What are some methods of distributed civil disobedience for Americans?
-
It has to be the employees not the state because companies withhold it and remit directly to the IRS. Not saying you should do this, but if you increase your
withholdingsexemptions then it won't go to the IRS. Though you will owe it in April and may have to pay penalties for underwitholding.Small technical correction:
To DEcrease withholdings (the dollars shown on the Fed line of your paystub)
One must INcrease exemptions claimed on Form W-4
But the rest is correct. If you underwithhold/underpay you risk penalties come April.
However, if you try to claim so many exemptions as to get to zero federal withholdings, employers are required to second-guess you and make you document the exemptions you are claiming (not all will do this but they're required to nonetheless). But if you go to very little federal withholding, just not zero, employers generally don't give a shit and will just make the payroll adjustments accordingly.
-
https://www.opb.org/news/series/racenw/race-northwest-united-states-jordan-lund-portland/
reminder to everyone that that's why Jordan doesn't like BLM.
It is so unfortunate that Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter are difficult to tell apart by context at first glance.
-
well first, it isn’t exactly a binary continuum whether or not one has reproductive autonomy. many people are somewhere between the caricature of a literal sex slave and someone just stuck in an unhappy marriage. without any delimiters in the original comment i don’t think it’s wild to assume that it does refer to these people, generally… how could it not? i’m willing to bet a significant portion of the population is subjectively not exactly “choosing” to reproduce in the same way we choose to do other things so it feels a little dismissive for you to just say these people don’t matter for the sake of your rhetoric.
second, im not really justifying have children nor did i do so originally. honestly, willful antinatalism is an incredibly obscure opinion in public discourse - most antinatalist trends are results of socioeconomic realities - so i don’t really feel the need to even attempt justifying reproducing. like i said, i’d never really have kids myself. but people are going to do it no matter what i think and there’s no public opinion campaign that will ever change that, at least as humanity currently stands.
finally, im not even going to really respond to your last point. if you want to argue against the overwhelming consensus and body of evidence from academia demonstrating that who one’s parents are massively influence their outcomes in life then go ahead but i dont think anyone in your audience at that point has a brain, tbh. of course it isnt the only deciding factor. but this is like saying we should be concerned about repainting our racing stripes when the engine block is literally about to fall out. even if i concede your point that doesn’t change the fact that one of the biggest ways who someone becomes in life is determined is by who they are born to and/or raised by, therefore is one of the biggest levers by which future demographic and political trends will be decided.
& i agree the world is shit; we live in nigh apocalyptic times, but this weird overvaluing of the sanctity of human life that antinatalist do feels similar to the pearl clutching republicans have over abortion and fetuses. a sacrificial lamb? dude get over yourself. we’re all gonna die. kids die everyday. that doesn’t mean you have to retreat into cynic pessimism… who are you, or any of us, to be the anubis weighing the value of souls that might come into this world? your position is just so blindingly anthropocentric and arrogant.
wrote last edited by [email protected]well first, it isn’t exactly a binary continuum whether or not one has reproductive autonomy. many people are somewhere between the caricature of a literal sex slave and someone just stuck in an unhappy marriage
Not sure why you're putting so much emphasis on this - there is a dichotomy in the sense that you can either make the choice or you can't. If you're not in the position to make the choice, it doesn't matter if you're a literal sex slave or stuck in an abusive relationship or w/e: you can't make the choice.
second, im not really justifying have children nor did i do so originally. honestly, willful antinatalism is an incredibly obscure opinion in public discourse - most antinatalist trends are results of socioeconomic realities ... but people are going to do it no matter what i think and there’s no public opinion campaign that will ever change that, at least as humanity currently stands.
Why does any of that matter in the context of choosing not to have a kid? It's an obscure opinion? Really? I've never put much weight into the whole "everyone's doing it!" style of peer pressure... having a kid for that is almost as fucked up as having one just to fight in some unwinnable battle on a dying planet. And yeah no shit people are going to keep doing it - even ignoring the ones who aren't able to make the choice, there's still an overwhelming tendency to approach that decision for selfish reasons like continuing some family legacy or having that 'little bundle of joy'. There isn't much thought into whether or not it's fair for the kid.
i don’t really feel the need to even attempt justifying reproducing. like i said, i’d never really have kids myself.
