„1% of people hoarding 99% of wealth in the world, and most of them have the same skin color and religion like me? It has to be the fault of people with a different skin color and/or religion that I’m not getting richer!“
“Have we considered blaming the people who are reviving old religions for our society’s moral failing instead of acknowledging that the political leaders of my country share my religion
Skin color: capitalism
Religion: money
President Lyndon B. Johnson once said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
The worst hot take of this nature I’ve personally heard so far, in Canada: “Fuck man this customer service job pays me peanuts when I’m busting my ass! I tell ya, it’s those damn Indian immigrants saturating the service industry and driving the wages down!”
Worker saturation does reduce the power of the workers. A small town strike is a huge deal, it can shut the business down with nobody around to easily replace them. As opposed to place they can be easily replaced with low cost workers, the conditions will slowly move towards slavery with every replacement.
Aren’t most of the Indian customer service workers in India though? Nothing to do with immigration
in my mind, it’s not even capitalism. there are rules against monopolies, and people are supposed to pay their taxes to not become unfathomably rich. these rules are just not enforced, because everyone is arguing about wether trans people deserve to exist or not. politicians need to take their job seriously. and the only way to change that is from within. join a party and do jour job properly. complaining about capitalism isn’t making the situation better either.
The rules aren’t enforced because capitalists are buying their way into politics, so much do that they’ve gutted the IRS. BTW, they can’t even do most of their work on computers, because of lobbying from Intuit and H&R Block.
I think you have good intentions, but you miss the fact that money talks in this fucked up ecosystem.
But how does that make any sense in regards to trans issues?
Like, I’d get if maybe some laws weren’t being brought to vote because it doesn’t fit the agenda for the day, but do you really think all 3 branches of our government are so embroiled in lgbtq+ issues that they aren’t making other laws? How does what politicians are discussing on social media or on television affect whether a regulatory agency is going to open their eyes and prosecute when things are put on their desk? Is the SEC (not the government, but the governments enforcers) discussing trans medicine this whole time instead of intentionally looking away from white collar theft?
The reason trans people are being targeted is because the Republican party has become a proto-fascist party. Part of fascism is to have an out-group that can be scapegoated. The best method to identify these targets is in the way they’re framed.
They’re infinitely strong with all the allies and lots of power. But they’re also super weak and easy to defeat
This is the framing device fascists use to gain power. Of course, this target always changes and becomes more regressive. As the famous poem goes, “first they came for the communists”
The reason they target trans people is because they’re an easy target. Trans people don’t have the money of billionaires, the infrastructure of support, or the critical mass of people with positive opinions towards trans people. Fascism is different in every country that falls for it, so no it’s not a requirement to hate Jewish people for a person, party, or country to be fascist. In an ironic twist of fate, I’d argue that the government of Israel is a fascist nation, with Palestinians being the target of fascist hate and influenced by Apartheid and Jim Crow (random aside, Jim Crow also influenced Fascist Germany and Apartheid).
Anyways, back on topic. The laws being passed to target trans people are also nebulous and vague, creating the groundwork to target the next group they choose to persecute. Historically and through stated visions, the next target will be gay people. To the gay people that believe “support LGB not the T”, you will be the next target of Republican ire if you allow this attack on trans people to continue. Your observation is absolutely correct, the attack on trans people is not a whole-government operation, yet. Fascism is a merging of state and capital. As the death cult becomes more hostile towards people not in the in-group, the SEC will eventually start prosecuting trans people for securities fraud for working at a publicly traded company. It’s a slow boil, don’t be the frog in the water.
Capitalism is the problem because it incentivizes these behaviors and allows “capital” (i.e. rich people) to control the political process. The people who are pushing the anti-trans agenda - just like the gay marriage scare of the past - are doing so to manipulate people into voting against their own interests to elect politicians who are loudly subservient to capital. It’s not a coincidence that the same people, i.e. Republicans, have been pushing for trickle-down economics and privatizing social security for decades. Democrats aren’t much better. In some part because Citizens United (a Republican gift to the rich) declared that money = speech, and so it’s hard to compete electorally without caving in to the demands of capital. So, they do dumb shit like propose privatizing the water supply:
And this doesn’t even get into the real nasty part of capitalism which is the plunder and exploitation of the global south that has gone on for centuries to build today’s capitalist society.
If you have actions you plan to take that will get your elected representatives to stop doing things that makes the ultrawealthy richer and start doing things that improve the lives of everyone else (UBI, universal healthcare, equality for all) under the capitalist system we have, then go ahead and get on it. People pointing out the flaws in capitalism is not the reason you have thus far been unsuccessful. And when you call for everyone to stop criticizing capitalism, as if it is some universal equilibrium that is undeniably correct, you are carrying water for the very people you want to oppose.
