While I absolutely agree that in the current state of things most western people are so well off they can't even imagine what it means to actually be oppressed and suffer, I can't help but notice that the current state of things can quickly change and that we're in a constant yet barely visible struggle with forces that want to bring about just that kind of oppression here and that we're slowly losing it.

You might think this is about the rise of fascism[0] in the US, Chat Control in the EU, the failure of revolution in Belarus and Turkey, censorship in the UK, martial law in South Korea, etc. But it's about all of those.

I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence (performed or threatened) and that we keep building cool stuff because we get paid a lot, yet we don't own the product of our work and it is increasingly being used against us. We don't have guns to our heads yet but the goal of AI is to remove what little bargaining power we have by making us economically redundant.

At every point in history, oppressing a group of people required controlling another (smaller but better armed) group of people willing to perform the oppression. And for the first time in history, "thanks" to AI and robotics, this requirement will be lifted.

[0]: https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...

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rixed 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> I am reminded that the only real power comes from violence

Rather from numbers in my opinion. "Divide and conquer", or its modern equivalent "confuse and manipulate", is what makes violence effective. It is always striking to compare how much people are similar, even in our divided society, versus how much dissimilar they think they are. I'm used to help organize long boat trips with all kind of people from various backgrounds, and it's funny to watch.

In the past it was easy to convince people that "the other" was strange and dangerous, due to physical distance. Today we achieve the same with social media.

	▲	martin-t 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> Rather from numbers in my opinion. Because for now more people means more violence. If you control more people, you control more potential violence. So if your enemy controls more people, you need to either amass more people in your cause or divide the enemy's cause. And there are limits to how many people you can control. Even in the past, they were surprisingly large to my liking. Helot slaves to their Spartan owners were 7:1 at some point apparently. Soldiers in WW1 had riles and bayonets, yet one guy with a revolver could send dozens of them to their deaths. But still, it was impossible to censor communication among ordinary people and prominent enemies of the regime required constant supervision by another person. Digging up dirt or evidence could take months of work. Now so much communication is online, detecting dissent can be automated to a large extent. There's a limit to how many people can be in prison without starving and without the state collapsing by how many people need to perform useful work and how many people you need to guard them. But I bet soon we'll see a new dystopian nightmare where prisoners are watched by automated systems 24/7, increasing the prisoner to guard ratio. And finally, look at Ukraine. Artillery was the primary cause of casualties in the past century of wars and you needed people to transport heavy shells, load and fire them. Apparently 1 ton of explosives per death. Now it's drones, which can be mass produced largely automatically and controlled automatically. And they are so precise you could use them to target individuals in crowds.

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HellDunkel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is this „Chat Control in the EU“ ?

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expedition32 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The Netherlands in 2025 is a decadent country were everyone can do whatever the hell they want.

But a gay man growing up in the 1950s in a rural village was plenty oppressed. It's actually quite fascinating how in the 1960s/70s we had a Cultural Revolution of our own that ended a thousand years of religious oppression! And we didn't even have a Mao.

But never forget we are always one bad week away from sliding backwards.

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mlindner 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Whenever people start talking about things called "the rise of fascism in the US" as if its a foregone fact rather than a highly fringe opinion, it's unfortunately rather easy to assume that the person doesn't have a good ability to tell fact from "story they heard online from a web post".

It's fine if you want to argue that there is a rise in fascism in the US, but you need to actually pose that argument, not just talk about it as if its true and that everyone agrees with you.

Also, there is not currently any martial law in South Korea. That was a brief event that lasted a matter of hours from when it was announced and when it was repealed. It's an open question if any actions were actually performed under the guises of it.

	▲	jeremyjh an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The POTUS is calling for his political enemies to be executed. He has sent soldiers - illegally - into “Democrat cities”. He is using what is left of the DOJ to prosecute political enemies. The dismissal rate in the DC circuit is at 20% due to all the baseless vindictive prosecutions. The FCC is cancelling shows critical of the POTUS. SCOTUS is allowing racial profiling. ICE has committed a half dozen high profile cases of political violence against protestors - several in direct violation of a federal judges orders. But yes, you are its hysterical fringe voices calling this the “rise of fascism in the US”.
	▲	Hikikomori 13 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		https://whatisfascism.org/docs/Warning_Signs_of_Fascism.pdf Is any of the boxes not checked?
	▲	martin-t 20 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		There's a web post and a web post. The source I linked is written by a historian[0] - a guy who actually studied how this kind of stuff happens. You'll also notice that his post uses a fairly high standard of proof - using 2 different definitions of fascism and using only the wannabe-dictator's own statements to show he satisfies all points. There's also a YouTube video and a YouTube video. Here's an actual lawyer talking about the legality of the proto-dictator's actions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hybL-GJov7M [0]: https://acoup.blog/about-the-pedant/
	▲	ThePowerOfFuet 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		>Whenever people start talking about things called "the rise of fascism in the US" as if its a foregone fact rather than a highly fringe opinion, it's unfortunately rather easy to assume that the person doesn't have a good ability to tell fact from "story they heard online from a web post". >It's fine if you want to argue that there is a rise in fascism in the US, but you need to actually pose that argument, not just talk about it as if its true and that everyone agrees with you. It is beyond settled at this point... the whataboutism doesn't help your argument either.