At the risk of sounding like a class reductionist (I’m not), even things like racism and LGBTphobia are exacerbated by this, because the only reason we don’t just eat those ten guys is we’re always hating each other. The reason there’s so much racism in the US, for example, has a lot to do with slavery – and guess who benefitted from slavery? Guess who benefitted from the genocide against Native Americans? Who benefits most from calling refugees and undocumented workers “illegal immigrants”?
It’s not me. If you’re reading this, it’s probably not you. It hurts us. It hurts our communities, while these ten people keep brainwashing us into actually defending them and their system while hating each other.
(Ok now I’m going to have my coffee, and I wish to the gods that I could disable inbox notifications after posting this.)
“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.” – Lyndon Johnson
I live in the Bible belt and people 100% think a trans kid socially transitioning with a new haircut and different pronoun is a more direct threat to their livelihood than their boss giving them a 1% raise in a 5% inflation environment.
This is very class reductionist. Rich people are still hurt by bigotry, especially celebrities. Not every rich person is a cis, hetero, white, man.
These issues predate capitalism. Not making full use of minorities and oppressed people actually hurts the capitalist economy especially in terms of innovation. It would be much more efficient for the rich if everyone were giving their best.
These divisions are far from the only reason people don’t turn on the rich. People just don’t support socialism and I can see why. Things like the USSR and China are what happened when marxism was tried. We need to come up with better economic and political systems that actually work if we want to get anywhere. We then need to remove the stains these previous systems caused. I don’t think that’s gonna happen with the current crop of leftists as they are idealists still using 100s of years old ideologies.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the rich???
You don’t understand what I am saying do you? These issues predate the rich people we have now, and even hurt some of them. Billionaires are still bad people, but they aren’t the only problematic people in societies.
Try to mention that the majority of landlords who go around fixing shit all day are struggling just as much you will get you hung around here.
Mention that the uberrich are the ones behind those firms buying up houses and they want you blaming that 70 year old still fixing shit instead of them.
People are blind to so much shit sometimes and the pendulum swing in other directions like ACAB suddenly being pushed by a bunch of people who couldn’t speak English is the cherry on top to realizing so many people on the left are just as easily swayed as the people being grifted the right.
E: I’d like to see what people think are acceptable amounts of property ownership. Each person gets to own a single property? So I can own two properties and rent one if me and my partner each own, right? I wonder how far housing Co-ops can work.
Anyone in a committed relationship should be able to rent a single property. Nothing guarantees that we won’t break up, so they will need to keep something just in case. It’s also emergency funds for if we lose everything in the stock and people realize the Stock Market doesn’t work without the very thing people thing are arguing against. Unsustainable capitalism. What else do people do then? Go full Ron Swanson and put it all into shiny metal and bury it lol?
Until people start unionizing to the point where people don’t require their work to put into their retirement and get paid enough to actually save so they can’t generate money from hoarding, then you’ll need stock. You’ll need diverse portfolios which include property ownership.
For fixing shit, there are plumbers and electricians and carpenters. They are workers.
Landlord earns money not from fixing, but from renting out a house first and foremost. And this is a passive income, or, to put otherwise, exploiting a resource and dragging money from something that doesn’t produce anything for society.
Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the slumlords!!!
Landlords are not a special case. If you don’t like your job you can quit. Sell the property if it is such a burden.
That’s the point, they often can’t because unlike you and the other people putting money into the magic money making machine which requires unsustainable growth based GDP to work, aka the stock market, they put theirs into equity.
Selling 1-2 houses for $150,000 isn’t going to let them retire lol. They also bought houses for generational income so they can gift them to their children or grandchildren.
And just like the reactionary fun both of you are going with, you pretend like it’s still not a class issue lol.
the majority of landlords who go around fixing shit all day are struggling just as much you
Nah, this ain’t it, chief. They’re not struggling like me, and they’re exploiting a resource that should be a basic human right for profit. For every landlord who’s tRyInG tO pAy MoM’s NuRsInG hOmE fEeS, there are multiple tenants who can’t because they’re being sucked dry by these vampires.
People can fix shit without exploiting housing.
Edit: YIKES I just saw your username. Blocked, blocked, BLOCKED! Holy fucking shit!
As I’ve said, the death of nuance lol.
You’re welcome to google the name and find out blankets with smallpox was never a thing though!
E: You’re also welcome to read any number of my well sourced comments or discussions about landlords and class warfare elsewhere.
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Yes indeed. I have multiple references to that one instance at Fort Pitt in my thread which historians believe to be bullshit. To be clear, this is the one verified attempt we can point to since dude replaced a couple of blankets and a scarf later which came from the smallpox ward. As you said, there’s no possibility he was able to spread it that way. It’s just not how smallpox works. Any smallpox already in the native population was due to contracting it conventionally exacerbated by the closeness of combat in warfare.
Blankets with smallpox was never a thing that decimated swaths of natives. Smallpox was able to do that all on it’s own. People weren’t handing them out left and right trying to kill natives. The US government did that all on their own through widespread genocide and cultural erasure.
Blankets with smallpox, was never a thing to deserve it’s cult childish joking status like everyone likes to pretend it did. People repeat it because it sounds plausible and it’s essentially a historical ear worm.
Settlers weren’t handing them out trying to kill people. The US government didn’t have a policy to use them to trick natives. None of it was a thing.
E: Clarity.
instance at Fort Pitt in my thread which historians believe to be bullshit.
I scanned your links and there was refutation of Churchill’s claim about Plains indians and blankets but there was no refutation of Pitt. Your links only showed corroborating evidence that Pitt happened.
The attempt was made, that’s verified. The actual ability to give someone smallpox via blankets is bullshit. I might have made that more clear. Apologies.
In ancient Greece. The concept of beauty was so ingrained in the hearts of people. That no matter how poor you were - no matter how long the seigh of a city lasted. No one stole the gold that was on the statues located around town. Because to the Greek, beauty WAS life.
Put a cleaning robot in a public space, and count the number of hours until it’s been vandalized.
Those kinds of people are a major contributor too.
Seems like a real good reason to get independent and start doing things for passion instead of for money.
Only issue is you can’t eat passion or use it to protect you from the elements. The idea of doing something for passion while tangentially making just enough money to support yourself is and always was a lie under a capitalist system. If we want to do that, we need to change the system first.
Doing the math, if you took the wealth of the top 10 people and divided it up among the world’s population, everyone would get 153 dollars.
