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The thought of being remembered for something so bland and boring is weirdly scary to me. Maybe Felix was on to something when he talked about how settler-colonialism hollows out your soul and kills any culture, creativity or national identity you might've otherwise had. thinky-felix

Edit: 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 SETTLER DOWN 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻 🔻

  • blobjim [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Most of the stolen wealth from other countries just goes straight to the top 1% or whatever of capitalists

    Not really. It goes to everyone's who's a labor aristocrat or above, at least. You couldn't have a world where every person had the quality of life of a lot of Americans (including myself).

    • Justice@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't know exactly what lifestyle you live or are thinking about, but there's absolutely no reason the entire world can't have all of their basic needs met and could do so with much less labor being done than now. It's not a resources limitation. The reason it seems otherwise, if it even does (I don't see it this way, but I think maybe I used to), is because we don't consider all the extreme inherent waste under capitalism. With a centrally planned, world wide distribution of resources and a common understanding of what we "need" there's nothing stopping humanity from everyone working a dignified amount of hours that leaves time for leisure but also having everything we need as far as shared, massive apartment complexes for living, community cafeterias where food is provided for everyone, and of course there's no reason "luxury" commodities can't exist either within reason.

      Will the "upper crust" Americans see a reduction in their current QoL which essentially just translates to wasting a fuck load of resources? Sure. Probably. To me that sounds like a good thing though.

      Regardless, the idea of convincing current day Americans to stop having this mindset that they HAVE to have a detached single family home or HAVE to have a personal vehicle or HAVE to be able to order Chinese fastfood, pizza, and ice cream to their detached family home at 3am seems impossible. Things will have to sort of "naturally" (climate change?) keep getting worse and worse and worse until people have no choice. And it'll take educated leaders at the right times and in the right places to force things in an equitable direction.

      It's not inconceivable that this vision never comes to pass. People like their treats and are more than willing (we see day after day especially recently) to ignore or even cheer on suffering elsewhere if they get that treat. But just because it isn't happening and may never happen doesn't mean it's not possible. I just don't think that's true. I don't want to be reductive, but when I hear that type of argument my first thought is "maybe we're envisioning much different lifestyles" or "this person is advocating anarcho-primitivism!" That's sort of a joke, I think it's usually the former, but I do see some humorous "back to monkey" takes out there done in earnest.

      • blobjim [he/him]
        ·
        1 year ago

        Our posts basically agree.

        Will the "upper crust" Americans see a reduction in their current QoL which essentially just translates to wasting a fuck load of resources? Sure.

        Yes there will be a reduction in quality of life for basically every American labor aristocrat. There might be things to offset that like less mental stress of expenses like health insurance or taxes or whatever, or more efficient use of resources, but at the end of the day those people would have a lot less disposable income to spend on random stuff because being able to buy random stuff is not sustainable.

        The idea that socialism is so much better and more efficient that it will magically solve most resource constraints and other issues the world has right now is the same kind of magical thinking where people assume technology like solar panels or electric cars are going to solve climate change. It's never that simple (I think we agree).