The US is oddly very similar to a third world country in how it works sometimes
An American city has been without power for 2 weeks, unacceptable.
Submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.today to workreform@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/5cfe4f4e-404c-42f0-a765-80ed90e8dbd6.jpeg
Comments
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
I wish people knew what “Third World” meant, from a historical context. Quite a few historical “Third World” nations were as advanced as their NATO and Soviet peers, at the time the term was coined. But the most advanced nations were then subjected to decades of sanction and espionage and outright bombing, until the term became synonymous with war-torn hellhole.
The US doesn’t have this excuse. We’re de-industrializing due to a combination of cheapass degeneracy and vindictive bigotry.
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works 7 hours ago
Yeah everyone was about as advanced at a time. The world is a competition and the west had an edge during a very pivotal moment of rapid technological and scientific advancement. Honestly China had quite an edge for a long time but fumbled it at the wrong moment but caught up pretty quick once they stopped killing everyone. International interference is a given. China messes with US who messes with Russia and China and so on. No one is anyone’s friend here, it’s partnerships of convenance at best. As someone who has lived in undeveloped countries it’s not just that causing the problems, there’s a lot of internal and regional nonsense as well. The potential for development is crazy but everyone is just out for themselves. Politicians from local areas all the way up to the president couldn’t give two shits about their country, they just want to get their money and get a house in Europe.
SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 19 hours ago
Particularly towards its minority populations. The US is full of colonized peoples and regions that it has, if not an extractive relationship with, than a relationship that’s passively exterminationist.
In much the same way that the US shoved its indigenous peoples only reservations, expecting them to die off or otherwise exit the stage of history, black people were redlined into inner cities for the same purpose. Now Gary, IN is without power, Flint, MI goes without water, etc.
Of course, this also becomes an active process as well, like when the FBI murdered Fred Hampton, or propped up a tinpot dictator on the Lakota reservation in With Dakota in the 70s.
But that internal Colonial relationship is at the core of all of it
kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
FYI, this post has been reported as “off topic”, along with the declaration that posts of this nature make this board indistinguishable from Lemmy Politics.
As the sole Mod, I’m going to allow it because this sort of issue is a direct consequence of our civilization’s corporate-centric approach to governing, and highlights the urgent need for Work Reform; the implementation of a system that is not 100% profit-driven or based around profit outcomes. Indeed; Work Reform is a political concept at its core since the entrenched powers never reform from within, but due to outside pressure.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree with this approach. All opinions are valid.
Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
My complaint is that it’s from a serial Reddit reposter. If I wanted a reddit feed, I’d go to reddit. Last I looked, they posted 10x the amount they comment, drowning out communities
kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Oh, its Sanitation again, I didn’t notice that.
I understand and appreciate your point. But as long as they’re abiding by the rules of the sub, I’m going to let the community upvotes & downvotes be greater determinants of the worthiness of their posts. And as long as they’re not being a bad actor, I won’t ban this or any other user.
I’m just glad to see posts that are mostly-applicable to the topic rather than those spammy fake jobs or that one guy obsessed with the end of the world.
Okokimup@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m inclined to say off topic, but i’m not angry about it if it stays. I really appreciate your mod style. Thank you for asking for opinions from the community.
an3223@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
Hey, it sucks to hear this place only has one mod. I have free time and I strongly believe in the mission of decentralized social media. If you want any help I would be more than happy to volunteer my time.
kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’ll keep that in mind, thanks! Fortunately this is Lemmy, so I only have one or two reports each day to deal with (for now). And most users actually seem pretty mature and reasonable!
I have a hope that the sort of people to be on Lemmy at all aren’t the sort to be too toxic or unreasonable; and mostly that’s been wonderfully true in my (limited) experience!
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Technically I think it is off-topic since it has nothing directly to do with work reform. Note, I said directly, so no need to point ouf correlations between work reform and racism or bad government in general.
kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I know what you mean, and your logic is 100% sound.
By the time I saw this it was 8hrs old with +250 upvotes though, so I didn’t want to purge it against the will of the people.
stickyprimer@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s not especially on-topic but it’s not completely unrelated either. I think it’s fine as an edge case but that doesn’t mean a ton more like it should also be allowed.
daychilde@lemmy.world 1 day ago
All opinions are valid.
Wrong.
That’s my opinion, therefore it is valid. ;-)
kat_angstrom@lemmy.world 1 day ago
LOL that’s valid
I thought about editing that since unconstructive replies are less valid, but figured whatevs. I’d rather hear all feedback than discourage poor feedback. :p
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
The government is no longer serving everyone. It’s not even serving the red states that voted for the current regime. It’s serving the ultra wealthy. It’s even openly pay to play: You get access to Trump by bribing him.
Also the regime is incompetent and despises expertise, so not only can they not negotiate with Iran, but they can’t operate the US armed forces to engage Iran with military force. The administration serves as an adverse force multiplier. And is wrecking the lives and integrity of the units.
The US is no longer a nation. It’s a pile of debt and assets that are being financialized, picked apart like buzzards would a carcass.
