How ICE knows who Minneapolis protesters are
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
In no world did we ever allow the government to track our movements or what we think. People are free and are not bound to laws that the gov will simply trample over when they feel like it.
Use encryption, don't tell plans, and keep fighting. We have got this.
The protesters use a ("secure") phone.
icemap.dev
https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2025/10/welfare-cuts...
Economics on its own is probably not sufficient either. You probably also need widespread unionization, a Cordon Sanitaire, and probably German-style intelligence surveillance of the far-right too.
Edit: Looking at the comments below you also need a MUCH better education system. FYI 99% of the time immigration is great for the economy, which is why the US has been wholesale accepting immigrants for a very long time.
It's 'safety net' itself that helps fuel the immigration rage and delivers people into the hands of the right-wing.
This has effectively been a death spiral for the past several decades - blame the government for incompetence while preventing it from doing anything. For example a major reason that so much power accrued to executive agencies in the first place is the trend of Congressional gridlock kicked off by Newt Gingrich.
As a libertarian I have plenty of criticism of the Democratic party as well, but they're not the ones currently wholesale destroying our Constitution.
The contradiction of private vs public interests surfaces when growth/ROI demands become harder to achieve. Marx predicted it as diminishing profit rates [0]. The decades of lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations led to the present budget pressure on institutions, civic decay and agitated uninformed voters. This happens in all capitalistic democracies and we hear the same songs everywhere, about more austerity with a xenophobic background.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit...
And as a libertarian I can emphatically agree. A foundation of libertarianism is freedom of individual choice, and when a significant number of are economically disenfranchised such that they face economic coercion while simply trying to exist, it completely undermines that foundation. And looking at the structure from the top, completely ineffective anti-trust enforcement has made it so there aren't even many choices to choose from.
> The decades of lowering taxes for rich individuals and corporations lead to the [pressing] budget pressure on institutions, civic decay and agitated uninformed voters
I agree with your description of this trend, as well. I learned long ago that it's not enough to merely push in one direction and assume any results will be positive by construction. Rather you must look at what actually stands to be achieved, in order to avoid merely being a patsy for entrenched interests.
I do question why diminishing profit rates are relevant though. Even if profits had generally been going up, wouldn't the desire for even more wealth lead to the same lobbying / looting pattern?
I haven't really studied Marx though. A quick reading of your link, and trying to restate what I took away in my own terms: As labor becomes less important to capital, then capital is less inclined to invest in the labor pool? That does basically fit the overall trends.
Yes, it would, because the expectations of growth/profit/ROI are baked into the system (eg. by interests rates ticking on everything) but in this case, not necessarily to the detriment of society. The profit drive is the root of the problem. Achieving these profits is the point of conflict.
In early capitalistic societies, economic growth is easier because of untapped resources but once the growth of the economic pie slows down, environmental exploitation becomes societal explotation. Previously the point of conflict was capitalists, externalizing cost onto nature (waste products, side effects), today, it is them externalizing operational cost onto the public. Marxs take is, as i understand it, that this profit margin is physically bound to shrink when the remaining space for cost externalization shrinks too, because free markets eventually propagate the lower product prices.
Biden really dropped the ball here.
These weak prosecutions did nothing to stop trump and only caused republicans to rally around him.
Yeah I don’t see that happening here either. Maybe in some rich areas, like tech/finance hubs, operating like mini-Switzerlands. Even then, the poor will keep voting for disruption, so those hubs will need private security vs the federal government? I just don’t see how this is possible or at all desirable. I think we have to tackle inequality……
> Economics on its own is probably not sufficient either. You probably also need widespread unionization...
I think you're right about that.
> ...a Cordon Sanitaire, and probably German-style intelligence surveillance of the far-right too.
> Edit: Looking at the comments below you also need a MUCH better education system. FYI 99% of the time immigration is great for the economy, which is why the US has been wholesale accepting immigrants for a very long time.
You're getting off track there.
