For a while the ruling class managed to convince people that it really was the end of history.

Systemd was designed long after a lot of these security practices and problems with tracking were well understood. There’s very little excuse for it doing a lot of the things it does. Systemd is literally re-architecting how Linux was meant to work originally, and for the worse. I get the impression you’re not actually familiar with the history of Linux or Unix philosophy in general.

Having to put everything into containers is really just a work around bad architecture that keeps being pushed in the Linux world. Containers are useful, and probably the only way to actually keep apps from having too much access to the system at this point, but I don’t see why bad architecture should be accepted and then have to be worked around.

Browsers aren’t just apps, they’re effectively platforms which run all kinds of apps you end up accessing online when you visit sites. Since the browser leaks the id to these apps, you’re effectively trusting the apps. Sure, you could run your browser in a VM or whatever, but that’s missing the point entirely. The real question is why your machine needs to have a unique identifier, and why the fuck it’s baked into functionality of systemd which is now replacing the traditional tool chain with a monolith.

And yes, I’m fully aware of other metadata that the browser leaks, and the fact that people are just starting to talk about that is also a problem. Running with Js disabled or putting a browser in a VM, is not really a solution for vast majority of people. The issue is that we have systems that are designed to enable tracking by default, and you have to jump through hoops to get around that. Telling people here are the hoops isn’t really helpful.

The browser itself is one of the biggest vectors of attacks here. Both Chrome and Firefox indirectly via libdbus, read your machine-id. Firefox shares browsing data and other unique info with ‘with partners, service providers, suppliers and contractors’ including Cloudflare and Google.

It’s an interesting social phenomenon how most people tend to gravitate towards whatever style happens to be dominant at the time. And it’s not that certain ones are inherently better than others as we see styles cycle over time.

seems like it

Yup, American empire is collapsing and we’re going to be living in a whole different world going forward.

Exactly, the rich can see crashes coming early, so they pull out of liquidity to protect their assets. As a bonus, when the crash happens, they can swoop in and buy up the assets others are forced to let go on the cheap. So, each crisis ends up acting as a black Friday for billionaires and a massive wealth transfer to the top.

A lot of it will get moved into physical assets like property. There’s also been a huge investment boom in HK because people are realizing Chinese economy is more stable now. Similar situation with Singapore since Asia is expected to be doing better than the west thanks to China being the stabilizing force there.

Right, because they’re just the socially conservative wing of liberalism. They’re fully on board with economic liberalism.

Marx argued that capitalism had built in contradictions that would eventually make it unsustainable. He basically predicted capitalism would collapse under its own weight, but didn’t specify how long it would take to finish dying. Things like falling rates of profit, ever worsening crises, and the immiseration of the working class are all precisely the things we see unfolding around us today. At some point all these problems must reach a breaking point where the system as a whole can no longer function.

Arguably, Marx underestimated the ability of the capitalist system to adapt and it ultimately proved more flexible at kicking the can down the road than he gave it credit for. Marx also thought the crisis would hit the most advanced industrial nations such as Britain and Germany first. Instead, capitalism fueled imperialism exporting its worst exploitation to the Global South. The core countries got to enjoy relative stability partly because the worst human abuses and extraction happen elsewhere.

Lenin followed Marx’s logic and argued that Western capitalists used superprofits from colonies to bribe their own working class with higher wages to buy off revolutionary potential. Basically, the system managed to survive this long by making the Western working class comfortable enough to not want to burn it all down.

Who cares about them, the polls I linked show that there’s already a critical mass of people who support socialism. These are the rational people to focus organizing efforts on.

our whole society is inherently a social construct

It’s important to note that liberalism is fundamentally a right wing ideology which consists of two main parts. First you have political liberalism which focuses on all the wholesome ideas we hear about such as individual freedoms and democracy. But the second part is economic liberalism which deals with free markets, private property, and wealth accumulation. These two aspects form a contradiction. Political liberalism purports to support everyone’s freedom, while economic liberalism enshrines private property rights as sacred in laws and constitutions, effectively removing them from political debate.

As a result, liberalism inevitably justifies the use of state violence to safeguard property rights, over supporting ordinary people, which directly contradicts the promises of fairness and equality. Private property being seen as a key part of individual freedom under liberalism provides the foundational justification for the rich to keep their wealth while ignoring the needs of everyone else. Thus, all the talk of freedom and democracy ends up being nothing more than a fig leaf to provide cover for justifying capitalist relations.

Weird say to talk about a grounded article explaining how socialists adapt to real world material conditions in Cuba. Your whole assertion that this is somehow a win for the US is itself absurd. Do you even understand the purpose of markets or what role they play in an economy?

The Long Depression dissects the ongoing crisis of profitability that has defined capitalism since the 1970s which rendered all post-war booms fragile and temporary. It explains why a return to sustained high growth impossible without a massive destruction of capital value such as a major war or a deep depression.

Would you care to explain how, in your mind, these things are in any way connected.

nice find