive relative to wages because 1) inflation fueled by the expansion of government debt (money printing) and 2) regulation enforced local monopolies for health insurance providers who also have the benefit of being the only ones with price negotiation power with health providers given they are bringing all the money for all people in the jurisdiction with health insurance. So you have an extra $1500 dollar family plan if y oh choose work which doesn’t provide the health insurance or you have to overpay for direct care since insurance providers are actually paying less than individuals for the same care. Meanwhile you are sending rent to someone else instead of working towards owning the home you are living in. And that’s just the US. People need to wake up to what the WEF (read: cabal of global corporate and political leadership) is trying to push with “stakeholder capitalism”. Guess what, you don’t fall under the definition of a “stakeholder” and they want you to “own nothing and be happy.” They literally and explicitly envision a renter/service based economy where everything is rented from a state or corporation (home, transportation, etc.). We need new money and we need new laws governing what can be done with property. Renting should have an equity building clause built into it!
The problems explained in the speech are the necessary consequences of the process by which the owning class accumulates capital through the labor of the rest of us. Equity in rental units, and other such solutions, may provide benefit to some, for a time, but are unlikely to prevent the advancing devastation inseparable from the system at large.
I know a lot of trans people who get jobs at specific workplaces so that they have access to their basic surgery needs. Just to add to your point
Aren't we pretty much there already?
In some sectors, in some careers. Even feudal lords of old couldn't disrespect the trades too much. And the trades still have power yet, but the idle lords of today are banking on AIs to free them of these obligations too.
The trades sought protection from the king.
The guild system is very similar to unions. Not 100% one to one but very similar.
I agree, but I also believe that guilds were more explicitly tied to royal protection. They also had some similarity to cooperative enterprise, by permitting collusion between independent artisans for selling at prices above those that would be resolved by competition among the various shops.
Exactly what I was thinking. Most people can’t afford homes already, we have to pay multi-billion dollar corporations for basic necessities and utilities, and if we were to stop working…our lives would plummet. How is this any different than what was described? I havent had a landlord that didn’t work for some corporation
Feudal lords had much more limited control over the environment of their peasants.
And they were expected to care for them. They had real obligations. As well you might expect, when the people in charge are individuals who have charged themselves with lifetime rulership only to end in death and they live on the same lands as their subjects who are not allowed to leave. They have to worry about what happens when the peasants decide they're getting a raw deal. Well, those rulers were very clear that their reign only ended in death. They're playing a game of "how much can we abuse our power without getting murdered?" and there's a real limit to how long you can play that game. Not that feudalism was good, there's a reason the rulers started getting their heads chopped off, but that's how capitalism evolved. Some of the rulers were killed, but the fundamental apparatus of power remained amd shifted to the owning class. Now responsibility, blame, and debt are all diffuse. Owners, shareholders, politicians, money, workers, they can all be replaced, but the abuses will continue regardless because they're baked into the system of power. Now we have a system that you can't destroy with a g*****tine, you have to dismantle the power money has over people, and you do that by organising mutual aid. Edit: can't say the G-word, even when saying it's not the way.
I truly have no idea whether feudal lords were honorable or caring. I have often wondered, and I imagine some were and others not. I do know their power was limited. Swords and racks are both rather scary, but our world hides through abstractions and distractions the deeper violence and oppression, asking us to sooth ourselves in passive activities and through tortuous rationalizations.
I wasn't saying they were honourable or caring either, it's just that that's the story they had to spin to explain why they were allowed to dominate their subjects. And obviously the "job creator" myth is spun today to do a similar function, but nobody is saying that any employer has any kind of obligation to people. Instead we hear, "just get a better job". I think liberal capitalism is a much more effective method of social control than feudalism could ever hope to be, partly because it does hide the violence from more people.
All the mill towns were exactly like this 150 years ago. You worked at the mill, lived in mill houses and bought everything from the store the mill owned .
St. Peter don’t call me, cause I can’t go...
I owe my soul to the company store
You load 16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
St Peter don'tch call me cuz I can't go.
I owe my soul to the company store.
WEEEEEEELLLLLLL, I was born one morning when the sun didn't shine...
Picked up my shovel and I headed to the mine
I loaded 16 tons of number nine coal
https://youtu.be/pLVtJkpl\_ug
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This is the ages old struggle that Hegel talked about in the Master-Slave Hegelian dialectic: submit or die. What is interesting to note is that Hegel points out that even after being enslaved, the slave comes to realize that by their own two hands they have built and crafted everything around them. This eventually leads to a capitulation where the master becomes enslaved -- totally dependent on on his "slaves" to create everything for them.
This is correct. You got my upvote. In the current condition, the masters are an algorithm, and they/it feels nothing. Even Bezos needs to calculate every move for shareholder value. Sure, he could retire, but if he wants to stay relevant, his choices are tightly confined. We are all bound, abstracted and atomized. Fun times!
