I don’t think you’re ready to have an adult conversation about politics until you’re able to admit that there are things you love and enjoy that would not and should not exist in a just world. $8 billion dollar budget movies every other month don’t exist in a just world. New 900 GB AAA video games every year don’t exist in a just world. Next day delivery doesn’t exist in a just world. 80 different soda brands don’t exist in a just world.
All of those things come from exploitation on some level, and if you wouldn’t trade those for a world where everyone can eat and have a home no matter who they are or what they do, I don’t know what to tell you.
Man, this post makes me feel conflicted, because on the one hand, of the things listed, next-day delivery is the only one that DOES actually exist in the world today. The others are exaggerations, and while I understand the point being made, they do detract from it.
I understand—and agree with—that sentiment of, “I want slower deliveries by drivers who are paid better,” as one recent tumblr post put it. I absolutely agree with the idea that we need to produce and consume less as a culture, and that an actual substantive conversation about politics should involve willingness to relinquish the many modern luxuries that are built on exploitation.
I don’t think these are good examples of those luxuries, though.
Large budget movies are possible because consumers (and investors) are willing to pay for them. A large budget is actually a necessary component in making sure workers are being adequately compensated; the fact that they currently are often exploited by studios is a result of deliberate misallocation of resources, not anything intrinsic to the size of the production. Same thing goes with high-quality video games. As for releasing a new film/game every month/year, that’s only unsustainable because there’s only a handful of monopolistic studios doing it. In a well-regulated industry that encourages growth and competition, we could see tens, if not hundreds of studios producing big-budget films and games. And, with a well-compensated and socially-supported citizenry, consumers would have enough disposable income to support it.
Similarly, the problem with soda isn’t that we have 80 brands; it’s that we have two. And those two brands each own 800 different labels. In a healthy economy, these monopolies would be dissolved, and we could support well over 80 moderately-sized independent beverage companies producing their own sodas.
Same-day delivery, again, could be easily supported with proper allocation of resources. Currently, we have huge centralized distributors like Amazon exploiting gig-workers with slave-wages to ferry cheap mass-produced crap to people, and that’s what makes it bad, not the speed at which they do it. If instead, we had something like a super-robust USPS, with well-compensated deliverypeople working reasonable hours within a decentralized network of independent-but-cooperative suppliers, there would be absolutely no reason why you couldn’t get something delivered to you from the distro ten miles down the road within a day.
When we critique capitalism, and they respond, “Yeah, well capitalism made the cell phone you’re using!” our response shouldn’t be, “Oh shit u right,” it should be, “No, capitalism made the cell phone I’m using break after a year so I’ll buy a new one, and they use slave labor to do it while they pocket the rest.”
There are luxuries, and there are artificially-valued, mass-produced, built-to-break trash that are marketed as luxuries. But we don’t solve the problems of fast-fashion by saying, “Welp I guess I shouldn’t wear clothes.”
yeah that’s a decent rebuttal imma reblog now
people don’t realize how much stuff you used to be able to get locally
nowadays I might pay for rush shipping on sewing supplies if I need them for a project deadline. 100 years ago, I could just go to a store and buy silk thread, a zillion different types of braid in different fibers, cut glass or steel buttons, a tailor’s ham for ironing, a needle board for ironing velvet, etc. there were entire stores just for ribbons, for faux foliage, for specialty sewing machine attachments, for individual varieties of fabric. and most of it was locally produced
especially since I live in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. if you told someone in 1924 that I couldn’t find any newly-made glass buttons for sale in a city the size of BOSTON, they’d look at you like you were insane. doubly so if you told them that buttons, period, could only be purchased at like three stores in the area, from maybe two different brands
today I go to the craft store and it’s. one brand of polyester thread. maybe seven colors of cotton thread, all dull or dark. one size and brand of snaps. one size and brand and type of ironing board. plastic buttons (MAYBE a few cards of wood or metal). flat polyester ribbon trim in a few sizes and colors. and that’s pretty much it
you didn’t NEED next-day shipping as much even as recently as 60-70 years ago, because more things were manufactured and sold closer to you
amhrancas 