We have so many houses going unused. We have food and resources for everybody, but we’ve set up a system that arbitrarily concentrates most of it on a few people! Young children, with no understanding why society is this way, are suffering and dying because they live in a world that collectively agrees to let this happen unnecessarily
Fuck, I’m stoned but you know I’m right
Edit: and the sad thought hits me: the first step is realizing the system doesn’t have to be this way, the second step is realizing it isn’t going to change, at least not any time soon
To put in the words of someone I truly hate, someone I deeply despise, someone who used to be part of my friends discord group but is thankfully gone now:
“You can’t have winners without there being losers”.
This. This is how such people see the world, and in their eyes, perfectly justify inequality.
Probably throw in a bit of “just world” delusion in the mix, to make things worse.
Every year capitalists kill 10 million people by withholding food, medicine, and clean water. All because it isn’t profitable to them personally.
This. This is the reality and the root cause of a lot of the issues regarding homelessness, starvation and preventable illness in the world.
Aggressive capitalists value money more than anyone’s, and everyone’s life.
They will let you die to bump their profits a fraction of a percent.
Just FYI this is a tankie account.
The less organized and fragmented the populous, the easier it is for the rich to take advantage of us.
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich,”
As an example of how stupid our global civilization is … Africa has more than enough wealth and natural resources to produce all the food and water it needs to feed its own people without any outside influence or control. Unfortunately, first world countries have such a stranglehold on African nations and governments that they are forever beholden to foreign aid and manipulation that they will never be able to pay off their debts … which means African will forever pay first world countries and never be capable of standing on their own.
Also, I’ve been sober from alcohol and drugs for close to 30 years now … and I’m perfectly aware of all this and think about this stuff all the time. We don’t need mind altering drugs to understand how stupid, greedy and corrupt our world is, has always been and will always be until we destroy ourselves and free this planet of our own stupidity.
I can tell you right now why nothing happens. Because those of us who have housing and a solid life are terrified it will be taken away if others are given what they worked for (I realize this to be false, however it’s a very common sentiment among 30-40 year olds who own homes or property of any kind).
So, they keep voting for farther and farther right politicians because the left wants to “take your guns, land, and make you live under communism!” This is a non-exaggerated thought process of how a lot of people think.
Fuck that i only have a house so i don’t have to pay someone else’s mortgage.
Actually, it’s because of capitalism. It’s not a good reason but it is the reason. Everybody knows that we throw away food every single day that could literally feed the whole planet twice over. Everyone knows that we can manage to put everyone under a roof. The billionares sure as hell know this but they want to keep the status quo because they know as long as nobody actually does anything about it, they’ll always be the 1% with everything—and so the rat race continues.
Everyone else already mentioned this… Methinks the fundamental issue is wealth distribution, so yes it is capitalism. I would say it is a “good” reason as it is a major target for sociology research and politicians, and there are active efforts in some countries to reduce inequality so…
I think I was radicated by this back in second year of college… Professor mentioned something like “The US Midwest has enough production capacity to feed the entire world” when a lot of the crops went to beef production, sweeteners, or just waste
This has been an issue for a while and I think Cory Doctorow mentioned it in one of his blog posts? About the Luddites; they were not anti-technology, but saw how the productivity increases would only benefit the rich and wealthy. I suspect the current AI issue is the same, “robots replacing your job” will be a lot more positive if the replaced worker still makes the same amount via basic income/stipend by the government instead of the money being concentrated into OpenAI or Meta or somewhere
… I’ve wanted to talk about these for a while
For those reasons I believe ai will be a net negative for all humanity in a capitalist system. It serves to further enrich billionaires and create a police state for the rest of us.
Now if it wasn’t this way, you could use ai as a tool to potentially do good (im still not a fan of it) but we know this will never happen. So id advise anyone to boycott any ai shit that keeps getting shoved into our faces. I will deny it until I have to go live in a shack in the woods to do so.
Poverty is a necessary component of capitalism. It’s not arbitrary, it’s calculated.
Yes but I’m saying there’s no good reason why we use capitalism instead of something better
I know what you’re saying, I’m just raising the class question. There are “good” reasons for the rich to use capitalism, after all.
Pointing out that the rich are acting according to their own material interests is a powerful way to show the (sadly) uneducated masses that they should do the same!
a system that arbitrarily concentrates most of it on a few people
It’s not arbitrary.
And the reason it’s so much worse now is the distribution.
If one family owned a company, they’d value long term brand loyalty over quarterly profits.
With a corporate board, they all own a piece that’s easily sold, and a whole bunch of other people who don’t have “enough” already. There’s no focus on long term company health, just that the percent return increases.
That’s just not sustainable.
So large corps but up companies, run them into the ground, then sell them off. Often replacing with shitty knockoff quality products under the same brand.
A private owner can be satisfied, a board will always demand the numbers go up.
Even worse is that they try to gaslight society into thinking the poors are leeches and parasites on society, while it’s been them all along.
That is why I think stock ownership should be for a minimum term, like bonds.
10 year minimums. That should turn it back into an investment vehicle it was always supposed to be.
Minimum terms before sale and preventing use as collateral on loans are two very simple pieces of legislation that would make a huge difference in wealth inequality.
And loans should be taxable, with repayments being deductible.
Or we should just switch all taxation to be wealth based and not income based.
Rich want to be richer. Isn’t that a good enough reason?
Fuckin’ socialists, putting the right of poor children to go to school above the right of billionaires to buy another mega yacht.
Wait until you hear the true story of the Irish Potato Famine and realize that not only did nobody learn from it, but most of the anglosphere seems to be towards a direct repeat of it at an even wider scale.
Spoiler
The potato blight was a secondary or proximal cause of the mass death and emigration. The primary cause was the system of absentee landlords (arguably an early form of corporatism), ineffective government and racism.
The world is how it is until it doesn’t matter. Suffering is only temporary. Enjoy the time that you have. Can’t take anything with you.
Then explain the tombs of Egyptian Pharoahs?
They thought you could take it with you. But they were wrong
You can’t take anything with you, because the British will rob your tomb and take your stuff back to Britain.
That too
Take anything with you where? Dead is dead, and there’s nothing after.
My point, exactly. No point in hoarding.
the second step is realizing it isn’t going to change, at least not any time soon
No, I will never have this attitude. I refuse to believe that we couldn’t at any moment choose to change our course. The rich and powerful fear it. Believing things won’t change, sooner or later, only benefits them and not us. There is no magical right time for change, there’s only now.
Look at game theory. We have 300m+ Americans operating primarily out of their own self-protection. They’re lied to about what that means. They are divided beyond repair.
3% of the US population protested in July, that wasn’t enough. What would be enough for a revolution you think? How would that go?
Look at history
Edit: apologies for the snarky and unproductive comment, I was hungry.
What I meant is that one of the wonders of the modern propaganda system is making you see everything through the lens of “the system”. If you want to know how oppressive regimes can be overturned, simply look at how it was done before. The French, Russian, American revolutions. Spoiler: it was never pretty.
I can believe things could change any day. Everyone in every country is sick and tired of the rich monkeys in charge. It’s a coordination problem, nothing more nothing less.
I always get annoyed at people jump on all the justifications about how just handing someone a house isn’t enough to set these people’s lives right, and I’m like, “Right. ‘Cause the street will definitely help themselves get back on track. That lack of shelter is an attitude problem.”
Yes this is the world. It fucked and we hope to change it. Even thought you were stoned it makes sense. Feel and house people
