DAMION: Security via obsolescence

Oh sorry, I didn’t understand your last comment and assumed. Guess it made an ass of me.

Got it. Youre on the all or nothing boat to hell for everyone.

The state has the power to suppress what?

To be clear though, my argument has nothing to do with the feasibility or responsibility of the government to regulate Lyft/Uber into paying living wages.

My argument is that Mandami is building a movement/coalition through paths of least resistance and sweeping incremental changes as opposed to highly targeted legislative changes.

Biden did wipe out student debt, but because the courts were packed, his efforts were nullified. Had the groundwork been laid first (replacing the courts) then this life changing legislation would have passed. In order to replace the courts, there would need to be a coalition built supporting the change. It’s great to shoot for the moon, but if our progressive spaceship blows up on the way to the moon, our progressive politicians will have a track record of getting nothing accomplished - just like the lazy sacks of shit that are the true enemies of the state: Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer, etc.

If we want the moon, and we deserve the moon, then we need to be OK with taking the path of least resistance, getting the easy wins, and building a coalition.

We are at the mercy of private businesses until we have buy-in of the populace though.

We don’t get the buy-in by doing everything at once. Incremental change is good change. Following the path of least resistance make things incrementally better, makes people believe in the government again which allows us to pass stricter regulation.

We can spend our efforts trying to get Uber to pay a living wage. Or we can make an incremental change for rideshare drivers that makes their life better, and move on to make life incrementally better for a bunch of other people (see Mandami’s snow removal policy). The more people that Mandami is able to make life better for, the more people will be bought in.

For context…NYC’s population is 8.5million. There are an estimated 100k uber/lyft drivers in NYC. That is representative of just over 1% of the population. Mandami claims to have put $104 mil back in the pockets of drivers, that works out to about $1k per driver in NYC per year. That’s representative of a 2% raise. He did that with minimal fight/effort.

Imagine if he went for broke, what that would take. Who he’d be fighting against. Let’s say he doubled their pay. 1% of the population would have double their pay, 99% of the population wouldn’t have improvement. It feels like we’re seeing an sweeping but incremental change like this every week from Mandami. An Uber/Lyft vs. Mandami showdown would impede that. Let’s say he’s efficient and it only takes 6 months to beat them. After a year he’s raised the total wealth of the population of NYC by 2%. But by the end of his 4 year term, he’d only raise the wealth of 8% of the population.

Right now he’s raising the wealth of 1% of the population by 2% every week. In a single year, he’ll have raised 50% of the populations wealth by 2%. At the end of his 4 year term, he’ll have raised the wealth of 100% of the population twice. Since people can only vote once, I’d argue it’s better to make life better for as many people as possible. It creates a stronger movement when you lift everyone up together.

That’s fair too. Either way, it wouldn’t be a good look for Mandami.

They’re also large enough that they could pull out of NYC with a note/call to action on their app bashing Mandami, “Mayor Mandami has passed a law that makes operations unsustainable in NYC. This unrealistic expectation jeopardizes the livelihoods of thousands of drivers and their families in NYC. Please write Mayor Mandami and demand that he repeals Law 863 and restore the jobs of thousands of people. Until then we cannot offer you a ride within NYC limits. Good luck!”

They could simultaneously pay their drivers to protest city hall.

They have the ability to create a protest that would cause most politicians to cave. I don’t know if Mandami would cave, but it certainly would hurt his image - and thus hurt the image of all Democratic Socialists and similar progressive movements.

Conservatism cares a lot about people having jobs. Not about whether they are paid living wages.

I’d see that tweet and say a broken clock is right twice a day.

Its not a perfect solution, but its a manageable step in the right direction that immediately benefits workers following a path of least resistance.

The perfect solution is to banish tipping and force employers to pay more. The reality of doing that, in an unguided way, is that Lyft/Uber would either pull out of NYC or find loopholes to stiff the worker. Forcing higher tip options is a quick solution, that’s easily implementable and enforcable, as a greater coalition builds of people believing in the government there will be less resistance to perfect solutions.

But for now, something that tangibly benefits workers is a good thing, and it certainly isn’t a bad thing.

Shit article. Doesn’t even explain what data collectives and cooperatives look like.

But sure theyll save the world.

I’d understand your argument more if it was an American company.

How? The opinion portion of the comment youre replying to is perfectly valid. It’s why any time there’s looting (BLM protests, Katrina, etc) the foil to the argument about lawlessness/looting is that the looting is almost always necessities (food, bedding, etc)

If you think the commenter is wrong for having stated that it wasn’t a mistake by Trump to pocket the tariff money, then youre wrong.

To make us enter a digital dark ages that is way more than just a digital one!

He’ll probably get a couple bucks per day he was in jail.

What’s Ecosia and noai.ddg?

I personally am OK with the politician that has seemingly done the most good in modern American history playing politics.

Mourning the loss of a soldier, or any of a politician’s constituents, is quite frankly good politics, and basic humanity.

