I found a #youtube video that was 47 minutes long and titled "Why Everything Feels Like a Scam Now" and I thought -
Well it is, cuz that's what poorly regulated #capitalism does after a while, and I just saved myself 47 minutes.
capitalism
#Trains enabled the emergence of mass production, being the necessary govt subsidy for the big, remote factories to make sense. They were foundational to the emergence of #capitalism. There's a reason the construction of the railway is the topic of every single #western movie and is never portrayed favorably.
Railway is a uniformed service. Highly hierarchical, centralized and beloved by every single authoritarian state from the past. Have been used by authoritarian propaganda for as long as it existed.
Why are people on the #left now preaching it so much? Plus, why are trains the special interest of so many people?
Are we completely doomed, and is it not worth fighting for a better future? Reply your thoughts.
#poll #politics #climatechange #capitalism #billionaires #nazism #racism #lgbtqia
Options: (choose one)
🇺🇲 MacArthur Park: What to know about federal show of force in Los Angeles
https://apnews.com/article/what-happened-ice-raid-la-macarthur-park-cc04479ed94ed68d11acf807d97914e6
Gov. Gavin Newsom called it a political stunt and spectacle meant to intimidate the city’s immigrant communities
New normal: Soldiers in U.S. cities
https://www.salon.com/2025/07/09/this-is-going-to-be-normal-soldiers-descend-on-us-cities/
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 #Christofascism #SCOTUS #transgenocide
🇨🇦 #Trumpism
🏳️⚧️ #TransLivesMatter #BlackTransLivesMatter #TransRights
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
Collaborate/advocate/educate/resist
#socialism #justice
Edited 4d ago
I think it's particularly funny that Mercury is telling the truth here 😄#economy #capitalism #retrograde #anticapitalism #eattherich #feedthepoor #activism #astrology #socialism #communism
Oregon's Housing Crisis is the fault of "Investors" driving up prices, not a shortage of housing:
From the OR Capital Chronicle:
There is no large crisis in the raw amount or supply of housing. The crisis lies in its price.
In this current decade, Oregon’s population increased only slightly, from about 4.2 million at the decade’s start, to about 4.3 million now, and there’s been no mass destruction of housing. . . .
Legislative Republicans this April complained that in the last three years only about 43,000 building permits for residences had been issued in the state, well below the governor’s plan for 108,000. But the state’s number of households rose by about the same amount during that time. The new construction that happened should, in theory, have been enough to keep up with it.
In 2023 (the most recent year available), Oregon had about 1.75 million “households” with the average household comprising 2.4 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
That same year, the Census counted in the state 1.88 million “housing units” — over 100,000 more housing units than the number of households — including “a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters.” It doesn’t include some other residential places, such as trailer and mobile home parks.
The upshot is that Oregon, like most states, has more residential units than households.
And there is no crisis for people of sufficient means. Anyone who can afford to plunk down a half-million or so (which includes many existing homeowners, in or out of state) will not have much trouble finding a house. People below that level, a large part of the population, may find that a house (or in some places apartment rentals, too) are simply out of reach.
The problem with Oregon’s housing crisis is affordability. The median house value in Oregon (which reflects purchase prices) as of May was $540,300, according to online real estate market platform Zillow. One home-buying calculator estimates that if a purchaser puts down 18% for the home — the median downpayment of home buyers in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors — they would need to have more than $97,000 saved, and earn more than $120,000 per year to afford their mortgage payments. That means fewer than a fifth of Oregon households could afford a median-priced house based on income. (Sales by owners of currently owned houses could expand that number.)
Despite the limited pool of buyers, prices have climbed and stayed high.
Why?
Oregon’s notably strict laws on land use are often mentioned as a cause of the problem. They may contribute to it, but many other states — such as next-door Idaho — have far fewer building restrictions but still have house pricing problems as bad, or worse, as Oregon’s.
High priced homes can be more profitable for builders and developers, so they build more of them.
But the key explanation for why so many more houses are purchased, compared to the number of local residents who can buy, seems to be that relatively wealthy investors — individuals and especially businesses — are buying large numbers of houses and apartments in Oregon, and around the country.
Many national studies have found as much.
Redfin News, which tracks home sales nationally, said last August that investor home buying has been rising steadily in recent years — about 3% annually — and bought one of every six U.S. homes that sold — purchasing $43 billion worth of properties — and one of every four low-priced homes that sold.
Redfin found that during the 2nd quarter of 2024 in Portland, 13% of homes sold (valued at $511,419,529) were bought by investors, an amount rising in recent years. Many homes are then flipped and resold for still higher prices. All of that activity places upward pressure on sales prices of other homes as well.
A variety of buyers have been among the mass purchasers. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley has for several years focused on the role of hedge funds in home buys, and with U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington, introduced in 2023 the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act.
Merkley called hedgefunds, “a contributing factor that has made it more difficult for middle-class Americans to become homeowners and is contributing to America’s twin crises of housing unaffordability and wealth inequality.”
Others have disagreed about how large a role the finance organizations have played. But someone can afford to buy all those houses — in many cases well beyond the asking price — and less-wealthy wage earners cannot compete.
