workercapitalist.com - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The point isn't whether there's a Left or a Right. The point is remaining free to choose between them.

submitted 12 hours ago • 0 comments

Party punditry on the Left sounds like "criticize and wait." Our familiar system is in shambles. We're not moving back into the old house. Act like professionals. Try treating the crisis like a problem you want to solve. What do you want your country to look like in 5 years? Specify. Plan. Act.

submitted 13 hours ago • 0 comments

People get it. Responsible leaders aren't framing it. Frantic competition to stay ahead of ourselves is worse than foolish. Like Q explained to Picard on the Enterprise, "just change the universal gravitational constant..." Change the way you fundamentally think about what's possible. Just do.

submitted 15 hours ago • 0 comments

The business of living is not the business of going to Mars.

submitted 17 hours ago • 0 comments

Extraordinary wealth is 1,000 times the median. People don't come 1,000 times more than a median. Not stronger, smarter, prettier, or anything else. No-one's 1,000 times more than a median, and I object to individual wealth over 1,000 times more than the median.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

Both 'personal liberties' and 'free markets' are oxymorons under monopoly capitalism.

submitted 1 day ago • 0 comments

It won't work—prayer is only effective in secret (Matthew 6:5-6).

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Putting them all in the Cabinet has to be the only way to get this group of Chrinos ever to pretend to pray together.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Ours is an ancient social predicament, perhaps the most basic social predicament. How do we keep what we produce and need for ourselves, without giving most to the aggressive and violent few who inevitably show up, to help themselves and no-one else?

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

If you have an account on X in order to keep up with the sounds of wanton government restructuring, you're needlessly persecuting yourself. Truth is, you simply don't need to listen to liars lying. You'll find out what in fact they're doing quite as quickly—and more accurately—elsewhere.

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

Correct me if I'm wrong: the Democratic Party runs on a business model. To get elected, you contact and impress the Party, which underwrites your advertising and the mechanics of "getting out the vote." Then you legislate for the lobbyists who add funding if you remain Party-certified.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

I've become a grumpy old man, wary of people, with their opinions and expectations. Bluesky is a comfortable place. I'm not coerced to interaction, and others can easily ignore me if they choose. I rarely bump into anyone, but I always know I'm not alone.

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

Capitalism is the way owners organize workers in a market economy to keep as much profit as possible away from those workers. Capital buys equipment to replace workers owners once paid, so owners can keep more profit. Billionaires hope AI will eliminate workers entirely, so they can keep it all.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

It's not clear how the Democratic Party makes decisions, but @hakeem-jeffries.bsky.social knows, and should know, too, that you can't deliver messages via a carrier designed to distort them. Move all Party announcements and conversation to Bluesky, and the Left will follow. Lead! (it'll make news)

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

That emotion surging through working MAGA voters today is embarrassment. Unfortunately, most humans will go to lengths to hide theirs. Some, still bonded by tribal status displays, committed to respect for their shouting MAGA bosses, and outright revering a pompous old windbag, always will.

submitted 4 days ago • 0 comments

@sanders.senate.gov 's "oligarchs" are majority owners in today's monopoly capitalist economy. Historically, they manipulated real scarcity to reward worker groups who enforced their monopolies. Without real scarcity, monopoly capitalism can only succeed by controlling worker opinion. Tricky stuff.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Capitalism is about generating profit, driven by external markets and technical innovation. Historically, monopoly capitalists have been able to use violence, exercised by paid enforcers, to control who got those profits. That's the model billionaires have inherited, and will continue to use.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Christianity without Jesus is not a thing, but the price of pretending is too high for the faithless to believe—and today's return on the grift is way too much to resist.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Jesus was raised a bigot, and a pretty nasty one. He came around. Don't despair of them—these "Christians" can come around.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

During early childhood critical growth periods, I was controlled by a powerful, occasionally psychotic, 'Christian' single mother. What remains of that is my perception that Jesus, as written in the early documents, is a pretty cool guy. I protest what I consider misusing his popularity.

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

I've been arguing for some time that 'Scientism' is as much a religion as 'Christianity' (same underlying psychosocial constructs and orientation mechanisms, different objects). Maybe there's some political wisdom to that.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

It appears the 'Christian' zealots in government are driving out various scientific references to empirical reality with the same enthusiasm rigorous 'Scientists' once drove prayer out of classrooms.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

Whether or not 'Scientism' is politically recognized as religion probably has little bearing on the efficacy of the method—but it may have real protective power under the First Amendment. Constitutionally, we're free to practice what we believe.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

LLMs persuade in whatever personality they're asked to persuade. If you're on Facebook, whatever 'interaction' means there (I've no idea, I've never used Facebook), you'll soon be persuaded—in your own language and character—however Facebook wishes to persuade you. It does, after all, know you well.