Additionally, there is no indication that the soldier signed up to participate in Trump’s war on Iran. An argument could be made that joining the military is morally wrong, but that argument generally fails to hold the pedophile elite who started the war accountable

The article talks a lot about how the modern movement isn’t an outright rejection of tech. Rather, it’s a rejection of Big Tech. Which is a really nuanced approach.

The fediverse is equally a rejection of Big Tech, but not a rejection of tech.

The Fediverse, as far as I’ve seen does not have any localized communities, and whatever it does have, its not like reddit where every town over 50,000 people has a sub reddit that gets posted to at least monthly.

The article talks about the Luddite club in NYC, and it mentions one of the goals of the movement as creating a channel for people to be able to find in-person events, without needing to go on [Big Tech owned] social media. In NYC, one of the most densely populated cities in the world, it absolutely makes sense that traditional marketing materials will go further than trying to get people to join non-Big Tech social media, and then also want them to show up in person.

The author highlights the good of early social media, as well. One of the examples they specifically cited was that it connected queer kids living in rural, conservative areas to other queer kids living in similarly dangerous areas. It allowed movements to happen. It is quite apparent that the Luddite Club of NYC is not serving this group of people (nor am I arguing that they should be). They are primarily focused on improving commonality within their community (which is NYC).

After making my initial comment, I did find the Luddite club website, and found that branches exist outside of NYC, but they are primarily found on college campuses. Which makes sense - college campuses are micro-cities with high levels of walk ability and public transit access, and they’re communities that most exemplify the spirit of the Luddite club of NYC. They are full of social clubs that have weekly newsletters (via email), they have lots of networking events, in-person connections, and flyers are everywhere on a college campus. The reason I no longer do medical studies isn’t because I wanted to stop doing them, its because since college, I have not encountered a flyer with the tabs that you pull off to get a phone number.

A more difficult place to start a Luddite club is in a shithole small town in bumblefuck USA. Why? Well, first things are more spread out, there aren’t as many 3rd spaces, and then there’s the small town everyone knows everyone bullshit rumor mills. Townies don’t like different or new groups of weird groups or whatever. I believe it’d cause a stir on a Shithole Midwest Town People in the Know Facebook page if 20 people showed up to a park wearing gnome hats. And it might grow in popularity. But very quickly it would devolve into some Christian cult lady shouting about how gnome hats are actually a sign of the Antichrist, and they’d start showing up to city council looking to ban it. If you lived in that town, every time you went on social media, you’d hear about the devil worshipping gnome hatters. Eventually, the Luddite club would get the reputation of being a group that antagonizes the fragile Christian community, and they’d start to lose support from the centrists that truly don’t care about gnome hats, but they’re just sick of the complaining. The centrists, being the cancer they are on society would see the easy solution as wanting the Luddite club to not exist, not because they think its morally wrong, but because they want to be able to enjoy their town without having a holier than thou Christian fucker bitch about gnome hats.

There are of course the places in between God’s country and NYC. But there are still challenges. In smaller cities and suburbs, the lack of walkability leads to less effective means of communication. And a whole slew of other issues that anyone with have a brain can come up with on their own for why starting a local Luddite chapter would be more difficult than doing so in NYC. Of course, there might be some points where its easier to start a Luddite Club in smaller towns/cities too. I’d be surprised if it was easier to create a Luddite club in a smaller town or city than NYC though.

The Luddite movement would do more for more people with an online presence. A queer kid being able to find Luddism online, is a good thing. And you can reject Big Tech online. That’s why we’re here.

From an organizational standpoint, its also easier to locally organize when you have feedback from communities trying similar things. That’s why trade shows exist - get people in the same industry in the same room to talk and your industry will improve. Using social media to talk about how you organized in a Luddite manner can improve the Luddite cause. From reading the article, I gather that it would be possible to find the Luddite club organizers online, just maybe not on Facebook or Reddit. I don’t see their mission as saying people/businesses shouldn’t use the internet. I see their mission as people/businesses should have the autonomy to be able to not use Big Tech. Further, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d be supportive of a coffee shop that exclusively advertises their events on their own website. I think their biggest complaint for that would be that individuals would be tied to a Big Tech device to even access the website in the first place.

The Fediverse is, in my opinion, part of the Luddite movement, even if the connection isn’t explicit.

But, I can see why you’d be confused, and make the comment you did, if you didn’t read the article…

??? Care to explain?

Oh dip. I’m sold on Luddism. Is there a Luddite community on the fediverse or to I need to start one locally?

Maybe. It’s been done to a degree, 1971, 4 years ago.

https://www.wired.com/story/22-year-old-builds-chips-parents-garage/

Wasn’t sure how much the hobby evolved since then. I asked hobbyist level as the lowest barrier to entry, but even wondering if something at a lighter scale than Intel could repurpose old CPUs or other ICs.

I’m in too. No bishop making rules without elections though. But we should definitely learn the pretzel recipe.