deflock.me

Marx says something interesting about the comparison between wage labor and slavery. Basically, that where the horrific nature of chattel slavery hides the way that the labor of slaves went toward their own subsistence, where wage labor hides the way that the labor of workers goes toward their employers:

In slave labour, even that part of the working-day in which the slave is only replacing the value of his own means of existence, in which, therefore, in fact, he works for himself alone, appears as labour for his master. All the slave’s labour appears as unpaid labour. In wage labour, on the contrary, even surplus-labour, or unpaid labour, appears as paid. There the property-relation conceals the labour of the slave for himself; here the money-relation conceals the unrequited labour of the wage labourer.

W.E.B. Dubois, in Black Reconstruction in America, says something similar about the state of chattel slavery prior to the civil war

The slavery of Negroes in the South was not usually a deliberately cruel and oppressive system. It did not mean systematic starvation or murder. On the other hand, it is just as difficult to conceive as quite true the idyllic picture of a patriarchal state with cultured and humane masters under whom slaves were as children, guided and trained in work and play, given even such mental training as was for their good, and for the well-being of the surrounding world.

The victims of Southern slavery were often happy; had usually adequate food for their health, and shelter sufficient for a mild climate. The Southerners could say with some justification that when the mass of their field hands were compared with the worst class of laborers in the slums of New York and Philadelphia, and the factory towns of New England, the black slaves were as well off and in some particulars better off. Slaves lived largely in the country where health conditions were better; they worked in the open air, and their hours were about the current hours for peasants throughout Europe. They received no formal education, and neither did the Irish peasant, the English factory-laborer, nor the German Bauer; and in contrast with these free white laborers, the Negroes were protected by a certain primitive sort of old-age pension, job insurance, and sickness insurance; that is, they must be supported in some fashion, when they were too old to work; they must have attention in sickness, for they represented invested capital; and they could never be among the unemployed.

To clarify, DuBois is not making a case for slavery, just describing the object conditions.

nothing is so calculated to ruin human nature as absolute power over human beings.

DuBois makes the strongest and most soaring case for the inherent dignity and personhood of Black Americans, and ultimately considers the chattel slaves who worked southern plantations as part of the working class, and analyses how these historic conditions were used by various kinds of capitalists, and the southern plantation owners were heavily subjected to market conditions. These conditions led to more heavy and brutal exploitation and abuse of victims of slavery as war and market conditions demanded more pressure for plantation owners to meet and compete with global market demands.

One of the main reasons that the wage labor of North America during and prior to the civil war was a material condition that led to the abolition of slavery, was because wage laborers were not paid to maintain themselves and their family, they were paid market rates which were heavily influenced by the way that slavery lowered wages for wage earning northern workers.

It was as Frederick Douglass said in Boston in 1865, that the Civil War was begun "in the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;-both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro."

Furthermore, from DuBois:

Slowly but surely an economic dispute and a political test of strength took on the aspects of a great moral crusade.

The abolition of slavery was objectively a progressive development toward the dignity and humanity of the working class. Chattel slavery, which was (is) a form of exploited labor under capitalism, where it existed (exists) doesn't just harm the victim of slavery, but the waged worker who is forced to compete with free labor; and the efficiency of exploited waged work leads to more brutal exploitation of the victim of slavery.

But this division of labor is sustained in our current society as a difference between poor workers and middle class workers, still defined most often along lines of race, gender, and hegemonic social legitimacy. As such, the division of labor is a condition that suppresses the wages and wellbeing of all waged and unwaged workers.

"Saying you don't need privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't need freedom of speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden

A lot of them love these.

But that's communism like what China has and they have cameras watching every person's waking moment. We can't have that

They are switching to flocks og investor, Axon.

Paraphrasing this may help in convincing friends, family, and your community of their reality.

But where do you come in? What benefit have you from that kind of ‘law and order’? Don’t you see that this ‘law and order’ only robs you, fools you, and just enslaves you?

‘Enslave me?’ you wonder. ‘Why, I am a free citizen!’

Are you free, really? Free to do what? To live as you please? To do what you please?

Let’s see. How do you live? What does your freedom amount to?

You depend on your employer for your wages or your salary, don’t you? And your wages determine your way of living, don’t they? The conditions of your life, even what you eat and drink, where you go and with whom you associate, — all of it depends on your wages.

No, you are not a free man. You are dependent on your employer and on your wages. You are really a wage slave.

The whole working class, under the capitalist system, is dependent on the capitalist class. The workers are wage slaves.

