There’s a term for this, HENRY. High Earner, Not Rich Yet. The lie is the “Yet”. Millennials and Gen Xers have been struggling to reach the middle class that is kept perpetually out of reach. They have given up on the idea of financial solvency and are going into debt to indulge in luxuries like having children, going on vacations, and living somewhere that isn’t a complete shithole. Saving for retirement is as realistic as training to live on Mars, so why bother? Keep digging a financial hole and then lie down and die in it.
Gen X here and I can’t afford to contribute to my retirement. Even had to withdraw some during unemployment. I’m either working until I die or hoping assisted suicide becomes legal in 20 years.
Gen Millennial here. I can assist you on your suicide that day for a hot meal so I can at least eat on that day. Maybe someone from Gen Z can assist my suicide if I leave him my blanket then.
Yep. Same. I do pretty good for myself and I’m more fortunate than most, but I had to borrow money from my dad recently for a series of expenses I couldn’t absorb in real time. I got the “you don’t know how to budget” sermon. It felt as fun as you’d expect
I said fuck it and gave him a list of earnings and expenses (I’m pretty frugal) and he was like, “oh…”
X here too, 53yo, cannot contribute to retirement. At 67 I will have to sell my house because I’ll not be able to afford taxes, insurances, power, repair, etc
What most people don’t realize is that once you have excess income, you have options. What you do with the excess is what matters. If you don’t save and invest it, you’ll be living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of your life.
A lot of folks think being rich means just spending money on whatever you want. That’s not really the case. If you spend the excess on fancy cars or luxury items that make others think you’re rich, the irony is you’ll be working for a long time and never actually become financially independent.
Edit: well, if I’ve learned anything from this comment, it’s that everyone on Lemmy identifies as a HENRY with bad spending habits no matter how much money they make. Or, at least a temporarily embarrassed one.
Every time ive tried investing, i had to take it out after a few months to pay for something thats popped up in life after other things have raided my savings.
Investing is for people with a lot of excess cash.
Precisely, which is why I don’t think my comment is directed at you. If you’re always trying to get ahead of the latest unexpected big expense, you’re not a “HENRY.”
Not necessarily. It’s what living paycheck to paycheck is if you’re poor. If you make a lot of money but spend a lot of money on unnecessary things you can also be paycheck to paycheck.
Broken phone, hot water heater, HVAC, fridge, washer, dryer, toilet, stove, oven, microwave, tv, personal computer, new shoes, new clothes, friend is getting married, friend is having a baby, the car needs a new set of tires, the car was rear ended, windshield was shattered by a rock that kicked up off the road on my way to work, need a new lawnmower cause the second hand Toro mower’s gas powered engine is shot, property taxes went up because home values went up, kids got sick and went to the doctor, dentist appointment found a cavity, accidentally sat on your glasses, suit doesn’t fit anymore and you have a funeral to attend, older windows on your house built in the 90’s are starting to go bad, storm damage to your out of warranty roof, deck needs to be rebuilt because the old wood is starting to dry rot, time to replace the bed(I know you’re supposed to replace them every 8 years, but you went ahead and stretched 15 out of this one because you’re frugal)…must I continue?
Stove, oven, and microwave are redundant; it's convenient to have all of these but you don't need all of them. The TV, also, is a luxury item. I don't know what part of your friend's wedding you paid for, but that's not a necessity either. Did the person who rear-ended your car not have insurance? A gasoline lawnmower is excessive, get a push mower. Attend the funeral in less-expensive clothing. Windows starting to go bad haven't actually gone bad. Deck wood starting to dry rot doesn't mean it's nonfunctional, and even if it is a deck is not a necessity; get rid of it instead. Replacing your bed "just because it's time" is weird, was there actually something wrong with it?
I'm not saying it would be awesome to cut or postpone those expenditures. But you said you had to take your savings out to do these things, and that doesn't seem true to me. You chose to take your savings out to do those things. If you value those things more than you value having savings, fine, that's your choice. But "Investing is for people with a lot of excess cash" isn't true. You could have chosen to have savings instead in exchange for a less expensive lifestyle.
What are you doing to those appliances that's making the break down so rapidly, anyway? I've got a microwave that's lasted me at least a decade. I've never had a TV or toilet "go bad."
I generally agree with you. Just want to address this one point.
What are you doing to those appliances that’s making the break down so rapidly, anyway? I’ve got a microwave that’s lasted me at least a decade.
Newer appliances break down at a much faster rate and are more difficult to repair than those made a decade ago. Planned obsolescence. Your microwave hasn’t broken because it’s a decade old.
Well, the internal light did burn out, and for some strange reason it can only be replaced by half-disassembling the whole microwave so I never bothered. The internal light doesn't help the microwave do its job.
Perhaps if it does eventually fail in a more meaningful way I'll look into getting a second-hand one, if the newer models have such a propensity for breaking down.
This post is weird. I get it prices have sky-rocketed I can see it myself (australia), and I am sure some people are really suffering.
But here it’s getting ridiculous, look at me I’m poor i can barely make ends meet after I redid my fucking deck and I bought a new TV.
And if you say something that goes against lemmys narrative (corporations bad) the downwotes start flowing.
Another person in another thread is complaining about the price of grapes. In north America, when it’s fucking spring and they are out of season. Tried buying fruit that is in season? Yes it’s price has increased but ffs use your brain.
Yeah. The bit I find particularly weird is how you're "supposed" to replace your bed every 8 years. I've never heard this and it makes little sense. Replace your bed when it needs replacing. They don't have expiry dates on them, do they? If the mattress gets dirty there are ways to clean them. Use good sheets and that should keep the mattress clean to begin with.
I think a lot of people don't understand what being poor is really like.
New shoes and new clothes should be part of your budget. You shouldn’t be blindsided by this.
Everything else, do some reseaech into ‘emergency fund’. You need one before you start investing, else yes you’ll be dipping into your investments the moment you need some extra cash and you might end up loosing money if the market has gone down when you sell.
That’s the point. Financial security is extraordinarily tough to come by so people can’t set aside the money for an emergency fund and invest. It’s not just poor budgeting, everything is getting more expensive for the middle class. Five years ago, my fiancee and I could buy 2 weeks of groceries for $100 at Aldi. Its doubled in that 5 years. Ironically, the most stable consumer good in the last 5 years has been gas and republicans bitch about that too.
Groceries have gone up, no one is questioning this, we all feel it.
When questioned about what your emergency, unexpected expenses were, that made you dip into money that you had invested, you listed real emergencies (cavities) and stuff that should be in a budget - new shoes.
Read about personal finance. You have money that you spend as part of your budget bills, shoes, rent etc.
if you manage to have any left, you put them against an emergency fund, typical recommendation is you try to build a nest that allows you to leave for six months.
Then if you still manage to have any left, you start investing.
It looks like you did the wrong way, invested money that you actually needed.
Also, if you are redoing your deck and don’t have an emergency fund, toubare living on the edge. Shit happens like lose your job and break a leg and you don’t have money to pay your mortgage. But at least you have a new deck.
This is basic personal finance, has nothing to do with the price of groceries and you are not poor since you obviously have extra disposable income that you are using wrongly. The other guy isnright BTW you don’t need a new bed ffs, if you have money to throw away start building an emergency fund.
But obviously this is lemny and my logic is in the way of the narrative that the greedy corporations are causing everyone to leave one pay check to another. Hence all the downvotes.
…or zoom out and see the hypothetical scenarios I listed as exactly that. Hypothetical scenarios. You can sit and nitpick probably about half, but I came up with all of those things in about 4 minutes. You’re not getting down voted because this is Lemmy and corporations=bad or whatever. Corporations and their executives making way too much money tax-free is the popular opinion world wide. If they’re billionaires after a 45% tax rate, then holy shit! Good for you CEO! But that’s not what is happening. They’re making billions and paying 0% on it because they’re investing it and borrowing money from banks against their company. That’s why the democratic party has won the popular vote for decades. Everyone is able to see this and are tired of getting fucked by the wealthy and Reaganomics. The middle class is paying 13% on $40K while Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are paying less in total taxes while earning multiple billions. I shouldn’t have to forgo a $250 tv in order to invest for retirement. Quality of life should be rising along with technology. There was a point at which interior lighting and electricity was a luxury and wasn’t necessary for daily life. Should that mean that I should be expected to go without in order to invest? No, it became a public necessity due to it’s net benefit to society. There’s a huge benefit to society each being able to turn on the news/sitcoms/movies in their own house. It allows children to see the outside world and become familiar with pop culture, noteworthy news, documentaries etc. It isn’t just an entertainment box that melts your brain and destroys your cornea…
Let’s entertain your deck criticism for the fun of it, what happens when you have a few friends over? You’re standing on the deck grilling for everyone and the railing someone is leaning against breaks and they fracture their leg? Sure you could have repaired the deck, but you chose to save a few hundred dollars. Now your friend has a hospital bill for $40,000 because he needed reconstructive surgery for a displaced fracture. He doesn’t have the money and would lose his house if he goes into medical debt, so he has to file a claim against your home owners insurance. They tell him to scram because it’s YOUR fault the deck was falling into disrepair. You’re expected to keep up with the maintenance of your house. Now he’s forced to sue YOU for the money. So do you spend the $1000 to repair your deck or do you risk someone getting injured on your property because you don’t have an “emergency fund” and Jim Cramer told you the only way to get rich is by investing and letting your money work for you.
Look I hate ceos profits like anyone else here. But you are right you chose shitty examples to cry poor, and they make less and less sense as you keep going.