That would be a real and pertinent, albeit sensitive, topic for the new state agency to address. Until someone does, the housing shortage for most Oregonians will go on.
#Housing #Houselessness #Capitalism
https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2025/07/10/the-real-housing-crisis/
A small price to pay for having billionaires and trillion-dollar corporations, wouldn’t you say?
#socialism #communism #capitalism #anarchism #anarchy #marxism #anticapitalism #revolution #classwar #politics #ushealthcare #healthcare #privatizedhealthcare
Edited 4d ago
"Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist."
– Sir David Attenborough
Canada should build public cloud infrastructure rather than relying on U.S. tech giants
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/canada-should-build-public-cloud-infrastructure-rather-than-relying-on-u-s-tech-giants
Controlling our own digital infrastructure is a key part of national sovereignty in the 21st century
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 #Christofascism #transgenocide
🇨🇦 #Trumpism
🏳️⚧️ #TransLivesMatter
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
🇨🇦 Values
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T8eCeeVbYmsEzvvyUmoDC0KeKvjB9E57YG4AvU97RZo
#capitalism #inequality
#socialism #justice
#sovereignty #CCPA #ElbowsUp #never51
🇨🇦 Freedom Convoy Founding Organizer James Bauder Seeks Political Asylum in USA
https://pressprogress.ca/freedom-convoy-founding-organizer-says-he-is-seeking-political-asylum-in-the-united-states
* flees upcoming criminal trial
* "living in exile" 🤔
* enlisting support f. Trump allies
Good riddance!
#FreedomConvoy #JamesBauder #antivax #FarRight
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 #Christofascism #SCOTUS #transgenocide
🇨🇦 #Trumpism
🏳️⚧️ #TransLivesMatter #TLM #BTLM
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
🇨🇦 Values
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1T8eCeeVbYmsEzvvyUmoDC0KeKvjB9E57YG4AvU97RZo
#capitalism #inequality
Collaborate/advocate/educate/resist
#socialism #justice
Capitalism siphons resources out of the hands of the community by design.
"I believe the world needs the skills we had been espousing years back now more than ever. Agency, #PKM, community, critical thinking, imagination .... but we have to contend with bigger players, capitalistic geed, rogue tech bros, corrupt governments, surveillance ... they’re huge. No wonder we feel at a loss and feeling like you do." —Helen
https://jarche.com/2025/03/adapting-to-chaos/#comment-371158
#capitalism
In the early twentieth century, the public didn't want to purchase automobiles. We liked our public transit, thank you very much!
It took an extensive propoganda campaign, er, excuse me, marketing campaign combined with the deliberate defunding of public transit to make the automobile a resounding commercial success.
Watch, now, as we are forced into using AI in a similar manner.
Reasons To Hate Capitalism #296 - Everything is rigged toward rich Capitalists, there is no meritocracy under Capitalism #meritocracy #capitalism #anticapitalism #inequality
It's probably a good idea to do another #introduction since people change over time, ideally.
I'm haui. I help people & build things that help people. Big #foss enthusiast, #sysadmin by day and #hacktivist at night.
I think all people (and animals) are born equal and should stay that way.
I oppose #capitalism and embrace alternative systems. I dont care about #corporatedemocracy and manipulated "free speech".
I want thirst, hunger and homelessness gone, for everyone, by any means necessary.
The car is the perfect capitalist machine.
Anti-relational: each driver isolated. Others on the road aren't community; they're obstacles.
Cars facilitate suburbs with isolated yards and little common space.
Cars remove choice. Transit gets cut. Walking/biking is dangerous.
Cars spawn big box stores with easy parking that need to be rebuilt after a few decades.
Cars are perpetual spending machines: for the vehicle, gas, roads/bridges/highways, insurance.
“The modern-day system of colonialism and sharecropping being constructed by the new East India Company that is Silicon Valley isn’t uncouth or stupid enough to put people in physical shackles. It doesn’t want to own your body, it is content with owning your simulation. And yet, as we have already seen, the more data they have about you – the higher the fidelity of your simulation – the closer they are to owning you.
…
If this doesn’t sound like democracy, it is because it is not. Surveillance Capitalism isn’t compatible with democracy.
The system we live in today can best be described as a corporatocracy; a feudalism of corporations.
Ours is a neo-colonial age of multinational monopolies.
A digital imperialism, if you will.”
– Me, The Nature of the Self in the Digital Age, 2016
https://ar.al/notes/the-nature-of-the-self-in-the-digital-age/
#BigTech #SiliconValley #colonialism #technology #feudalism #imperialism #corporatocracy #capitalism https://j12t.social/@j12t/114798595701343934
Edited 8d ago
For real, you are not a capitalist, you work for a capitalist and they're profiting off you#capitalism #anticapitalism #anarchism #socialism #communism #activism
Unchecked cruelty: Trump Free to Send Immigrants to 3rd Nations
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/07/trump-is-now-free-to-send-immigrants-to-third-countries
🇺🇲 🇬🇧 🇨🇦 #Christofascism #SCOTUS #transgenocide
🇨🇦 #Poilievre #DanielleSmith #Trumpism
🏳️⚧️ #TransLivesMatter
https://mastodon.social/@persagen/114186381298087870
Collaborate / advocate / educate / resist
#socialism #justice