You also need a democratically responsive government. If the technocrats say "99% of the time immigration is great for the economy" and the people say "we don't want it, less immigration, please," what do you do? If you want a Trump, you say "shut up people, the technocrats say you're wrong, and you're going to get what they recommend good and hard." If you want to avoid a Trump in the future, you say, "OK, we'll tighten the border and reduce immigration quotas."
I don't care how smart or correct you are: if you can't make your case to the people and get your policy widespread popular support, it shouldn't be implemented in a democracy, end of story.
Do less immigration where people feel it, invest into economic education of the general populace.
> Do less immigration where people feel it, invest into economic education of the general populace.
There can be a lot of legitimate disagreement about what the economy should look like or what's "great" for it. It's not just "GDP number go up."
And isn't it undemocratic for a government to be "investing" into educating people to think about and prioritize issues in a certain way (e.g. according to certain economic ideologies, like a technocrat)? A democratic government is supposed to represent its people, not control them to make them "better" according to some official's opinion.
It does work and made those countries much richer but basically it won't easily happen under democracies with paths to citizenship for immigrants and strong welfare. For both rational and irrational reasons.
> It does work and made those countries much richer
What, exactly, do you mean by "countries" and "richer"? The monarch is wealthier and more powerful? Some aggregate GDP number went up? More bank deposits?
There are a lot of ways to make the few gain at the expense of the many, and depending on the statistics you look at, that may look like the country becoming richer. However, those kinds of scenarios are one of the things democracy is supposed to prevent.
The monarch is probably the biggest winner, but that doesn't necessarily mean the citizens are net losers.
Of course there are no guarantees. People hated Obamacare and punished democrats so hard they lost the most seats since Eisenhower.
Current immigrants come from countries with high population growth. When their population growth slows down, will they get their immigrants too?
Think of it like (internal) trade, it's a win-win. I've been reading about Brexit recently. It's super easy to convince uninformed UK voters that "look the EU is benefiting from trade with us, so if we stop trade we can take all their benefit and keep all our benefit" ... That's not how it works. In the real world it's like Taiwan specializes at chips, China specializes at solar, India specializes at medicines, etc everyone brings something unique to the table and we ALL benefit from working together. It takes a lot of balls to leave your original country family/friends/etc. Immigrants are usually high quality people, it's best to just let them work.
> Current immigrants come from countries with high population growth. When their population growth slows down, will they get their immigrants too?
1) How is that your problem? Have you ever been worried about China not having enough immigrants before? The US is extremely well-positioned to win this one.
2) Yes there will be increased competition for immigrants, but it's really not a bad thing. I'd love it if the UK was politically stable so I could just move over since the US keeps trying to elect Hitler.
1. I support globalization and the specialization of countries. Taiwan specialising in chips is one of the major reasons china hasn't annexed it yet.
2. I am pro immigration in the sense that anyone should be free to move to any country that they choose.
3. I am not worried about china's immigration policy as I don't think they encourage immigration.
4. I am ambivalent to increased competition among immigrants, competition will always be present.
What I'm arguing against is the notion that developed countries need immigration. Why should any one country need it? Immigration should be welcomed to those who align with the values of the country. Want to be a devout Muslim? Move to the middle east. Love Confucianism? Move to an east Asia. Want American style freedom? Move to the US. But when a nation is not able to sustain their quality of life solely with the resources they possess, requiring immigration to prop themselves up seems like a desperate move and only kicks the proverbial can down the road to future generations.
The older I get the more I kinda want to retire from that lifestyle and move to Spain or something. It's much easier to move than to try convincing Americans anything about healthcare or parental leave or any of those socialist policies.
In the extreme case of an entire nation of DINKs, that nation will cease to exist as it once was. It I think in some sense, having kids is like paying for social security. If an entire society does not have kids, then who are they to demand that their quality of life remains? In fact, it feels a little selfish to me that they did not wish to bear the burden to child rearing, yet ask for others to maintain what they did not work to keep. Perhaps this makes childbirth seem too transactional, but I believe it has always been somewhat the case.
It's a shame that the world is a rat race. Why worry about letting China race ahead when they subject themselves to so much stress that the younger generations are "lying flat"? The race to more wealth as an indicator of a good life sounds too convenient to be true.