If you knew what making ends meet means, you’d stop with this deck nonsense. You wouldn’t have friends over when you can’t afford to buy groceries, or if you know your dexk ia not safe. And you’d understand that you are privileged, are making choices with your money, and are winging because you are wasting it - new deck, new shoes, new clothes and new bed.
But sure keep going. Redoing your deck is a basic human right, how dare anyone on lemmy challenge that.
I don’t know your situation, but investing is riskier than a savings account, that currently yeilds a high interest rate.
If you need an emergency fund, make one in a high yield savings account first. My rough number is $10,000. “You’re missing out on the gains” is an incredibly shortsighted view people have in the stock market. “Gains” are made over 20 year periods.
Most people are struggling with the basics, not disputing that. But, then I wouldn’t consider those people HENRYs.
When I look around, I also see a lot of people with high income making boneheaded moves like buying expensive vehicles, renting luxury apartments, etc. For some people the problem isn’t the system, it’s their own lack of self-control or planning. If you’re making $200,000 and still feel broke. Maybe that $1,500/month car payment was a mistake. Maybe you shouldn’t have used the raise to move into a luxury apartment building.
When I was starting my career all my coworkers lived in $2200/month luxury buildings. I knew we all made roughly the same amount of money, so was shocked that they would pay this much for rent. Meanwhile, I sought out roommates and paid $650. With the money I saved, I paid off my student loan debt aggressively. Now all these people are struggling to get to the next step in life. Yeah, I could’ve seen that coming 10 years ago for you.
I see the same thing with cars. Everyone wants to own some luxury SUV. And, they make fun of me for driving a Prius. I won’t be surprised in another 10 years when they’re still struggling.
This isn’t an attack on people who don’t have the money. This is an attack on people who do and can’t plan well, but then act surprised when they’re broke still.
I don’t make 200k, but together with my wife, we make a little under that. We both have cars, and both are paid off. I still have the first car I ever brought, which is a Nissan Sentra 2006 basic model. So, 17 years on the same car and hers is a 2015 Toyota. We do have 2 kids and brought a house in 2015. The last 4 years have been almost impossible to make ends meet, and all we try to do is survive with the very occasional do something for the kids. I have tons of housework I can’t do but also can’t pay for either. Because of this, we also can’t move until it’s taken care of, so we’re kind of stuck here as well. We have no money to save or invest. Did we make some bad decisions? Sure, probably shouldn’t have had kids for starters. They cost a fortune. But my point is we aren’t doing anything crazy here, it’s just that more and more things are taking our money and prices also went up. It sucks because all I want to do is live and get by, I don’t really have any grandiose dreams of doing crazy things or buying tons of stuff. I just want to get by as my parents did, which seems impossible today.
How much did you pay for your house? Assuming you live in a HCOL area? Making almost 200k you shouldn’t be struggling at all, unless you’re living in some crazy high cost of living area.
I live in North NJ. From my understanding, it’s about as bad as it gets. House was 330k 10 years ago. We also have crazy property taxes, so that alone is 13k a year. I also live in a very rural area which was the only option for the area if we wanted some space and also keep house prices semi cheap.
We purchased the house for around 300k, and even with the market today, it’s about 500k. Sure, it could go for higher whenever we do sell, but it’s not an investment. With our current loan we will have paid over 500k over 30 years, so I really am not expecting to make out from this. The only way this makes me money is when I retire (which is close to payoff anyway) and move someplace way cheaper than we’re we live now.
You’re going to pay it off in what, like 25 years? Yeah, it will be worth over a million by then.
My dad bought his house for $600,000 in 2008 peak, and it is now worth maybe 2 million. It hasn’t even been twenty years and it’s more than tripled, despite being underwater on the mortgage in 2009 (owed more than market value)
I think there’s a difference between High Earner and High Income that is causing a discrepancy here. Somebody making six figures is a High Earner, but isn’t really a High Income anymore. In 2020, I made about $40k, which was more than about 55-60% of Americans made that year. That puts anybody making $100k or more in the top 25%, at least, of incomes in the country. And yet the prices of things mean that more and more of them are living paycheck to paycheck, regardless of their financial planning.
In a lot of ways, what’s in the market dictates what people can buy more than what they can afford does. I had to buy an SUV the last time I bought a car because I need the 4 wheel drive for the winters here. I had a front wheel drive car once, and couldn’t get it out of my neighborhood when there was more than a half inch of snow on the road. That same SUV today is at least 25% larger than the model I bought, because “that’s what the market wants”, according to Toyota.
When I was first looking for apartments in 2010, studio apartments in my town started at the $1,500 to $1,700 per month range. The lowest rent I could find was a single room in somebody’s house with “occasional kitchen access” for $1,000 a month. And now there are cities where landlords are telling people making $100k that they need to find roommates to afford rent. A 2 bedroom house on a tiny plot of land that’s falling apart just down the street from my parent’s house got bought last week for $1.2 million. 10 years ago that house was probably worth $500k at best. The new owners intend to tear it down and replace it with an Air BnB, taking it off the housing market and further driving up housing prices in town. Builders are making luxury apartments and condos, and single family suburbs, instead of medium density multi-family housing because “that’s what the market wants” and definitely not because that’s what has the highest profit margins. I think there’s been 1 new mixed-use development built in my hometown since I was living there as a kid, but the number of condo developments has increased from 1 to 17 in that same time frame. Every year more kids leave because it’s simply unaffordable to live there. It was even when I was trying to live there, and it’s only gotten worse.
There’s people living above their means, and then there’s people making a six figure salary who just had to replace a car in a market where car prices spiked 30% in the last 3 months of 2023 alone. Personally, I probably wouldn’t even own a car if our country wasn’t built for cars instead of people. They’re priced as a luxury but considered a necessity by the powers that be. Even if you do a lot of the routine maintenance yourself, like me, it’s still prohibitively expensive for the majority of people. Even those we could consider High Earners.
I gotta back your position here, especially because I think you’re being downvoted unfairly. There is a lot of unfairness in this economy for sure but on this thread that started with HENRY and literally “They have given up on the idea of financial solvency and are going into debt to indulge in luxuries” your comments are totally in line and fair.
Want to add too, that even the first subject in the article ‘Making the most I’ve ever made’ isn’t the best example of a tough economy. She went through a divorce and then bought a house in one of the most competitive housing markets in the US. The high interest rates certainly make that tougher but that’d be hard to afford even before without it.
Both can be true. There are many people who barely (or don’t) make enough to survive. There are also many people who spend money frivolously and then complain that they’re broke because of the economy.
Dude, i pay near $400 a month in just student loan payments. I had to buy a “new” car last year and this 8 year old Subaru cost me $360 a month. I could have bought another $4000 beater, but that’s a hole you never get out of because you are constantly having to replace cars that aren’t worth the scrap they are made of. Everyone has been on a knifes edge for the past 16 years and now everything costs double from them but wages have been the same. No amount of budgeting is gonna fix that.
I didn’t say that… my comment isn’t directed at people who are living paycheck to paycheck. It’s directed at people who think they should be rich because they have a high income, yet always seem to have found some unnecessary thing to spend their money on, which prevents them from building wealth.
If you’re always struggling to pay your bills, you need to increase your income. Not saying it’s your fault, just that practically that’s the best thing you can do for yourself in an imperfect system rigged against everyone but the very rich.
On Lemmy financially irresponsible people don’t exist, and when making any statement to the contrary, all they can hear is “blah blah blah avocado toast”.
No, they said that their choice was either an extra expense of $360 a month for the car that they bought, or $4,000 for a cheap beater that’s guaranteed to die on you at some point and be a hole that you perpetually shovel money into if you keep replacing it with more junkers.
That doesn’t mean that they can afford the extra $360 a month. Just that it was the cheaper option.
He’s still paying $360 a month more than he was before he had to buy a car. His expenditures have increased overall, though not by as much as they possibly could have. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve reduced, unless you’re for some reason considering the cost of the previous car as being more expensive than the new payment in some way.
In fact, if he had bought the $4,000 beater and had to replace it after a year, it actually would’ve been cheaper than the new car - $4,000 over 12 months comes out to $333.33 a month. Of course, that doesn’t include anything like gas or maintenance, but neither does the monthly payment on the other car.
He didn't specify how frequently he had to replace the beater. Since he was complaining about how it would be more expensive than the car he did bought, logically I would assume it would be more frequent than that (or would require costly repairs more frequently, with the same result).
If he chose the less economically efficient option, that's even sillier. Why would he do that and then complain about it? This is really the whole point here - budget your money and choose the expenditures that make sense within your budget.
That’s irrelevant to the point I was making. I merely gave that as an example of how the beater could theoretically be cheaper than the car payments if it lasted that long without needing additional expenses. It could’ve been the cheaper option, but that would be gambling that it wouldn’t require additional work and still be running for a full 12 months.
My point is quite simple: He paid $400 a month in student loans. Now, he pays $760 a month due to having to buy a new car. That’s not reducing his expenditures, it’s increasing it. He didn’t go from paying $400 to $360. The $360 is an additional unplanned expense he has to pay now on top of his other monthly expenses because he had to replace his car.
But previously he was paying $4000-per-however-long-his-beaters-last. That was a planned expenditure too.
Whether this is an improvement or not is impossible to say without knowing how long his beaters lasted, that would be on him to figure out. Since he made the decision to switch to the non-beater I assumed he'd worked it out, but evidently that's a bad assumption so who knows.
What i am saying is thay it currently costs X to actually live in my low cost of living area, but most jobs around here only pay around .8X instead. No amount of budgeting and cutting out frivolous expenditures is able to buget you out of inflation
Small towns in the rust belt are not the entirety of the United States. Different people value different parts of it in different ways, just because the part of it that you like isn't doing well doesn't mean it has no value to anyone else.
