# The bad ending
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"collapse" [cr. 2024-01-03T01:07:53Z]
## social collapse begins with you
many people speak of the concept of "societal collapse" as if it can only happen to an entire country or the whole world at once
in a zombie apocalypse movie, the disaster hits a wide region of people all now living in a post-apocalyptic world
some people speak of innovations that could help us out in a time of "civilizational collapse", as if the whole civilization will go down at the same time putting everyone on equal footing
when people speak of the downfall of the United States, it is always the whole United States falling or a whole Third-World country rising
this is not how any class society works
"social collapse" hits individual people one by one and gnaws its way up the class structure very slowly
any chunk which is able to go about its life without helping failing chunks will continue while the failing chunks live in misery. _this_ is social collapse. should it hit you while you are in the middle of believing it only happens to entire civilizations, there will be nobody to help you. the point of class society is that it always takes away "available".
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"endings" [cr. 2023-11-27T00:12:06Z]
surplus value extraction is not the top problem
it is only the second biggest problem
disunity and competition between chunks is the big problem
one could imagine a society of just five especially greedy capitalists,
shrunk down from a society of 300 million people
everyone i talked to could totally imagine this
they could not imagine workers rising up
but they could wallow in paralyzed depression about a society made of five capitalists and machines exploiting the moon and planets, or five capitalists sitting on private islands while everyone else dies to climate disaster
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[cr. 2024-02-09T23:01:07Z]
human extinction pessimism and material genocide -
1. extinction of any species generally happens in stages rather than all at once, due to every large population being made up of smaller populations and numerous individuals
2. if humans die out, it will generally be in some areas before others — extirpation before extinction
3. material genocide is nothing more than localized human extinction
4. to desire human extinction practically brings genocide of particular countries or groups before full extinction
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[cr. 2024-07-11T23:21:10Z]
in my mind the purpose of doom-and-gloom messaging is like a conservatism vaccine
when people are surrounded by nice, correct values they feel safe and don't take action. it's only when people are surrounded by oppressive values that upset them that they actually move
so maybe we can hit them not with the live virus of reactionary parties, but with dead pieces of the live virus so they become stronger
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[cr. 2024-01-03T01:07:53Z]
may as well acknowledge the idea that "Leninism is the good ending to civilizational disaster movies"
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(v5.3) [cr. 2025-10-19T20:52:47Z]
'capitalism is infinite Black or Chinese people on a finite planet'
so here's the thing with "corporate greed". it's inherently linked to babies. capitalists get to profit because people are born.
the model of "surplus value extraction" being the biggest curse of capitalism is misleading, because both capitalism and Bolshevism skim a little bit off the top to create the institutions people work at — as well as the dreaded _huge Party member salaries_. if there was absolutely no surplus value extraction there'd be no jobs at all, and no republican representatives at all — worse than the Soviet Union, _no chance of "democracy" whatsoever_.
really — in the United States, a lot of bashing Bolshevism is actually just hating taxes, and hating that taxes pay for Congresspeople and parts of a business that ungrateful workers don't immediately benefit from themselves. (Social Security, corporate bailouts are theoretically coming out of workers but function as taxes)
even if the model of "surplus value extraction" totally made sense, there is the baby problem. corporations "skimming off surplus value" enables people to move to towns. think of all the times you've heard of somebody moving to a town because there were "job opportunities" there. this is arguably one of the core reasons people live in cities, towns, and even clusters of farms. every time a capitalist comes up with a new way to exploit people or the environment, more people can move into the town.
people moving into a town is quite a double-edged sword. on one hand, people will be exploited. people will have to listen to and pretend to be allies to the owner-conquerors that "killed the buffalo, Josh". on the other hand, towns allow human population density to increase. when human population density increases, it allows for less fighting over exactly what individuals will be on what plot of land and the potential for people to learn to tolerate each other and have to give up prejudices.