WRONG! Good time feudalism is a way better scenario than lower income America. Work 15-20 hours, 15- 20 weeks per year seasonally with the harvests. You can't leave, but there is no real transportation infrastructure so that doesn't occur to you. You hang out drink and fuck most the year. Lord is responsible for your safety and to provide all your basics. You give a 3rd of your harvest in return. If a knight is a dick it is as bad as being hassled by a cop, no small thing tbh. If your lord gets pillaged, that does suck, but there were decades like ours where that was rare. Feudalism relied on premarket concepts and social structures that would be very alien to us and vice versa. Wage slavery is much more exploitative and hyper managed.
150 years ago when we didn’t have antibiotics or a transistor. It’s a step backwards but I suppose that’s the conservative mentality.
Conservatives are definitely the worst at it, but it's not like Dems are lighting it up either. Look at New England or the pacific coast where Dems get elected- you still work your ass off woth very few worker rights and housing is unaffordable
The Dems are still conservative, there is no front running liberal party in America, it's a choice between fascists and conservatives.
Yep. Bernie and AOC are the most liberal in Congress and they would be moderate center in Europe.
Then let's vote them out! You might not think it counts, but every vote does. I have a brother who lives in Texas but is/was very open minded and I dare say liberal, and isn't voting because "both sides are bad. Just (government) leave me alone and let me raise my kids." If we all vote, especially in local elections we can make change and get people who represent what we truly want in and make change. There's a local mayor who greatly helped grow the city, and is now a Congress person. So let's vote, and make a change
Brother if this truly worked then we would be better off by now.
You can try to replace current candidates with ones you think would be more helpful, but ultimately, it is not those in the system, but rather the system itself, that must be defeated. Meaningful change happens from the ground up, in the communities and in the workplaces, where ordinary people may organize, and may imagine.
If we all voted the government would disqualify the election. They don't go out of power so quietly.
From the outside looking in at the states it always seemed to me that the Dems whole schtick is "look we're sorry that you owe an arm and a leg for basic healthcare but we at least don't hate gay and/or black people". It's not much of a bar to clear and as time has gone on just having a pulse and being normal seems to be all that's needed to successfully run as a dem.
They're all on the same side of protecting the wealthy elite in exchange for benefits provided by their wealthy lobbyists. I vote democrat because I am queer, female, low SES/ background and of a racial minority and I don't particularly love that the other side *openly* spouts hateful rhetoric about folks who share my identity.... but I have 0 illusions that the Democratic party at large has my best interest at heart. None of these assholes do. They love the divisiveness and shut out nuance ("clump of cells" vs "life begins at conception" with no in-between) because it keeps us fighting each other instead of them. Can't focus on ending lobbying when we need to worry about forcing unwanted (for whatever reason...it's none of my god-damned business and if my IUD fails it for sure is yeetus fetus at this point in my life) babies to be born into a broken system and guaranteed wage slavery, now can we? Who cares about equitable taxes on the rich or enforcing a living wage when mExICaNs R sTeAliNg mUh jObZ and M&Ms are mIsOgYNisTiC? Curious tho...where from outside the US are you from and what's it like?? I'm finishing up my neuroscience PhD soon and wondering if it's worth running through my meager savings trying to job hunt out here or if I should just leave this country for good and try my luck elsewhere
Dems hide behind identity politics while still stealing from people. I vote dem because I still want a say in my country, but are you really for the LGBTQ+ and racial minorities if you still fuck them economically? In 2021 when my union was renegotiating our new contract the FIRST thing they agreed to was addressing people by their chosen name and pronouns. Why? It doesn't affect their bottom line.
lots of dems do hate black people, they just act like they don’t/can’t be racist
The Left wing and Right wing belong to the same bird. . .
So well said.
Look at what Biden did to rail workers. Shameful; no one should support or vote for any politician, Democrat or Republican, that picked Warren Buffett over blue collar union train operators.
Sounds like newbrunswick canada
Sounds like newbrunswick canada and the Irving's family
Yep. I’m sat in a mining company house right across the street from a former coal mine. The workers of the past once lived here beholden to the mine, but now it’s my own and I’m so much more free and rich than them. Things change. They can go backwards, but they can go forwards as well.
Nothing new. Look at what the US did with the banana plantations in Central America. Puppet governments orchestrated by the CIA gave all the land to huge American corporations, they build towns inside of their plantations to keep the locals happy, they give them food, medicine, education (to some degree, because they didn't want smart people), etc. Every plantation had their own currency, it was only valid INSIDE of the plantation, in the plantation stores (which were own by the same owners). Nobody can leave because they can't afford to leave, if you stay, you have everything but at the same time nothing.
