New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
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Footnote: the outcome of the Epstein/Gates email itself is immaterial—what's interesting is the mind set underlying it, which seems to have strong explanatory power for our current mess: there are too many poor people, and Epstein and his mates would like to get rid of us.
@cstross And the thing to understand about being "poor", is that that includes everything up to the very tippy top of upper middle class!!
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@cstross The problem is not the billionaires, in a democracy it's the most numerous who win, not the richest. The reason the left almost always loses is purely self-harm and splittism for instance: https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3mfcdb62pp22r the left has been doing this to itself since the 1917 March revolution. Fix the left instead of going "booho billionaires rule both parties". Hitler himself won in large part because of "nach Hitler kommt wir" ideas of the communists.
@trademark Democracy does not run on victory to the most numerous these days, it runs on victory to the most indoctrinated. Which goes with the money.
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Footnote: the outcome of the Epstein/Gates email itself is immaterial—what's interesting is the mind set underlying it, which seems to have strong explanatory power for our current mess: there are too many poor people, and Epstein and his mates would like to get rid of us.
@cstross
It is the intersection of the degrees of selfishness & foresightedness. If your level of selfishness is "the good of all mankind" you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accomodation, etc; if "me and my family" you get traditional aristocratic behaviour; if "me & nobody else" you treat everyone else as objects, which can be disposed of at your whim- mass disposal of the poor on a par with a neat close-cropped lawn. -
@cstross The problem is not the billionaires, in a democracy it's the most numerous who win, not the richest. The reason the left almost always loses is purely self-harm and splittism for instance: https://bsky.app/profile/georgemonbiot.bsky.social/post/3mfcdb62pp22r the left has been doing this to itself since the 1917 March revolution. Fix the left instead of going "booho billionaires rule both parties". Hitler himself won in large part because of "nach Hitler kommt wir" ideas of the communists.
@trademark @cstross In the 2025 Reith lecture, Rutger Bregman makes the point that if somebody agrees with you 70%, that person ought to be your ally. The left is demanding levels of purity far, far higher and that harms their position.
Look at Evangelical Fundamentalists and Tech Bros. They have about as much in common as (as you mentioned Hitler) the German Adel had with the Socialist part of the NSDAP. Their only common goal was to get rid of the democratic institutions. That's not even close to 70% agreement.
So, how can the Left get jointly behind the idea of saving the western democratic model instead of bickering with the people's front of Judea? -
New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross
IIRC per your journal you've previously come to the conclusion that the planet is about 100% beyond its maximum sustainable carrying capacity (given our current tech base).
It appears that they may agree. -
@trademark @cstross In the 2025 Reith lecture, Rutger Bregman makes the point that if somebody agrees with you 70%, that person ought to be your ally. The left is demanding levels of purity far, far higher and that harms their position.
Look at Evangelical Fundamentalists and Tech Bros. They have about as much in common as (as you mentioned Hitler) the German Adel had with the Socialist part of the NSDAP. Their only common goal was to get rid of the democratic institutions. That's not even close to 70% agreement.
So, how can the Left get jointly behind the idea of saving the western democratic model instead of bickering with the people's front of Judea?@jsl @trademark You're missing nuances not specific to the US (you mentioned a Reith lecture!). Here in the UK, the Labour party is de facto politically the Conservative party of 20 years ago: they're absolutely not remotely on the left any more, and they're pursuing dangerously authoritarian policies in many areas. I submit that it's not "purity" to oppose Tories in pink ties, it's realism.
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@cstross
IIRC per your journal you've previously come to the conclusion that the planet is about 100% beyond its maximum sustainable carrying capacity (given our current tech base).
It appears that they may agree.@SoftwareTheron No, our planet is beyond its *long term* carrying capacity. We've already passed peak birth rate and even without pandemics or billionaire-induced genocide there will be more than a billion fewer people on earth in 2126 than there are in 2026. It's a self-correcting problem within a period of a couple of centuries, and we can probably survive that long on our current tech base.
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@SoftwareTheron No, our planet is beyond its *long term* carrying capacity. We've already passed peak birth rate and even without pandemics or billionaire-induced genocide there will be more than a billion fewer people on earth in 2126 than there are in 2026. It's a self-correcting problem within a period of a couple of centuries, and we can probably survive that long on our current tech base.
@cstross @SoftwareTheron we could also do a lot of things a lot cheaper if we actually assigned the costs properly. Excess air travel would be self correcting if it had to cover the full costs for example.
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@cstross And the thing to understand about being "poor", is that that includes everything up to the very tippy top of upper middle class!!
@GinevraCat @cstross And that includes "upper middle class" as defined in any reasonable sense of the phrase - having to work for a living, but able to absorb serious medical expenses or extended disability, or take vacations in more pleasant times - which includes, in the USA, anyone with an annual income under around $300K.
