There’s more to society than economic classes. Marxist class analysis is fine, but often it can be extremely myopic, focusing on just a single variable that divides a society. This is more about cultural class rather than economic class. It’s as much as as discussion of differences within capitalists as between capitalists and workers. This kind of distinction is lost when you collapse all of society down into working class/owner class.

When I say the MBA class, I mean the managerial social class that is inculcated in a certain set of shared values by American business schools. They’re trained to run businesses in a way very different from historical industrialists like Ford and the other early 20th century robber barons. Historical industrialists often focused on producing mass market goods as cheaply as possible. They made their profits through volume. They focused on maximizing total profit, rather than percentage return on investment. People like Ford came from humble backgrounds. They valued producing things for the common man. The assembly line was invented so that it would be practical to make a car cheap enough for an average person could afford. These industrialists weren’t humanitarians. They absolutely tried to maximize their profits, but they also saw a value in employing large numbers of people and producing vast amounts of goods that improved people’s lives. Maybe they just wanted to employ a bunch of people to lord over them, but employment itself was seen as a virtue. It was this economic system that powered the Arsenal of Democracy that served the US so well in WW2.

In the 1980s or so, a new business philosophy came about, the Cult of Shareholder Value. This belief system rejected generations of capitalist thought and said that the only thing that matters is maximizing the rate of return for stockholders. It doesn’t matter how many people you employ. It doesn’t matter how many goods you make. It doesn’t even matter if you’re maximizing raw total profit. All that matters is the percentage rate of return. Companies were to be run in whatever way maximized the stock market return. For this class of leaders, it’s better to make $1 million at a 7% rate of return than $2 million at a 6% rate of return. You’ll leave money on the table if it means a higher rate of return.

If all you care about is percentage return on dollars invested, then you are going to try to achieve the highest profit margin on every item you sell. It’s better to sell a smaller number of items at a higher profit margin than a larger number of items at a smaller one, even if the latter would generate larger total profits. This Cult of Shareholder value is also why enshittification has shown up in so many businesses. Maximizing rate of return encourages you to value-engineer every single product for maximum profit margin.

When it comes to weapons, this encourages the building of small numbers of Wunderwaffe rather than the mass production of cheap weapons. The exact opposite philosophy to something like the AK-47. The earlier business philosophy gave us hundreds of B-52s. . The Cult of Shareholder Value gave us the B-2 stealth bomber, which cost $2 billion each, and we never made more than a few dozen of them. Sure, the B-2 is as technical wonder, and in a certain military environment, it works wel. If you’re fighting the wars like we did in the 90s and 2000s, against small countries like Afghanistan or Iraq? Small numbers of high tech super weapons is a viable strategy. But this strategy struggles even against countries as capable as Iran, let alone China.

But we’re now entering the era of mass drone warfare. Little Ukraine is making 20 million drones a year. China could make tens of billions. And for an American defense sector that long ago abandoned ideas of mass cheap weapons production? We could be in real trouble…

The drone production capacity of China in a true total war scenario is frankly terrifying to imagine. Imagine the Workshop of the World converted to drone production. Little Ukraine is making millions of drones per year. China could make tens of billions.

At sufficient numbers, drones make nuclear weapons obsolete. Nukes are singular expensive objects. It’s always been assumed that nuclear weapons couldn’t be intercepted, but countries around the world have gotten really good at building missile interceptors. And suddenly nukes aren’t so scary if you can launch a hundred interceptors at every incoming nuclear missile. And new interceptor technologies are coming onboard that will allow interceptors to fly back to their launch points if they don’t strike a hit.

We’ve always assumed mutually assured destruction will prevent conflict between great powers, but I worry nukes may not be so scary in the future. Imagine if China built a billion missile interceptors and had them stationed around the country. (If the production can be fully automated, this isn’t an absurd number.) No missile could ever get through. Each one would be swarmed by a million interceptors. And only the interceptors that actually find their target will be consumed. The rest just fly back to their launch pads to refuel. To prevent your cities from getting nuked, a billion autonomous interceptors is not an absurd investment.

At the same time, drones could easily do nuclear bomb levels of destruction at sufficient scale. Imagine if you unleashed a million incendiary drones onto a city with a hundred thousand buildings. Each is programmed to scan for standing structures, land on them, and ignite an incendiary charge. The firebombing of Dresden is the model here.

Or here’s a terrifying weapon. Imagine an autonomous, solar-powered, AI-operated drone swarm. You unleash a million of them on a city. Each drone has an explosive charge in it and a simple mission: find and destroy any vehicle or human being you find within a geo-fenced region. The drones follow a simple algorithm:

1. Fly around looking for a target.
2. If a target is found, make a suicide attack.
3. If no target is found, land somewhere and recharge batteries via solar cells.
4. Once batteries are charged, fly back up again.

