@darkling @feorag The point is not to "fund government" since any country with a sovereign currency can never run out of money, so the conversion percentage really doesn't matter. The point is to remove power from a bunch of toxic psychopaths, so that the government can perform its basic function of stopping its citizens from dying unnecessarily

@cstross @jsl As I said, if it turns out to be true THIS TIME, it will be a case of "the boy who cried wolf". Assuming what you're saying is true, I would guess that Labour's leadership must have seen what happened to the most left-leaning US president ever and decided to overcompensate in the other direction. In the current situation I would recommend you spend 95% of effort on warning about reform and the remaining time on whatever labour is doing.

@Colman This is the conclusion I have also reached. TLDR: all mineral extraction should be taxed at a rate sufficient to cover the costs (best estimate) of fixing the environmental damage caused by how it is processed and used.

(...and the revenue generated thereby should be used to, you know, fix said damage -- or reuse/recycle materials as much as possible to minimize it. e.g. pay people to repair and upgrade electronics, rather than grinding them up and sending the results to the poor side of town, locally or globally. Pay people to repair clothes and furniture. Pay for recycling plastics that aren't "cost-effective" to recycle. Pay for research into better ways to recycle things. Dump billions or trillions into mass transit, because it's so much more efficient than cars. ...and so on)

@cstross @SoftwareTheron

@callisto @jsl @cstross No, the left was always going hard after Biden, the more left somebody are the more they are criticized by the left. Even when he forgave the student debt, they claimed it was his fault the courts struck it down and gave him no credit for even trying.

@trademark @cstross Yes, sorry, I'm not familiar with either US or UK nuances. Just surprised and unable to reconcile the ideas of the eponymous Labour movement with what is coming out of Westminster.

@MedeaVanamonde @cstross
It's their ideas which are toxic, not their flesh. But if you really want, put them all in a rocket & fire them into a lunar impact with enough velocity to create a crater visible by eye from the Earth, as a warning to future generations.

RE: https://wandering.shop/@cstross/116108349700425602

@cstross

> The class war has turned hot. And we're all on the losing side.

@cstross
But.

You cannot give up on self interest without consequences, no matter how much you dislike self interest looking like helping other people...

In fact, I'd argue it's *very quickly* unsustainable if you're left to your own devices.

I just hope it's quick enough.

@javierg @cstross How is Gates responsible for millions of deaths during the pandemic?

@jsl @trademark Labour has drifted sharply to the right ever since John Smith (leader before Blair) died suddenly in 1994. The last even remotely non-right-wing leader was Jeremy Corbyn, who was hounded out of the party in 2019 by the ratfuckers who backed Starmer.

@trademark @cstross And as Labour is so far to the right, why aren't there more parties to the left, besides the Greens maybe? Are voters more conservative than on the continent, despite apparent deprivation in large parts of the country?

@cstross I was just thinking the other day that efficiency *is* fragility and, conversely, that redundancy is an aspect of resilience.

@jef

@parkrosepermaculture often wears guillotine earrings...

@feorag @cstross

@jsl @trademark Here in Scotland, the SNP poll higher than Labour and the Tories combined—and are to the left of Labour. The equivalent niche in England is occupied by the LibDems who have the wrong kind of history but are nevertheless doing well enough the right-wing media scrupulously sideline them.

It's not that the voters are conservative but that the ENTIRE media environment is hard right.

@MedeaVanamonde @cstross @HighlandLawyer too many toxins getting into the food supply.
Dissolve them in piranha solution, and use the liquor as chemical feedstock.

@cstross @trademark The media's bias is indeed something I had to learn is true

@cstross Wow what?! This is the first time I've seen that quote.

I mean the charitable read is "how do we end poverty" but even then that is a HELL of a way to phrase that if so?! And it's hard to give these people the benefit of the doubt rn

@cstross I mean the entire thing of the Epstein files is wanting to think "it can't actually be that, this must be a misrepresentation" and then it's ACTUALLY that and WORSE than what you'd first think so I mean, I guess we should read it in the worst face value way

@cstross

It's the entire attitude of the ultra rich class that they did this all by themselves with so little effort and obviously nobody else is worth a damn and why can't they be smart and rich like us?

They don't even realize they're simply grifting off the rest of us.

@cstross

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

the Guardian (www.theguardian.com)