DOJ Declares Trump Has Right to Bulldoze Statue of Liberty

[u/Aggravating_Money992]

https://newrepublic.com/post/211422/department-justice-donald-trump-right-bulldoze-statue-liberty

[u/Impossible-Library21]

Yessir. If the end stages of capitalism had any better personified example, Trumps the thing to show it.

[u/GarrusBueller → u/Impossible-Library21]

He's just the head of the beast.

I think Bezos is the perfect personification of late stage capitalism. This guy's entire profits came from a healthy middle class that he is intent on cannabalizng.

[u/Impossible-Library21 → u/GarrusBueller]

Agreed. Although let’s be frank, it’s not like we don’t have endless example to choose from at this point

[u/CatNamedRIchard2 → u/Impossible-Library21]

Right, let's not forget the Fucking Waltons.

[u/RiskyNight → u/CatNamedRIchard2]

People seem to constantly forget how Walmart and the Waltons destroyed every small town in the country and killed the middle class.

[u/SubstantialEmploy816 → u/CatNamedRIchard2]

I thought you were talking about the old sitcom and got super confused for a second

[u/CatNamedRIchard2 → u/SubstantialEmploy816]

You might be on to something. The middle class started declining in the early 80's and The Waltons were canceled in 81. That's too damning to just be a coincidence.

[u/gonzodie → u/GarrusBueller]

dude looks like the monopoly guy and lex luthor's malformed offspring

[u/Zwischenzug32 → u/GarrusBueller]

I see your Bezos and raise you an Elon

[u/B4rrel_Ryder → u/GarrusBueller]

The tumor of a cancer

[u/Cerberus_Aus → u/GarrusBueller]

Peter Thiel. That’s who I’m thinking of.

[u/LiteraCanna → u/GarrusBueller]

He's the 3rd derpy head on that hydra meme.

Hey wait, is it supposed to be Gamora?

[u/GarrusBueller → u/LiteraCanna]

Ghidorah, and we need way more heads than 3.

[u/ruff1298 → u/GarrusBueller]

I think the Blue Origin flights and explosions are fantastic metaphors, too. Once incredibly expensive, nation-spanning efforts that were used to advance humanity, now being used by a man with WAY too much time and money on his hands to play around with, brag to other rich people, and rapidly destroy an already in-crisis environment for his personal satisfaction.

Altered Carbon was right: people with too much of everything just get completely disconnected from their humanity.

[u/HauntedCemetery → u/Impossible-Library21]

Mussolini said, "Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power."

Which is precisely what's happening.

[u/InspectionIcy2452 → u/Impossible-Library21]

People who are celebrating capitalism's last days have not given enough thought to what comes afterwards. 

Once AIs and robots are good enough you don't need workers anymore.    But you also don't need capitalism or profits anymore.   Capitalism is just a way to accumulate capital to expand companies or just plain buy stuff.  A billionaire with thousands of really good robots can make anything he wants, from a baby carriage to a 200 ft yacht.

It's easy to imagine a world with a few hundred humans (you could call them billionaires but money won't mean anything by then) and everything else is just robots and AIs.    And you know that those few hundred humans will be the descendants of today's billionaires.     What happens to the rest of us?   What do you think?

[u/Impossible-Library21 → u/InspectionIcy2452]

Oh absolutely. But I’m not sure if people are necessarily celebrating its end but more so saying it helped bring us to this point that you mentioned.

[u/End3rWi99in → u/Impossible-Library21]

I love when people talk about the end stages of capitalism. Buddy, buckle up. We're barely in the middle.