dil [he/him, comrade/them]

Garbage country :(

I guess I’m kinda hesitant to raise awareness though?

On one hand, it’s obviously absolutely fucked up and needs to be rectified.

… But we can’t raise awareness for just the people who want to help, and I’m very scared about bad people learning about a vulnerable population that can’t do anything to hold them accountable.

And what’s the fix? Are we gonna try overturning a supreme court decision? With this supreme court? Under this administration?

I think the realistic option is that communities use The Power of Incredible Violence, and I don’t think they need more folks aware of their situation to do so.

(Edit: want to clarify - I don’t think you should take this post down! Hexbear is probably the closest thing to a spot where you can raise awareness only for folks that want to help. I meant the above about sharing outside here.)

Honestly, having a combination of competency and indifference is perfect for a wage labor job.

If you’re competent, software engineering is the best wage labor in terms of dollars per amount of effort (though I’m very biased).

Most folks come in with a ton of passion, then burn out in a few years because they overwork themselves.

Something I’ve noticed is that it takes a bit of time to get your feet under you at a new job, but if you’re able to make a good impression and develop trust, you’ll generally be given a lot of liberty in your day to day.

Ideally, you’ll find an aspect of the work that you enjoy, and can devote your time to it. e.g. I’m a big fan of good data and monitoring, but needed to try a bunch of stuff to learn that.

Also hard agree with woodenghost’s reply - I think the market is starting to shift for SWEs to one where unions will be beneficial, and if you’re able to engage with that I’d recommend it.

And from experience… there’s a lot to be said for not making your passion into your job. All jobs will be tedious and frustrating at times, and they can suck the enjoyment out of something you enjoy.

This essay has stuck in my head regarding types of folks at a company (and looking at it now it maps pretty well onto Marxist class theory). If you’re working at any job at any company, you should have an idea of which camp you want to be in, and then play that role.

Deep sea: “Comrades, we need your help”

:doomjak:

I did a bit of a dive into race and wealth in the other reply here. Yeah, white people as a whole are extremely well off. The surprising take aways for me is that 1. there’s so, so many white people and 2. that most of the poorest folks are white.

And re ignorance: kinda yeah - I think most people just kinda believe what they’re told, right? Humans are social more than rational.

My parents were Republican and Christian, so I was Republican and Christian. As I got older, I believed what my friends believed. It wasn’t until I had a partner specifically, persistently ask me what I believed that I started to develop my own independent value system.

Everyone should decide what they believe for themselves, but I think tons of people live their whole lives just based on the vibe of their social circle. That goes double for white folks, who the system works great for and who would rather not even think about race (see: “I’m not racist, I don’t see color!”).

I also think our perceptions of the world are shaped by the media we consume. Capitalists own the majority of that media, and they have a vested interest in people not coming to the conclusion that they are suffering under capitalism.

Imo, ignorance is much more likely than malice for white folks, and so yeah I think that requires education and explanation (like the quote says).

Oh, but it should def be white folks teaching white folks. I don’t mean to put that on other groups.

Oh sorry I just reread your post and I missed the second “not” in you first sentence, which really changes the meaning haha

I definitely had a different view: that white folks were also exploited under capitalism, just to a lesser degree. I looked up a few stats and I still think that generally, but the gap is way bigger than I thought.

63% of America is white, 12% black, 11% multiracial, 6% Asian

59% of Americans in 2025 don’t have enough savings to cover an unexpected $1,000 emergency expense

It’s not a perfect measure, but I’m comfortable saying “most Americans are living on the edge.” Even if we round down to 50% and assume every single non-white person is below that line, that would still leave 13% of America white folks living on the edge.

Which is more than the entire population of black Americans (12%), which tbh I did not expect. (Note: I’m kinda suspect of the ‘multiracial’ bucket as it applies to how folks experience systemic racism, since iiuc that tends to be more like the family guy skin color ok/not ok meme. i.e. I assume that there are a decent number of folks in the 11% ‘multiracial’ bucket that experience anti-black racism)

I really like this article, too, specifically median wealth by race and the households by “teirs” of wealth.

Because holy shit there are so many well-off white folks and yeah, as a whole they’re rolling in it.

