They shared a perspective i hadn’t considered: all the AI involvement in the workplace, the constant surveillance, the rigid hierarchies–it all serves as ways to acquaint people with authoritarianism.

I mean, it isn’t illegal to treat workers with suspicion and malice – and frankly, they can always leave! (Same could be said for citizens, on second thought…)

If all the businesses decide they want to run that way (or if all the businesses get absorbed by 2-3 mega-corporations and they decide to treat workers that way), it’s within their rights to. Hell, we’ve been discovering for quite some time that businesses may even operate illegally until found out, and even then it’s often not enough to stop them – it simply becomes an operating expense.

Isn’t it interesting that the richest people in the world are allied with each other politically? At least here in this shithole we call the USA, we now get to witness enthusiastic levels of corruption, and every major corp with their shitty, billionaire leader is there getting their slice of pie.

The authoritarianism begins in the workplace (and schools!) where people become conditioned to the hierarchy, then ultimately get dominated by the authoritarian government that they themselves somehow voted for.

What are you hiding?! 😡

I think that’s part of the trouble with trying to take down something this big. It has to be done systematically because it is dense with governmental machinations and pure scale. They have to find all the weak spots and then work out how to dismantle them. You’d think it could be done much quicker but there are scores of incompetent people doing the work coupled with fairly large tasks to accomplish. The gears move slowly, even as it’s being destroyed.

I think another part of the problem is human resilience and adaptability. We somehow manage to keep saying “This is fine” while the house is on fire because we aren’t personally feeling the heat yet (and by the time we do, it’ll be too late). But we have nowhere else to go and the fire is way bigger than any of us can manage individually. Even if we manage to put it out, all we’ll have left is the burnt wreckage–if there’s anything left at all. Some are blissfully unaware that there’s even a fire going on, some are pouring gas on it and everything in between.

So i guess it could have been done a lot more quickly and efficiently but the fact that Trump is at the helm means there’s a level of incompetence baked into the operation that will inevitably lead to delays in the schedule of something like a fascist takeover.

Just for clarification: with these style of posts, am i supposed to read the bottom one first? I can’t remember when these types of posts came into circulation, but I’ve been puzzled about them ever since. It’s like the first/top line is sometimes the punchline, and i feel like i spoiled a joke or story by reading it from top to bottom.

I always felt American car companies were a really good example of that back in the 60s-70s when enormously long vehicles with giant engines were the order of the day. Why not bigger? Why not stronger? It also acted as a symbol of American strength, which was being measured by raw power just like today lol.

This also reminds me of the way video game programmers in the late 70s/early 80s had such tight limitations to work within that you had to get creative if you wanted to make something stand out. Some very interesting stories from that era.

I also love to think about the tricks the programmer of Prince of Persia had employed to get the “shadow prince” to work…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw0VfmXKq54