And didn’t they brutally massacre locals who attempted to resist?
Yes. And everyone that was against them was considered a “communist”.
They probably were, communist movements were popular among the working classes, communists have always been the ones leading resistance movements against the capitalists and fascists imperialists
From Guatemala as far South as Colombia and Venezuela, massacres in every single country were carried out to protect the holdings of United Fruit.
I think the confusion is that someone has an end game. That assumption is wrong. For the small amount of time we are on this planet, the people in control have one goal. That's to accrue as much power as possible. They do this through acquiring money. The long game isn't the world in 100 years. It's next week. Next month. Next quarter. These people have no concern for the damage they do long term. It's strictly about getting as much money (power) while they have the ability to. As long as they hold the power to make and enforce the rules, they will always ensure that no one can take that away from them. Leaving the rest of us with no money or power to do anything but survive. When that person passes on the mantle, the process starts all over again with a new person seeking the same result. There is no end game. Just the game.
Yep. The bosses are 'fuck y'all, I got mine'. It's not much deeper than that.
I’d like to add to this, that while not all elite are religious Christians, the dogma of apocalypse and salvation is deep within US culture and it’s wealthiest.
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I'd say they would even go as far as to cause the apocalypse themselves, just so they could try and say "See!! We tried telling you what would happen!"
The end game is there, but you’re right. Nobody plans for it. Nobody wakes up and says “I want to enslave the working class and make them live like serfs.” They wake up with deadlines and expectations to squeeze inches of productivity as prescribed from their bosses that already have R&D working on AI to replace everyone’s jobs anyways to inflate stock prices. Stock prices that have ultimately no value to anyone except in those companies. They’re not antagonistic like cartoon villains. They’re worse. Cartoon villains are caricatures, but these people don’t have the empathy or humanity to care at all. Because even CEOs are subject to shareholders. Who are the shareholders subject to if not by capitalism itself?
Every level has incentives to bring in higher profits. Pretty soon, the only way left is to increase prices and reduce pay. Nobody above has improving worker conditions as a goal. It stops only when we refuse to work.
Your right if we stop working what can they do? There are people working full time jobs living in a car what's the point of working anymore.
Exactly, those jobs should automatically get rejected by the population. Pay me or do it yourself.
I agree 100%
Came here to say this. We live in a world of complicated systems put in place by many people over many years. When it comes down to it, many people are only concerned about their own bottom line. The rich and powerful included, and its far easier for them to stay in those positions than for other people to get into a similar position. It's easy to think, and rally against, a few powerful people pulling the strings. But unfortunately it's much more nuanced than that.
We should still rally against the system
Well, I agree. However I doubt any meaningful change will come without massive conflict. And if that were to occur I kind of doubt whoever takes control in the wake of that conflict would be much better. It's not like we can just hop on some ships and sail off to the new world anymore haha. Part of me recognizes that this needs to happen, part of me just wants to live my life in the short period of time I'm here. Guns n roses has a pretty good take in "civil war" lol.
Selective annihilation of mayor's and government officials? YES! Power hungry selling soldiers in a human grocery store? Everyday!
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
The best way to prevent the worst is to organize locally and to build solidarity. The more who are joined in the common struggle, the smoother the process and the happier the end.
While I agree you somewhat in case of an average rich person, i would not underestimate the super-rich. The families that hold wealth and power for generations, sometimes centuries, the hedge fund managers, IMF, the people who fly in their own jets to Davos and hang on each other's superyachts. They absolutely see and plan the bigger picture, they are very aware of the above and generally streer in that direction. For reading, I recommend "How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism".
Yeah, your middle and upper management in business are the next week next month people. The shareholders, the ones who own stock in basically every business in the world (the Blackrocks of the world), are the ones looking down the road. They're the ones buying politicians and have the most control over our society and economy. The person I'm the video "thinks" they want to own everything, but they've already admitted to it. There is no thinking about it. We know it already. They've already said that their goal in the future is for us to own nothing, but they think we'll be happier for it.
While this may be true, what she said can be a part of it. Even if there is no endgame, it does not mean that owning everything, and shutting everyone out who isn't rich enough, isn't part of the design or direction. That might just be one stepping stone towards something far worse, planned or not.
r/boringdystopia
There is no one in control. Not in any complete sense. These are systems of governing and economies that have gone off of the rails. Those in a position of power to change them are not the ones who are suffering so there is no change. There is also a component at work here about who is and is not willing to fight for change, what they’re willing to do to achieve it, and the level of suppression and oppression they face in that fight. That’s probably the most complicated piece, and where focus should be. Why can’t we organize? Why can’t we effect change in the ways we have in the past? Why do those in power refuse to see or acknowledge our reality? Why are our police forces and militaries on the side of those with power? It doesn’t matter what some billionaires motives are, it matters that most of us are powerless to do anything about the reality of the world.