I work two jobs, one of which is a union manufacturing job. If that isn’t enough to live in a low COLA area then we’re cooked. That’s the point i am making.
That hinges on the assumption that the car he’s replacing is a beater, which isn’t necessarily true. All he said is that he could’ve bought another beater, which says that he had bought one before, but the car he’s replacing could’ve been a non-beater that he had bought because he had already learned how pricey constantly replacing beaters is. And by the sounds of it, having to replace the car was an unplanned expense, which says to me that he wasn’t driving a beater.
Why not just ask him instead of trying to finely parse ambiguous wording like this is some kind of murder mystery? I asked him for clarification myself earlier but he never responded to that.
In some cases genuinely yes. If you are earning $X and you are spending $X every month, but some of those expenditures are on luxury items like fine foods, then complaining about how you're living paycheck-to-paycheck and don't have the "choice" to invest rings hollow. You do have the choice to invest, you're just choosing to spend that investable money on immediate luxuries instead.
SOME cases? Half the country isn’t really earning enough to more than barely get by. They have nothing to invest. They aren’t spending much on “fine” foods unless you are counting not eating entirely ramen and rice as “fine foods”
Then there are those who choose to spend 10-20K on vacations every year and ‘feel’ they are struggling.
And these latter people will forever tell you how they are living ‘paycheck to paycheck’ and talk your ear off about how theri struggles are more genuine and ‘real’ than people who are actually poor.
“living paycheck to paycheck” generally means that all money is spent on living expenses and there is very little, if anything, left over. If you have any appreciable discretionary income, you are not living paycheck to paycheck.
I try to save whatever extra I have, because everyone says I need to have six months of expenses saved.
The problem is that before I can save up enough to cover that there’s some huge expense that I need to cover that empties it out and puts me even more into debt.
If I could manage to save up a year of expenses, I could probably start my own consulting agency and start making a lot of money, but I just can’t get there.
You’re basically telling people “just be rich” like it’s that simple.
People living paycheck-to-paycheck are not able to invest money because they don’t have excess income, they get to decide if they want to pay for rent or want to pay for food. Combine that with astonishing inflation rates and salary raises that don’t match cost of living increases or simply layoffs, and we have one fucked up situation.
This is a systemic problem. Billionaires shouldn’t exist. Billionaires are a societal problem.
edit: Oh, I see your comment isn’t directed at people living paycheck-to-paycheck, that’s a bit more reasonable then but I still think you’re missing the mark. It’s not as simple as “just increase your income” like you seem to be thinking it is.
The problem in this thread is that there are people - such as the one mentioned in the title of this article - that are living paycheck-to-paycheck by choice. They choose to spend their entire paycheck on stuff. They don't need to spend it all, they could save some, but instead they buy the biggest houses they can afford or build a deck they don't actually need.
There are people who would literally die if they tried to significantly reduce their spending. Those are the people who don't have a choice, and I sympathize with them and want solutions for this because it's a serious problem. The others I have somewhat less sympathy for.
The problem is that for many folks the amount they are making isn’t enough for them to live a very reasonable life AND they have nothing to invest in the first place. Suppose a household in a given area needs $100,000 to afford a VERY modest house in that area, health insurance, savings, healthy food etc. Now suppose the house has one disabled breadwinner and one fellow working for $40,000.
Because of this they live in shit town in a tiny apartment a building full of drug addicts in a not so great part of the state wherein the average life expectancy is about 10 years less than one of the good parts of the country.
The first 40k of “excess” would be spent on having a decent life, working a sane number of hours, moving into an actual home. For fully half the country the idea of having excess is laughable. It’s a crass joke.
My SO has a medical condition that limits her income. I’m in academia, so I don’t make much and work crazy hours. We get to have happy day to day, and save money to invest by renting a shity apartment. As in, my investment account is worth more than that of some friends in software development, cus they wanted to live in good apartments.
It doesn’t matter that average life expectancy is 10 years shorter. It matters why. Are people randomly getting murdered or constantly exposed to high air pollution? Don’t live there. Is it shorter cus they are mostly stupid fucks that eat shity food and their only hobby is smoking on the bench below the building? You can live there fine, those are my neighboors. Doesn’t stop me from eating healthy home made food, staying in shape and saving money.
Am I happy about it? No, I will never own a house, and it sucks cus I love to tinker, and enjoy growing plants. But I can live a full filling live, better than any king that ever lived up till around the 18-19 century, and save money.
The economic system is dead, it died in 2008. Combine that with climate change, and things are only going to get worse. Unless some politician is going to pull out free, infinite, energy machine out of their arse they can’t do much as the system is already collapsing.
You can be smart about it, and have a few more happy years before we all die. Or you can be stupid about it, and suffer till we all die.
Most areas don’t need $100,000 a year to afford a “very modest house”, you could get a nice mobile home and afford to pay off the loan in just a couple years.
Everybody wants everything at no cost. That's not how the world works, though. If you earn $X a month and want to save some of it as a long-term investment, you simply cannot spend $X a month. You can't have both.
There are indeed some people who have no choice but to spend $X a month, their basic expenses just can't go any lower without literally ending up on the street or straight up dying. Those people do have a real problem and I sympathize with them.
People who say "I want to save money but I also want to live in the nicest possible house in the nicest possible neighborhood" I have less sympathy with, because they have a choice. I face that choice myself and instead of griping about how I can't have everything I want with no sacrifice I just go ahead and make the choice. I don't spend all my money each month, and as a result I don't take vacations as nice as I could take and I don't have as nice a car as I could have. But in exchange for that I've got plenty of savings built up.
Lets define “most”. Herein I define most as the area immediately surrounding the majority of people. 70% of people live in urban areas not out in bum fuck.
I live in a small city of 50,000 in Washington. A house around here starts at about 400k. I would have to pay about 3100 per month including taxes and insurance. I would take home about 6500 per month after taxes if I made 100k. At current interest rates I would need to spend 3100 per month to service such a loan.or about 47% of my take home pay. It is difficult to see how I could afford a home with a household not individual of less than 100,000.
Adjacent to me is a much bigger city with about 20x the jobs and opportunities. I would need more like 900k to buy into there. Realistically to afford a home there we are talking about my household making more than 200k. Why so much? Because housing has got very expensive and interest is very high.
A ton of urban areas have much options cheaper than the west coast though, mobile homes, townhouses, duplexes, etc. $400,000 is much more than a very modest house. For example I would consider a shotgun house very modest, and short of very high income areas they’re usually much less than $400,000
Cheaper places are cheaper for a reason. Worse health care. Worse education for your kids. Worse life expectancy. Worse Opportunity. For instance St Louis has a median home price of 207k but they also have 10x the murder rate of Seattle a worse jobs outlook. You’ll make less money etc.
Who in their right mind would want to live in a red state?
Yes, and I agree I prefer higher density, but ultimately some people living in less desirable areas is more reasonable than trying to build ever taller skyscrapers in city centers- in a country with massive amounts of empty land.
Worse health care.
It depends, there are plenty of cheaper cities with very good healthcare, I grew up in Louisville, KY, spent a lot of time in LA, CA, and now live in Prague, CZ. Louisville has had the cheapest rent/purchase price and had by far the best quality healthcare(at least that I and my family received) out of anywhere I’ve lived.
Worse education for your kids.
This is valid in some cases, and there are plenty of valid reasons to desire living somewhere else more, that doesn’t mean there aren’t costs to that. Furthermore, there are plenty of expensive places with terrible school systems, plenty of cheap places with passable school systems, but more importantly traditional schools systems in general suck. Kids now days have access to the internet, that combined with parents who encourage curiosity and creativity will be much more important to them learning than the school system they go to.
For instance St Louis has a median home price of 207k but they also have 10x the murder rate of Seattle a worse jobs outlook.
That is cherrypicking, compare Chicago to Fargo, ND. Or a less distant example, Seattle to Spokane.
You’ll make less money etc.
Assuming you don’t work remotely, but you’ll also spend less.
Who in their right mind would want to live in a red state?
Not about being red or blue, its about not being a HCOL megalopolis. You can also move to Maine.
Manhattan doesn’t have much room to expand up or out but but Seattle still has 70% single family homes it and surrounding cities have plenty of room to build up.
Spokane is largely populated by bigots and Trumpers. In particular the state congressman they elected wrote a paper the “biblical basis for war” wherein he advocated that after the fall of the united states they would make war on the rest of us nonbelievers taking the women prisoners and killing men who wouldn’t submit in his new Christofascist white ISIS like kingdom. He was then caught trying to “rescue” a bunch of Ukrainian kids on behalf of an organization that existed on paper only without doing boring stuff like making sure they didn’t have parents fighting in the war or other relations who wanted to take them.
On an economic front the Seattle Metro area has substantial commerce, an international airport, a port and 4M people. Spokane has about 230k. Adding another 230k would be a 5% increase in population for the Seattle Metro it would double spokane. The resources for expanding housing and resources in the Seattle metro actually exist. If it ever makes it there that is about half a century of growth for Spokane.
OP is like: Even if you have highly-valuable skills, you can’t get ahead, because the game is stacked in favor of renting out your assets instead of delivering valuable labor.
Reply is like: Yeah, but have you considered renting out your assets though?
The funny thing is: You’re not wrong, you’re just talking about it at the wrong level.
Individually, if you don’t save and invest, you’re gonna be screwed due to unpredictable expenses, inflation, and lack of runway for retirement.
But if you zoom out and look at a whole population, it’s also true that tons of people are in such severe financial conditions that they can’t save and invest, so your advice is something like “buy a life jacket” to someone who’s already 10 feet underwater.