“Households with no wealth or in debt” (poorest 11% of the overall population) shows 9% of white households have zero or negative wealth, compared to 24% of black households. Applied to the overall population, that’s 6% and 3%, respectively. Which… challenges my intuition. I would not expect white folks to make up the majority of the poorest group of Americans.

Honestly, I think the biggest takeaway for me is that there’s an absolute shitload of white people. As a group they’re incredibly well off, but there’s also a huge number of struggling white folks.

What I’d really like to see is the racial makeup of each wealth percentile, something like this graph, but scaled by the absolute number of folks in each category, not by the percentage of a given race that falls in each bucket. Looks like the underlying data is published by the government, so I might try to do it myself sometime.

Exactly!! People are exploited and they know it, they’re just often ignorant of the cause.

America is deeply racist, and fascists stoke those flames to explain why people are exploited.

I think the quote is still relevant because a ton of our work is explaining to people “no, treats aren’t more expensive because woke, it’s because capitalism.”

What distinguishes neoliberal capitalism from fascist capitalism? Not trying to make a “they’re the same picture” joke, just trying to understand.

In my head, they’re the same economic system (where markets tend to centralize), just with different techniques and messaging to the masses.

Neoliberalism: feel-good concessions, “you too can get rich if you work hard,” and directing discontent towards electoralism

Fascism: violence, “look what they took from us,” and directing discontent at demonization of out-groups

I don’t think Trump gets elected if the white dipshits are content with their material conditions, though?

I think there’s real discontent in America in 2025, even with how privileged Americans are globally. I think that discontent is ultimately a result of getting squeezed by capitalism, and that most folks aren’t aware of that. Trump won by acknowledging that “the system” is broken, which most people know- he just pointed them to bigotry instead to protect capitalism.

That’s not to say that American’s material struggles are comparable to Burkina Faso’s - I think white folks in America are soft as shit - but I don’t think people feel like they’re doing well, and that’s ultimately what drives their actions.

Yeah I only made it through the first few paragraphs before it became clear this was antivax propaganda.

“I asked why she regressed, doctor says it’s common”

“RFK Jr says…”

“I got her vaccinated”

Just right in a row.

So gross.

I think they meant “fetishizing”

I’m not trans, and my vote goes to whatever the trans community prefers.

In your opinion, what’s the leftist line that will most motivate the masses in the US?

For the greater good

we ended up designing and fabricating them in-house

Tariffs will bring manufacturing back to the US!!! /s

I can definitely acknowledge that graph aesthetics aren’t as important as the real-world implications of the underlying data. I did not start the thread about graph aesthetics, though.

You asked miz about their graph aesthetic preference, and I answered bc it’s a common preference. I assumed that you were asking because you wanted to learn, and I answered in good faith. If you didn’t want to talk about it, just don’t ask questions about it?

I ignored your criticisms because I don’t really care about other people’s graph aesthetic preferences, because it’s not important and they’re my preferences.

If you had said “what flavor ice cream do you prefer?” and I said “many people prefer chocolate because <whatever>”, it would weird if you got upset and said “actually vanilla is better because <whatever> and also why are we even talking about ice cream preferences it’s not important”.

At any point, you could have said “I think this representation is appropriate, given the severity of the situation, but I understand the other perspective.” and that would have been the end of the conversation.

Clearly, we just had two different interactions.

My perspective is that you asked a question (how would you prefer it?) and I answered your question.

It seems like you didn’t like that. Why?

Correct. Some folks, myself and miz included, would prefer that.

Probably bc it’d be friendly fire

Exciting!!

I’d be remiss if I didn’t suggest looking into local leftist orgs (just search “[city] socialist orgs” and see what comes up). If you’re on social media, I’ve noticed The Algorithm starts suggesting new ones after you follow a couple. Most will have regular intro events - try a few out and see what you like!

More importantly, though - what do you like to do? Is there stuff that you’d like to try? What’s important to you? Where do you want to be in… six months? A year?

Woah there, I’m just trying to answer your question, not attack you or try to downplay the severity of the situation. It’s strictly about how data is presented.

Graphs with a Y axis that don’t start at zero is a common gripe for anyone presenting any graph, not just this.

The reason it is done is to make changes look more dramatic (stock market CRASHES with a graph showing a huge-looking decrease… of 0.5%).

Wanting graphs to start at zero is just about trying to remove spin from data presentation.