The reigning administration and its most rabid supporters can’t be shamed and can’t be reasoned with. We’ve learned that. Watching clear video evidence of a citizen being murdered for defending a woman who was assaulted, the conservative talking point is “Well, you shouldn’t bring a gun to a protest.” Alex Pretti had a permit for his holstered firearm, and open carry is legal in Minnesota. Pretti was executed, probably because he was defending a woman, reminding the ICE goons what honorable behavior looks like. They were triggered, lost control of their emotions, and murdered him. But MAGA is in too deep to see with their own eyes.
Also, the chaotic evil violence is part of Stephen Miller’s playbook. Murder citizens until they retaliate violently. Then invoke the Insurrection Act, call off the election, and advance the Fourth Reich (Corporate Rule). They’re so unpopular at this point, it’s the only way they can maintain power. They know it and they’re saying it out loud (imagine a link to Curtis Yarvin’s blog here).
I’m all for showing up at No Kings marches, and for liberals exercising 2A. But the most effective way to fight U.S. fascism and the billionaire tech Nazis who support it is much easier. Destroy them the same way we destroyed apartheid in South Africa.
Make them poorer.
The thing is, we don’t even have to bankrupt them. They absolutely cannot tolerate being even a tiny bit poorer. For the obscenely rich, two percent poorer is a really bad day. Five percent poorer is a fucking emergency–they’re calling Trump on his personal mobile to ask him what the fuck he’s going to do about it. Any poorer than that and they’re running for their bunkers and safe rooms, hitting red buttons, activating whatever insane contingency plans they have that probably involve private jets, islands, and underground kale farms. They just can’t handle it.
So how do we do it?
- Cancel your ChatGPT subscription. Seriously. Look, the AI bubble is going to burst anyway, because 90% of AI is a Ponzi scheme, investment falsely categorized as revenue. AI adds value extremely rarely. Most of it the time it subtracts value, making tech support impossible and complicating UIs with annoying pop-ups. AI is being shoved into apps and interfaces like Clippy. Too young to remember Clippy? Okay, how ’bout fetch? Tech keeps trying to make AI happen. Gretchen, stop trying to make AI happen. A ten percent dip in AI subscription revenue could be enough to burst the whole thing. Let’s do it! Boycott AI, sink Nvidia and Palantir, and crash the S&P 500! You should have already sold anything with a P/E ratio of over 100 anyway. But now’s your chance if you haven’t.
- Cancel Paramount Plus. I actually subscribed to Paramount Plus last night to watch UFC 324, which was a thing of beauty. I’m a huge fan of highly skilled consensual violence, and watching Sean O’Malley reach a flow state in round 3 against Song Yadong was incredible. But then I was reminded that UFC is actually planning a White House event, which is both horrible and completely fitting. After the fight I tried to watch Episode 1 of Starfleet Academy. The opening scene appeared to use an AI-generated backdrop, and the writing is so bad that some suspect AI wrote the script as well. Then a trailer for Melania popped up. I turned off the TV and cancelled Paramount Plus. When they asked me why I chose Other (“Because AI and Melania.”).
- Delay upgrading your iPhone. The most powerful form of protest in a capitalist society is non-participation. You don’t have to throw your iPhone in the river. You probably shouldn’t, actually. Just keep using it. The cracked screen looks kinda cool, like a scar on a tough guy. Don’t upgrade. The system needs you to upgrade. Resist. Make them miss their projected earnings by just a little bit. They’ll freak out! Tim Apple will demand that Trump do something about it, immediately. Well, he retired, but you get my point.
- Cancel Amazon Prime. Amazon is evil. Knockoffs, scam products, barcode comingling, employee abuse, deliveries that have a status of delivered but are nowhere, the LOTR abomination show, all making Bezos so rich that he can rent Venice and play with spaceships. Fuck that guy. Let’s make him a little poorer. MacKenzie Scott already took her pound of flesh. Let’s take a few more ounces.
- Sell your Tesla and sell TSLA. Need I say more? The current P/E is 309. JFC. Fuck that guy and his Nazi salute.
That’s a good start. Your own Top 5 economic non-participation actions might even be better.
Hit ’em where it hurts. Buy less. Delay purchases. Opt out. Especially tech.
They can’t be shamed and they can’t be reasoned with, but if they’re a little poorer, they’ll be calling Trump and demanding change.
Anonymous
One thing that bugs me reading your blog is why you decided to have a kid in a world this broken, filled with suffering, cruel people, savage nature and death. You are a smart and emphatetic guy, so why do it? Have you read some antinatalist philosophy?
J.D. Moyer
I’m not an antinatalist. The world is full of suffering, cruelty, and death, but it’s just as filled with joy, kindness, and new life. The universe is indifferent and it’s up to empathetic humans to create fairness, a caring society, and to unlock the mysteries of the universe. I believe in the potential for human progress. That said, it’s a big choice to bring a new life into the world–that new person might have a great life or they might have an extremely difficult one. It’s not a choice that anyone should take lightly, and I respect people who choose to not have children based on their values and beliefs.
