#late stage capitalism right

[like-butterflies-and-glitter]

working overtime? don't look it. greying too soon? don't look it. the stress and lack of sleep caused by growing cost of living in comparison with a stagnant wage getting to you? try this anti-aging organic pH balancing colour-correcting hydrating detoxifying cream for a glowing dewy glass skin of a newborn made with the blood of the people who were displaced and people whose labour was exploited to serve our profits virgins haha

[troythecatfish]

blood diamonds from congolese slave mines, gold jewelries from sudans child labour, silks, and satins from Bangladeshi underpaid factory worker. end the madness, eat the rich.

[liberalsarecool]

Why don't Democrats use this easy to understand story on the campaign trail?

Democratic politicians need to explain how capitalism is failing and many many hardships in life stem from the grinding capitalist agenda.

Biden has done a great job standing by unions.

Orgainized labor and worker solidarity are the path forward. #VoteBlue

[lastcatghost]

[alpaca-clouds]

You Cannot Create A Solarpunk Future Under Capitalism

I am feeling like a broken record, but I just need to make this clear once more: No, Solarpunk in any form is not possible under capitalism. If you think it is, you either fail to understand Solarpunk, or you don't get what capitalism even means.

Technically I wrote about this already almost exactly a year ago. Let me reiterate it again, though: Solarpunk at its core is build around a couple of ideas. Those are:

Living in relative harmony with our environment, rather than destroying it. (Which includes using renewable energies.)

Decolonialism.

Social justice and the same rights, chances and possibilities for all people.

Neither of those three points is archievable under capitalism, as the end goals of capitalism are opposed to each of them.

Let me go through each of them.

Environmental Sustainability is not archievable under capitalism.

This is the point people tend to argue about the most. Because they will go: "But if the renewable energy sources are cheaper than fossil fuels, the capitalist will see more possibilities to make money with it." Well, do I have news for you: A variety of renewable sources, such as solar and wind power, are already a lot cheaper than fossil fuels and yet somehow the capitalist argue against using them. Care to explain that? No? Well, I'll do it for you. (Technically already did in that blog last year.)

See, when someone's net worth is listed somewhere, most of them actually do not have billions of dollars on their bank accounts. And no, they also do not swim in gold coins. Instead their net worth comes from calculating how much money they would be able to make if they sold all thier assets. A lot of those assets are shares in companies they have, as well as stuff like their fancy houses, fancy cars, fancy private jets and fancy yachts. Most billionaires have not more than a couple tens million dollars in liquid money, meaning money they can just spend. If they wanna buy something that is more expensive, they will usually go to a bank, say: "Look at all the stuff I have. I wanna buy myself more stuff. Gimme money?" And the bank will go: "Of course, Sir Billionaire, here you go. Have a nice 10 billion dollars."

And this is where the issue arrises: Most of the billionaires who are investing in the energy market, have already invested billions in fossil fuels. Be it by owning shares of fossil fuel companies, or by owning mines, oil rigs, power plants and the like. And this puts them into a silly little position: Even if they wanted to make more money through renewables, they cannot without harming themselves. Because in the moment that renewables become even more viable than they already are, fossil fuels lose their viabilities - and hence all the assets they hold in fossil fuels lose their value in an instant. The billionairs know that. The banks know it, too. Which is why banks do not want to give the fossil fuel billionaires money for that, even if they ask.

And that is only on the energy-generating side of it. If you go into the other stuff that harms our environment... Simply put: Public transport will never make as much money, as selling everyone their own car. And plastics are just so much cheaper than any alternatives. And the companies need fast fashion, because they won't make as much money, if folks only go buying new clothes every ten years.

Capitalism is build on the exploitation of the environment.

You cannot archieve decolonialization under capitalism.

Let's talk about the call to decolonize next. This is even easier explained: Capitalism is build on colonialism. And contrary to what you might have been told in school, colonialism has never ended. Most indigenous folks never got their ancestral land back - or have to fight to remain on it to this day. The most notable examples you know off might be indigenous people on their land (at times the land they originally had been forced onto after their ancestral land had been stolen from them) fighting pipelines that the capitalists want to put onto that land. That is colonialism.

In fact a lot of the raw material we use to power capitalism is produced on stolen land or is moved across stolen land to be financially viable. Be it oil springs, that can be found there. Or be it mines. That is both mines that produce coal, but also mines that are used to produce lithium and other materials used in batteries of electric cars. These raw materials should technically belong to the indigenous people from whose land those materials are sourced. And we do know for a fact that some of them will prefer to leave those materials in the ground. Maybe because of the harm to the environment that mining for them creates. Maybe because the land is sacred to them. Maybe because some of them just do not care about cheap electric cars.

It is more than that, of course. Because colonialism also allows for slave labor. And yes, I mean slave labor. Like classical slave labor where people are pressganged into laboring in those mines, or in other factories, where they are not paid at all - or are paid in breadcrums. The reason that the global south is so abhorently poor, even though most of the raw materials powering our world are found there, is, that the people in the global south are exploited, while the land is often owned by people from the global north, who either got it through colonialism - or by buying it from someone who got it through colonialism.

And once again: The profit motive of capitalism is directly opposed to decolonizing - and because of that it won't happen. Capitalism is built on colonial exploitation.

You cannot archive social justice under capitalism.

