Been marinating in my brain...

Bags of gasoline, toilet paper, water bottles, land, houses, gold, bitcoin, dogecoin, baseball cards, pokemon toys, amiibos, sneakers, you name it.

The media will frame this as the irresponsible and ignorant hoarding of your fellow man, the unending greed of American citizens; but I also have to think of this speaks to, oft unexamined in mainstream news outlets, the desperation of regular folks. They buy bags of gasoline not just for themselves but on the off chance they make it big. They hoard toilet paper on the off chance they can sell in excess. Everything is a hustle because when you are starving, are broke, got bills up to your neck, you have to hustle.

Or am I wrong? Is it a fundamentally American thing to reach certain stratas of society and just want to greedily turn every object into a cash-cow, a golden goose egg? Once you reach an extra 30k of income, and you don't want to waste it on your dumb stupid family, you decide to gamble with it out of sheer boredom?

Who are these people really?

  • marxisthayaca [he/him,they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Red preppers/communal prepping is a thing.

    I feel like anyone involved in he Red Prepper community is also trying to maintain a certain level of self-sufficiency. Like I want to learn to garden so I can feed my family, it would make little sense to instead rely, in that case, on hoarded cans of food. The goal is to shift modes of production to small-to-self-sufficient scales, rather than just hoarding and being magnanimous in the sharing once shit hits the fan.