And if you zoom out even further, there’s no way that we’re going to solve severe wealth inequality through individual action. And especially not through investing, which helps you as an individual relative to other individuals, but also provides more options to the wealthy recipients/managers of the funds to extract wealth at a rate higher than your ROI, which accelerates the concentration of assets in the hands of people who already own a disproportionate amount of them.
I might be “rich” when my parents die, depending on how much elder care they need.
I’m actually kind of looking forward to the day I look my kids in the eye and say “I’m going out to look for firewood” and just walk out into the snow and die.
But there won’t be any snow anymore so I’ll just wander off into a slightly chilly night.
Then the credit card companies crank their interest rates higher and restrict the credit they extend to your kids to compensate. It's not "free money."
There is a possibility of that being happening but the last half-century of economic trends makes this unlikely, unfortunately. This decade, especially, makes it likely that the gouging will continue and any advances making care less expensive will just see an increase in profits at the top. Every industry seems to have give into overdrive on driving up profits at the populace’s expense, with the exception of basic consumer entertainment electronics but, they are, realistically also driving up effective costs as they are being used to harvest customer data for sale.
If we’re getting out of this, we’re going to have to do it ourselves because none of the established holders of power have shown the slightest inkling of being interested in stopping it.
The last half-century of economic trends supports my expectations, actually. Treatments have been getting cheaper as technology advances. New treatments tend to be expensive, yes. But then as they become older they too get cheaper.
That's not true. Originally insulin had to be isolated from animal pancreases, a costly procedure. The first handful of humans to be treated with it were literally the children of wealthy politicians, a congressman and the secretary of state. They were the only ones who could get access to it. It's now produced in industrial quantities using recombinant bacteria to synthesize it. It's routine.
I'm speaking about large-scale trends here. Obviously the prices of things have their localized ups and downs when you look at them on the scale of a few years. But I'm not expecting to need elder care for quite a few decades yet.
Yes, again, I'm talking about large-scale trends, not the current spot prices. I don't live in the United States anyway, most people don't. Note how cheap it is everywhere else?
Stop telling them this in advance! They can’t get at your work material or deliberations. Just give them a general affirmative and go on to nullify that shit.
Also, at the point you can’t seat a jury because they’re telling you they won’t convict there has to be some kind of slaughter rule. To stop wasting the court’s time if nothing else. Because at some point you’re just letting the prosecutor choose a verdict, not a jury.
Don’t lie under oath, but you also don’t have to scream from the hilltops that the whole damn system is out of order and ensure that someone who is heavily invested in punishing the people for feeding the homeless gets your spot in the jury instead.
Edit: I find it absolutely hysterical that you assholes can't help yourselves but pipe up and continue to expose yourselves to be exactly the kind of men we are talking about (when all it takes it to literally just.. not. You realise you do have the ability to just shut the fuck up, right?). Enjoy whining in to the void, I've already wasted too much time on you clowns.
Except they did, insisting on saying "people are terrible" instead of "men are terrible" is not only pretending people of other genders are part of the problem when they're not but is
essentially saying "not all men"
Not that any of this will stop you from continuing to try to derail the conversation instead of just accepting that this is a problem with men, no matter how uncomfortable that is for you to deal with.
Yes, in this case men are absolutely to blame, I am not denying this.
I believe they intended their comment as a general statement not specific to sexual harassment/assault. It felt like a fatalist response, not as an attempt to derail the conversation.
Except you did, insisting on saying "people are terrible" as an answer to "men are terrible" is not only pretending people of other genders are part of the problem when they're not but is
essentially saying "not all men"
Not that any of this will stop you from continuing to try to derail the conversation instead of just accepting that this is a problem with men, no matter how uncomfortable that is for you to deal with.
Would you do the same for different races or religions?
"Yes, but essentially saying "not all muslims" allows muslims to continue to ignore and exclude themselves from the problem, making them actively a part of the problem."
If the discussion was about a situation where a power imbalance clearly and obviously benefitted Muslims, then yes (except there isn't a global problem with the power imbalance favouring Muslims on anywhere the same scale as there is for men).
It really isn't difficult once you take your head out of your ass.
Or you can continue to make up as many strawmen and false equivalencies as you like to try and derail the conversation, but all that achieves is you showing your ass as being part of the problem, knowingly now, because you've been provided with information that should make you rethink your bad take, not double down on it.
Strawmen don’t exist, this user is asking you about situations that do exist, such as the example about the muslims, which is absolutely a real thing that you absolutely would get flack for saying in real life. So no, to ask you a why it’s magically ok for you to say it about men when it’s not ok to say about literally any other group, makes it by definition the very opposite of a strawman. Don’t use words if you don’t understand what they mean.
This also demonstrates that your point about power is wrong. If hate speech is only allowed about one single group, it suggests the opposite of: that group holds all the power.
I don’t think that would do anything. The problem isn’t that they don’t know it’s wrong, it’s that they know they won’t face any consequences for their actions.
If someone gave him a brickin’ early on in life, we wouldn’t be here. Just enough to slow home down a little, nothing grave, take a few points off his IQ
That’s too old testament for me. Specifically these instances. The author’s “explanation” at the end is way off, but it is a good collection otherwise.
Haha, no worries. It just sounded like something he said awhile back or would say and I wasn’t sure. It is nice though to see him popping up here though
Isn’t that the dream for a capitalist! Labor that sleeps at work. Google takes it a step further and asks employees to pay for being able to sleep at work.
The score is just soulless “lo-fi beats” type of music played all over the grounds to avoid any one person ever having to sit alone with just their thoughts as background noise.
This is fucked. They are allowing your tax dollars to be used for Christian Fundamentalist Schools. All that fear mongering about “brainwashing” your kids with CRT and the LGBT-agenda in public schools that never existed, and the Republicans are literally trying to push a religious agenda down the throats of this citizens of this state.
How long before girls are banned from the higher level STEM classes and instead required to take Home Ec and urged to be stay at home mothers and wives, you know, like Harrison Butker and his wife suggested?
Yeah. It’s bad. In case anyone can’t see the writing on the wall, they are going to give everyone vouchers so that they can afford to leave public schools and go to private schools and then gut them later.
The vouchers will further tank public schools. Republicans will then be able to argue that public schools are failing, that attendance rates as abysmal, and they should shut down funding to them (and conservative voters will eat that shit up as their entire world view is based on sound bites they got from Fox News). I bet the voucher programs don’t last much longer after that once there is no alternative.
It’s been proven time and again that the cops don’t need to know or enforce actual laws. Suing cops is almost impossible, and when you sue the department, the taxpayers got the bill with little impact on the offending officer.
when you sue the department, the taxpayers got the bill with little impact on the offending officer.
Police officers and departments should be required to carry professional insurance policies to cover these payouts, just like doctors are required to carry malpractice insurance.
My son is a cop and I’m completely for this. He’s an intelligent empathetic man that would definitely speak truth to power if called upon to do so. And I would say he agrees that the job attracts ignorant belligerent bully types that love pushing people around. And this behavior needs to stop for sure.
It was about 10 years ago, but someone had interviewed a panel of police officers of different ranks from the counties in the bay area of California. When asked how many cops shouldn’t be cops, one officer responded 75%. The others agreed with that figure.
No. If you’re a good person who chooses to work for a corrupt organization, you are also choosing to shoulder some of the responsibility for the actions of that group. I would also like to know where you got the idea that there are 800,000 good officers in the US, because that feels like a made up number.
Turns out it’s pretty easy to get concessions from your rulers when you’re quite literally the last line of defense between their beloved status quo and the other peasants’ revendications
It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if Lemmy is rife with these trolls. And I’m not just talking about the tankies.
I will never understand people who advocate for communism as opposed to democratic socialism. Every major country that has ever gone down the communist road has ended up a dictatorship. That’s not a bug of communism, it’s a feature. I get the criticism of capitalism, I really do, but we can enact socialist laws that rein in the excesses and extremes of capitalism without sacrificing our democracies for one-party governments.
The goal of democratic socialism, like all socialism, is communism. My guess is you either meant social democracy instead of democratic socialism (easy confusion to make) or you’ve been made to think communism means stalinism (also prone to happen if you’ve lived under McCarthyist propaganda your entire life).
Some Marxist socialists emphasise Karl Marx’s belief in democracy[51] and call themselves democratic socialists.[20] The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement define socialism in its classical formulation as a “system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the community.”[52] Additionally, they include classlessness, statelessness and the abolition of wage labour as characteristics of a socialist society, characterising it as a stateless, propertyless, post-monetary economy based on calculation in kind, a free association of producers, workplace democracy and free access to goods and services produced solely for use and not for exchange.[53] Although these characteristics are usually reserved to describe a communist society,[54] this is consistent with the usage of Marx, Friedrich Engels and others, who referred to communism and socialism interchangeably.[55]
The only difference between a socialist party and a communist party is branding for people who don’t know what either thing is
You know most people differentiate between socialism and communism now right? It is definitely more nuanced than your argument of all democratic socialism wants to transition into communism.
People can call themselves whatever they want to call themselves, but if their goal isn’t a currencyless, stateless society without private property and based on mutual aid they aren’t socialist they’re sparkling capitalists.
No, it’s not. Even they differentiated between socialism and communism. But they are correct in their assertion that the ultimate goal of socialism would be achieving a state like communism. Not a state as in a nation. But a state as in a state of being.
Whether or not you think such thing is possible in this moment. And I think most people would say it’s probably still a little ways off. Even you ultimately would like a society in which you were free to do whatever you desired. Whatever stimulated you intellectually and explore your passions. Without having to worry about being a wage slave.
I’m not trying to be pedantic here, but I did want to add that there is a big difference between democractic socialism and social democracy. Jacobin has a great article on what the differences are … below are 2 quotes that highlight the basics.
