someone: so what do you think is the solution to homelessness?
me, socialist:
Let homeless people occupy peopleless homes, build houses for use rather than exchange, 3D print comfortable houses in a day, convert corporate skyscrapers into housing and commercial malls into publicly-accessible community centers with living commons and entertainment
When you say it to people and they break
“But the money? … we can’t just? But, Money? We can’t just… help… people? Can we? The Money. We can’t just help people? Like that? We can’t just? Money?”
It’s not invalid for anyone, obviously if people keep buying something it will create a demand. The only problem with that rhetoric is that it implies everyone has an equal amount of power in the market, and that boycotts will cure any harmful business practices. The reality is large corporations who cause the most harm own tons of brands and even buy/merge with other companies so you can’t just boycott monopolies. Also, corporations attempt to cover their harmful practices and often people don’t even know about them until they’re uncovered, like the Volkswagen scandal. Overall “vote with your wallet” is a very inaccurate and simplistic idea under capitalism.
Also, even when people know that a corporation has deeply unethical practices, the products they make might be so indispensable a tool for modern life that people have no choice but to buy them anyway. Cellphones are a good example – the fact that the production chain involves super-exploitation of sweatshop workers is basically common knowledge now, but modern capitalism has made cellphones a necessity. And this isn’t even getting into the increased atomization of workers under neoliberalism, a trend that implicitly seeks to rob people of their organizing potential (for boycotts and strikes and such).
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Worse still often if I boycott doesn’t get publicity enough to drop the stock prices, the capitalists won’t lose any money and will instead just fire employees, cut wages, and create robots to do the job instead so that they can keep hauling in their hugely inflated salaries. Capitalism is built by capitalists to shield themselves from the harm they do. That what makes America free, capitalists are free from consequence
The amount of times people try the ‘if you hate capitalism why do u have a smartphone’ shit it’s rage inducing
With the exception of some local positions, all politicians are at best complicit in, but more likely supportive of, an unjust system. Voting matters, in the sense that you should do it when you can, but at best it only results in incremental, surface-level change, whereas what we need is a deeper change of the systems in place
Society will try and make you think of politics and governments as something “real” and fundamental, which you just have to accept and try to change in the couple approved ways they give you. But all it is is a group of people wielding the power to inflict violence on others and compelling us to fund that power. Think outside of the current systems and try to imagine a society that works for everyone rather than a small minority. Imagine a better world and then help build it
Democrat establishment:Russia interfered with our presidential election! The cheeto man is a traitor! Let’s rally CIA leaders for #TheResistance!
Working class people:Maybe you could also support progressive legislation to actually make our lives easier? Living wage, universal healthcare & education, subsidies to communities rather than to corporations, etc.? Maybe you could be less capitalist and technocratic?
gayfeline 