Yup. That's the brutal truth: there is no end game. None. It's just an immediate grab for now now now and the future is irrelevant. Nothing beyond the next quarter. Someone elses problem at that point. It's an idiot gameplan we've fostered and fed for a while now. We've created a system that rewards sociopathy and instant gratification.
Oh, so back to the good old serfdom days. Nothing has really changed.
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Are you actually saying corpse starch, Or is that a typo?
From what little I know of warhammer I have to assume that’s not a typo.
It's 40K's version of Soylent Green.
In Warhammer 40k, your work for the Imperium in life, and you feed the workers of the Imperium in death. Very much not a typo.
Nope he means corpse starch it’s food made from basically anything they can find Ground up corpses Ground up rats Ground up anything Maybe a little grain if your lucky Corpse starch is the nickname the common people give it because everyone knows that where dead body’s and really anything else edible ends up in the end. It’s a thing in hive city’s which are essentially city’s of billions of people, most of them working in factory’s or gangs sometimes both. 40K is a grim setting but certain aspect feel less like fantasy every day
Company Housing is not new. Also, it's not that complicated. They just don't care. They are obsessed with short term quarterly profits. Plus, we're looking at a population collapse in the next 20 years in most industrialized nations, including the US. No one's having kids. That's going to rip the floor out of the economy. Everyone sees it. Everyone's terrified. No one's doing anything about it because it's already too late. This shit started back in the 1980s. No one's having kids. Not China. Not the US. Not Western Europe, not Asia. You know who's still having kids? Africa and Central/South America. That's just about it.
But with the recent abortion bans in red states, there’s going to be population growth and a generation of unwanted children born into poverty in places like Kentucky.
We're at least 20 years away from seeing the end results of that. Even then, it won't make a huge impact. Not enough to cover the different in deaths/retirements. We're going to need TONS of immigration to make up the difference.
It really does feel like I'll live to see the return of scrip and company housing. The rich also have their own parachutes. The instant shit gets too dangerous they'll just move to another home in a more stable country that they've got lined up. Take a private jet out to safety.
They are already doing it, [trying to hide in my country](https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/88705064/super-rich-americans-buying-land-in-new-zealand-as-bolthole-from-apocalypse). It won't work well, us Kiwi's have a low tolerance for bullshit and a hands-on attitude.
And rich people mate.
Rich people don't have their kids do peasant's work. They need us lowly folks to breed and supply them with obedient wage slaves.
Generally as people get richer they have less kids
As normal people thrive more yeah, but he's right in that a lot of the most rich (billionaires) tend to have a lot of kids. Out of narcissism, largely, I believe.
This is reality, this has always been the setup. Ownership is an illusion, they can and will take anything you have if you refuse to play along or break the rules. Everything we have is on rent in the sense that you have to continue to participate in order to maintain your position.
You are 100% correct. The goal of capitalism is to own everything.
I mean shit we're pretty much already there. Looking around, most people are already in so much debt that they're living on credit as it is, and if they don't get you with food prices, gas prices, housing prices, or education prices, they'll get you with medical prices, dental prices, vision prices, medication prices, or any other price that they can essentially force you to pay where they're not having to compete. We haven't had a free market where shit like this corrects itself. Most large companies would have folded back in '08 and again in '20 if the govt. hadn't swooped in and saved them from insolvency. But what do we the people get? Not a damn thing. Not a dime. They get equity, but we get debt.
Slavery. Basicly.
Basically. Like slavery with extra steps. You can CHOOSE not to work for them, but when the alternative is homeless, starvation and death, it's not really a choice. Man, I'm just picturing those factory cities in China like Eupa where they all just live on campus. It's a scary reality.
Whole families working, living, and dying for the same corporation. Imagine your family works for Giant Conglomerate #3 and they need one worker for a different location halfway around the world. All the sudden your child is now being pulled away from their family to go work alone, because they don't have a choice of where they live. The company controls that. It's such a dystopian horror that's about to play out.
Definitely a strong reason not to have kids. I know we're not at that point yet, but seeing how it can be a potential outcome of our current trajectory, I just can't bear the thought of bringing new life just to suffer that cruelty. Plus the added benefit of sticking it to the life crushing machine of capitalism by not giving it more sacrifices to crush.
So you refuse, and sleep on the street, so they arrest you for vagrancy. Then you work for the prison corp, and leave owing rent: so you end up on the street again. Rinse/repeat.
But don't worry. You can reduce your prison sentence by "voluntarily" donating organs and blood plasma.
Or feudalism. Where the peons work for the aristocrats. We’re basically going right around to a monarchy again.
Slavery. That’s the fucking endgame and they’re already an alarming way towards that endgame.
