• DokPsy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      But that’s communism like what China has and they have cameras watching every person’s waking moment. We can’t have that

      • Jiral@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Indeed, China does all those good things, plus the surveillance state on top. In Shenzen for example there is apparently hardly a public space left in the city not covered by face detection and people tracking cameras.

        • DokPsy@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’m not sure if you caught it but that was sarcasm as that’s exactly what the us is doing with these cameras but wrapped in the red scare blanket of communism.

  • pammyfromthesticks@mander.xyz
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    2 months ago

    I always said we were are all slaves… everybody just rolled their eyes. 🙄 HA jokes on you…🙁 Jokes on me

    When I was younger I did not know the name for capitalist but I knew they… yes "THEY"🤬 were the problem.

    • Zombie@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      Paraphrasing this may help in convincing friends, family, and your community of their reality.

      But where do you come in? What benefit have you from that kind of ‘law and order’? Don’t you see that this ‘law and order’ only robs you, fools you, and just enslaves you?

      ‘Enslave me?’ you wonder. ‘Why, I am a free citizen!’

      Are you free, really? Free to do what? To live as you please? To do what you please?

      Let’s see. How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?

      You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don’t you? And your wages determine your way of living, don’t they? The conditions of your life, even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, — all of it depends on your wages.

      No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your wages. You are really a wage slave.

      The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.

      So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more with it than your wages permit?

      Can’t you see that your wage — your salary or income — is all the freedom that you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don’t go a step further than the wages you get.

      The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn’t mean that you can do it. To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven’t the means, the opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?

      So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, than it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.

      You see, then, that the whole situation comes to this:

      Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you.

      The law upholds and protects that robbery.

      The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free.

      In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.

      But how does it happen that you didn’t think of it before? How is it that most other people don’t see it, either?

      It is because you and every one else are lied to about this all the time, from your earliest childhood.

      You are told to be honest, while you are being robbed all your life.

      You are commanded to respect the law, while the law protects the capitalist who is robbing you.

      You are taught that killing is wrong, while the government hangs and electrocutes people and slaughters them in war.

      You are told to obey the law and government, though law and government stand for robbery and murder.

      Thus all through life you are lied to, fooled, and deceived, so that it will be easier to make profits out of you, to exploit you.

      Because it is not only the employer and the capitalist who make profits out of you. The government, the church, and the school — they all live on your labor. You support them all. That is why all of them teach you to be content with your lot and behave yourself.

      ‘Is it really true that I support them all?’ you ask in amazement.

      Let us see. They eat and drink and are clothed, not to speak of the luxuries they enjoy. Do they make the things they use and consume, do they do the planting and sowing and building and so on?

      ‘But they pay for those things,’ your friend objects.

      Yes, they pay. Suppose a fellow stole fifty dollars from you and then went and bought with it a suit of clothes for himself. Is that suit by right his? Didn’t he pay for it? Well, just so the people who don’t produce anything or do no useful work pay for things. Their money is the profits they or their parents before them squeezed out of you, out of the workers.

      ‘Then it is not my boss who supports me, but I him?’

      Of course. He gives you a job; that is, permission to work in the factory or mill which was not built by him but by other workers like yourself. And for that permission you help to support him for the rest of your life or as long as you work for him. You support him so generously that he can afford a mansion in the city and a home in the country, even several of them, and servants to attend to his wants and those of his family, and for the entertainment of his friends, and for horse races and for boat races, and for a hundred other things. But it is not only to him that you are so generous. Out of your labor, by direct and indirect taxation, are supported the entire government, local, state, and national, the schools and the churches, and all the other institutions whose business it is to protect profits and keep you fooled. You and your fellow workers, labor as a whole, support them all. Do you wonder that they all tell you that everything is all right and that you should be good and keep quiet?

      It is good for them that you should keep quiet, because they could not keep on duping and robbing you once you open your eyes and see what’s happening to you.

      That’s why they are all strong for this capitalist system, for ‘law and order’.

      But is that system good for you? Do you think it right and just? If not, then why do you put up with it? Why do you support it? ‘What can I do?’ you say; ‘I’m only one.’

      Are you really only one? Are you not rather one out of many thousands, out of millions, all of them exploited and enslaved the same as you are? Only they don’t know it. If they knew it, they wouldn’t stand for it. That’s sure. So the thing is to make them know it.

      Every workingman in your city, every toiler in your country, in every country, in the whole world, is exploited and enslaved the same as you are.

      From Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 3: Law and Government.

      Available to read, or download in various formats, for free, here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc5

  • Boozilla@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    The wage slavery became very obvious when they tied health insurance to our employers, if not before then. There’s a throughline of chattel slavery, feudalism, indentured servitude, wage slavery. Obviously some are far worse than others. But it’s the same basic idea, “we own you”.

  • kibblebits@quokk.au
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    2 months ago

    Gonna make it super easy to know where you try to run when they declare martial law and start mowing people down.

    • architect@thelemmy.club
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      2 months ago

      In my city it’s specific buildings and residential areas and I can’t figure it out. It’s not poor neighborhoods only. Definitely a ton around schools and colleges. Lowes has a ton pointing at it, too.

      • perpetualflight@lemmy.zip
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        2 months ago

        It seems haphazard because they’re not just installed by local governments, they’re also are bought by companies and private parties that can then enable access of those feeds to law enforcement. It’s how they can say they aren’t a mass surveillance company, because customers are also willingly sharing all their data to help expand the dragnet under the guise of increased safety.

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        You’ll notice that most of the expensive homes tend to be built away from highways, since highways are unsightly and noisy.

  • Mulligrubs@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Fantastic point! They’ve been doing this at an accelerated pace since The Patriot Act.

    Their surveillance limitations have always been due to their inability to go through everything. AI is their solution, no one is needed to watch the cameras or to listen into calls.

    And the world wonders why “Americans aren’t doing anything.” Meanwhile, say a key word or phrase anywhere on Discord or Facebook or Reddit, and they will find you. How many thousands have been arrested for this very reason? How would we know? But, you can see peeks of their surveillance activity here and there, arrests for arms possession and plots against a political officials and more daily it seems.

    But, people are still trusting third parties like Google with their communications, thinking that they are private. In my opinion, there is no longer any such thing as truly secure communication, no “wire tap” needed, no warrant, nothing.

  • AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Kind of interesting watching the “if you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to fear crowd” hate these things. Like, this is exactly the thing they should be in support of no? Well, if they were actually genuine about it, but they only care now cuz it affects them directly.

    • zergtoshi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Mostly some of the bad parts though like mass surveillance and opression.
      Yet economy wise China seems to have their shit together in difference to the USA.

      They reconize the importance of e.g. energy independence (from imports) and domestic chip/RAM production while USA tries to play a fool’s game with tariffs and hurries to run more of the economy on dinosaur farts (yeah, I’m aware that most fossil fuels aren’t made from dinosaur remains…).

  • pigup@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    It was a clear evening so we looked up and it was twilight so all the satellites flying above were well lit up. I’ve never been able to see so many satellites flying overhead and you can clearly see the Starlink grid. It is really dense. They are realizing the horrible sci-fi future. It’s what they want.