You entered into this conversation doing exactly that, despite your own decision on the matter.
if you want to argue against the overwhelming consensus and body of evidence from academia demonstrating that who one’s parents are massively influence their outcomes in life then go ahead
I did not, nor will I. I said it wouldn't make a difference in the fight against fascism. Nice strawman though.
but this is like saying we should be concerned about repainting our racing stripes when the engine block is literally about to fall out.
It's saying the car is totaled. Tending to the engine or racing stripes are both a waste of time and effort.
who someone becomes in life is determined is by who they are born to and/or raised by, therefore is one of the biggest levers by which future demographic and political trends will be decided.
In a vacuum, yeah. But in the context of a society where stupid and evil breed like rabbits, casting a drop in opposition to that river isn't going to do shit. The exception being if you happen to be rich - money is ultimately what drives politics, so if you've got the income to make an impact and the means to crank out a child and put the effort into molding them into a decent person, then yeah I guess it's worth a shot. Even if they can't change anything, they'll have the means to live a life detached from the dumpster fire. That said, the venn diagram of people who are rich and people who are decent hasn't shown much overlap.
we live in nigh apocalyptic times, but this weird overvaluing of the sanctity of human life that antinatalist do feels similar to the pearl clutching republicans have over abortion and fetuses.
More strawman. I didn't say shit about the value or sanctity of human life. I hate it when people put words in my mouth - stop doing that. My stance here is ultimately about suffering, and that if you're in a position to choose whether or not create a life that's doomed to suffer the hellscape we've built for the generations after us, that the sensible decision is to simply decline.
a sacrificial lamb? dude get over yourself. we’re all gonna die. kids die everyday. that doesn’t mean you have to retreat into cynic pessimism…
Jfc you tell me to get over myself for adhering to an opinion built entirely on minimizing the suffering of others, then immediately shrug off people (and kids specifically) dying everyday. Again, life vs death isn't the core of the argument here, but consider the mass suffering that goes along with those and follow your own advice: get over yourself. This isn't cynic pessimism, it's pattern recognition.
who are you, or any of us, to be the anubis weighing the value of souls that might come into this world?
I don't give a fuck about souls or anubis or any other mythology. Those things are fun in videogames or w/e, but don't belong in conversations like this one. I care about suffering, climate collapse, this global surge in popularity of authoritarianism: those things are real, and increasing at rate that doesn't exactly make our world a suitable place to raise a child.
But who am I, you, or anyone else reading this to make the decision to have a kid? A potential parent, of course.
your position is just so blindingly anthropocentric and arrogant.
How so? You are the one arguing in favor sending our spawn into a life of misery so they can solve humanity's problems, for the sole sake of humanity itself, without regard to what that means for the individual kid. That seems pretty anthropocentric and arrogant to me. You're projecting.
-
-
reproduction isn’t a choice for some people. that’s fucked up but it’s cold & hard reality.
-
this just increases the ratio of parents in the next generation that are shitty people, effectively strengthening fascist movements by increasing the proportionment of lil hitlers vs everyone else in the kindergarten class.
i think this strategy is highly problematic if you think about it for literally even just a second, and i say that as someone who would never voluntarily have kids.
this just increases the ratio of parents in the next generation that are shitty people, effectively strengthening fascist movements by increasing the proportionment of lil hitlers vs everyone else in the kindergarten class.
This is one of the reasons I want children despite everything. If all the conscientious people stop reproducing, the future population will be composed entirely of people raised by selfish assholes.
-
-
Target is an interesting case study. Largely self-inflicted, but conservatives remember them having trans bathrooms and liberals remember them taking them away (not that that was the only issue, they have become blatantly racist as well). It's too narrow and too slow, but that's what results when society rejects an institution.
