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
Every year capitalists kill 10 million people by withholding food, medicine, and clean water. All because it isn’t profitable to them personally.
10 million in the usa? or where?
Those are the worldwide numbers for starvation and preventable disease, roughly.
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.
“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.
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.
You have to remember that most people, especially Americans, are brainwashed from birth to believe that the current order of the affairs is the best and only way to operate a society, and that anything else is, ahem, communism, which is the worst possible thing there is. For many, psychedelics has been the most impactful way for an individual to actually think outside the box on a visceral level since their conditioning since birth has been one of “this is the only way to think, so hop on board lest you be cast out of society.” It’s the entire reason why these substances are illegal, can’t have people thinking for themselves out of lockstep with the prescribed mentality.
youd think that but ik plenty of ppl that do psychs and still are republican/trump supporters, if anything they doubled down harder, it can go both ways
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.
The less organized and fragmented the populous, the easier it is for the rich to take advantage of us.
Reality is rather complicated
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
Because the people in power benefit from the status quo, and they’ll sooner blow up the planet than live in a world where they’re not on top.
Not a good reason
I mean, glad you think that, but there’s this stupid thing call reality that is pretty lame yet it is what it is.
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!
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.
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Fuck that i only have a house so i don’t have to pay someone else’s mortgage.
I bought it the wrong time. I had a house and paid for 15 years lost $200,000 in the sale.
I would have actually done quite well to rent instead.
That sucks real hard.
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.
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.
The whole system modeled on infinite growth is not sustainable. The population is aging and we’re running out of markets and increased competition abroad. We’ve hit the end of the road for the post WW2 era. The American model in almost every industry just milks and extorts the working class and they are running out. Between big pharma price gouging citizens, banks trying to deregulate, and big tech out of any innovation just making harmful advertising/surveillance capitalism. They are running out of ways to extort and keep maximizing profits without harming citizens. They are trying to seize more control and influence of the government because of this.
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.
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.
A punishment for undesireability.
When you’re too old, too uneducated, too unattractive, too disabled, too beligerent, or an obstacle to further extraction, you’re rendered homeless.
Homelessness is a socially acceptable method of eugenics. A homeless person has no right to property or personhood. They can be abused, imprisoned, and executed without excuse or much effort.
Homelessness is, at its heart, a form of social murder.
But part of what makes one homeless is bad luck. Generally, a person with a terrible personality who cannot behave appropriately will end up being an outcast…on the other hand they could end up being president
Trump was rewarded for regurgitating a philosophy of eugenics that a bunch of other Silicon Valley psychos believe in.
A fun read is A Modest Proposal
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.
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.”