They might only get 20 minutes of flying time and require 10 hours to charge, but that wouldn’t matter. You could have the swarm coordinate the charging cycles of the million drones so that there are tens of thousands of them in the air at any given time. The ones on the ground recharging would be completely helpless, but no one could go out and deal with them with tens of thousands of active drones flying around. Plus you could rig them to explode if someone approaches them while they’re in their charging cycle.

We have not even begun to see the horrors of drone warfare.

Because the military had been enshittified just like everything else. Contractors have realized there’s more profit in making small numbers of extremely expensive weapons that large numbers of cheaper weapons. It’s the exact same reason the American car market is fucked. The same MBA class runs all of these companies.

Prison guard, probably.

Police officers commit domestic violence at a rate 2.5x the rate of the general population. The profession attracts the type of person that wants to exercise power over others. Keep that in mind whenever anyone proposes giving these people access to new tools.

Sorry. Allies and trans allies share some commonalities, but you will never feel this in your bones. Part of being an ally is not talking over those you claim to be allies with. When a trans person speaks on a trans issue, if an ally disagrees with that, it’s best to keep your opinions to yourself.

This is one reason trans-dedicated spaces have to be very careful with how many allies they let into the space. If you’re not careful, the actual trans people will be outnumbered by the allies, and actual trans people will have their voices shouted down when the opinions of trans folks and their supposed allies disagree.

There’s a reason Native American tribes carefully control their member lists. If they’re not careful, friendly and supportive white people who have an enthusiasm for Native culture will end up taking over the place.

I’m white myself, but I do have a great affinity for the struggles of our black brothers, sisters, and siblings. I consider myself an ally to the black community. But at the same time, I would never talk over a black person if they shared a perspective on the black experience that differed from my thoughts on it. Obviously they know these subjects better than I do.

Unless you’re trans, I don’t want to hear your perspective on this. I don’t listen to entitled cis people who tell trans people how to think. We know our needs better than you do.

The falsehood was that the election was lost because a large number of people decided “both sides are the same.” That is a comforting lie.

Some people just have different ethical systems than you do. Please have the humility to acknowledge that and not be so judgy. For millions of voters, supporting the Gaza genocide was a bridge to far. And no, you cannot placate these voters just by reflexively saying Trump would be worse for the Gazans. This is about ethical lines in the sand, not a balance of the greater good. The people who voted against Kamala because of Gaza do not follow your ethical framework. They simply look at the world differently than you do. They have a different world view, and that world view is just as valid as your own. Have some respect and quit pretending your way is the only way. And if you just call them stupid, they’ll continue to not vote the way you want. You don’t win votes by calling your voters stupid. Kamala tried that path of arrogance already.

This has all been hashed out before. But ultimately you have an ethical system that goes for a utilitarian greater good approach. Others have a respect for persons ethical system. The latter says vote for the lesser evil. The other says, vote for lesser evil, but there are some ethical lines that simply cannot be crossed.

Yes, you can say that’s stupid. But you’re talking about two different ethical traditions, each with generations of scholarly work behind them. It makes you seem like a child. To just dismiss an entire ethical philosophy out of hand is not only the height of hubris, but a recipe for losing elections. If you cannot be honest about why some people didn’t vote for your candidate, you’re going to continue to lose.

It appears you prefer feeling morally superior over actually winning elections. Respect for persons says that there are certain actions that are simply unacceptable, regardless if they result in a net benefit to the world. We could cure a lot of diseases by involuntarily experimenting on people, and on net we probably would save lives. A utilitarian philosophy like yours would tell you that using prisoners as involuntary test subjects is perfectly ethical, as long as it results in a net good for society.

And I actually voted for Kamala. I just have the honesty to acknowledge why she lost.

No. I said Democrat for a reason. Stop thinking in terms of a single election. I’m talking about coalitions and power balance within parties. You need to get past “Democrats good, Republicans bad.” Both parties are themselves coalitions, coalitions whose fortunes can rise and fall within the party.

Republicans are always going to be evil. But if the Democrats turn against us, now both parties are out to get us. That is the real threat, where trans persecution gains bipartisan support. We’re completely and utterly fucked if that happens. I fear a future where transphobia becomes so entrenched in both parties, that advocating for trans rights becomes as politically radioactive as a politican advocating for the rights of pedophiles in today’s world. I am willing to lose an individual election to Republicans if it means transphobic Democrats do not gain power within the party.

A transphobic Republican winning means pain for a few years. For me, ensuring that at least one party is not militantly transphobic is a far higher priority than winning a single election. I personally had to flee my home to escape Republican political persecution. I became an internally displaced refugee in my own country because of them. But at least now I live in a blue state with solid protections at the state level. If Democrats turn the way of Republicans, I will have to flee the country entirely.

Again, stop thinking of things just between parties. Parties are not a monolith.

One should not slander people who simply have stricter ethics than oneself as “both sides are the same.” That’s how you lose elections.

When did we start seeing a handful of DNC candidates shifting on this position? When the candidates winning elections, the GOP, went transphobic. So the DNC losing more elections won’t make them less transphobic, it will make them more. We’ve seen this in real time in the last 2 years.