Nonprophet@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
‘The US is no longer a nation. It’s a pile of debt and assets that are being financialized, picked apart like buzzards would a carcass.’
In a trench coat!
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 1 day ago
It feels like the worst parts of Las Vegas and “Big Box Retail.” Everything is being parted out to private equity, and it’s not for us people (or even U.S people) anymore.
I use Vegas as an example because all of the fun family-ish attractions and locals’ incentives have all but been eradicated, replaced with celebrity-DJ’d highrise night/day clubs and luxury shopping that seem to pander to the most egregious ends of wealthy foreign money. (Probably where a lot of shady deals go down, too.)
The other end is conventions, of course. If you wanna woo a guy who knows a guy to give
youyour boss’s boss’s boss a government contract for kill-drones, it probably happens here.The majority of residents’ place in this new structure is as servants, hawking luxury goods and experiences they themselves couldn’t possibly hope to attain because they’re actively shut out.
Feels like the entire country is following this ruinous pattern.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
The government is no longer serving everyone.
When did it ever?
The US is no longer a nation.
Most nations have historically operated like this. Hell, it’s the foundation of feudal societies. Oversized robber-baronies which violently extract wealth from their residents, for the aggrandizement of the aristocracy. If you go back to the old school 19th century Anarchist literature, it’s this view of government that underpins their belief in the abolition of state systems.
But to claim the US has stopped being a nation because it has shit domestic policy? I just don’t know what kind of definition of “nation” you’re working with.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 hours ago
At this point, the federal government is divesting itself of its responsibilities to the states. The Trump regime is actively seeking to not provide services and support to those parts of the nation that didn’t vote for him, but in doing so is actually hitting red states (and red counties in blue states) harder than he is the blue ones.
But the message is clear: Some of us no longer count as Americans, according to MAGA or the White House. The individual states are responding accordingly, either challenging these denials of support legally, or creating state-level alternatives. But some places are being left in a state of disaster. Puerto Rico is rationing water (to the people while corporate interests retain water access) and Gary, Indiana has been without electrical service for two weeks now. Then there’s the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Here in California, we’re fighting wildfires without FEMA support, but that’s been the case since early 2025. And there are a few other natural disaster hot zones to which FEMA has been unresponsive.
So, the US is behaving like a failing state. That’s not a strict boolean. The decline and fall of a nation a long, slow, non-linear process. We don’t know if it’ll devolve into civil war or toward the fracturing of the US into separate allied clusters of states. It’s up to the individual historian (say a century from now) to decide exactly at what point the US actually failed. Rome, for instance, fell across centuries.
Right now, the federal government has pretty much abdicated its duties to the states, and only serving corporations who pledged fealty to the Trump regime early on. (Again, some government action is taking place due to court orders, but the administration isn’t always obedient to them.) The states are on their own for anything they don’t fight for.
I suppose there could be more severe symptoms that might indicate the failure of the federal government. Civil war between states, anarchy in municipalities, or the rise of martial law in some counties, whether by the National Guard, by local police departments, or by regime paramilitaries such as ICE.
For me, I’m still a Californian, but the Trump Department of Justice and Department of State would not consider me American anymore, for being a leftist and disabled, and in fact might regard me as a terrorist. I am, after all, the chief regional officer of Antifa.
qarbone@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
There’s a propagandized version of a “nation” as a country with functional and supportive social systems, which I think most people subscribe to. Whether or not their country every really qualified as a “nation” by that metric is debatable.
TIEPilot@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Wait til you hear about Puerto Rico after Maria. I was there 2 years after and there were whole parts of the island that had no power or running water. It took me almost 2 months to get my gear shipped in as they had an active triage on what was shipped by need. It was one pallet, thats how tight it was even after 2 years.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The less touristy parts of New Orleans were still fucked in 2012 from Katrina in 2005.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 1 day ago
2012? Those scars still won’t smooth out for another two generations.
Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 1 day ago
If we kill Blackrock, we solve so many issues.
boonhet@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Uh… No? BlackRock is a passive company. They “own” so much because people buy they ETFs and mutual funds which buy stock in everything. You’re basically saying get rid of pension funds, 401ks and retail investors because those are largely the people using BlackRock and Vanguard funds.
ninja@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s kind of a problem that they own the stock. It’s not the people that own the ETFs or mutual funds that get to vote with the shares. Instead, a company gets to amass that power using other people’s money.
I don’t know what a good solution is, but it’s very much a problem.
Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
Looking at your down votes here I don’t think you are correct.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 days ago
remember Flint, pepperidge farm remembers, it took them a long time to fix it.
PagPag@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There were places in the US that didn’t have power for over a month after hurricane Laura. I know because I experienced it firsthand.
Nouvellalia@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I’m telling you, that was my thought too. But my second thought was that hurricanes are way more destructive, over a much bigger area. If I can get power in two weeks after hundreds of miles of 150mph wind and 20’ floods, why aren’t they fixed yet?
This shit in Gary is extra fucked up.
