Crypto For Workers
I just got an email from an organization called, Unionbase -- here is its self description on its website:
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UnionBase is the home of the Virtual Labor Movement
Unionbase is a tech and educational hub for unions
Welcome to UnionBase where you can connect with union members and leaders as well as learn about the labor movement. Founded in 2015, we are a tech firm that leverages web development, publishing and subscription based educational content on behalf of unions, union leaders, and worker organizations.
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Here is the text of their outreach this morning from this "tech firm:"
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Tomorrow (Friday) at 5pm Eastern we will be hosting a Youtube Live entitled Crypto and Labor!
.Tomorrow (Friday) at 5pm Eastern we will be hosting a Youtube Live entitled Crypto and Labor! Click on the button below to join!
.We'll be talking with Blockchain Socialist about the cryptocurrency movement and its potential for the Left and Labor. We'll touch on several subjects including the growing movement of leftists working to build decentralized power using emerging technologies and the political implications of ignoring crypto.
The Blockchain Socialist is the pseudonym of the blog host and podcast under the same name. Blockchain Socialist explores the intersection between Left politics and the blockchain space both critically and with cautious optimism.
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You have to "sign up" with Unionbase in order to get more information on this event or any other project by this "firm" that "leverages" stuff.
Let me take a wild guess about what crypto can do for workers -- instead of putting their nickels and dimes raised at bake sales and zonk raffles in a capitalist "bank," revolutionaries can convert their capitalist money into socialist crypto and beat The Man at his Own Game.
People do not understand Uncle Phineas's wisdom about suckers. They are born every minute, but they are not all just stupid. In fact it easier to fleece smart people than dumb ones because dumb people do not imagine themselves blest with financial genius.
Once I turn 70 next March, I will be able to do consulting work without blowing off my Social Security. Maybe I can learn this lingo and scarf up some crumbs falling off the table as these charlatans sell small groups of naive activists on the miracle of Block Chain Socialism. Is this a great collapsing civilization or what?
Hooray for Entrepreneurial Revolutionaries!!!!
Comments
Cryptocurrency is a strange and unpredictable new creature
What makes you so certain it's a scam?
Cryptocurrency's potential for subversion has always been a basal part of its appeal, and the fact that it could also go the dead-opposite direction has only been a relatively-recent twist.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
A Pertinent Question
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There are two distinct levels of contempt I have for this email that targeted me a union activist.
First, this "tech firm" is marketing itself without making anything clear about what they do. That phrase is well hidden in the middle of a long, complicated paragraph full of corpspeak bibble babble. I am not sure when or how the noun, leverage, became a verb. But it makes no sense whatsoever to "leverage web development, publishing and subscription based educational content." What they probably mean is that they sell advice and support service for those techie sounding activities. Every union with a sizable budget already has contractors for this stuff, which is called, "marketing" in plain English.
The corp speak is a tell, and so is the utter silence about what the fuck they will help you do with crypto technology. Before getting to an evaluation of crypto, this come on is an example of entrepreneurial resistance, an oxymoron from hell.
Two thumbs down.
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Second, regarding crypto itself, I confess that I do not understand anything about it at all. I do not regard that as a plus -- but it does clearly disqualify me as an authority on the subject. All I can say is everything I have heard about Bitcoin or any other crypto thingee has sounded like bibble babble to me.
That does not mean that there is no merit to any of this. Just that I, a somewhat lazy guy, see nothing worthwhile about it and I have no interest in looking into the matter further. Kind of a snooty attitude, but I am not the only one with what personality trait.
Thus I make fun of it. Maybe the joke will be on me when I miss the Crypto Boat.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Fully agree
Has a whiff of stench about it.
But I want to hear about this 70s threshold and consulting work. Could a blog be considered consulting work?
Thanks for the post.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Social Security
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For a guy who spent a lifetime in labor relations, I was pig ignorant about Social Security until I applied for it last year. Before reaching age 70, the Social Security Administration advised me that I could earn up to 19K without reducing my monthly benefit. After my birthday next year that limit gos up to something like 95K.
Yeah if you can get anybody to pay you for blogging, as far as I understand those are the rules.
I cried when I wrote this song. Sue me if I play too long.
Thanks for posting this. It's like an e-mail version of
telemarketing which, instead of targeting the elderly is targeting Unions and those who would wish to organize, join, or belong to one. "Hey, laborers and laborites, get rich quick while sticking it to the man, let us teach you how; the first lesson is free." That's all buried in just two lines:
Perhaps I should join, since I am a virtual laborer indulging in virtual labor. I suspect that socialist crypto is just regular crypto except "everybody gets a share" (Milo Minderbender). In the real world, is not the home of a virtual something actually the home of a literal nothing, an empty bucket for you to throw your coins, bit or otherwise, into?
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --