I never dreamt I'd experience a future with so much unrealized potential.
When I was young, in the 60's, in the Seattle area, if you were white, Capital Hill, which was essentially 90% black back then, was a place you didn't want to go because if you for example stopped at a red-light and there was a car in front of you four black men would break your windows, drag you out of your car, and beat the shit out of you just for fun.
I had a hard time understanding this when I was in 4th grade and earlier because we had some black kids in the neighborhood and they were like everyone else, we all got a long, played together, maybe got into some mischief together but it wasn't the destructive things people do today.
Then our shitty city decided that the schools weren't "mixed" enough so they bussed children from the South part of the city which were mostly black up to the North which were mostly white. I was fortunate to be able to stay into a school close to my home even though my friends were sent to schools in the south. The local blacks continued to behave as they always had, but those imported organized gangs and all sorts of fights ensued. I had one of these gangs jump me and start whaling on me and I fought back and even though I did not start this fight, I merely defended myself, I'm rewarded with a three day expulsion. I pointed out I didn't start the fight, they accused me of being racist, I pointed out I had black friends in the school, didn't matter I was racist.
It was pretty much this way through out junior high school (our school system was divided as elementary school grades kindigarden - 6th, Jr. High 7th through 9th, and high school 10th through 12th, though my Jr. High and High were across the street from each other and advanced students were allowed to go acrosss the street and take some of their high school classes early. There was some magical boundary crossing the street because in the high school, none of this racial stuff was happening.
At first, I did not understand why this was happening, but then I came to understand that in high school, instead of random forced bussing they had a different system to encourage racial mixing and that was the high schools each had what they called "magnet school" programs which means each school had unique programs that other schools didn't. Our high school had a radio station and electronics classes and an Olympic size swimming pool and students would come there to use one of those facilities or take part in a program those facilities provided, everyone in Seattle was permitted to choose high school that interested them, so even though we had a lot of black people there, and they weren't local, they were there by choice and that was the big difference.
So for me at least the puzzle for that situation had resolved, and by the time I was in high school the situation on capital hill was changing. The police started to actually police it, property values increased, the run down buildings were bulldozed and new homes and businesses were built and it became an area that was less racially polarized. When I try to understand why people mostly lived in peace there for a while, poverty used to be the norm when it was almost all black, now not so much. So I thought ok, probably economic conditions had a lot to do with it's previous situation, a lot of poor black people forced to live there because they didn't have the means to live in other places. When the economy improved those that remained did so by choice and were no longer living in poverty. It occurred to me that back in school, those blacks that were native to the local area also were not living in poverty because the neighborhood was one of reasonable affluence.
Biden added support for economic well being having a lot to do with us being able to get along, because after Biden got in office and ruined the local economy, Capital Hill has gone back to being a war zone. In fact it's worse than that now, it's the entire city.
There is someone up at the top that wants to destroy us, someone who wants to reduce our population, and wants those of us who remain to live in poverty. Covid vax has killed five people for every one person it's saved. This was obviously planned because they started developing the vax before the first hints of the lab grown disease was created and released into the public. They create a situation where there is a shortage of energy and food to cause massive deaths, and accelerated it with injected toxins. I don't know who all the players are, obviously Bill Gates, Klaus Schwab, Uval Harrari, Rockefuckers, Rottchilds, but who is at the head of this? I don't know, I'm sure Henry Kissinger was one of them also, but thankfully that bastard finally died.
We could have such a future ahead of us if we could eliminate the influence of these bastards. By creating these artificial scarcities, they cause us to fight each other over the remaining resources when we are not each other's enemy, THEY are our enemy. If not for them we could put our energy into creating a better future for ourselves, get fusion reactors working, get molten salt fission reactors working, continue improving space technology so we can mine resources from off the planet where there is no natural life to be hurt.
We need to identify our true enemy and stop fighting each other. Put an end to this bullshit and move on to achieve our destiny.
Nanook
in reply to Nanook • •The battle between capitalism and communism is one that can't be won because pure forms of either do not work. And this is going to become more true as AI, robotics, and automation in general become a larger part of our lives.
The problem can be reduced to this. Those that own the means of production keep the wealth to themselves. But if we distribute the means of production equally productivity dies and we all starve. The Bolsheviks are a case in point. A relative minority of farmers owned all the land, produced all the food, and they were wealthier than others because everybody has to eat so they will trade whatever they have to get enough to eat.
Enter the Bolshevik revolution, land is taken away from the farmers and given to all the populace on a more or less equal basis. Most of whom either don't know how to farm, don't want to farm, or are just plain lazy, no food is produced, 60 MILLION people die of starvation.
In the west we find ways to compromise but in some areas we have compromised too much, labor unions are a case in point. They help by forcing the owners of the means of production to share some of that production with their workers. It is an imperfect system as it exists because it doesn't incentivize production, it just incentivizes showing up and collecting a paycheck, and in practice many employees these days have problems even with the showing up part. It generally forbids or makes difficult for a corporation to reward a more productive worker for their productivity verses the employee that just shows up and collects a pay check but does little to contribute to the generation of wealth that is distributed to them.
The west does have a market system that allows people to buy-in to the means of production, called Stock Markets. But this usually requires a more long term view than most people have.
The other solution is welfare which provides people who do not contribute to the production of wealth in any manner what-so-ever access to a portion of that wealth. This has gotten so out of hand that we've got a large unemployed work force out there that will not hold a job even though millions are available. Why work when you can sit at home and get high?
Part of the reason that people sit on welfare and don't take jobs is because the type of jobs that are becoming available requires knowledge they don't have. If a robot takes over flipping burgers at your local burger palace, SOMEONE still has to fix that robot when it breaks, and it will, someone still has to provide the energy it requires, someone has to build it, program it, etc. So it took a few peoples jobs but many jobs are created to maintain it, but not enough people are trained in those technologies.
So laziness is part of the issue, but the lack of availability of training is another part. My view, we should not support laziness. If someone wants to collect welfare and they are able bodied but lack training then they should have to be in training to receive it and we should find some means of providing that training.
Fighting over which economic system should rule by throwing Molotov cocktails at each other in the streets and destroying existing goods, services, and the means of producing them is NOT the way we should be going about this.
I think we should find some ways to make it easier for someone interested in entering the market to do so, reduce regulations that make it too complex, people who own a stake in the means of production, even if other people are doing the production, are more likely to contribute to it in positive ways than people who do not.
J. Løvstuhagen
in reply to Nanook • •@Nanook
This is truly the biggest problem right now - it justifies endless illegal immigration because "the locals won't do it!" when, in reality, some amount of pressure must be exerted on the chronically unemployed to get the desired results.
Likewise, illegal immigration dilutes wages way too much. You could even say that illegal immigration is a stressor on the free market.