Anonymous
The idea that we can ‘fix’ society doesn’t justify creating a new person. You’re essentially creating a problem just to hope your child is the one to solve it. It’s a gamble where you place the bet and they pay the stakes. You admitted life can be ‘extremely difficult’, so why force that risk on someone who was at peace in non-existence? Bringing someone here to solve ‘mysteries’ they never asked for isn’t a gift; it’s an imposition. Creating a capacity for pain just to chase a joy that wasn’t even ‘missing’ is an ethical violation against a person who can’t consent to the struggle.
J.D. Moyer
There was no “someone at peace” — there was just nonexistence. And to me the opportunity of existing outweighs the risk of a difficult life, especially if I can tip the scales towards a good life by being a good parent. But everyone is free to make their own choice. It sounds like you personally might feel that life is an imposition, and I’ve felt that way at times when I’ve been depressed. But these days I’m very happy to be alive. All people suffer and feel pain, and sometimes life can feel “net negative”. But in hindsight (for example after recovering from four years of chronic pain), I’m so happy that I’m still here, that I made it through the hard times.
Anonymous
This isn’t about optimism or pessimism, but it’s about moral permission.
Not being created harms no one, because there’s no subject to be deprived. But creating a person guarantees exposure to serious harms (illness, psychological suffering, loss, and death) without their consent. Good intentions or good parenting can reduce risk, but they can’t remove it.
Your personal gratitude for having survived hardship doesn’t authorize imposing that risk on someone else. Some people don’t recover, don’t find meaning, or judge their lives as not worth starting, and procreation selects blindly between them.
So the question isn’t whether life can be good. It’s what ethical principle justifies imposing unavoidable, non-consensual risk on a new person when refraining from doing so harms no one at all.
J.D. Moyer
Sure, I’ll go there. What about moral permission to NOT have children? If no one had children (the antinatalist approach), civilization would collapse in a generation, creating immense human suffering for more than eight billion people. So if we are going by ethical principles, non-procreation doesn’t hold higher moral ground. Kind of like the plot of Pluribus.
What it comes down to, for me, is that human existence has value. There are ethical problems with both having children (no argument there), but also with not having children. There are ethical problems in simply existing, taking up resources, consuming other life forms, creating waste and pollution, etc. For me, the potential of life outweighs the imperfect morality of existing, both personally and collectively. If you want to judge me as being ethically imperfect for having a child, I accept that. But is there a way to be alive and always be ethical? I don’t see one. We all make gray choices.
Anonymous
I don’t doubt your good faith or your care as a parent. But antinatalism isn’t the claim that everyone must stop reproducing overnight, so the civilization-collapse scenario misses the target. Ethical evaluation applies to individual choices under real conditions, not apocalyptic hypotheticals where everyone adopts the same principle at once.
The core issue isn’t whether life can have value, since it clearly can for those who exist. It’s whether that value authorizes creating a new person and exposing them to unavoidable harms without their consent, when choosing not to create them harms no one.
You’re right that perfect ethical purity is impossible once we exist. But that doesn’t make all choices morally equivalent. Creating a new person is unique in that it manufactures a lifelong stake in harm, need, and death for someone who couldn’t agree to it. Choosing not to create that stake is imperfect too, but it avoids imposing risk on someone else. That asymmetry is what antinatalism is pointing to.
J.D. Moyer
I see your point about the asymmetry, but I do think it’s valid to consider the ethical implications of a behavioral choice if everyone were to engage in that choice. Otherwise those who advocate for that choice are offloading the moral burden to others.
Does antinatalism advocate for a slow winding down of human population? That’s a scenario I explore in The Sky Woman (first book of my trilogy).
Anonymous
Collective effects matter, but refraining from procreation doesn’t offload harm – it avoids creating a new person to bear it. Antinatalism isn’t about abrupt extinction, but voluntary restraint and likely gradual decline. The asymmetry still holds: non-creation imposes no risk, but creation necessarily does.
J.D. Moyer
But non-creation does impose risk. It’s collective risk, distributed risk (to individuals who are part of society), but just as real and just as valid. And antinatalist policies with the aim of gradual population decline (like China’s one-child policy) created real life harm on a massive scale (female infanticide).
Anonymous
China’s one-child rule caused real harm, including female infanticide, but those harms arose from coercion and cultural pressures in an already overpopulated society – not from voluntary restraint. Antinatalism emphasizes voluntary choices, which gradually reduce births without imposing risk on anyone.
The asymmetry between creation and non-creation remains decisive at the individual level: refraining imposes no risk, creating imposes unavoidable risk. That’s what antinatalism is pointing to – not perfection, not immediate societal redesign, just harm reduction at the level of the person you could create.
J.D. Moyer
I completely respect another person’s choice to not have children. But to advocate for antinatalism, to try to convince another person that having a child or children is wrong or unethical, is different than making the choice for yourself. The latter is a perfectly ethical choice (even if there is some small cost to society when a potentially good parent makes that choice–see Idiocracy), but the former is along the spectrum that can lead to policy decisions. You could argue that it’s just persuasion, not policy, but on the flip-side, is it ethical for natalists to attempt to change the mind of women trying to get abortions? I don’t think so.
Human population is on track to naturally decline due to choice and reproductive rights, and that’s much better than decline from policy (or from war, pandemic, or natural disasters). So maybe we can leave it there, since we appear to agree on a desired outcome.