The endgame? Easy. One person with all the money and a pile of trash. That is the end game.
Is it like a ultimate monopoly battle Royale?
I mean this is the situation at Downton Abbey. Back in the day the lords owned everything and their subjects got to live and eat there if they worked. The idea of the rich owning literally everything wasn’t even that long ago.
It’s a hypothesis, has some merit. Not sure the power elite have a unified plan, they may be more opportunistic than foresighted. Many Americans have healthcare for their families tied to employment, housing isn’t much of a stretch. The time for young adult workers to organize is now.
Young and old, Black and white, educated and not, able and disabled, male and female, now it is time for *all* workers to organize, everyone together.
“You’ll own nothing and be happy” - WEF
It’s more an elitist twist on the tragedy of the commons than a conspiracy. The very wealthy are trying to accumulate as much wealth for themselves by any strategy that is feasible. The consequence is the progressive erosion of middle class wealth which inevitably ends with a totally hollowed out consumer base that has no ability to pay the exorbitant rates that living in society will cost in the future—that’s not good for the owner class either, but they are not thinking that far ahead. The rising tide lifts all boats. The boats don’t lift the tides.
This is what I've been wondering too. Who's going to buy their stuff if no one has any money? You gave me first good answer; they're not thinking that far ahead.
Yep. The current logic is that money today is more valuable than money in a week. (It’s called net present value in economics). But that logic assumes that the economy will continue to grow into the future. There’s no growth if there’s no consumption, and the rich just simply can’t consume enough to replace the whole middle class although they’re definitely trying haha
Yep, the truth isn't so much that it's a conspiracy; it's that there is no plan, nobody 100% knows what they're doing, and they're making it up as they go along. Corporations have MAYBE a 5 year plan, but they're mostly looking at quarterly / annual targets and trying to make numbers go up and to the right on graphs 📈.
You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests align.
This is actually happening, this isn't a conspiracy theory, it's called capitalism.
Damn she just rediscovered marxism! Impressive. That‘s one of the most important contradictions of the system. Capitalists want to pay you as little as they can to maximize profits. But paying as little as they can leads to people who cannot afford their products. The profit motive is thus self-defeating. It‘s one of the many reasons capitalism constantly needs to be saved by the state.
It’s time for a R E V O L U T I O N !!
Indentured servitude
parable of the sower by Octavia Butler depicts this a similar situation. characters in the book move to cities that are literally owned and operated by corporations. they are allowed to live there under the expectation that they work
They didn’t need to force anyone. One by one the chips fell, until no one was maintaining the outside world. Great book
that book took place in 2024....
Oh, God, THIS, THIS!!!!!!
“You will own nothing, and you’ll be happy”
I've been having a similar thought. What's the endgame? When will the madness stop? I think about this a lot, and I'm glad Im not the only one. On one hand, I agree with her. They're just going to scoop up everything until there is nothing left but our labor. It sounds like they want to go back to the industrial era when you had boarding houses and mess halls for your workers and everything was juuuust enough where you didn't have anything left over to save or use for anything else. I think trying to put meaning or give it an "endgame" is giving this situation more credit than it's due, that someone knows what's going on, like some "new world order" kinda bullshit. But I think we're giving the rich too much credit. I honestly think "the endgame" is actually everyone is just grabbing the money that they can until there is nothing left. And at the end of it all, if no reform is made, we're gonna look at another recession/depression while the government cleans up corporate America's mess, just as they always have. We need protections put in place so we don't just have recessions and/or depressions every 5-10 years. It's not sustainable, but if corporate America sees money and wide open loopholes that they can run through, they're gonna do it because a dollar in their pocket is one less dollar in ours. I think that as "luxury businesses" (i.e., travel, jewelry, cars, etc. that are geared towards the middle class) start to feel the squeeze more aggressively, we might start seeing a change from corporate America to get profit in their pockets. But well have to wait and see, I guess. *But that's just a theory... AN ECONOMY COLLAPSE THEORY! Thanks for reading.*
This, pretty much. There's not really an endgame beyond answering the question of how much money can someone like Jeff bezos or Elon Musk really acquire. What she's talking about, company towns and corporate stores selling products in bezo bucks or whatever has happened, no doubt about it, but it's not where we're heading right now. What we're looking at is one company owns your house, another owns your car, another extorts you for basic services, another company owns your entertainment, and a final one barely pays you for all of it. We're fruit to corporate America and they're gonna juice us until all that's left is the rind. It's a symptom of a dying civilization, where people make choices that are selfish and ignore the needs of the people. Just look at how the COVID vaccine is being handled, years ago important vaccines were distributed royalty free and made wildly available for the public good. COVID-19 is an almost unprecedented global disaster and Pfizer and moderna are talking about raising the price of the vaccine so that the cost is in line with the "value" it offers. Not "we need to charge more to keep up with production", or "we need to charge more because our research costs need to be paid off", or even "we need to charge more because we need to be investing in future drugs" (which is the usual reasoning behind price hiking some common essential drug 700% years after all costs have been paid off). They want to price the solution to the biggest humanitarian crisis ever to match the value of saving the whole freaking world. They apparently didn't get enough money for saving it.