some things are terrifying when you break them down mathematically. if the United States stopped believing in "infinite growth on a finite planet" tomorrow, there would be harsh effects in the Southern states. any particular town in Alabama which is satisfied with its current number of White people could say "we have too much growth and newfangled modernity" and simply stop trying to expand or create businesses and make more jobs. in turn, if a Black person tried to move there, the town could simply say "we have no jobs" "the houses are all taken, good luck paying exorbitant sums to get one when we don't wany any more jobs" and all the White people content with their current small businesses and "traditions" could go about their day being perfectly insular to themselves. if offered a shipment of books or other products that Represented other ethnic groups in Media, the town could simply say no, because having any more unique products let alone products that open up a new category of products is just growth and excess and modernity when everything was perfect as it was. universal healthcare for Black people in Indiana? why grow the government, it's just more growth and modernity. gay marriage? well if you allow that there's just going to be a bunch of LGBT books and fashion design and animated shows and video games and frantic social media newsfeeds with diverse people all over them all clamoring for people's attention, and that's just more growth and modernity to thrust on a tiny Southern town that's fine as it is. this is the way United States people think. many United States people already see any kind of change as an act of greed, unless change comes purely in the form of somebody acquiring something with wealth. if individuals want to bring in modernity by buying it, no matter how tacky people find it there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. the right to own more businesses or belongings is the only thing people will usually accept as protected by law and never attack with a pitchfork. consequently, individuals will be allowed however much conspicuous consumption they want, often even if that excess comes in the form of forbidden Media Representation. practically speaking, trade and increasing amounts of trade into any given town are one of the very few things forcing people to exercise any tolerance and preventing people from committing lynchings. trade is the only loophole that takes power away from racists when they're dead-set on exercising maladaptive self-determination. even the most "obnoxious" forms of growth such as Twitter feeds represent the act of trading identity and experience themselves to another town and hoping someone will expend attention to "buy" them instead of casting them out. in this sense, every transaction between towns of different majority ethnic groups, which ultimately requires labor to complete, which ultimately requires the acceptance of one town undergoing a growth process to produce available labor, which depends on the acceptance of one town's growth within the other town to forge a connection, transfers rare pieces of knowledge from one town to another as individuals so much as greedily seek wealth others with prejudice could not possibly possess. growth is tolerance. growth is anti-prejudice. [*k]
anarchists never want to admit the fact that while having a perfectly unstructured tribal population might be okay, and having a fully developed capitalism would be okay, having a bunch of "small and local" businesses is often the worst of both worlds and very much not okay. rhetoric about "stopping at small and local" is abundant, but nobody takes a moment to think hard about how the finite allocation of space in such a "small and local" town makes it mandatory to pursue vertical development to have any space for accommodating Black people or immigrants. aggressively segregated towns already exist, and when you tell people "infinite growth on a finite planet" or "small and local", they _are_ going to hear it, and they _are_ going to become more racist in order to do their part to prevent "excess", "decadent" growth.
the only silver lining to that fact is that if you could only find a racist enough way to word it you could probably convince a whole lot of people to transition to renewable energy. perhaps "if you buy oil, Iraqis and Russians get to be born at the expense of United States babies, while only wind and solar energy help White suburban moms"? only time will tell. [*e]
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[*e] this is why I could never be a Liberal-republican politician. I don't hate other countries. I know the absolute most effective way to make people support policies is making them hate people like this; appealing to chunk competition and how many babies or migrating adults you can deprive from Russia to benefit the growth of the United States. [*e2] and I'd never want to do it. I just want countries to tolerate each other being countries and for people to get along.
; lithoGRAPHica proposition links, added post-v4 in v5.3:
;=> Q?? they killed the buffalo, Josh
;=> Q?? maladaptive self-determination
;=> Q?? Any more stuff is decadence
=> research.moraleconomy.au/entry/E:Q76,84 *e2. [M3] Would you kill a Russian in order to vote?
;
;=> *k. kimba problem
; feels like it goes after this idea in the 5.2 numbering
;
== research.moraleconomy.au/entry/Philosophical_Research:MDem/4.3r/2411_collapse
:: cr. 2023-11-27T00:12:06Z ; 1701043926 - "endings"
:: cr. 2024-01-03T01:07:53Z ; 1704244073 - "collapse"
:: t. 3000_endings
:: t. v4-3_2411_collapse
:: ed. 2024-05-22T08:13:44Z ; date titled
; v4.3 scraps/ The bad ending
; v4.3r^/ social collapse begins at you
@@ 1758780216 ; 5.3/0992 entries r = scraps, rN = revision scraps, V = revisions, x = archived, ^ = posted to lithoGRAPHica thesis portal