So, what becomes of your freedom? What can you do with it? Can you do more with it than your wages permit?

Can’t you see that your wage — your salary or income — is all the freedom that you have? Your freedom, your liberty, don’t go a step further than the wages you get.

The freedom that is given you on paper, that is written down in law books and constitutions, does not do you a bit of good. Such freedom only means that you have the right to do a certain thing. But it doesn’t mean that you can do it. To be able to do it, you must have the chance, the opportunity. You have a right to eat three fine meals a day, but if you haven’t the means, the opportunity to get those meals, then what good is that right to you?

So freedom really means opportunity to satisfy your needs and wants. If your freedom does not give you that opportunity, than it does you no good. Real freedom means opportunity and well-being. If it does not mean that, it means nothing.

You see, then, that the whole situation comes to this:

Capitalism robs you and makes a wage slave of you.

The law upholds and protects that robbery.

The government fools you into believing that you are independent and free.

In this way you are fooled and duped every day of your life.

But how does it happen that you didn’t think of it before? How is it that most other people don’t see it, either?

It is because you and every one else are lied to about this all the time, from your earliest childhood.

You are told to be honest, while you are being robbed all your life.

You are commanded to respect the law, while the law protects the capitalist who is robbing you.

You are taught that killing is wrong, while the government hangs and electrocutes people and slaughters them in war.

You are told to obey the law and government, though law and government stand for robbery and murder.

Thus all through life you are lied to, fooled, and deceived, so that it will be easier to make profits out of you, to exploit you.

Because it is not only the employer and the capitalist who make profits out of you. The government, the church, and the school — they all live on your labor. You support them all. That is why all of them teach you to be content with your lot and behave yourself.

‘Is it really true that I support them all?’ you ask in amazement.

Let us see. They eat and drink and are clothed, not to speak of the luxuries they enjoy. Do they make the things they use and consume, do they do the planting and sowing and building and so on?

‘But they pay for those things,’ your friend objects.

Yes, they pay. Suppose a fellow stole fifty dollars from you and then went and bought with it a suit of clothes for himself. Is that suit by right his? Didn’t he pay for it? Well, just so the people who don’t produce anything or do no useful work pay for things. Their money is the profits they or their parents before them squeezed out of you, out of the workers.

‘Then it is not my boss who supports me, but I him?’

Of course. He gives you a job; that is, permission to work in the factory or mill which was not built by him but by other workers like yourself. And for that permission you help to support him for the rest of your life or as long as you work for him. You support him so generously that he can afford a mansion in the city and a home in the country, even several of them, and servants to attend to his wants and those of his family, and for the entertainment of his friends, and for horse races and for boat races, and for a hundred other things. But it is not only to him that you are so generous. Out of your labor, by direct and indirect taxation, are supported the entire government, local, state, and national, the schools and the churches, and all the other institutions whose business it is to protect profits and keep you fooled. You and your fellow workers, labor as a whole, support them all. Do you wonder that they all tell you that everything is all right and that you should be good and keep quiet?

It is good for them that you should keep quiet, because they could not keep on duping and robbing you once you open your eyes and see what’s happening to you.

That’s why they are all strong for this capitalist system, for ‘law and order’.

But is that system good for you? Do you think it right and just? If not, then why do you put up with it? Why do you support it? ‘What can I do?’ you say; ‘I’m only one.’

Are you really only one? Are you not rather one out of many thousands, out of millions, all of them exploited and enslaved the same as you are? Only they don’t know it. If they knew it, they wouldn’t stand for it. That’s sure. So the thing is to make them know it.

Every workingman in your city, every toiler in your country, in every country, in the whole world, is exploited and enslaved the same as you are.

From Now and After by Alexander Berkman, Chapter 3: Law and Government.

Available to read, or download in various formats, for free, here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism#toc5

Not much, and it's probably soldered onto the board.

But they all have a rather nice solar panel...

I've looked at a teardown, the ram chip is unmarked and soldered. They have an OK IR camera, a nice solar panel, a good battery, and a decent GPS unit.

I don't know if you'd be willing to up your commute time for it, but the deflock website has a map tab that builds a route avoiding flock cameras.

edit: it links to a separate app/website

Mostly some of the bad parts though like mass surveillance and opression.
Yet economy wise China seems to have their shit together in difference to the USA.

They reconize the importance of e.g. energy independence (from imports) and domestic chip/RAM production while USA tries to play a fool's game with tariffs and hurries to run more of the economy on dinosaur farts (yeah, I'm aware that most fossil fuels aren't made from dinosaur remains...).