Good that those things are taught in some places. I can only speak from my own experience in high school - we were required to have laptops for school but were never taught how to be safe online.

Some people put their whole lives on the internet and never once stop to think if it’s a good idea. Then again, online safety and security are never taught or communicated, at least in the west, maybe by design.

Ok so they’re not allowed to use Azure OpenAI, but there’s certainly a secret Microsoft department called Thin-Blue-Line ClosedAI which provides support to cops using AI for facial recognition and pre-crime.

So they’ll just start shoveling wood into coal power plants in 2030 and unfurl the “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Digital surveillance is omnipresent in the west. Apparently nobody cares.

From my reading Hudson’s Superimperialism is an more an extension of Lenin’s Imperialism, based on how material conditions had evolved over the interim fifty years and the lessons learned from (at initial publication) the first generation or so of US dollar hegemony. To simplify it maybe too much, it adds a monetary dimension to the already established framework of finance capital being the driving force behind imperialism.

Superimperialism is indeed the same English term often used for Kautsky’s Überimperialismus hypothesis. Yet apart from the initial parallel of a global cartel, ie. dollar hegemony, I don’t see much of Kautsky’s ideas represented in Hudson’s work, but I’m also not terribly familiar with überimperialism.

For an actual explanation for what happened in 1971, economically and monetarily at least, go ahead and read Michael Hudson’s Superimperialism and Global Fracture. Superimperialism was so prescient at its original publishing that the US government itself used the book and the theory as a manual on how to be better superimperialists right back around 1971, and hired Hudson as a consultant.

I won’t comment on the fascist economics presented in the linked website.

Still no worse than the worst of the male grifters.

There are better systems. A distance or time window based fare seems like the best way, until societies have developed to the point where public transportation is free at the point of use.

Germany has done well with the €49 per month “Germany ticket”, which includes all urban and regional commuter trains across the country. If you want to take a high speed long distance train there is some weird surge and/or bucket based pricing. Depending on when you book the same trip can cost anywhere from €29 to €180. In comparison neighbouring countries like Switzerland or Netherlands have flat distance based fares for most services.

Alternatively many countries offer flex tickets, in which you book a section of travel, say from one city to another, and you have the full day to make that trip however it works for you.

Remember ten years ago when massive German subsidies were the driving force behind the dropping price of solar panels globally, and western media made a fuss about it? Yeah, me neither.

The way China has been developing (in broad strokes: state supported import substitution and resource nationalism) is exactly the way western imperialist powers developed. Yes I’m ignoring the class characteristics of this development, these are crucial as well, but just in terms of development policy China is doing something very similar to what Britain and the US did in order to develop their productive forces.

There are two requirements the US ruling class has for internet connected tech: surveillance opportunities and content distribution and censorship capabilities.

That’s why we saw the fuss about Huawei five years ago, and that’s why there’s been a fuss about TikTok over the last five years as well. Huawei isn’t a US military or intelligence adjacent or contracted company, so the NSA and Co can’t roll in and mandate backdoors into Huawei’s networking products. The TikTok available in the imperial core, while already being somewhat controlled by the US military-intelligence apparatus already, still doesn’t allow for enough surveillance and equally importantly doesn’t allow for enough content control. The US ruling class knows it’s losing the narrative war, and is trying everything it can to reign that in.

What politicians actually believe doesn’t really matter. Some have bathed in the kool-aid, others know it’s just theater. What really matters is what the capitalists believe, and they are pretty clear on what they have to do to maintain power.

I could and I probably should. We used to have the 9-15 core time but that was completely dropped at some point. Still hasn’t changed the cultural expectation that you’re available from 7 or so onwards.

CIA involvement with Nazis predates the CIA itself.

The Silicon Valley thieves are just copying and stealing from over a century of US industrial strategy.

This has been pretty common in German offices for the last five to ten years but it’s all a facade. Sure you are allowed to put in your eight hours (or less) however you like from 6:00 to 21:00 or so, but in reality you’re there from 8-16 because that’s when your coworkers are there and calling you and scheduling meetings. I’ve often been teased for “sleeping in” for showing up and returning calls at 8:30 by colleagues who start at 6:30.

At least everyone respects your free time in the evenings and there’s no expectation that you answer emails or messages after 16:00 or so. Not yet anyway.

Full disclosure, I’m not a metalhead by any means, and Metallica isn’t always considered pure metal, but this one hits just right.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQvLsifMZIE

They care about surveillance alright. They just need to be the ones surveilling and reality inventing.

Large private companies are effectively the state, so the term nationalisation isn’t so far from the truth.

To be fair, it’s not hard to beat expectations when the expectation of the western press is “imminent collapse!!!”