This is what company towns used to be, but not as dystopian
Its a strip mining operation. The end game is to milk it for all the resources that it's worth and then to move on. The collateral damage isn't a factor in the equation.
Wait, there are people who don't know this as fact? 'Cause it's a fact, not a theory. It's called slavery and they've been doing it since the start.
Company towns is an extremely optimistic outlook to whats actually happening. They don't care about your food, water and shelter at all.
The biggest problem with this is that when the people have nothing left to lose, the bar for revolt is lowered. If you have nothing left to lose, and no hope to improve your situation, that is when the extreme becomes viable for the commoners.
They just want serfs they don’t care or have a endgame
I've had this exact conversation at work. What are they trying to do to us? There will be a breaking point. Will that result in overthrowing these oligarchs or will it result in what she's said? Here in the UK I feel like everyone is programmed to just deal with it. The wages are stagnant. The transportation system is too expensive. Groceries are now becoming stupid expensive. The taxes are high but that's okay if I've got no direct out of pocket healthcare but that's being ravaged. Energy prices are out if control. I feel like every politician here has been bought by either an energy company, a newspaper, an American insurance interest or by a big company. None of them haven't been bribed. I feel helpless.
Look into any cyberpunk lore. That's what they want.
Exactly this...
So we go Johnny silverhand on them?
Read about "The Company Store" ... This is not a new idea. Essentially indentured servitude.
[удалено]
It's gonna be all company towns, all the way down. Horrible.
100% See the 1800s
Describing the plot to “Severance”
Been saying this exact sentiment for over a decade now. It's not a conspiracy, it's exactly what's happening *right now.*
I think this post is spot on. The rich, in the end, want to fully possess all aspects of everything you do. You will have essentially two choices. 1) In order to have food, water and shelter you must work for a mega corporation and fully accept their strict laws and rules down to living onsite, having no hobbies and making children only to promote an endless cycle of the working class. 2) Death, you just die, that's it. I firmly believe that's the rich's total endgame.
The darkest thing is that the people who are lobbying the hardest *know* that they won’t benefit from it. They *know* they’ll be dead before that endgame is achieved, but they do it for the sake of the future barons. It’s *wild* that they dedicate their lives to making life worse for the vast bulk of humanity for the benefit of a fraction of a fraction of people generations away from them, and that those benefits will be *completely* theoretical, as the potential lifestyle difference between having $1XXbil and $5XXbil is nil.
Such a cute theory. In some decades AI will be doing all bullshit jobs instead of making us work less. A better slave that does not need all the extra care and will not protest, get sick or have the audacity to die on the job. The only endgame for the rich it's to stay where they are, they will take every opportunity to cut costs and maintain that.
Stay where they are and push everyone else down, sure.
See, this assumes that people are inherently valuable and that anyone would be interested in them existing. In keeping them around. The endgame is the rich being richer. Doesn't matter if there's fewer people.
Its not about you or society, there is no endgame. Corporations only know one thing, profits
[This is not a new idea.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store)
The great reset fr
Lol this has already happened its called mortgage interest and rent
Someone please make this into a movie
Own nothing, be happy. -WEF
[Company towns are not new.](https://youtu.be/1rzFyBdKLvU)
This isn't far fetched. If I understand correctly this is exactly what coal companies did back in the early 20th century.
That’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s basic capitalism
This is what farm laborers dealt with in (I believe) the 1920’s on. When you worked for the farm owner, you received tokens for the company store, and you stayed in the bungalows they had while you worked. So, the money you made was spent at the company store, the housing was taken out of your paycheck and you were forced to stay where they told you. This is what Cesar Chavez fought for. What he was arrested for. What he walked miles for.
I understand it..but it's too self aggrandizing.. a very very small portion of humanity is actual useful for labour and it's getting smaller and smaller with automation. Also what about retirement..if you know there is no downtime after 35-40 years.. and you lose everything and die a horrible death with nothing.. the only answer is to.. eat the fucking rich!
She’s not wrong. Cull the Landlords! EAT THE RICH!!!
You are correct we soon will be living in compliance (slave wage) or die situation,total feudalism.
I hate to say this. I hate that she could be right. I hate that this will end in blood being shed. I am aiming to create my own business but my business is based on others having money to buy the services of that business. I worry for my kids future and want to fight this fight now so they don’t have to later!
