The hidden costs of worshipping the #deathcult

One of the successes of neoliberal capitalism has been convincing us that we’re paying less while actually paying more. They promise lower taxes, then they privatise the services, health insurance becomes a private tax, car finance becomes a transport tax, rent becomes a housing tax, student debt becomes an education tax. The electricity surcharge for AI data centres becomes another hidden tax. You voted to reduce taxes, but all that happened was public taxes became private payments to corporations. A vote for “tax cuts” too becomes a vote for hidden taxes. The same trick plays out across the digital world. We’re encouraged to embrace platforms and AI systems that consume enormous amounts of energy, degrade the quality of public knowledge, undermine independent publishing, harvest our personal data, and concentrate even more power in the hands of a handful of tech oligarchs. We’re told this is innovation, but it’s mostly enclosure. The latest scandals around Elon Musk and his…