Janx@piefed.social 16 hours ago
Yes, I do remember Flint. 12 years after the issue, they finally have lead-free pipes…
qarbone@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
I don’t believe it was intentional but adding on “a low-income Black city” feels unnecessary.
Like, sure, that is likely the reason the administration is utterly uninterested in helping. But its addition will just fuel diversions by racist, e.g. “well, why are they ‘low-income’? Maybe those blacks should just get to work instead of waiting for handouts.”
Just saying a US city is without power for 2 weeks should be damning enough.
mrmisses@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Yeah why point out that it’s because of racism, we already know they’re Nazis /s
Alpha71@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
While this is the first I’m hearing about this. Again. What does this have to do with work reform?
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Most advanced in what? The US is not even the top dog in military tech anymore.
chunes@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I know it’s fashionable to claim that the US sucks at everything here on lemmy, but is this really a serious question? The US dominates in academia and scientific research and it’s not even close. e.vnexpress.net/…/us-universities-dominate-global…
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I have to admit I did not expect the US to still perform so well after losing thousands of academics this and last year.
However, reading the article you linked, it strikes me as a pointless victory. A statistic that won’t lead to anything meaningful.
Sure, it’s cool that academics and scientists publish a lot of articles, but does it really matter if nobody reads them because access is paywalled? And does it really matter if government institutions, as well as private companies, will just go against the research, because they could not care less?
Personally, I’d be much more interested in something that tracks public access to academia, and its impact on society, especially government’s decision making. Because to me, this just feels like GDP. Good for bragging about being top 1, and nothing else.
Still, I have to give the empire at least a little credit for its universities’ performance.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Shanghai rankings account for the number of Nobel Prize / Fields Medal winners, meaning they look at how good the institution was historically, rather than purely how good it is now. If you rank universities by current research output, such as the Leiden Ranking, it’s a very different picture.
sudoer777@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Expensive and mediocre garbage
pseudo@jlai.lu 17 hours ago
The whole city? What happened?
monotremata@lemmy.ca 16 hours ago
A derecho, flooding, and tornadoes. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Gary_power_outage
Stolas@lemmy.ca 14 hours ago
Republicans complained whenever they received delayed federal aid but when they’re in power the opposition receives no aid.
The safest place you can be right now is in a red state, in the eye of the hurricane, blending in.
onionsinmypores@sh.itjust.works 19 hours ago
Aug 24, 2025.
x.com/SenSanders/status/2091970263856394274orioler25@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
Same priorities as they’ve ever been.
Nonprophet@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
America! We’re number ONCE!!!
20cello@lemmy.world 2 days ago
That’s probably on purpose
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 2 days ago
‘okay okay, we will schedule a couple bombing runs for Gary, to make things even. that’s how equality works right? ah fuck it’ pushes red button
Squizzy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
How is it the most advanced…I heard some of the cities are wothout power… and apparently segregated
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Priorities seem straight to me. Impoverish non-white Americans so that old richwhitemen can do whatever they want.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It’s both bigger and smaller than that
- smaller in that outright racism has evolved to systemic racism plus classism
- but much bigger as a failure of poor infrastructure condition and market that can’t adapt. Many places have a poor state of infrastructure that could fail like this, and the market can’t adapt to the need regardless of what city failed
raman_klogius@ani.social 2 days ago
No, no, they already set their priority.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 days ago
If the war on Brown people just happens to hurt Black people then that’s just an added bonus.
fellow_human@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
Oh they are asking for 1.5t military budget next yet. Crazy shit. Let’s make sure they ain’t getting it
iknewitwhenisawit@fedinsfw.app 1 day ago
daychilde@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Not Louisiana; Paris, France; or even Rome?
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gary, Indiana - let me say it once again.
OakTree@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Writing a snarky tweet on the fashy social media site seems to be the extent of any democrats abilities. Thanks Bernie, I’m inspired.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Gary, Indiana. Let me say it once again.
FE80@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Heck of a job.
patruelis@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Richest, most advanced 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
meat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
North Korea tells the same story
BooBees@fedinsfw.app 1 day ago
Except they actually had a beat crop year that beat expectations this year, so at least some of their propaganda turned out to be true
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
According to who
meat@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
We do have the richest and most advanced billionaires.
Jhex@lemmy.world 1 day ago
which is proof that, as a Nation, it is neither
hOrni@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah, that’s something Trump would tweet. Just the first sentence, without any context at 3 in the morning.
stumu415@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
So advanced it doesn’t need universal health care or 60% of the population lives from paycheck to paycheck and have no savings in case of emergency. Not to mention definitely no rampant drug issues.
stretch2m@infosec.pub 1 day ago
It certainly doesn’t seem that way, but I think when people say this they are referring to GDP, which does show the US as the highest.
Image
morto@piefed.social 1 day ago
does ai companies passing money to each other get counted in the gpd?
Alexfire@lemmy.world 1 day ago
All the sheep spouted,
“The best country in the world”,
And they believed it
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 days ago
in the wealthiest neighborhoods.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
It’s corrupt as hell, but the world still folds back to the US dollar when their own currency goes to shit for a reason.