It would be great if we could narrowly focus on a few egregious examples and wreck them, but getting everyone to non-organically agree on who to target (no pun intended) is going to be difficult.
The target needs to be capitalism. Not Walmart, not Target, not Amazon. Just quitting the sheer amount of shit we buy that is not necessary. Reassessing our understanding of the word necessary. And for the things that are truly necessary, buying from companies who don't race to the bottom with the most low-quality instant garbage they want to break so we'll but another one.
-
I hope somebody runs you off the road.
I hope you recover from your carbrain
-
The "All Lives" folks would conveniently skip over this bit:
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that between 2010 and 2012, on an annual basis only one in every 40,000 white Americans was a homicide victim, while the number was one in 5,000 for African-Americans."
Until BLM steps up with a "say their name" protest for every black homicide victim, they are just as full of shit as the All Lives asshats.
you sound like a bullet list of republican talking points. wonder why that is.
-
Yep
Modern American economy doesn't give a shit about labor strikes.
But a consumer strike?
Everyone literally cutting out all extraneous purchases and cancelling every subscription except utilities...
That would get the wealthy's attention.
US corporations have been paying real attention to Canadian boycotts of US products. At this point, it has become habituated and will not be reversible.
-
you sound like a bullet list of republican talking points. wonder why that is.
Wanting BLM to use their platform to talk about ALL black deaths and not just those killed by white cops is a Republican talking point?
Here's another good example, take homicides out of the equation:
Black people (and more specifically black women) are discounted by medical professionals, resulting in worse outcomes and higher death rates:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/maternal-mortality/2022/maternal-mortality-rates-2022.htm
"In 2022, the maternal mortality rate for Black women was 49.5 deaths per 100,000 live births and was significantly higher than rates for White (19.0), Hispanic (16.9), and Asian (13.2) women."
BLM? Silence. More black women die in childbirth each year than anyone killed by cops. Do they think black lives matter or don't they?
Shouldn't they be raising awareness on this? Shit, why do I have to be the one telling you this, shouldn't this be common knowledge for everyone?
-
this just increases the ratio of parents in the next generation that are shitty people, effectively strengthening fascist movements by increasing the proportionment of lil hitlers vs everyone else in the kindergarten class.
This is one of the reasons I want children despite everything. If all the conscientious people stop reproducing, the future population will be composed entirely of people raised by selfish assholes.
So what is your plan? Try to outbreed the selfish assholes? Because otherwise, being the conscientious minority among an assholish majority is not a great place to be.
-
isn’t a choice for some people
Previous poster isn't talking about those people; but about people who do have a choice and why they should decline.
this just increases the ratio of parents in the next generation that are shitty people
Correct. But that doesn't justify dropping a child into the dumpsterfire we're turning our planet into just so they can serve as a footsoldier in the fight against it. Children aren't sacrificial lambs.
effectively strengthening fascist movements by increasing the proportionment of lil hitlers vs everyone else in the kindergarten class.
What's to say good parenting can combat that to enough of an extent to actually make a difference? It's not rare for two genuinely good people to produce a little hellspawn that grows up to be a lil hitler despite their parent's best efforts. Good parenting is certainly an important factor, but that's far from a guarantee your kid will do good with their lives. They could just as well be the next actual Hitler.
We can't outbreed stupid or evil. If abstaining from having a kid for the sake of protecting that kid from an increasingly dire hellscape is some kind of failure to delay humanity's downfall, then humanity isn't something that should be preserved.
Previous poster isn’t talking about those people; but about people who do have a choice and why they should decline.
Yeah, my comment is clearly aimed at people who do have choice. That should be implied when someone makes any sort of idea: the ability to actually do something. I'd say that a birthstrike is comparatively easier than a labor strike, where a good percentage of the population is 1 or 2 missed paychecks from financial ruin and homelessness.
Don't use someone else's inability to justify your own lack of action. "Whatabout the people who can't?" isn't a strong argument if you do have the ability.
-
I hope somebody runs you off the road.
You're a special kind of stupid cunt, right?
