@pluralistic In the ongoing contest between capitalists and neofeudalists, I would say that progressively minded people should be wary of choosing an alliance with either side. Both are powerfully aligned on a common goal of managing public sentiment and suppressing popular organizing against their interests, the capitalists with their interest in preserving unchecked capability to exploit labor, and the neofeudalists with their interest preserving unchecked capability to expropriate wealth. Neither can tolerate seeing the tools of state power being used to serve the interests of the peasantry.

@pluralistic this sounds a lot like early Marxist thinking. Marx originally thought the bourgeois class would help bring in a more egalitarian society, but in the failed revolution of 1848 they just grabbed power and turned it on the workers who helped them.

As much as it's fun to cheer these wannabe billionaires on as they fight the incumbents (i know i am 🍿), they are not on our side. The pigs will take over the farmhouse if we don't stick together.

@pluralistic

Thinking about this and your article about all the ai big tech companies propping up the stock market by buying gpus from nvidia, I think we can now say that we are in an arms race to see what big tech company can control the largest portion of AI possible so that they can extract all the rents from all the smaller ai startups.

@pluralistic broken link fyi

ONE DAY LEFT!

Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller Red Team Blues and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/doctorow/red-team-blues-auf-deutsche-drm-freie

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