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“Oh yeah, well capitalism built your iPhone”
“I am going to mail you a bomb” :a-guy:
i said this exact line of reasoning to my chud relatives a few times and they agreed with it but then one of them called Ted Kaczynski a “great man” and the “only good leftist” so that was fun
Leftists who are critical of the left are rare as hen’s teeth. You know the saying: “no friends to the right, no enemies to the left”. Thus any criticism of the left from the left feels like a breath of fresh air to the right. “It’s not just us!” they cry in relief. Of course, that’s the whole point of that maxim, to starve them of their air supply, to deny them the social proof that gives people strength. If people are saying something and nobody else is, they’ll eventually lose heart and shut up. Any leftist who criticizes the left is incredibly harmful, like Glenn Greenwald, Jimmy Dore, etc.
The Unabomber Manifesto is pretty critical of the left and I don’t know if this man should be being praised. I’d quote from it…but, you know.
I mean…we SHOULD have some principled luddism. Some technology enables awful, antisocial behavior.
That’s probably a decision better left to a collective decision, but a lot of it is “how” versus “what,” versus “is it worth it.”
For example, networked devices/IOT are not inherently bad, but is that where we should put resources and labor?
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We Should we be using them to but not in a capitalist way. We should use them keep detailed maintenance logs and make sure access use is equitable at the local tool library.
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Do they give us an opportunity for surveillance that we should simply not even have?
Clothes Dryers, for one thing. I remember a while back I was looking into ways to reduce my electric bill/footprint and I learned the hard way that the HOA where I used to live bans you from using a clothesline to dry your shit.
It’s all about asking the question “is this technological solution actually an improvement, and is that improvement worth all of the costs associated with getting it?” Under capitalism the drive is to sell as many devices as possible with no regard to the downstream costs of adding them. It’s easy to see where that drive clearly goes too far as it often does with terrible kickstarters for $500 DRM-protected juicing machines, but it would be worthwhile for society to apply that lens of analysis to every technological solution that we’ve come to take for granted.
public funding made everything that goes into an iPhone anyway, like GPS