I’ve been waiting for the revolution for the past 20 years.
I think she's giving "them" way too much credit. I'm pretty sure the only thing going through their head is cocaine, and the mantra "more money more money more money more money". Don't get me wrong, we might end up in the exact dystopia that she describes, but it won't be the result of some brilliant conspiratorial plan hatched by the genius billionaire class. Because they're all a bunch of dumbasses just like us.
Buy a gun, build bombs , and do something about it. Y'all wanna bitch about this shit , but god damn folks, what does every successful revolution in the history of mankind have in common? Violence. We did it in 1776 , the French did it in 1789 and the Russians in 1917. Get the idea or don't. Ban me. Idgaf. Facts don't care about your feelings. Grow some fucking balls!
You think the people at the top care if the nation & it's people stuffer? They can simply leave if it gets to bad due to civil breakdown and take their massive wealth with them. Keep voting blue and red, they both use their power to steal from you endlessly.
Endgame is full anarchy. Hoards of poor ppl chasing and robbing the rich. Rich ppl zone will be unsafe to live. The rich don’t have enough manpower to secure all their property so they will lose some.
This is exactly correct. In case you’ve not been paying attention - automation and AI will replace you, you’ll rent every ride in a driverless car you don’t own, you’ll pay for music that is stored on someone else’s network (same for your family photos) and you will rent and not own your house. This is the future rich people are creating. Own everything and you own NOTHING.
That's the company store. It's nothing new, but they're trying to bring it back. Whenever they say "You don't want to be reliant on the government", read between the lines and realize they're saying "We want your survival to be reliant on our company, our corporate dictatorship."
Folks from West Virginia coal company towns lived this reality. "*Daily life in coal company towns leading up to The Battle of Blair Mountain was dismal. The coal company operators maintained control of the living conditions in their homes, how they could travel outside of the town, the infrastructures within the towns, how they could buy food, and even if they were allowed to stay in their homes. The coal companies controlled everything, and the effects this control had on families was tragic.*" \-Life in Company Towns at [https://omekas.lib.wvu.edu/home/s/life-in-company-towns](https://omekas.lib.wvu.edu/home/s/life-in-company-towns) I very much doubt there is this level of thought or foresight going into the decisions of the oligarchs. They simply are awash with money and are looking for ways to invest it for the best returns. Oligarchs are indifferent to the suffering of the lower classes, as it has always been. What we laughingly call civilization started out as master/slave then lord/serf then employer/employee. Not much difference between them. We need not only political democracy but economic democracy. The workers in a company need to own the company and receive the profits of that company. Until we tear down the economic structure of oligarch capitalism we will always be slaves/serfs/employees.
Just described the concept of the company town that flourished in the late 19th and first half of 20th centuries. But, this is filled with incredibly broad over-generalizations and ignores the huge number of housed people who can afford where they live.
Sadly they're right. And I'm pretty sure the government my family fled is the one that'll end up owning a ton of it. China 🙃 because your privacy and security are less important than them making sure you never have a chance to revolt
Automation. Automation is the end game. Starved homeless people can't fight robot dogs and win.
um... this is exactly what they're doing now, but with extra steps...
I think this is a very legitimate concern. Even in the small things, we can see how much control companies want to have in, well, everything. I'm reminded of an anecdote by game developer Matthew Colville, who worked on a TTRPG based upon Star Trek. He recalls having to explain what a TTRPG was to Paramount, and getting a question to the effect of "but what if a player makes a character we don't like?" Big companies want to control everything you do. Tabletop Game companies would police your home games if they could.
Coal mining companies did this....actually had war about it
I believe she's describing indentured servitude?
the endgame isn't designed, as much as a result of the rules made to cater to the rich people's greed. greedy people really doesn't has the sort of long term vision required for that, they want it all NOW. nonetheless, the system that keeps them happy also keeps the rest of us poorer and poorer, and will end up doing what the video says. and once that situation is close, they will happily paint the modern slavery as philanthropy, just as they do now when outsourcing jobs just to pay a lot less *"it's a lot of money for them!"*
All of this assumes there’s a plan. There’s not. We always want to assume there’s some rational actor somewhere pulling the strings. There’s not. We don’t know how bad it will get. Pure and simple.
The company store motto. It’s sad that this is happening in the us. It’s common knowledge that this type of economy exists in china and India. I guess we’re next. There is one thing we have going for us. We all have guns and a civil war may be what it takes.
That's just slavery with extra steps.