Nordic countries — Finland, Norway, and Sweden — are social democracies. They have constitutional representative democracies, extensive welfare benefits, corporatist collective bargaining between labor and capital that is managed by the state, and some state ownership of the economy.
Democratic socialism, on the other hand, should involve public ownership over the vast majority of the productive assets of society, the elimination of the fact that workers are forced into the labor market to work for those who privately own those productive assets, and stronger democratic institutions not just within the state but within workplaces and communities as well. Our characterization of democratic socialism represents a profound deepening of democracy in the economy.
Sure, but it’s important to distinguish when a word is being used two different ways, and the only way to do that is define them.
There are people who use Lenin’s definition of “socialism” as the name for the transitioning stage between capitalism and the communist goal in the Manifesto.
There are also people who use “socialism” to mean any time the government does any regulation or helpful policy of any kind.
Fair. The only thing I’m trying to do here is fight the unnecessary reification of words.
Also worth noting that Marx never refers to two stages transition between capitalism and communism. He does refer to higher and lower stages of communism but those don’t map to lenin’s usage with socialism etc.
The goal of democratic socialism is not communism, generally. I’m sure there are a range of individual goals.
Democratic socialism is closer to a fully capatalist system than it is to communism, but attempts to limit capatalism in ways that could be detrimental society (regulation and taxation). Additionally, it implements programs that benefit society (public infrastructure, Healthcare, etc).
A completely capatalist society will kill itself. A fully communist society will grind to a halt. A careful balance between those extremes can deliver many of the benefits of both. Finding that balance is difficult and there are reasonable debates to be had about how. Unfortunately, there are a lot of unreasonable people in power.
A completely capatalist society will kill itself. A fully communist society will grind to a halt. A careful balance between those extremes can deliver many of the benefits of both.
A socialist country will simply kill itself more slowly – any system that accepts the continued exploitation of the planet is unsustainable. Considering how much damage has already been done to the environment, even if we all went socialist today and started driving electric cars we’d only push back the inevitable a decade or so.
An authoritarian “communist” (I use quotes because I don’t believe actual communism can be forced) society will degrade and grind to a halt the same way any system that has positions of power will as the power struggles ensue.
Communism doesn’t imply pacificism. A decentralized anarcho-communist society with a culture that recognized and managed consistently bad actors before they had an opportunity to gain power, and was moneyless (as communism is) meaning those seeking power would have limited ability to pay anyone to back them up seems the only logical sustainable path.
This may seem like an impossibility, but it was arguably the way humanity existed for 200K years before the consistently bad actors got the upper hand, took power and used money to keep it.
The main problem is that the exact meaning of communism and socialism and all of its derivatives has changed since its creation. Everyone ends up argueing over semantics and using no true scotsman fallacies.
I assume from the second half of your comment that you’re in favor of communism, but I question your strategy of using literal Republican scaremongering statements as your argument for it.
Yes, but a cesspool with first mover advantage. I think its a good example of how Americans have been manipulated to operate against their own interests.
Every major country that has ever gone down the communist road ended up a dictatorship
While I don’t think full-on Marxism is necessary and am in agreement on the democratic socialism, I think the reason for this is really more towards the political end of it than the economic.
If a country practicing a communist economy had a more representative/democratic political system from the start, I’d like to see how the results panned out. And I’d also like to see which came first, the dictatorship, or the communism. The former being first makes more sense than the latter.
Communism weds its system of government with its economic system pretty inseparably. I’m not sure how you’d set up a communist economy without a communist government to manage it. As for the communism/dictatorship chicken-and-egg problem, I’m not sure it really matters when communism predisposes itself so readily to authoritarianism that a dictator is a foregone conclusion.
Well I ask these cause authoritarianism seems counterintuitive to the main philosophy around Marxism. Saying “the proletariat should have greater value and power in a business, since they’re doing the actual labor”, but then rolling over and accepting a dictatorship where the populace has no political say seems nonsensical.
Hence why I suspect the authoritarianism must have come first. So I can’t necessarily agree to “communism predisposing itself to authoritarianism” since it doesn’t make sense for a True-Marxist society to want to accept that sort of government.
As for how to set up the government in a communist-economy state: probably more of a Republic. People elect multiple representatives, and these representatives meet and decide on policies for the country and how to run it
A one-party system is inherently authoritarian; that’s what predisposes communism to becoming a dictatorship. Communism starts with the premise that the old regime needs to be violently overthrown. I don’t know how much clearer a line towards authoritarianism you can get.
So the original Marxist idea would lead to withering-away of government, and thus zero parties, not one-party authoritarianism. But due to all the authoritarian implementations, people think of states like the USSR when they hear/see communism
That communist ideal has never been achieved and there are plenty of good reasons to expect it never will be. Communism in the purest sense (a government-less society) has only ever been shown to work in relatively small communities. I don’t think it could ever work on the scale of a nation state.
So, for all intents and purposes, the transitional one-party government system is the only real communist system. That’s what I criticize, and anyone who champions this fantasy of a government-less society—I’m sorry, but I just think that’s deluded.
It’s never been achieved, and there are so many good reasons to believe it never will be, so who cares? The transitional phase of communism is actually the end one, so authoritarian rule for life. Great fucking system.
It’s obvious you have read no theory. Read the Communist Manifesto, Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds. For anarchism read David Graeber or Rosa Luxembourg.
If you still feel the same after reading, fine. But read first. Instead you wallow in ignorance and declare your opinion informed. It’s not.
Basically they are about (specially Blackshirts and Reds) how “libertarian” socialist experiments all failed, and were ultimately destroyed by national and international bourgeoisie.
I think Critique of the Gotha Program by Marx is much better than the Communist Manifesto, as it’s also a critique of the libertarian socialist Germans.
Like, if you want to get very sad, read about the politicides in Indonesia, Korea, South America etc. Communists (and I include anarchists, libertarians socialists, democratic socialists etc. here) have to organize in strong movements to survive.
All communist experiments that lasted more than 1 years were either MLs or Maoists.
We really should look at this and try to learn from it. It’s a fact, it’s just something that has happened.
We have to understand why democratic socialism is vulnerable to being exterminated, and why ML and Maoism aren’t.
Would you be really shocked if “tankies” agreed the state sucks? They are… gasp… communists after all no? And communism is stateless, moneyless and classless, right?
Like even “tankies” are anti-statists… they just disagree with people like you that we can reach communism without authoritarian revolution, creating a dictatorship of the proletariat, and first transitioning to socialism. And that doesn’t mean they agree the revolution and the proletariat dictatorship will be like in the USSR, Cuba, China etc.
Marxists-Leninists and Maoists understand socialism will look different everywhere it comes, and will adapt to the culture and expectations of the working class of those places… only anti-communist leftists make the mistake of thinking “tankies” idolise the USSR or China. That what they want is an exact repeat of the Bolshevik Revolution…
I didn’t say anything about what the critique was…. I did make a typo saying libertarian socialist German communes. But I tried writing libertarian socialist German communists, which doesn’t make sense either, but the meaning was libertarian socialist Germans, or libertarian German communists.
In any case, I never said it was the main point of the text either……
Because I don’t care. And you haven’t made me care.
You have a bit of time here to make some kind of point to make us interested in the hours you want us to spend. You haven’t accomplished that.
It’s like trying to sell someone on coming to your space opera production when all you’ve done so far is sing off key for six seconds.
No? Why would anyone want to voluntarily subject themselves to that. I don’t need to spend five hours of my evening attending your play to know that it probably sucks.
If it were any good, you’d be able to make a small, interesting point out of it.
Do I want to learn more about your hemorrhoids? No. Fuck no, dude. That’s not how I’m spending my evening.
You know while I do empathize with being asked to care about something and being annoyed at that, it’s also annoying to be inundated with takes from people on complicated subjects, who aren’t willing to put in some hours worth of work. Nobody’s going to be willing to personally walk you through the subject matter and do all of the intellectual labor for you specifically, that’s an unreasonable request of them, and frankly, less efficient than just reading.
Sure, but you need to sell someone on why the time is worth spending. Nobody here is asking anyone to walk them through the subject matter, just give an idea of why the subject matter is worth digging into.
I personally have read the The Communist Manifesto, and when paired with what I know about human nature and how it turned out in practice, my conclusion is that it’s a bunch of idealistic nonsense. It can only work in the way described if everyone buys in and the leadership is noble, which is true for pretty much every governmental system out there (dictatorships can work well if the dictator works in the interests of the people). It doesn’t work well when you remove the assumption, because people will game the system and consolidating power is a recipe for disaster.
And that’s why liberal democracy has worked so well. Instead of assuming people are good and consolidating power is beneficial, it instead mitigates the damage bad actors can cause. There are obviously downsides, but the average liberal democracy should be better off than the average dictatorship.
So I’m not going to pitch The Communist Manifesto because I find it uninteresting. I will, however, pitch How Democracies Die, which is an interesting look at how bad actors have subverted or attempted to subvert democracy to turn it into authoritarianism, and it culminates in a discussion about Donald Trump and similar political figures. You won’t find a pitch for an ideal political system, but you will find examples of weaknesses in past and existing institutions, and I think that’s a lot more interesting than a non-existent, “ideal” system that we don’t fully understand.
This is a great example of how you can take complicated subjects and express the ideas in a simple way while still recommending further reading. I’m absolutely more likely to read How Democracies Die now than I am to read anything the tankies have suggested.
If you can’t explain something to a five year old then you don’t really understand it.
I’m convinced the tankies understand less about government than they do about social media techniques and creating a cult.