Capitalism as a system was invented for one reason and one reason alone: To allow former nobility, who were close to lose their power and influence in a Europe of anti-royal revolutions, to hold onto the power and influence and veil it underneath the idea of meritocracy. Basically saying: "Everyone gets what they deserve based on the work they got in." Obviosly they got the most, because they owned the land that everyone was working and living on. And then they did their best to brainwash everyone into believing this - at which they actually succeeded.

Here is the thing: Capitalism needs an underclass to exploit. Sure, a good chunk of that exploitation will happen in other countries, where the poor white middleclass folks do not need to see them toil, but some of that exploitation simply cannot be done in those other countries. At times because the work physically needs to happen in the western nations - stuff like road contruction, general contruction work, cleaning and such are an example of this. And at times because some things might be time critical, cannot be transported that far and stuff like that - like farm work in some cases, or also all the Amazon warehouse stuff. Oh, and all those fastfood jobs belong into this area. Stuff that is paid minimum wage and exploited to no end.

And then there is of course prison labor in the US, which once again is just slavery.

And all of that does not even go into the care and nursing work that is either underpaid by a ton when it is happening on the open market (like in hospitals, schools, kindergardens and other care facilities) - or is happening completely for free. Mosten done by women, who will care for both children, as well as elders and disabled family members for free.

The true endgoal of capitalism is to turn the labor of the lower classes into money and value for the upper class to hoard like bloody dragons. As such capitalism will never be compatible with any sort of equal rights and equal chances.

Those three aspects are truths that just cannot be changed. Capitalism will never be able to create any sort of justice, equal rights, or sustainability. It is not in the interest of capitalism to do so, either.

[my-midlife-crisis]

[bootleg-nessie]

For every employee that dies at work they should kill an executive to balance it out

[admiral-atheist]

Man who married daughter of billionaire tells Brits: ‘you don’t get anything without hard work'

So, here is the latest edition of conservative hypocrisy. Rishi Sunak, the current Prime Minister; someone who never has to worry about the implications of not being paid because of illness from being off sick from work is telling the nation that their GPs no longer have the authority to sign them off work.

The implications of this are as huge as they are depressing. Anyone too sick to work; could be contagious (flu etc), have an aggravated injury made worse by repetitious activity etc, will be forced to attend work after a "company Dr" obviously on the company's payroll declares you fit for work.

This is the current playbook of their steady march towards abolishing the NHS and installing privatised healthcare throughout the country.

PLEASE VOTE!!!!

[long-sleeved-sandwich]

when i publish my book, i don’t dream of it becoming a movie or a short series. i dream of my book being mentioned on fox news as the gay commie bullshit that your kids are reading these days. i want to hear passages of my work read in a sarcastic voice by Ben Shapiro and Laura Ingram. i want it debated at school boards. i want it on banned book lists and in the “read banned books” section of books a million. i want conservative christians to burn it. i want it to go down as one of the most controversial novels in the history of literature, because that way i’ll know that i wrote a good story, one that sheds light on the lives of the most oppressed and marginalised of our society. to remember the most forgotten of the forgotten.

[queerism1969]

[troythecatfish]

[liberalsarecool]

Capitalism is built on the illusion of scarcity.

How can we possibly pay workers? We have no money after we gave the millions in stolen labor value to the CEO.

Don't fall for the tired lies. Stop CEO greed.

[woodlandcreatur]

Kinda fucked that we, as Americans, have accepted that our time has no inherent value.

The discussion about minimum wage focuses too much on the value of any given type of labor. We're sitting here bickering amongst ourselves over whos job is worth more, and who deserves less... and we've completely lost the plot.

Minimum wage is strictly about the value of the time our employers take- or, at least, it needs to be. If a company demands 32 to 40 hours of your time every week, this time should have an intrinsic value regardless of the work you're doing. And, given that this time makes up most of your waking life, it should pay more than enough for you to survive in this society.

The value of our labor is what gets paid on top of that.

But here we are, acting like our work is all they're taking from us while they burn away our lives for nothing.

[lastcatghost]

[imacaprisun]

In light of the United States of Hell, the land of the fucked being one of the only countries in the whole entire world to state that food is not a human right, I think we should start planting food everywhere. Fruits, vegetables, greens, flowers, plant everything and anything that can be eaten. Stop digging out every weed that grows in your garden and try identifying them and see if you can eat them. Most of the common weeds in our backyard are edible and can also be used for medicine! Make seed bombs and throw them around everywhere. Try and start a community garden in your neighborhood. Also, gardening does not have to be stressful! We just made it stressful because we stopped using methods like the food forest, companion gardening, you get the picture. Hell, just throw a bunch of seeds into your backyard and see what happens. I would say plant more than enough for yourself and whoever lives with you and then donate the rest to homeless shelters, animal shelters, etc... Anywhere that needs food in general. Just remember to make sure everything you plant is native not only to the U.S., but to the state you live in as well. Learn how to forage and what foods you can find in forests near you. Once you learn a good bit about foraging, start teaching your friends and families as well. Maybe learn HTML and make your own website with all the information you learn! Help spread information about how to garden and forage. Go dumpster diving as well. Majority of the time, a lot of food is thrown out that is still fresh, but isn’t “good enough” to sell (aka not visually appeasing enough). Remember to bring along a friend and/or family member! It’s always safer to go in pairs or more when dumpster diving. Water isn’t free either, despite the fact it should be, so try setting up a rainwater barrel and learn how to purify water. If you have more than enough, donate it. Everyone deserves access to food and water!