2meirl4meirl

We have seen over and over that we can have a sustainable, industrialized world. The poorest people in the world have washing machines and refrigerators. I highly encourage anyone who thinks in terms of basic conveniences to travel to poor places and see what their quality of life is compared to the US or Europe, it's often eye-opening and makes you rethink what we're focusing on.

The problem isn't that we need to give up conveniences, it's that the people who produce our conveniences are treating their relationship with us like drug dealers or pimps. They produce inferior products designed to break and in return they continually raise prices, and create marketing campaigns that mislead and influence people, they find ways to exploit workers at a GRAND scale, all while funneling MASSIVE amounts of our wealth upwards and outside of our communities, and even that would be almost be solvable if they didn't then compile all their wealth and resources to influence politics to deregulate their own industries.

The "Oh you want socialism? Are you ready for bread lines??" responses to a public outcry for more fair systems or safety nets are tired relics from Ronald Reagan's era.

Actual post-capitalism society would be nearly unimaginable in today's world, people who think we're going to topple capital in our lifetimes are delusional. BUT we can go a lot further towards mitigating the damage it's doing.

We can create amendments to our constitutions that set in stone fair practices in business, lending and truth in media among other desperate needs for overhaul. We can set corporate tax rates where they were in the 50's when we had a boom in American wealth, we can break up monopolies in smart ways that don't kill jobs but instead shift ownership and thus revenue towards localities that need it. We can incentivize worker-cooperatives and provide subsidies for companies that stick to fair practices and are putting actual wealth back into communities.

We could create a semi-post-capitalist first-world if we all really wanted to, but the forces of capital have already dumbed our population down into a herd of consuming livestock that shriek bloody murder whenever someone threatens regulations on business. We need generations of concerted effort to undo the damage that Reagan and his fellows have left us.