-
Huh turns out I was already resisting without knowing it.
It pisses me off when people accelerate so quickly off the red light and whip around me just to slam on their brakes at the next light, while I'm trying to save gas. It seems so unnecessarily dangerous.
Same thing when accelerating onto a highway or up a hill with a downhill on the other side. I get that people are in a hurry - sometimes I am too - but don't do it behind me in the right lane.
Actually accelerating quickly uses less fuel than accelerating slower as engines are more efficient at higher rpm.
-
So what is your plan? Try to outbreed the selfish assholes? Because otherwise, being the conscientious minority among an assholish majority is not a great place to be.
I'd rather maintain a conscientious minority than abandon the world entirely to assholes.
-
well first, it isn’t exactly a binary continuum whether or not one has reproductive autonomy. many people are somewhere between the caricature of a literal sex slave and someone just stuck in an unhappy marriage
Not sure why you're putting so much emphasis on this - there is a dichotomy in the sense that you can either make the choice or you can't. If you're not in the position to make the choice, it doesn't matter if you're a literal sex slave or stuck in an abusive relationship or w/e: you can't make the choice.
second, im not really justifying have children nor did i do so originally. honestly, willful antinatalism is an incredibly obscure opinion in public discourse - most antinatalist trends are results of socioeconomic realities ... but people are going to do it no matter what i think and there’s no public opinion campaign that will ever change that, at least as humanity currently stands.
Why does any of that matter in the context of choosing not to have a kid? It's an obscure opinion? Really? I've never put much weight into the whole "everyone's doing it!" style of peer pressure... having a kid for that is almost as fucked up as having one just to fight in some unwinnable battle on a dying planet. And yeah no shit people are going to keep doing it - even ignoring the ones who aren't able to make the choice, there's still an overwhelming tendency to approach that decision for selfish reasons like continuing some family legacy or having that 'little bundle of joy'. There isn't much thought into whether or not it's fair for the kid.
i don’t really feel the need to even attempt justifying reproducing. like i said, i’d never really have kids myself.
You entered into this conversation doing exactly that, despite your own decision on the matter.
if you want to argue against the overwhelming consensus and body of evidence from academia demonstrating that who one’s parents are massively influence their outcomes in life then go ahead
I did not, nor will I. I said it wouldn't make a difference in the fight against fascism. Nice strawman though.
but this is like saying we should be concerned about repainting our racing stripes when the engine block is literally about to fall out.
It's saying the car is totaled. Tending to the engine or racing stripes are both a waste of time and effort.
who someone becomes in life is determined is by who they are born to and/or raised by, therefore is one of the biggest levers by which future demographic and political trends will be decided.
In a vacuum, yeah. But in the context of a society where stupid and evil breed like rabbits, casting a drop in opposition to that river isn't going to do shit. The exception being if you happen to be rich - money is ultimately what drives politics, so if you've got the income to make an impact and the means to crank out a child and put the effort into molding them into a decent person, then yeah I guess it's worth a shot. Even if they can't change anything, they'll have the means to live a life detached from the dumpster fire. That said, the venn diagram of people who are rich and people who are decent hasn't shown much overlap.
we live in nigh apocalyptic times, but this weird overvaluing of the sanctity of human life that antinatalist do feels similar to the pearl clutching republicans have over abortion and fetuses.
More strawman. I didn't say shit about the value or sanctity of human life. I hate it when people put words in my mouth - stop doing that. My stance here is ultimately about suffering, and that if you're in a position to choose whether or not create a life that's doomed to suffer the hellscape we've built for the generations after us, that the sensible decision is to simply decline.
a sacrificial lamb? dude get over yourself. we’re all gonna die. kids die everyday. that doesn’t mean you have to retreat into cynic pessimism…
Jfc you tell me to get over myself for adhering to an opinion built entirely on minimizing the suffering of others, then immediately shrug off people (and kids specifically) dying everyday. Again, life vs death isn't the core of the argument here, but consider the mass suffering that goes along with those and follow your own advice: get over yourself. This isn't cynic pessimism, it's pattern recognition.
who are you, or any of us, to be the anubis weighing the value of souls that might come into this world?