Hell, I’m even trying to help them. Novel ideas are good for everyone. It’s why we believe in freedom of speech and not banning books. Trying to bandwagon and browbeat and mock people into joining your “cause” is… less helpful.
If you got anything out of it other than a sense of pretentiousness, you should be able to extract and express some ideas from it without going into detail.
How do you summarize a history book? The detail is the entire point. If simply stating the conclusions would work you wouldn’t tell people to produce sources. All you’re doing is making excuses for yourself to be lazy and anti-intellectual. And you’re making it impossible for yourself to be exposed to ideas that take any amount of time or effort to articulate.
Every major country that has ever gone down the communist road has ended up a dictatorship.
Up until not too long ago, every democracy relied on slavery, disenfranchised large parts of the population, and eventually ended up a dictatorship. If you asked someone in like 1810 whether democracy could work, it’d be completely understandable if they pointed out all the horrible aspects of Greek and Roman “democracy”, American planations, colonialism and the Reign of Terror, and if they assumed all of these to be inherent to democracy.
“Sure, the king isn’t perfect, but he’s surely better than Robespierre (who was inevitably succeded by Napoleon). And besides, great thinkers like Plato argued for a philosopher king – and that guy lived in a democracy, who would know better about all of it’s evils?”
Yes, communism has failed in many respects so far.* The reasons for that are complex, include active sabotage by anti-communist states, but anyone who doesn’t genuinely and critically reflect it’s failures is (probably) doomed to repeat those mistakes.
Assuming those are inherent and inevitable based on less than a hundred years of history is imho short sighted.
*Some very early societies were probably kinda close to what we conceptualise as communism™ today, but applying the term is anachronistic.
Up until not too long ago, every democracy relied on slavery, disenfranchised large parts of the population, and eventually ended up a dictatorship.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison. Slavery was never an inherent part of democracy and democracy certainly didn’t rely on it. Ancient economies might have, but not their democratic systems of government. By contrast, communism does inherently call for the violent overthrow of existing governments in favor of a one-party transitional government that violently suppresses all others. Like I said, authoritarian rule is not an unintended consequence of communism—it is very much intended and seen as necessary.
Yes, communism has failed in many respects so far.* The reasons for that are complex, include active sabotage by anti-communist states, but anyone who doesn’t genuinely and critically reflect it’s failures is (probably) doomed to repeat those mistakes.
I don’t really think it’s that complex. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. When you have a governmental system wherein multiple groups can check each other’s power levels, the system can self-stabilize (that’s not to say it always does, but it can at least). Communism, with it’s one-party system, has no checks and balances, and therefore is much more prone to succumbing to authoritarian rule.
You say we just haven’t given communism enough time to “get it right” yet; I say they’ve already gotten it “right” multiple times. China is communism working as intended.
I think one thing that’s confusing is that there’s Marxism, communism, Leninism, MLM, etc. Different communist countries try to learn from other countries and each one has its own implementation based on its own material conditions.
From what I’ve heard, Lenin’s vanguard party and violent revolution thing was basically theorized to be required basically because of the long history of more peaceful movements being squashed by violent capitalists, the difficulty it is to wrest power from the old dictatorship, that of the rich, and the difficulty it is to change a country’s culture (see the super brainwashed US that might re-elect Trump let alone ever be able to get affordable health care). It’s not really required for communism so much as seen as a working theory of what’s required to achieve it in a pragmatic way due to the US trying to destroy it in every country that’s gone near it from its very inception and their full corporate-owned media blitz on people like Bernie or the democratic socialist in the UK.
A lot of the authoritarian nature of these countries is due to the material conditions from which they arose (usually poor, rural non-industrialized dictatorships, often colonized) and from which they had to stay alive (which is usually in a siege mentality as the US or other Western countries continued to sanction and undermine them). I’d definitely prefer to live in a Nordic country than any communist one, but they also started off in very different contexts, so I’m not sure if that will always be true. Like the other commenter, I’d be curious to see more data. I’d give the point to socialist countries right now though, because the experiment of capitalism has the entire global south counting against it.
From what I’ve heard, Lenin’s vanguard party and violent revolution thing was basically theorized to be required basically because of the long history of more peaceful movements being squashed by violent capitalists, the difficulty it is to wrest power from the old dictatorship, that of the rich, and the difficulty it is to change a country’s culture (see the super brainwashed US that might re-elect Trump let alone ever be able to get affordable health care).
Anyone can call any other group “brainwashed.” If that’s all it takes for you to justify violence in order to change a system, you yourself are the fascist. Regardless of how wrong or deluded you think a people are, democracy requires that you rely on debate and conversation to change their minds in order to accumulate the support needed to change the system. If you resort to violence, you are enacting authoritarian rule, plain and simple.
That’s the thing, often the rulers resort to violence even before the people. You can’t talk or debate your way into power against a dictator or monarch. They’ll shoot your peaceful protestors and kidnap and torture your leaders. They will blacklist your writers and artists. Talking and other avenues should always be the first step, and if you’re already in a democracy probably your only step, but if violence is used to enforce an unjust system I’m not sure how else you think it could be changed.
I could see a vanguard party providing for more than just defense or violence, too. It provides a way to organize and spread your thoughts and ideas, a way to provide mutal aid, a way to focus your demands, a way to teach political theory, etc. The rich always have class solidarity while they are masters of splitting up the poor intos different factions based on race, sex, gender, etc. Finding a way to foster solidarity into a big group where the proletariat can get their needs met seems like a worthy goal.
In the case of a dictator or a monarch, I agree there’s a case to be made for necessary violence, but in actual examples of communist revolutions, the violence has never been contained to the ruling governing body and its enforcers; it always expanded to “the bourgeoisie,” which often meant anyone who made beyond a certain amount of money, including small businessmen, teachers, doctors, etc. You talk about this process in the nicest possible terms, but that’s never how it actually plays out. It’s a violent revolution, people–often innocent people–get hurt and killed, and the whole point is to establish a new authoritarian system of government that explicitly denies the right for any other body to contest its right to rulership.
I’m sorry, but you are either a very subtle troll or extremely naive in my opinion. I don’t think we have much more to talk about. Good-bye.
And you like to take the nicest part of the pre-revolutionary history, where often rulers perpetrated violence against the poor as well for years, and ignore that as well. You also seem to be taking the worst examples. There’s been socialist revolutions where nothing happens to teachers, doctors, or small businessmen. Most of them, actually. China and it’s Cultural Revolution is the only one I can think of that went out and hurt a bunch of unrelated civilians.
Those are idiots, they’re fed up with the horrors of capitalism, like the ideals of communism, and don’t understand that popularly understood “communism” was more authoritarianism than anything else. They believe the assertion is that the two options are brutal capitalism or an authoritarian monstrosity where everyone quotes Marx and Lenin
If you judge an idea by the understanding of the dumbest supporters, they’ll all seem pretty stupid
Yes, communism has failed in many respects so far.* The reasons for that are complex, include active sabotage by anti-communist states, but anyone who doesn’t genuinely and critically reflect it’s failures is (probably) doomed to repeat those mistakes.
This is the part I was replying to. A big part of the supporters aren’t critically reflecting its failures, which doesn’t make me very optimistic.
Agreed. Ironically I imagine we’re probably wiser and more intelligent but worse off in terms of ability to simply leave the system than the Ancient Greeks
Cuba is one of a few extant Marxist–Leninist one-party socialist states, in which the role of the vanguard Communist Party is enshrined in the Constitution. Cuba has an authoritarian regime where political opposition is not permitted.
Who’s the dictator? Are their laws literally forced down upon the people? Is there no democratic process?
According to the constitution, Cuba is a socialist republic where all members or representative bodies of state power are elected and subject to recall and the masses control the activity of the state agencies, the deputies, delegates and officials. Elections in Cuba have two phases:
election of delegates to the Municipal Assembly, and election of deputies to the National Assembly. Candidates for municipal assemblies are nominated on an individual basis at local levels by the local population at nomination assemblies. Candidates for the National Assembly are nominated by the municipal assemblies from lists compiled by national and municipal candidacy commissions. Suggestions for nominations are made at all levels mainly by mass organizations, trade unions, people’s councils, and student federations. The final list of candidates for the National Assembly, one for each district, is drawn up by the National Candidacy Commission.
Cuba’s national legislature, the National Assembly of People’s Power, has 605 members who sit for five-year terms. Members of the National Assembly represent multiple-member constituencies (2 to 5 members per district), with one Deputy for each 20,000 inhabitants
Candidates for the National Assembly are chosen by candidacy commissions chaired by local trade union officials and composed of elected representatives of “mass organisations” representing workers, youth, women, students and farmers. The provincial and municipal candidacy commissions submit nominations to the National Candidacy Commission.
Article 88(h) of the Cuban constitution, adopted in 1976, provides for citizen proposals of law, prerequisite that the proposal be made by at least 10,000 citizens who are eligible to vote.
The Cuban government describes the full Cuban electoral process as a form of democracy. The Cuban Ministry of External Affairs describes the candidate-selection process as deriving from “direct nomination of candidates for delegates to the municipal assemblies by the voters themselves at public assemblies,” and points out that at the elections to the municipal assemblies, voters do have a choice of candidates. The ban on election campaigning is presented as “The absence of million–dollar election campaigns where resorting to insults, slander and manipulation are the norm.”
There is no possible democracy in a one-party system, because all of the politicians you can vote for have to be approved one way or another by the only allowable party. This isn’t complicated, and the fact that you point to Cuban sources and claim that’s all that’s going on is pretty laughable. I could point to Iranian sources and claim that’s not a corrupt state, but it wouldn’t be true.
