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m_d_hOnce upon a time, living in San Francisco was counter-culture, rebellious, forward-looking, liberating.
Nowadays, San Francisco has been overrun by hordes of academically gifted people who have decayed into venture capital wraiths. They've lost all their humanity by obsessively tuning their personalities to display career-focused "passions" that use small piles of capital to exploit further the debtor class and thereby accumulate bigger piles of capital. But they nevertheless try extremely hard to convince themselves that they're still human, by creating an atheistic religion worshipping human potential. Rather than making the world a better place here and now with existing technologies, they view themselves as acolytes of a future technological revolution in which they will magically provide for everybody via their new and disruptive iPhone apps.
We already have all the material and technology we need to feed, clothe, house, educate, and heal everybody living in the US, while also transforming our economy to emit less CO2. We don't need smart people to develop more new apps. We just need to tax the wealthy and spend that money on universal benefits and green infrastructure.
But we could've had socialism 100 years ago. Now that we understand climate change, we could have green socialism now. Enacting socialism is a political problem, not a technological problem. And passionately devoting your life to harvesting billions of additional dollars for the capitalist class is not helping.
I think if I were starting over, which I may do when I turn 60 and retire, I'd move to Michigan and volunteer as a labor organizer. That's something I could feel passionate about.
Nowadays, San Francisco has been overrun by hordes of academically gifted people who have decayed into venture capital wraiths. They've lost all their humanity by obsessively tuning their personalities to display career-focused "passions" that use small piles of capital to exploit further the debtor class and thereby accumulate bigger piles of capital. But they nevertheless try extremely hard to convince themselves that they're still human, by creating an atheistic religion worshipping human potential. Rather than making the world a better place here and now with existing technologies, they view themselves as acolytes of a future technological revolution in which they will magically provide for everybody via their new and disruptive iPhone apps.
We already have all the material and technology we need to feed, clothe, house, educate, and heal everybody living in the US, while also transforming our economy to emit less CO2. We don't need smart people to develop more new apps. We just need to tax the wealthy and spend that money on universal benefits and green infrastructure.
But we could've had socialism 100 years ago. Now that we understand climate change, we could have green socialism now. Enacting socialism is a political problem, not a technological problem. And passionately devoting your life to harvesting billions of additional dollars for the capitalist class is not helping.
I think if I were starting over, which I may do when I turn 60 and retire, I'd move to Michigan and volunteer as a labor organizer. That's something I could feel passionate about.