A nation can enrich it’s elites in the short term at the expense of its people, or it can invest in its people (education, commons, etc) at the expense of its elites.

The west, and especially my cesspool the US has made its choice.

China has been heavily building up its commons and infrastructure in the same 40 year span the US has let its commons and education fall into utter ruin in order to sell economically segregated education and gated communities for private profit.

The US is culturally indoctrinated to be hostile towards the very concept of society. Imagine resenting paying into universal healthcare because you don’t want to accidentally pay for your countrymen’s “bad decisions” like… Eating food.

I go on Rednote quite a bit. The US attitude towards China, just like non pure crony capitalism is “they are evil and from hell” for being a society. Their people, not their politicians, their people, are sweet, intelligent, and mostly treat Americans with an “are you guys OK? We’ve heard (true) horror stories.”

Thats humanity. Why would I want my schaudenfreude and greed ruled cesspool to “win?” It’s not about winning, it’s about the wellbeing of ALL your people. If the US dominates the world culturally, all that would mean is that humanity stands for “fuck you I got mine” at which point I have no comradery with my species whatsoever.

Actual human worth/value is measured in empathy for one another, which makes the US destitude in what matters.

As an American, I hope his presidential guard at least killed some of us.

Which makes them suckers.

Birth lottery is most of it. They let a few exceptional tokens through, enough to keep the fantasy alive.

I consider being a grind culture warrior true believer to be considerably dumber than a lottery ticket addict

“Hey, I saw someone doing something illegal to a capitalist!”

No you fucking didn’t.

I always find it peculiar and proof of self-hatred that humans are so averse and judgemental about reveling in our sexuality.

It’s a major part of who we all are, whether we choose to deny that or not. Cultures and world religions always run by monied interests would prefer we spend our time miserable collecting more for their dragon hoard piles as they live in hyper-decadent debauchery, and most of us have been too fucked in the head with sexual and “don’t be laaaazy” shame to be fixable, but humanity would have been so much happier if we spent less time sacrificing ourselves to the God of economic metastasis and more time fucking, especially in an age of birth control.

We might not even have put ourselves on the express lane to self-extinction we’re currently careening down in search of more treasure for the masters.

“So long as I’m free to exploit you into subsistence, you’re free to die in the gutter when you’re too broken to produce value for me!”

-The capitalists destroying us and the habitability of the world for any future humans, solely to run up their ego scores.

That’s kind of the enshittification of every sector as private industries have stopped caring about long term business models and only see as far as the next earnings report because private shareholders demand it under threat of legal action. A race to the bottom with no concern for any future, a fire sale.

Look at the airline industry at large. Flying, even for regular people, used to be seen as an event to look forward to. Now you get hit up for fees for literally everything that used to be part of the ticket as you’re crumpled on top of one another.

Boeing is a bad actor, because our modern “free market” rigged economy now incentivizes being a bad actor. Private shareholders don’t contribute to these companies, care about the quality of their products, or the satisfaction of customers, they just want moooaaaar right now. Always moaaaaar. If anyone tries to actually provide a better product/service, they may win by being bought out by the shitty industry they tried to improve, but they’re bought to either kill or enshittify that company to maintain their oligopoly that screws both customers and employees to maximize private shareholder profit at all other expense.

This is why the customers first, employees second, investors third model business tossed aside in the 70/80s was so vital. Nothing happens without customers and employees, no profit, no product. Shareholders are just needy baby leeches that contribute no labor and demand moar profit every feeding, and they have ALL the power.

Our economy should punish the private shareholder model and reward a cooperative model that rewards active and former labor contributors to a profiting business commensurate with the labor/expertise/duration of contribution they provide. Won’t happen, the owners will see to it we collapse before they let their captured government put them in check, but it needs to.