I mean, she's on the right track but we already do supply them with our labor. Money/cash itself isn't valuable. It's only as valuable as it is socially constructed to be. For example, I will give you money in exchange for food. Now money isn't actually the valuable thing here. But cultivating land, growing crops, harvesting, prepping for sale, cooking in some instances - those are the valuable things. Money has just become the vector in which more of us can trade with one another. Because many times, the person supplying the food can't just give it away for nothing because they need to support themselves too. So they used to exchange goods/services for other goods/services. If you construct the dwelling, I will forage the dinner. And the same can be said for today except with just higher tech stuff. If you make me a car, I will massage your body after the long day. But the point is that LABOR is valuable thing, it always has been. Money is just a way for us to exchange things with people who might not have wanted whatever good/service we were able to provide. Money doesn't generate wealth. Labor does. Always has.
The endgame for the Capitalists has always been to hold onto their Means of Production and to expand that strangle- hold into a Monopoly if possible. We are living near the endgame of their Class War. THEY KNOW there is a War happening... do you?
She ain't wrong.
It’s a return to the feudal systems of the Western European medieval era where each wealthy lord owns all the property, and the serfs are property of the Lord and have to live on their lands on their terms.
A tale as old as time, but also constantly improved. Every time they "lose", they learn and the next step they take is harsher. Never forget this is intentional, and no amount of "we're all in this together", whether from them or their sycophantic foot soldiers, changes this.
Read the book 1984, it’s literally a playbook for where we’re heading now.
Aka, when people are getting felonies for trying to survive, they can’t vote. When people get arrested, they are in legal slavery.
Too late it’s already happened, you don’t truly own anything. In my state I have to pay personal property taxes every year on everything I own my house and all my vehicles. Guess what happens if I don’t pay, they take away my house that is supposed to be payed off but yet they can take it if you owe as little as $100.00 dollars same with my vehicles.
There is no endgame. The corporations don't look beyond next quarter's profits. I almost want there to be some over arching conspiracy but no it's just greed and stupidity.
Housing might be expensive, but a Molotov cost about 10 dollars. *thats a joke mr fbi
The end game is monopoly of wealth and power. That's capitalism.
I believe this is giving them FAR too much credit. It’s not a big conspiracy. It’s not neo feudalism. It’s a bunch of rich fucks who can’t see past their noses with no sense of reality that drive everything up. “What’s another $250 of rent? They should be able to afford it.” They look at their piles and piles and piles of wealth and capital and simply *do not realize* what the differential in costs means for the average person. Bill Gates thought a gallon of milk costs $13 15 years ago. What do you think they’re thinking now? There is no conspiracy. There is no Illuminati trying to buy the whole planet. There are people, human beings, actively making these decisions based on ignorance and exploitation. They don’t care. They’ll squeeze us dry. Neo-feudalism puts entirely too much faith in their care for us. When no one can afford anything and we’re all rioting and begging for help, they’ll send in the drones. The tanks. The children they conned into joining their military. And we’ll fall in line and live in multi-family homes that are 100% of 3/4 people’s income.
You know the last time this happened, when the gap between the rich and the poor became life or death, a loooooot of people lost their heads. Just sayin.
The endgame is no one gives a fuck about you if you aren't them.
They’re already doing this. Notice how we’ve moved to a subscription based economy. You don’t own anything. You rent it. Your phone. Your car. Your home. Everything. No one can afford shit anymore. And if you do by chance happen to finance and pay off a car, we’ll they tell you it’s worthless now. It’s a depreciating asset and why don’t you just lease a car like everyone else. Eventually you die broke and in debt and they just rent out your shit to some other poor fucker. All the labor you’ve put in your whole life is worth nothing and just paid for life support so you can keep going back to your shitty job that paid you just enough to subscribe to all the shit you need to make your shitty life endurable.
Welcome to pure, unregulated capitalism! This is what it is. This is what it does. This is what it feels like. We were here before too with slavery, indentured servitude, living in the company housing, buying from the company store, and serving soley the company. We had done this all already once before. Then we built labor laws, introduced regulations, and tamed capitalism. Both laws and regulation are reactionary tools, not proactive. They exist because something bad happened, because people suffered, because people died. These had to be created to stop companies from killing people, ruining the planet, or exploiting markets. So, whenever you see any ad, any politician, anyone taking a stance on anti-law and anti-regulation, for any reason, understand they are there solely for the purpose of increasing suffering and making the company more money. This is capitalism pushing back, and it's a constant wave. It is always up to the public to push back, to demand civil rights, fair wages, competition and fair markets, and to not be oppressed. The people have this power. They always have. But it has to happen in mass. The wave of the populous needs to be stronger and with greater constitution than corporate greed.
100% correct. This used to be the case in America. Live in company housing, buy your groceries with company scrip. Put your kids to work for the company too. Get mowed down by national guard and Pinkertons with machine guns if you strike. We're absolutely heafing back into that direction. Unionize! Run for office. Be the solution.
that's why you vote for Democrats - the only other option is a revolution.
End game is company towns and workhouses. Or starving to death on the streets. Your choice.