Tell me you don’t understand the first thing about what capitalism is or how it works without saying you don’t know the first thing about capitalism or how it works… And yet you clutch to it like a turkey voting for Christmas…
Perhaps consider looking in to the works produced by the minds who dedicated their lives and careers to the subject, rather than your own, clearly uninformed one?
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/marx-exploitation-abc-unequal-world/
https://jacobin.com/2022/06/karl-marx-labor-theory-of-value-ga-cohen-economics
these rules are just not enforced
And the argument for that is always because they’re anticapitalist, my dude. Even if you agree with the core tenets of capitalism, it’s a hard argument to claim it hasn’t been weaponized in multiple ways.
Well the other problem with capitalism is that when the wealth inevitably funnels to a few, those few can then pay scraps to politicians to keep getting richer. If you don’t co-operate, well they’ll just pay the other party instead. Good luck winning when guess what, they also own the news networks. They own the social media. If you think it can be magically solved by joining a party and doing your job properly then you really don’t grasp the reality of the whole situation.
You’ve got a point, but with that attitude nothing will get anywhere… At least if you did in there’s a chance for a better outcome where you get a chance to influence things
you’re not exactly saying the thing on the meme, but god, the line is awfully thin. capitalism IS the unfathomably rich.
politicians are doing exactly what they’re there for: protecting the interets of the unfathomably rich.
Lmao
Years upon years of pro-capitalist propaganda is a helluva drug.
Because they would have to take their part of the responsibility for allowing it to continue, and that’s hard.
We need more general knowledge.
American conservatives: better defund schools and ban books so people don’t catch on to what’s actually happening. Better if they blame the gay, brown, and poor people, not us in power.
In plain view, too. For shame. I honestly didn’t think I’d see it in my lifetime. I read about it in other places, but the wool was over my eyes.
I luckily don’t hear that much. I mostly hear fellow wage slaves making barely enough to slowly die repeat bullshit news headlines like “no one wants to work anymore” all the while working harder and harder for less and less. It’s incredibly depressing.
When I worked at DGX, basically EVERY customer said this in response to seeing me being the only one behind the counter…
No… No, this store just has shit pay, forces EMPLOYEES to pay for parking, and is willing to fire people at the drop of a hat.
Simple, under this system the more desperate folks undercut him. They don’t see the rules of the game are what is causing that. They couldn’t imagine a system under other rules, except for Stalinist nightmares. So crushing the people who undermine them is the only option they can imagine (and have been lead to believe by the preachers of hate)
Look out, plebs! Those foreign lads are going to steal your crumbs.
Easy, they’re brainwashed, exactly as planned. Watch the news lately?
I get that argument on paper but I think it’s more of the government’s doing. Hear me out first, we could live off the grid, build our own house, our own farms, never work for a job, but the government stops us, they are the weapons of the banks and rich who enforce authority.
They gave the housing market and land to the banks. I understand many blame minorities for taking our jobs, when in reality, capitalists just hire whoever works for cheaper, and yes, that’s true. But if wasn’t for government regulations, more jobs could exist for everyone, or you could live off the grid.
I like to cite how many despise healthcare being tied to your job, but government involvement caused that in the first place.
We live under corporatism/fascism. Yes, the rich run everything, but they have the government be the ones to control us. You must first get through the pawns if you want the king.
You think it’s building codes keeping people in poverty??
You think you understood his comment?
No. I didn’t.
He seems to be saying that we must either choose anarchism or corporatism? Or that building codes and other regulation is a slippery slope to poverty and fascism?
You must have the wrong comment then. They didnt mention building codes. You’re the only one mentioning building codes.
My state doesn’t have building codes.
My state is still shitty for poor people. Probably more shitty than states with building codes
Why the fuck are we talking about building codes?
To be fair to my egregious summarization he kicks off by saying life would be better if people could just build homes off the grid.
Anyone can build off-grid if they want to, as long as they purchase their land and pay property tax. OP admitted to being mostly libertarian, so I think they’re really just complaining about taxes. I personally think libertarianism is a slippery slope to anarchism, because taxes are what pay for roads, police, firefighters, etc.
No one ever gets my points. No one can build off grid if they want to because they have to buy the land. It was never like that if we were to go back to the U.S. in the late 1700s.
Property tax and income tax I’m against. But I said that I do believe in governance at the local level, and as long as it’s constitutional. So taxes on gas for instance to pave the roads is sorta ok in my book.
Let’s try to elaborate more.
We live under corporatism where the rich have bought out everything. The banks own the land. Big Pharma runs the medical industry. And the military industrial complex runs NATO and such. We call this money lobbying.
It doesn’t just affect politicians, even agencies and armies. The FDA and CDC for instance are owned by big pharma. Big pharma lobbies to these agencies to create more regulations, yet, these regulations the agencies make never seem to hurt the big guy, only the smaller companies starting up. They want to kill the competition. That’s why medicine and insulin can be so expensive.