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

What Worker Capitalism would do, said 2 ways: Reduce the wealth at the top by eliminating wealth from politics. Take big money out of politics and cap incomes at a million bucks a year. Run this through your imagination. The only way not to recognize it as the solution is by refusing to look.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Imagine every US voter could give a maximum $50 to any one election campaign, and only voters could give. I find that very hard to do. One way is to re-imagine recent elections as if it had been true—would recent results have been the same without paid advertising (or closed source social media)?

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

Be aware, since most people don't, in fact, work with complicated software—it's not that complicated (and rocket science isn't that hard). The fact just a handful of people reportedly drive the 'innovations' in, say, AI, doesn't mean that handful are brilliant. It means that handful are rich.

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

There's no recovering those good old days. Try it with your own youth, or remember the look in your lover's eyes at first. There's only growing up through those memories, to this bright miraculous present, reconstituting our selves—from today's novelty and the best of what came before.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

Being motivated by love for the United States is different than being committed to the Democratic Party. Being committed to the Republican Party today is just being duped...

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

...it seems those struggling voters who "moved past" Donald's immorality to focus on their own (often desperate) needs—really didn't. His crimes are now committed against them.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

We can, if most of us choose to, change government from something that's done to us, into something we do for ourselves.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

We already know everything we need to know. Nothing has changed except the opportunities. And anyhow, if we're all exterminated, it won't mean anything to anyone.

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

How it works: the instant you post on X, xAI can weave your words into the Fox-like propaganda you deplore, and feed it to the faithful and confused. Your presence on X is an attack on yourself. Ask everyone, the Democrats won't lead. @aoc.bsky.social, for the life of the country, dammit—lead!

submitted 10 days ago • 0 comments

We have to be the United States, which is only—because of how people are made—what we imagine we can become. We can't be the opposition to ourselves. We have to be the United States.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

When I was a little boy there was a war in Vietnam and it was on TV. Somebody said, "this is the first war we're watching on TV." Some of the old high school boys went away to play in it. Somebody said, "war is good for the economy."

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Try seeing our political predicament as an effort by leaders to direct growing popular unrest away from the source of the unrest, toward the reliable old scapegoats of class, race, gender, and whatever might piss people off. Then wonder why, because fixing the real problem doesn't hurt anybody.

submitted 11 days ago • 0 comments

Try thinking of extraordinary wealth in a community like a tumor in a body. It derives from the same materials and instructions as the baseline prosperity in a culture, but, mutated, it grows uncontrollably until it distorts its environment, and threatens the surrounding population.

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I'm aware "freedom of the press" isn't much of a thing, faced with deep-pocketed litigants, who would surely show up, but if we're hurting, it might help to have a well-researched app, a real time feed, in one place, detailing the suffering, imprisoned, and dead—with their associated "budget cut."

submitted 12 days ago • 0 comments

I think what's called "socialism," (or worse, "Marxism!") is really just the "labor" side of "capitalism," but it's presented as a "revolution"—a wrenching change in "the way we live." Like, "they're gonna make us all wear tight green shorts and silly buckled shoes..."

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Structurally imposed wealth constraints and universally equivalent access to the political process are radically different configurations of the same system we all know and love—but it's the same system we all know and love.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

While the Constitution wisely prohibits government's "abridging the freedom of speech," it really doesn't try to prevent anyone else from doing so. "Originally," would the framers have cared about speaking machines that can manipulate the opinions of entire populations?

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

We rely on popular punditry, as a society, to coalesce around simple messages, originating from a universe of conversations on our streets. The messages are amplified through political megaphones, arriving finally as group decisions at ballot boxes. Social media rewrites the messages at every point.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

I don't struggle with powerlessness any more. I am, as you are. Societies are emergent phenomena, and we are each as effective as any individual neuron which combines to emerge as consciousness in a brain. We're more fortunate than neurons, I think, because we get to watch. And maybe flip a switch.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

In a nutshell, then, Democrats ignored 3/4 of the US population while partying in their affluent class castle, and Republicans gleefully harnessed resultant despair by promising to tear it down. Democrats can choose to fix themselves (campaign finance amendment!)—or forget it.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

What I mean by 'campaign finance amendment (CFA):' Every individual and organization is limited to the same maximum contribution to any political election campaign. Say, maybe, 2 hours' worth of middle class pay. Fundamental change. Very hard to think through.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

So, how to run for office after the CFA? Say you've got 20 thousand constituents. Half (at $50 per) give you $500K. You run a website, spread some social content, host some podcasts. If you can't win on $500K, you shouldn't get into office. We need leaders who live in today's community, today.

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

This is important to me: believing there's a path forward. Not just that there is a path, but that I know where it is. And I've found one. I'm certain the preponderance of Americans approve of getting money out of politics. Since voters want it out, the only obstacle is—money in politics.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments

Today I can buy desktop hardware to run an LLM—and download the LLM. Today! A bit of engineering, and we'll capture an entire inbound browser stream, strip it of advertising content, and render it to my display. Browsing without ads, while the browsed websites see everything as normal—but no sales.

submitted 17 days ago • 0 comments