Honestly, you sound exactly like one of the trolls described in the OP article, and this is the end of my convo with you. You’re either trolling or as detached from reality as a Trumper.
Tbh I think having everyone in the country in the same party might be a perk. It’s an interesting way of abolishing the idea of political parties. Basically opposition is allowed, we saw that with those protests before, the economic reforms, and the Constitution updates, but it’s done by people changing things within the party.
In a single-party state, I’d expect the actual debate occurs inside the framework of the party. You’ve still got different viewpoints and factions, but they’re not directly campaigning for votes. That might encourage more work towards consensus, because it’s not an every-four-years winner-take-all battle for control.
The fetish for electoral democracy runs the risk of confusing means for ends. Democracy is one way to deliver good governance, but is it the only one? Is it the best one for all situations?
I hesitate to say it’s the only acceptable form, but it’s the best one I’ve seen so far. I like Churchill’s quote here:
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…
It’s possible someone will come up with a better form of government, and perhaps that already exists on paper. However, Communism/socialism ain’t it, at least not the one party form used today.
Bernie Sanders can call himself a strawberry crepe if he wants to. He’s a new deal democrat. Not only just a social democrat but one who lines up to support every foreign adventure the US sets out on.
And you’re dodging the point. This is a country that murders leftists when they get too organized. You’re not allowed to vote for another system.
Cool, so start there and drive it forward. Or run a credible third party from the grassroots up.
It’s nonsensical to suggest that “outsider” candidates and beliefs can win in our system when the Tea Party, MAGA, and shit like Moms For Liberty all represent a new direction that has never existed in US politics.
You can’t credibly say it can’t be done, you just don’t want to be the one to do it. That’s fine, but be intellectually honest about it.
Leftist candidates can’t win in the US because leftism isnt popular. If you want to change that, you can.
This is a country that murders leftists when they get too organized
The assassinations of MLK, Malcolm X, and Fred Hampton were just coincidences, then? Sure seems like any credible movement wound up being eliminated if it required any systemic change.
These are civil rights leaders from 70 years ago, not current leftists.
Again, this is just a massive cop-out on your part.
The reason leftists will never succeed in America is that they are completely unwilling or unable to do the work required - that’s their only barrier of entry.
You’ll note all of the above actually succeeded in their goals, as well.
“You can’t say it can’t be done” “yes I can, look at history” “lol history doesn’t count”
You’ll note all of the above actually succeeded in their goals, as well.
According to Tucker Carlson maybe
And those aren’t the last people to get murdered for organizing as leftists. Look up what happened to the original BLM organizers. Add “car fire” to the search terms if you have trouble.
Whether it’s a bug or feature depends on whether you’re trying to hold power or not.
Authoritarianism is often one of the steps on the way to communism, and in theory it makes sense. Once you have unified control, you can start getting everyone and everything to work together.
Problem is, people tend not to do that. If a regular person gets the reins, they are usually unwilling to give them up, and the citizens tend to care more about themselves than the collective
In theory communism works great. In reality it’s the people that fuck it up.
Authoritarianism is often one of the steps on the way to communism, and in theory it makes sense. Once you have unified control, you can start getting everyone and everything to work together.
The word you’re looking for is “force” and it’s exactly why authoritarianism is a horrible thing. Stop trying to justify it.
Communism doesn’t work because any sufficiently large number of people are going to have disagreements. That’s not a fault of the people, it’s a fault of the system trying to manage them (communism). If your system of government’s only way of manufacturing consensus is violent suppresion, you have a shitty system.
Governmental systems are designed around people, for people. If your governmental system only works if everyone does what they should, your system is broken. Political systems need checks in place to prevent bad actors from screwing the whole thing up.
So if communism doesn’t work with actual people, it’s a worthless system from the start. Maybe some of the ideas can be salvaged. For example, the separation of private and personal property is interesting, and it’s what makes georgism interesting to me, and I think we should be looking at systems like that instead of communism.
I think this is semantic(definitions) confusion. Please let me explain. For example communism by definition is a stateless society. Meaning a state cannot be communist. The countries you are thinking of have all called themselves socialist not communist. Socialism does not necessitate dictatorship or democracy. It’s simply economical. Socialism is an economic system that abolishes private property which marx defined as different from personal property. Personal property includes your place of living your tv your clothes all your personal shit. Private property refers to owning the means of production. So under socialism you could own your house but not a factory or Google ect.
The countries that are exploited the worst have sometimes had socialist revolts in the past. These countries are typically not functioning democracies beforehand. The USSR had a tsar. China’s last emperor ended up joining the socialists once he was overthrown. Cuba had a U.S. backed dictator before Castro’s popular revolution. These countries were not made into dictator ships because of socialism. You have the idea in your head because of capitalist propaganda.
Democratic socialism is just capitalism with a nice welfare state built on it. Despite the name it doesn’t necessitate having democracy or socialism. Infact it’s incompatible with socialism. These states are nicer then usual capitalist states but often backslide. For example Britain moving closer and closer to privatizing their healthcare.
Marx’s definition of socialism is unhelpful, has been detrimental, should be ignored. He did advocate for socialism, but in a specific way. He saw socialism as a step towards communism. Marx believed that after a workers’ revolution, society would first enter a socialist phase where the workers control the government and economy. Then, eventually, this would lead to communism, where there would be no need for a state and everyone would share everything equally.
The United States regulates businesses, provides welfare. Those are socialist ideas. China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has rich and poor people. It isn’t communist.
Marxs definition of socialism is the important definition because it’s his word. Marx did think socialism would be the next step after capitalism and that communism would eventually follow. But he thought communism would follow in a far off future.
“The United States regulates businesses, provides welfare. Those are socialist ideas. China, controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, has rich and poor people. It isn’t communist.”
Socialism is not when the government does stuff. I know you have been conditioned to think that but that’s not what it means.
Social systems aren’t all or nothing. Government run health care: socialist/communist. Government regulating businesses: socialist. Enabling competition among businesses: capitalist.
Engels and Marx believed an all-in approach was best, but even they believed in the value of incremental improvement. We don’t have to implement an entirely pure socialist government before we can say we’ve adopted any socialist ideas at all.
You are missing the contemporary academic basis for democratic socialism though. Orthodox socialists view capitalism akin to a malevolent force, whereas democratic socialists view it as something like an inevitable byproduct of scarcity, something contemporary history seems to have more support for. It’s very much a modern vs postmodern take on the same issue.
At the same time, democratic socialists prioritize a degree of individual liberty and human rights as an ideological basis for government. The ideological basis for orthodox socialism is honestly a bit more flimsy and often in conflict with itself, which is a big part of the reason why the modern demsoc movement doesn’t have the same outward hostility towards certain forms of regulated capitalism. The idea being that with the right regularly framework in place, you can effectively resolve scarcity and capitalism withers away. This is actually not incompatible with Marx, and is also very similar to Dengist technocratic state capitalism, but without the obligate autocracy.
Nah communism is that your private property is the community’s property, which would be great if you’re a single mother until someone finds your baby locked in the car by accident but it’s not your car.
Really? It looks to me like ‘almost every single one’ tried to use communism as an excuse to funnel as much wealth as possible to their ruling classes, just like capitalism and Russian/North Korean/Chinese communism.
But can you name some specifics? That way we know exactly what you’re talking about.
Generally these countries already had massive wealth disparity so keep that in mind, with a few landlords and the rich ruling over vast amounts of a mostly rural populace.
North Korea was a lot more equal than South Korea when it was formed although I’m sure it’s changed since then, but they don’t let people in so there’s not many official figures. China is basically a capitalist country now, although notably it’s income inequality rose more when it implemented these market reforms that made it more capitalist. It’s wealth inequality is less than the US’s, or about the same, anyway.
Cuba was a lot more equal after the revolution than before. They basically removed homelessness, fed everyone, gave everyone health care, etc. It’s commonly known that the Batista era was filled with graft, rich landowners and club owners, and corrupt government officials while most of the countryanguished in poverty. Inequality has only risen when they had to implement more capitalist-like market reforms after the Soviet Union fell and they lost their major trading partner.
Vietnam had also done well at that front, increasing growth with only slight increases in inequality, doing better than China on that front. They’re still worried about it after implementing market reforms as well but are working on it, and have still done better than other countries.
Notably Social Democratic countries like the Nordic ones have also done well in terms of wealth inequality, but like these other ones examples, it can trend worse when increasing - privatization or similar capitalistic reforms. Some of these countries like Norway also have even more publically owned goods and companies than countries people think of as socialist, like Venezuela.
Speaking of, Venezuela had the lowest inequality in South America for a long time, although crashing oil prices has impacted that.
I love it when posts like this are made with way more upvotes than downvotes. Sure though, you’re an endangered minority and the commies are out to get you. The most red thing about lemmy are the downvotes that people get for disagreeing with your sentiment.
I’m under no delusions that Western communists have enough popularity or support to actually enact your dreams of a hostile takeover of Europe or the U.S. My only point was that Lemmy is a haven for you and you do make up the majority here, it seems.
I suppose Lemmy allowing for an opinion other than yours to exist makes it a “haven” but I don’t know why you think that’s a bad thing. Something tells me you’d love a dictatorship if it was yours. I bet you also count the deaths of nazis as “deaths under communism”. You don’t know a damned thing about my dreams, and you certainly don’t understand the meaning of “majority” when you think you having way more upvotes than downvotes means people who disagree with you are a majority.
Let’s put the western dogma aside here for just a moment.
The other thing you have to consider is that all governments, authoritarian or democratic are just another institute or system inside of a society.
