But, while the divide between the rich and the rest has certainly grown, how can it be claimed that we can’t afford the rich? Here’s a short answer.
Their wealth is mostly dependent ultimately on the production of goods and services by others and siphoned off through dividends, capital gains, interest, rent and speculation, and much of it is hidden in tax havens. They are able to dominate economic life and dominate politics and the media, so their special interests and view of the world come to restrict what democracies can do. Their consumption is excessive and wasteful and diverts resources away from the more needy and deserving. Their carbon footprints are grotesquely inflated and many have an interest in continued fossil fuel production and economic growth, threatening the planet.
whenever you’re thinking about ‘keeping children safe online’ remember that 'parental controls’ on internet use (more accurately, domestic spyware) are statistically three times as likely to be keeping a child’s abuser informed about them than to be keeping them safe from predatory strangers, because family members account for 30% of CSA perpetrators and strangers account for 10% (the other 60% is split between family friends and acquaintances and people in trusted positions of authority like doctors and priests)
posting this exchange because i disagree with the first replier but i also think the second replier is a really bad and incorrect reply to what they’re saying. it is of course true that the current supply chain for electronics is founded upon tremendous and horrific exploitation at basically every level of production. but i think ‘red’ here is making an assumption–that this sort of exploitation is inextricable from the very concept of building electronic devices–that doesn’t hold up at all.
for a start, there are lots of obvious and simple ways to vastly vastly reduce the production requirements of computers and cellphones in the absence of a profit motive. build phones and computers that last, that can be repaired by anybody, instead of junk with planned obsolescence and proprietary firmware. without apple or samsung trying to make a profit, there’s no reason for anyone to be replacing their cellphone every two years.
and secondly, i think that unlike 24/7 year-round global Banana Access, there is a very obvious and very compelling case for the production of cellphones and computers to continue in the absence of a profit motive, which is that access to them immeasurably benefits society by providing new networks of communication, new tools for administration and organization, and other tremendous advantages for quality of life. socialists throughout history obviously understood this – that’s why OGAS and CyberSyn were attempted! there is nothing about the object of a portable computer and communications device that necessitates it being built in inhumane conditions by exploited workers. everything about it could be built, like anything else under socialism, by workers with democratic control over their workplace and production. the marxist critique of capitalist and imperialist production does not lead to 'and therefore nothing should ever be made’ !
This article pulls zero punches. Incomplete list of potential triggers: miscarriage, medical neglect, loss of fertility, infant death, vomit, maternal trauma, mention of genetic and birth defects, and forced pregnancy.
The women named in this article have suffered, terribly, unnecessarily, because state law makers meddled in matters they didn’t understand.
