In addition to the other thread descendants, staring with u/jjjalljs@ttrpg.network:
For all the bitching about capitalism, which basically every country on Earth uses for an economic system
This is only the case because it was instituted at gunpoint. The exploration, colonization, settlement, expropriation, amassment, warfare, thievery, and conquest of the world’s economy is soaked in blood, laden in exploitation of people, places, and things and destruction of the commons. You’d know that if you were subject to it. Or, if you’d paused to read, ask, or think about it for 5 seconds.
And, I can’t believe I’m saying this in public, “just because everyone is doing it, that doesn’t make it right.”
We can vilify, undermine, and lead smear campaigns against unions under capitalism.
We can break, or prevent, unions under capitalism.
Our governments can attack us using local, state, provincial, and federal police forces whenever there is a perceived threat to capitalism.
Everything works fucking horribly with those 2781 billionaire capitalists robbing the world blind while blaming the victims.
I think it’s kind of fundamentally unjust that the owner keeps all the profits from what labor produces. That’s capitalism. Unions and government are bandaids on top of that.
The heart of capitalism is definitely theft - theft of labour; theft of time; theft of energy; and theft of value. Intrinsically, it is a system that creates hierarchy and rewards exploitation of fellow human beings. The core tenets of unregulated capitalism are, subjectively in my opinion, a reflection of the evil of the sociopaths and psychopaths who benefit from how the system operates.
While I believe in communism as an ideal and socialism as the next-best-thing (preferably governed anarchically), I don’t see how western societies will be able to immediately get from where we are today to there without terribly bloody war in which countless lives are lost and suffering of the proletariat is rampant.
I think that moves to restrict capitalism (UBI; genuinely enforced workers’ rights; nationalisation of critical industry; stripping corporate personhood to hold individuals liable for the actions of companies; universal high-quality public education from birth to higher adult studies etc.) are the way to edge closer towards a more utopian society.
I don’t know how we make that happen while the billionaires and centimillionaires still have their thumbs on the political scales though. But, a man can dream.
Spell it out then. I am willing to listen, willing to be wrong.
In addition to the other thread descendants, staring with u/jjjalljs@ttrpg.network:
This is only the case because it was instituted at gunpoint. The exploration, colonization, settlement, expropriation, amassment, warfare, thievery, and conquest of the world’s economy is soaked in blood, laden in exploitation of people, places, and things and destruction of the commons. You’d know that if you were subject to it. Or, if you’d paused to read, ask, or think about it for 5 seconds.
And, I can’t believe I’m saying this in public, “just because everyone is doing it, that doesn’t make it right.”
Imagine that.
I think it’s kind of fundamentally unjust that the owner keeps all the profits from what labor produces. That’s capitalism. Unions and government are bandaids on top of that.
The heart of capitalism is definitely theft - theft of labour; theft of time; theft of energy; and theft of value. Intrinsically, it is a system that creates hierarchy and rewards exploitation of fellow human beings. The core tenets of unregulated capitalism are, subjectively in my opinion, a reflection of the evil of the sociopaths and psychopaths who benefit from how the system operates.
While I believe in communism as an ideal and socialism as the next-best-thing (preferably governed anarchically), I don’t see how western societies will be able to immediately get from where we are today to there without terribly bloody war in which countless lives are lost and suffering of the proletariat is rampant.
I think that moves to restrict capitalism (UBI; genuinely enforced workers’ rights; nationalisation of critical industry; stripping corporate personhood to hold individuals liable for the actions of companies; universal high-quality public education from birth to higher adult studies etc.) are the way to edge closer towards a more utopian society.
I don’t know how we make that happen while the billionaires and centimillionaires still have their thumbs on the political scales though. But, a man can dream.