Due to the human tendency for entropy, everyone has a different idea of what works and what is fair, and in a growing, and increasingly complex world, democratic and authoritarian regimes still somewhat coexist but may attack each other’s systems by disinformation and propaganda campaigns, but 9/10 rationality and conscience will support systems that provide utility and potential for innovation first, second to the next system that simply contains or prevents the worst of human tendencies - the reason is very simple. If you imagine you were born without a conscience or worse, simply to commit familicide, but the only thing holding you back was being busy with a job or doing something more meaningful that made you feel good, you would probably prefer to pick both, but still favour the one that keeps you busy so that you can think of better things to do while your planning something evil so that you can give yourself time to change your mind before you make a decision.
Communism more often than not gives people the short term illusion that they’re doing something useful, like for Che, until they realise they’d arguably still be able to apply the same function within a capitalist or anarcho-communalistic setting, it’s just a question of how useful and how much good do you think you can do before you feel competitive 😉
Good luck and godspeed using that approach with a rural county sheriff’s office in Texas. No, they cannot enforce this, and you should probably just politely deflect the question and gtfo
During Monday’s meeting, the Lubbock County Commissioners Court passed an ordinance banning abortion, abortion-inducing drugs and travel for abortion in the unincorporated areas of Lubbock County
That guy is a bootlicker. He was using disingenuous politeness to attack some dumb tankie earlier and now he’s in here being a contrarian to anyone openly opposing the state. It’s not about abortion for him. He doesn’t want anyone advocating doing something about those motherfuckers because he wants the system in place right or wrong.
You’re missing the right to privacy in your phone. Make sure you didn’t put the clinic into Google maps or make a call to them ahead of time. Governmental AI is on the way and it will be steered by the same people making these rules.
Yep. One should never use a smartphone with the intent of ever breaking a law. It’s nothing but a huge papertrail for law enforcement. Believe in parallel construction and don’t believe stories of safely encrypted data in either iOS or Android.
If you think they are going to get this info directly off your phone, you are pretty naive. It’s social media where they will harvest this data. Locking your phone is like holding your pinky up to avoid getting wet in a storm.
That’s being shortsighted about things. Remember the story of how Target knew a girl was pregnant. You think if they are going to dig for evidence, they wouldn’t just use tactics like that. You won’t have to announce you have had an abortion, but I am sure certain actions that are tracked by social media will scream it out for you. I don’t understand why I am downvoted on my previous post. I am merely trying to warn people about the dangers of letting big companies or govt collect all this information on us. But hey, I guess people don’t care enough to stop it.
I mean, there’s that mother who was jailed because there was evidence of aiding an abortion in her private Facebook messages, so it’s not like there isn’t even immediate precedent.
There’s a complete lack of understanding about privacy on these sites. People will make mistakes, especially younger people seeking abortions. Even adults will make that mistake as seen here.
They don’t. Even when it starts ruining lives and loved ones start disappearing, they won’t give a shit.
They want this. They want others to do anything they want so long as they aren’t inconvenienced or hurt, and if they are, as long as they aren’t rendered homeless, and even then, as long as they aren’t imprisoned.
They are cowed through decades of propaganda, ready for the slaughter.
Target knew she was pregnant because she was buying stuff like pregnancy tests and prenatal vitamins. It wasn’t all that hard to deduce. So yeah, if you’re researching abortion providers or asking your social network to help you obtain an abortion, social media/google will know. But it isn’t some subtle behavior that clues them into it.
Sure, if you are familiar with this person and are close enough to them to know these details it’s probably easy to figure out. The ease of which they can deduce things is only part of the concern. It’s the fact that they can, will, and have used this data against people is the real point here. Once these officials suspect that someone has traversed their county seeking an abortion, it’s just a matter of time before they start submitting subpoenas to various social media for their data on these heinous individuals daring to use their roads for nefarious purposes…
Thats useful, but if I’m doing something where I’m concerned I might have my phone checked (airports, border crossing etc), I’d rather just turn it off off, instead of having to remember to do that, or do it each time I unlock my phone in those circumstances.
I think it would likely be used to add extra charges after the fact ie did you get caught? Then you must have also commited this crime on top of the others. Then again I might be ascribing logic where there is none.
That’s the loophole they’re trying to use. You can’t punish them for the abortion, so you punish them for using public roads for disallowed purposes (driving to abortion). They do have jurisdiction over road use.
They dont really have jurisdiction over road use because of the interstate commerce clause either.
Thats why they claim this bullshit law doesnt cause any conflict, because they aren’t restricting use of the road, they are just “making it easier for private citizens to sue people that help women doing something legal one state over” which is of course restricting use of the road, but pretending its not.
Yeah, it’s absolutely ridiculous and hopefully it won’t stand up to a challenge. But the fact that it exists, and no one wants to be the one going to court to fight the government, means that it will still have an effect on these women.
I’m not super sure that applies here - they aren’t being punished (legally) for getting the abortion, but for using the roads to get there. It seems to me conceptually similar to how European companies aren’t allowed to sell drugs that are used for lethal injection to the US, even though those drugs are legal to sell in Europe: They aren’t being punished for taking part in an execution that’s legal where it happens, just for doing something that enables it in a place where it isn’t legal. Same deal here.
I’m sure it’s an unconstitutional/illegal law for some other reason, I just don’t think this specific reason applies.
There’s two things that apply in this situation. The first is that like several other states, they’re not making getting an abortion in another state illegal, they’re making traveling on their infrastructure for the purposes of obtaining an abortion in another state illegal. Is that an unconstitutional restriction on interstate commerce? Who the fuck knows anymore? I don’t think it will hold, but I didn’t expect Justice Thomas to rise like Cthulhu from his eternal and well grifted slumber to kill Roe, so I’m not offering an opinion on that.
The second way, and this is also worrying me, is that while they can’t make flying to California to smoke pot illegal, they can make having pot in your system when you land back in Texas illegal. If they can’t make having an abortion in CA illegal, can they still use medical records to track that your pregnancy was terminated out of state, and prosecute you on a charge after returning to the state with a terminated pregnancy?
To be honest, I think that will fail too, but I’m sure it’ll land on the books someplace.
I’m also sure that these will all become national level laws because people still think politics is a team sport, and if it does not terrify you that the worst president in the history of the US and with openly fascist statements of taking full control and going after his enemies is running neck and neck with just a regular pre-2000s style politician, you’re either not paying attention or you’re privileged as all fuck.
This is why I as a Canadian can’t fathom why Americans seem to think they have more freedom than I do somehow. To me the whole “States Rights” debacle essentially gives Americans two countries worth of laws that they are bound by instead of one.
The fact the US also enforces it’s laws on non-citizens for things done outside it’s country legally gives the whole thing the sense of the US being drunk on it’s own sovereignty. Like it’s legal to smoke pot here but if you are tricked into mentioning at a US boarder crossing that you EVER smoked weed on Canadian soil even if it was in the distant past you risk being forever barred from entry into the US.
And to be clear this is not their citizens doing things in their own country that are not illegal by the measure of that country’s law. From what I understand there isn’t much of an appeal process either because once it’s done our citizenry suddenly goes into category “not my monkey not my circus”.
The US is very very fond of restriction of freedoms from an outsider perspective.
When pulled over, any interaction beyond what is required by law should be not answered or answered with something along the lines of invoking the 5th. There are a bazillion YouTube lawyers that all the say this.
If you need directions, put in something that isn’t the abortion place, but has it along the way, like a national park or other tourist place, some conference, etc. Then put in the real destination when you get across the border.
Straight up intimidation. Women will now be pulled over and asked questions that are nobody’s business, not to mention it gets more women pulled over and in danger of being assaulted by police.
A cop pulls you over “I don’t answer questions”, “I’d like to speak to a lawyer.”, “I do not consent to a search.”, “I would like to speak to a lawyer.”
If they keep asking questions. Do not respond with anything other than “I would like to speak to a lawyer.” Be polite; but you are far more likely to incriminate yourself than not.
The more you say, they more they can use against you.
make sure to record without unlocking your phone, if that’s the route you’re going to go. Also. Don’t use biometrics to unlock your phone. Use a pin. Less convenient, sure, but your face/fingerprint is “evidence”, but they can’t compel you to give up your pin.
not that it’s going to do much at all. there’s tools that they can use to crack inside of… moments.
These types of laws tend to rely on someone close to the pregnant person calling the cops, usually family. These communities passing these laws are full of people who would eagerly jail their children for getting an abortion.
LEAs have been shown to actively track women who use search engines or messaging services to seek information about abortion services. There’s a non-zero chance that women who they suspect, and their friends and family, are tagged in their system when they search the plates of someone passing by.
It’s not about lying to cops, particularly if they can already prove you were seeking those services in the first place. At that point they’ll arrest you with probable cause.
They already use that kind of system with drug dealers. If they suspect you sell drugs, they will tag your name and plate and find a reason to pull you over if they spot you. Why would they hesitate to track women like that?
We know you’re traveling to get an abortion, we have your messages and search history. It is illegal to use this highway for that purpose. You are under arrest.
Whether they are correct in issuing an arrest doesn’t matter for them because they have qualified immunity. They let the courts sort it out.
I was just having this conversation the other day. The person was absolutely confounded how in the world this law would be enforced. I essentially said that it doesn’t matter. Cops will stop you for whatever, arrest you for whatever, send you to jail for whatever, doesn’t matter. If they’re wrong, oh well, that’s the court’s job.
They could just have checkpoints on the exit roads on the state. There are a lot of things Texas republicans are doing with police, namely allowing them to be border patrol agents with authority to deport people. This, along with precedent being pushed that police can find probable cause after the fact that you’re arrested, police can just arrest first because they saw a women “who looked pregnant.” I foresee women becoming second class citizens really soon in red states, and its really troubling.
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