I don't give a fuck about souls or anubis or any other mythology. Those things are fun in videogames or w/e, but don't belong in conversations like this one. I care about suffering, climate collapse, this global surge in popularity of authoritarianism: those things are real, and increasing at rate that doesn't exactly make our world a suitable place to raise a child.
But who am I, you, or anyone else reading this to make the decision to have a kid? A potential parent, of course.
your position is just so blindingly anthropocentric and arrogant.
How so? You are the one arguing in favor sending our spawn into a life of misery so they can solve humanity's problems, for the sole sake of humanity itself, without regard to what that means for the individual kid. That seems pretty anthropocentric and arrogant to me. You're projecting.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I just wanna prepend my reply here with the fact that I hold no animosity towards you or anything, you’re a stranger to me, and that I appreciate you taking the time to share your ideas with me.
Now, I have two main points in response if you’re interested in continuing any sort of discussion…
Primarily I want to point out how every time material consequences are raised you respond with some form of absolute statement. (e.g, off the top of my head without directly citing you: ‘any kid could be Hitler,’ ‘it all won’t matter anyway,’ ‘humanity is a lost cause’). While this isn’t intrinsically bad it does come across as cowardly rhetoric. Conceding to absolutes is also what we might refer to as faith.
Secondarily, are we talking about morality or strategy here? If we’re talking about morality, then just say plainly you oppose reproduction categorically. If we’re talking real-world, effective strategy then we must confront things dialectically because material facts matter. We can’t just dismiss things with absolutism for being inconvenient to your existing position.
EDIT: Additional thought: If your stance is purely about suffering, then you are indeed making a claim about which lives are worth bringing into existence… namely, those that won’t suffer. That is a sanctity/value claim, just under another name. Which is it? Either you admit this is a value framework, or you have no grounds for your conclusion. I didn’t put words in your mouth, I simply interpreted the ones you put into the world as any reasonable person would.
-
Yep
Modern American economy doesn't give a shit about labor strikes.
But a consumer strike?
Everyone literally cutting out all extraneous purchases and cancelling every subscription except utilities...
That would get the wealthy's attention.
-
US corporations have been paying real attention to Canadian boycotts of US products. At this point, it has become habituated and will not be reversible.
Oh, I'm not sure how much that will matter. I was shopping today and all that was left was an American brand of spring mix that I have been avoiding for months now because it's American.
Well fuck me sideways, wasn't it suddenly made in Canada?
I also noticed something similar at the hardware store. I researched a product and found exactly what I needed. It was a gutter screw made by a company called Euramax.
When I got to the store the packaging said "Amerimax". So they rebranded their shit in Canada online before their current stock was out, I guess.
-
Actually accelerating quickly uses less fuel than accelerating slower as engines are more efficient at higher rpm.
I am operating under the assumptuon that my engine is most efficient at about 2k RPM, and I shift so the new gear is about 2k. I have a pretty small engine so this isn't that fast.
My other heuristic is that by avoiding unnecessary braking, I also save fuel. The people flooring it, getting around me, and slamming on the brakes are wasting their fuel.
-
Eh? Corporate HQs are all in city centres, and the vast majority of people live in cities...
They are. And you'll get arrested in 100% of them for doing this. Which is fine if that's your goal, but go in with eyes open.
-
I am operating under the assumptuon that my engine is most efficient at about 2k RPM, and I shift so the new gear is about 2k. I have a pretty small engine so this isn't that fast.
My other heuristic is that by avoiding unnecessary braking, I also save fuel. The people flooring it, getting around me, and slamming on the brakes are wasting their fuel.
If you're getting on the highway you should aim to go the speed limit by the time you're merging. It's good for the engine to breathe and stretch it's legs a little bit and blow out any carbon that has built up. I agree that in town it makes no sense in town to floor it all the time. I noticed that the lights in my town are mostly timed to the speed limit.
