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
Reality is rather complicated
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?
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.
You’re right, but it’s worse. That sentiment isn’t just why our cohort votes right - it’s why our cohort is unwilling to change the status quo. It’s scary, when you have a kid and rent and a partner and aging parents and just a fuckton on your plate, and even if your morals are all in the right place you have to choose between even protesting, potentially being jailed or worse, or just biding time to vote. And that’s ignoring even any actual radical expression. Revolution is a young man’s game.
Reagan pretty much shut down progressivism in the eighties and its only in the new millenium we have seen it come back to a level it could be implemented again. We would be in much better shape if we did not have reaganomics that looked better than it was due to the energy crises no longer being a thing.
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.
There’s a reason they call it the tragedy of the commons.
Edit: The full paper is available online if anyone is interested. Here’s a copy from a university in Michigan. https://pages.mtu.edu/~asmayer/rural_sustain/governance/Hardin 1968.pdf
Never seen Wikipedia article shill capitalist propaganda this hard…
Jfc
The fuck you on about?
The Wikipedia article starts with two paragraphs accurately defining the term, then in the third paragraph above the drop-downs mentions the criticisms. Then two drop-down sections, Solutions and Criticisms, are almost entirely given over to all the ways various people have refuted this.
What do you want, a big flashing red banner at the top that says “This Concept is Bullshit”? I don’t think you understand how Wikipedia works.
I’ll allow it, but only if we can somehow put the same flashing red banner on top of politicians in real life.
The paper this article talks about was authored by an evolutionary biologist that wanted to talk about environmental science problems and social responsibility. Ignoring the concepts of personal property and ownership and stuff, think about this for a minute. 81% of Americans own a yard, but how many of them do you see growing crops in that space? How much more effectively COULD that land be utilized towards the common good if it were managed in some way? Or from the other side: the Alaskan government had to step in and put a halt on Bering Sea crab harvests for a few years because the numbers were critically low. Do you think all of the individual fishermen who are reliant on that income would have voluntarily stopped? Would they even have known the crab population was dwindling?
I can see thinking the tragedy of the commons is capitalist propaganda if you think there is a hard line between people and corporations.
The North Sea fishing industry didn’t collapse because too many of the proletariat wanted to do a lot of fishing, it collapsed because thousands of people organized into dozens of groups that systematically overstrained the ecosystem. Because those groups wanted to make more profit for a small group of hundreds of people. Everyone involved was acting in their rational best interest with no oversight or regulation guarding the big picture view and it caused everyone involved to destroy their livelihoods. Other than the ones at the top who’s livelihood is/was consolidating profit of course.
The tragedy of the commons isn’t about how it’s an individual’s fault or responsibility. It’s about how larger groups need disinterested guardrails for long term higher quality of life.
The concentration isn’t arbitrary.
“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
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.
But a lot of dumb reasons!
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.
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.
Yes. Though capitalism/fascism is the reason, it’s not good.
Faschitalism
Where did the h come from
Poverty is a necessary component of capitalism. It’s not arbitrary, it’s calculated.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
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.
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.