Banks like JP Morgan financed the war on terror. We came into the middle east to help their people rebuild, instead, we expanded JP Morgans banks, and drew out the war to finance them better, among many other terrible things.
There could be tons of jobs right now, but people lobby to have regulations crush the smaller guys so few monopolies have power. The government enables the rich.
So, when someone is in poverty, let’s ask why from every angle possible. Why can’t they have a house? Credit scores, banks owning everything, and blackrock eating up the housing market. Why can’t they get a job? Not enough jobs available. Why can’t they find food and temporary place to stay? Inflation, which is the silent tax making food more scarce, and no one wanting to give the poor a place to stay and help them get off their feet and become independent.
When you see all of these things, you realize that the powers that be don’t want us to be self sufficient and independent from them. I don’t see it as just “housing codes.” More as government control. Think of the banks as the king, and the government as it’s military.
Yes, I understand oligarchy and also corporate capture. Those things are bad.
What does that have to do with friends and neighbors blaming minorities?
I’ve talked with socialists before. They had interesting reasons to justify socialism. They talk about how minorities come over the boarder and steal jobs, but claim that it’s because the rich hires who works for cheaper, that’s why this happens as minorities will work for cheaper. At first, I thought it was an unbeatable argument. But, if it wasn’t for such government regulations, more jobs and competition would be available for these people. And if things didn’t work out for people, they should just be able to homestead like what people once did.
Some socialists believe that late capitalism has caused our recessions. They see value in work, but not the dollar. My argument is that if it wasn’t for the FED causing inflation, things wouldn’t be so bad. Woodrow Wilson created a centralized bank, worse thing possible. And we had presidents ban the gold standard to top it all off, that’s why money feels useless. If it was a finite currency (like bitcoin aims to be) then I see great value in it.
Honesty, I’d consider myself to be libertarian at the level of federal government. But less libertarian and more constitutionalist the closer to home it gets. I don’t necessarily support government, but definitely governance if so to speak.
People like Ted K were definitely smart. He believed we should go back to the Neolithic era in the sense where we have our small local communities with direct democracy. In terms of freedom, and maybe happiness, that’s the best option.
Unregulated lobbied capitalism. I’m okay with capitalism and competing ideas. What I’m not okay with is some of the late stage problems we’ve encountered as a society. Assuming the US average person lives to be a very low of 50, we are four generations deep. Ive known two generations in my own lineage. That’s not very long.
It’s okay to make better systems. Even for billionaires its okay because a rising tide floats all the boats. This is something that needs to be taught better to the upper class. If these guys had less complaining workers, people willing to contribute more so in their enterprises, workers who are happy to make their products, it would be fine. Putting the squeeze on the little guy does nothing for these dudes besides some tight margins.
Coupled with a very elderly legislative body we are left with senseless greed in both trade and politics. Portions of the population just consume politics like it’s a sitcom. What we’re left with is a system in need of refinement.
Gross
When economic power is functionally political power, and self-perpetuating economic inequality is the default under capitalism, this is inevitable over time.
You can push against it’s nature with that kind of thing, and you might see some temporary improvement, but the baked-in incentive structures will inevitably be followed, and the decline to late stage capitalism and collapse will continue.
If these guys had less complaining workers, people willing to contribute more so in their enterprises, workers who are happy to make their products, it would be fine.
I am not sure that would work. Happy people start to get self-aware and then start to make demands. People who are suffering one way or another are easier to control.
Look for example at how people behave after a war. They work together, build stuff together, do everything to manifest peace. Look at how they behave a few decades later … it has fallen back to in-fighting. Once everything is in order again, people fight among each other. Neighbors fight for shit like wrongly places trees, some build gangs and move around to destroy stuff just for fun, etc.
Humans are shit. We are just not made for being happy.
Even grosser
I don’t know man I just work here
I have the perfect plan. We hook all children up to a lifelike VR war simulation shortly after being born. Then when they reach a certain age we pull them out of it so they’ll behave cooperatively.
Well, if we believe the great prophets Wachowski in their prophetic depiction called “The Matrix”: the people in that simulation would just go crazy and die.
Billionaires are a minority… something like 1% of the 1% of people
Wtf I’m a bigot now!
(not disagreeing) And due to capitalism, they and the exploited will always exist, and have the power they have. If the billionaires of today didn’t exist, some other people would be in their place, and nothing would have changed. Capitalism is the root.
No matter wether capitalism or something else. People want power. Thise who have more will do anything to keep it. People fight back. reform Or social collapse. Repeat.
It’s a cycle that will repeat as long as their is something to opress.
Im not saying we should stop fighting. But even if we win it will happen again.
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The struggle’s real.
I think prefer my memes to be generally funny, instead of angry and political