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@GinevraCat @cstross And that includes "upper middle class" as defined in any reasonable sense of the phrase - having to work for a living, but able to absorb serious medical expenses or extended disability, or take vacations in more pleasant times - which includes, in the USA, anyone with an annual income under around $300K.
@callisto @GinevraCat Yep. The gap between a billionaire and a mere millionaire is vastly bigger than the gap between average-middle-class and a millionaire.
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New blog entry: More in Sadness than in Anger: https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2026/02/more-in-sadness-than-in-anger.html
@cstross Eat the rich before they eat us.
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@trademark @cstross In the 2025 Reith lecture, Rutger Bregman makes the point that if somebody agrees with you 70%, that person ought to be your ally. The left is demanding levels of purity far, far higher and that harms their position.
Look at Evangelical Fundamentalists and Tech Bros. They have about as much in common as (as you mentioned Hitler) the German Adel had with the Socialist part of the NSDAP. Their only common goal was to get rid of the democratic institutions. That's not even close to 70% agreement.
So, how can the Left get jointly behind the idea of saving the western democratic model instead of bickering with the people's front of Judea?@jsl @trademark @cstross What you're missing about "the left" in the USA is that (1) for the most part, they don't exist, still victim of the purges of the 1950s; and (2) the only reason we (a pronoun I use loosely) seem disunified is that the strategy of the Official Opposition
️ is to throw out test balloons of which vulnerable people to discard this week, then when opposition to *that* is led disproportionately by folks most directly impacted, then scream "you're tearing us apart." -
@cstross While I am in France, I still fall short of that. There again, there’s a joke in there about guillotines and falling short.
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@trademark Democracy does not run on victory to the most numerous these days, it runs on victory to the most indoctrinated. Which goes with the money.
@cstross Cheap excuse to deny the left's own agency. The left can't stop billionaries from spending their own money. What the left can do is to stop sabotaging themselves. If they can do that they will win. The left has been screwing themselves over for more than a 100 years though, this is not new.
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@SoftwareTheron No, our planet is beyond its *long term* carrying capacity. We've already passed peak birth rate and even without pandemics or billionaire-induced genocide there will be more than a billion fewer people on earth in 2126 than there are in 2026. It's a self-correcting problem within a period of a couple of centuries, and we can probably survive that long on our current tech base.
@cstross @SoftwareTheron That's assuming both no gain in efficiency and no change in underlying lifestyle (the part that has the most easy gains to make). -
@feorag I still think we should invest in guillotine futures!
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@jsl @trademark You're missing nuances not specific to the US (you mentioned a Reith lecture!). Here in the UK, the Labour party is de facto politically the Conservative party of 20 years ago: they're absolutely not remotely on the left any more, and they're pursuing dangerously authoritarian policies in many areas. I submit that it's not "purity" to oppose Tories in pink ties, it's realism.
@cstross @jsl ' I submit that it's not "purity" to oppose Tories in pink ties, it's realism.' If that turns out to be true this time, we'll have a case of "the boy who cried wolf", the rhetoric is always the same no matter what. This sort of behaviour was annoying enough when it only brought tory misrule, now it can very well bring in actual fascism, just like it did in 1932.
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@cstross
It is the intersection of the degrees of selfishness & foresightedness. If your level of selfishness is "the good of all mankind" you want to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accomodation, etc; if "me and my family" you get traditional aristocratic behaviour; if "me & nobody else" you treat everyone else as objects, which can be disposed of at your whim- mass disposal of the poor on a par with a neat close-cropped lawn.Enlightened Selfishness: I wish to live free of the fear of starving, freezing, or being shot at. Therefore I wish to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accommodation, etc.
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@cstross @jsl ' I submit that it's not "purity" to oppose Tories in pink ties, it's realism.' If that turns out to be true this time, we'll have a case of "the boy who cried wolf", the rhetoric is always the same no matter what. This sort of behaviour was annoying enough when it only brought tory misrule, now it can very well bring in actual fascism, just like it did in 1932.
@trademark @jsl Labour is pursuing a bunch of very unpleasant policies—institutionalizing transphobia, banning sex education for kids, banning immigration, social media surveillance, reclassifying free speech as "terrorism"—to say nothing of pandering to the far right and running a massive rearmament program (the latter might, alas, be necessary this time round). They're trying to recapture the Tory voters who have deserted for Reform. They're going to turn Labour fascist if they continue.
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Enlightened Selfishness: I wish to live free of the fear of starving, freezing, or being shot at. Therefore I wish to eliminate poverty by giving everyone enough food, accommodation, etc.
