also like me saying “i dont want laws” doesnt mean “anything goes with no impugnity welcome to pandora”, it means that the legal system is predicated on a police force, is predicated on punishment, is predicated on a worldview that is completely alien to how i believe society should work. we can and should deal with people doing bad things that hurt others, but we can do that without any reliance on an outmoded system that assumes an inherently corrupt human condition
“In 1969, Humanity walked on the Moon. It was the first
stellar body we’ve stepped foot on outside our own. In 2018, Elon Musk sent a
car to space as a joke.”
Opening line for my essay about Alien and Capitalism
A tweet that reads “just a quick reminder that a society exists to serve the people within it. there’s no such thing as a person being ‘useless’ to a society, only a society that is useless to a person”
Has anyone else noticed how, when you have a chronic condition of some kind, that there’s always the basic assumption from people around you that you’re not already doing everything you can?
It’s all about the illusion of control. People who are healthy like to believe they can always keep being healthy if they do the right things. They don’t want to think about how good people get struck with terrible circumstances for no reason.
So they keep assuming that if they got sick, they could do something to make it better.
And if you’re still sick, that must mean you’ve done something wrong or not done enough.
Nail. Head. The same attitude can be seen in how a lot of people talk about poverty.
And sexual assault. All they have to do is not go there not drink that not wear that not date them and they’ll be fine, right?
The Just World theory – that as long as I do everything right, I’m safe, and everybody who isn’t safe is at fault for not doing everything right – is perhaps the most harmful and widespread mindset today
if you ever see a conservative and wonder just how in the world they have so little compassion? they are genuinely convinced that most – not all, but most – bad things that happen are the fault of the person affected, because then they don’t have to feel bad
somebody explaining this to me as a young adult was, quite literally, the start of me seeing the world in a new way and moving considerably to the left politically. by letting go of the just world mindset my conception of reality shifted considerably
So I was doing some research on common medications for a pharmacology class at school, and realized that Wikipedia is calling out the outrageous practices of pharmacological sales in the US. Right up there in the main intro to the medication they’re showing how much the drug costs to produce, versus how much a typical course of treatment costs in the USA.
Also, just so you’re aware, as of late Mat 2018, 1.80 GBP is 2.40 USD. For a three month supply of the pill. The same amount could cost you 150 USD in the United States.
the entire point of dogwhistling as a concept is to leave enough doubt for you to plausibly deny that that’s what you meant, but it’s a signal to your intended audience who would immediately recognize and understand Exactly What You Meant By That. so yeah you can say “so-and-so didn’t outright say x y and z and you cant prove it was their intent to imply that” and you’re right, we can’t prove that, but you’re eating out of the palm of their hand when you say that, you’re literally right where they want you
“Unlearning ableism requires a fundamentally anti-capitalist change in perspective.
Specifically, it necessitates that you believe in the inherent worth of human beings, regardless of someone’s social position or productive potential.”}
Before you actually start reading communist theory you assume it’s gonna all be about violent revolution and setting cops on fire but in reality most of it’s like… just descriptions of intuitive and efficient ways to organize society. It’s stuff that doesn’t feel like it should be radical, but stuff that politicians, urban planners, etc. should already be doing (and then you realize that they aren’t and it’s incredibly frustrating).
Like, consolidating industry so redundant work isn’t done by multiple privately owned companies working towards the same end (eg. Google and Amazon both trying to develop AI competitively rather than just letting computer scientists work together and share research) just makes sense. Equally distributing the amount of work available solves the twin problems of unemployment and overemployment (people forced to work multiple jobs or overtime). Letting people enjoy the fruits of automation by increasing leisure time was how people always envisioned the future, but instead people are terrified of technological progress because it threatens their job security.
A planned economy to minimize waste is just more efficient and in the best interest of basically everyone on earth. Capitalism is so backwards that genuinely innovative and efficient ideas are marginalized and discredited while the status quo promotes massive amounts of waste and unecesary labour. It’s almost painful to think about how much further we would be as a society by now if we didn’t have the ball and chain of our current profit-driven economic system dragging us down.
One of the most obvious and infuriating examples of how capitalism is an enemy of human progress is the state of green technology. Major oil companies have actively sabotaged the most important work being done in science and tech for the past 50 years, simply to protect their own interests, at the potential cost of all life on the planet.
Aside from the obvious moral argument that deliberatley delaying action on climate change is monstrous and will come at the expense of thousands and thousands of lives, it’s also ridiculous from a global economic perspective.
A worldwide transition to sustainable energy would create a massive amount of jobs and stimulate the economy in a huge way. Instead, we’re being told that our best hopes for new jobs are the pitiful amount of people it takes to man a pipeline (which is miserable work even if you get it) and the future of our economy is in the oil industry, which is crashing before our eyes. It’s almost comical how antithetical to the good of society our current trajectory is.
This has got to be the most sad argument for capitalism i’ve ever seen
types out the zeros for 3 billion but not 4 billion so 3 billion looks bigger
[Image description: A screenshot of part of a list, reading: “12. ‘4 Billion people live in poverty’. Cool, you gonna just ignore the 3,000,000,000 people that don’t?”]