It depends entirely on why they lose. Democrats didn’t lose in 2024 because of transphobia. Polls show trans issues were near the bottom of voter priorities.

When a party loses an election, politicians start to innovate. They change their messaging and start modifying their platform to try out something different. If those changes improve electoral results, those changes will stick. If they’re a net negative, they’ll end.

What we’re seeing with the Democrats is experimental transphobia. They’re testing the waters to see if it improves their odds. I as a trans person need to do everything I can to make sure that experiment is a resounding failure. Most Democrats aren’t openly transphobic…at least not YET. It’s unusual and “innovative” to be a transphobic Democrat. If a Democrat experiments with transphobia, and they win an election, that teaches every other Democrat that transphobia is a winning strategy. If they lose in landslide because the queer vote abandoned them for their betrayal, the experiment fails, and other Democrats will be less likely to take up transphobia.

WTF. Its a good thing I never said anything of the sort. I don’t even think you need me in this conversation when you’re the one putting words in my mouth, and then criticizing me for it.

You were almost certainly going to. After all, you just said I advocated for the GOP. Which should be pretty obvious I don’t support. Whenever I point out that sometimes trans people need to vote against some Democrats for larger strategic reasons, someone with a room temperature IQ will come out of the woodwork and say, “well that must mean you love Trump!” I wasn’t accusing you of putting words in my mouth. I was asking you not to do that. However, you still did it anyway when you accused me of advocating for the GOP.

You are the one advocating for the GOP and voting for GOP candidates directly opposed to trans rights. You are directly hurting my trans sister. You are the person with the torch setting fire to the country.

That is not the case. In almost all scenarios, I support voting for a Democrat over a Republican. But a Democrat experimenting with transphobia against a Republican? Regardless of how that race goes, a transphobe is going to win. From my perspective, that particular election is already lost. At that point my priority is making sure the transphobic Democrat has as little credibility as possible. And that’s achieved by making sure they lose by the largest margin possible.

You will only see this as advocating against trans issues if you have the future time horizon of a fruit fly.

Ok.

A lot of us who disapprove of the party are still going to vote for them. It doesn’t mean anything.

That’s what Hillary said.

You need to think of power coalitions and long term policy positions.

Again, you’re stuck in binary short term thinking. I need to be more long term and strategic than you do.

And yes, transphobic DNC candidates losing makes the party less transphobic in the long run. We need to make transphobia completely toxic in the Democratic party, and that’s only possible if transphobic candidates lose. Every win by a Dem transphobe means more transphobes winning the next primary cycle. Look at Labor in the UK now. They’ve been completely taken over by TERFs.

Again, you’re still stuck in this thought pattern where the only election that matters is the one in front of you. I’m thinking decades into the future here.

Right now, we are seeing a transformation of the Democratic party. DSA candidates for instance are pulling the party further left than it has gone in decades. Do you think that could have ever happened without Trump being elected. (Please don’t put words in my mouth and pretend I’m saying that means it’s a net positive that Trump won. You’re better than that.)

The only reason the DSA candidates are doing well now is that the old common sense understanding that corporate centrists are “more electable” has been completely shattered. That would not have been possible without the 2016 and 2024 elections.

Remember, parties are coalitions. There are both trans allies and TERFS in the Democratic party. And TERFS need to be seen as complete losers. Elect a TERF? Lose the general election as all the queer people sit it out.

Small minority groups have no real political power on their own. Queer people are never going to be able to win elections on their own. The only power small minority groups have is the ability to work as a spoiler. And if you’re not willing to exercise that power, you will have none.

And frankly, if both parties turn transphobe, this whole country can burn to the ground as far as I care. You don’t get to expect someone’s political support after you’ve decided they don’t count as a human being.

That’s what Kamala said.

Not always. For example, I as a trans person need to vote against any transphobic Democrat. I can’t afford to myopically pretend that only the election in front of me exists. If the Democrats go the way of Labor in the UK, I will lose civil rights for the rest of my life. If a Republican wins, there’s always the possibility of Democrats reverting things after the next election.

For me personally, a transphobic Democrat is far more dangerous to my safety and well being than any Republican. It’s more important to make sure at least one party isn’t transphobic than it is to win every election.

Despite that, the Democratic party has a lower approval rating than Trump. People see Trump as evil. They see Democrats as shiftless empty suits that believe in nothing.

Very poor article. Fuck Trump, hope he dies tomorrow. But I’m also not willing to give a business owner an automatic pass just because they’re on my side.

No where in this article do they actually list WHY their alcohol permit is being revoked. What exactly are they being accused of? Because I could absolutely see some slimy owner with a rat-infested kitchen latching onto politics as a means of shielding their crooked operation. “I’m innocent, they’re just trying to silence me!”

Is it possible this is politically motivated? Sure. But the fact that they never actually list the specific reasons why the permit is revoked is damning.