People don’t want to organize around homeless outreach, that’s why the huge, costly, and incessant efforts in most cities never turn into literally any useful political action. Most people are more selfish than that, and it’s also unclear how giving away donated food and socks translates to anything, anywhere else, in society.
Parents/teacher groups and labor unions are a lot closer to the mark because that stuff has actual impact on the people involved. Although I’m skeptical - the parent/teacher zeitgeist is now one of conflict after the COVID school closures. But it’s a place to get traction.
The old school anarchists used grand acts of violence, i.e. propaganda of the deed. Luigi tried that, seems to have dissipated.
Everyone’s just rich enough to not care about shit like this any more.
We need worker cooperatives. Unions are a bandaid over the misaligned incentives that capitalism creates. We need better education on exactly how these things work.
Yeah okay I gave bad examples off the top of my head of things that I have done that have worked. Just saying grand acts of violence doesn’t do anything unless there are organizations of people who can fill the vacuum that act of violence made. The only thing Luigi changed was the conversation, and CEO’s private security. Did insurance prices drop? Did the new CEO say ‘Brian Thompson was an immortal man who used his power and privilege to extort exorbitant amounts of wealth from the people, and we’ll see to it that no one can leverage an individual’s health care against them again.’ No, some other suit named Mike Baker is doing the exact same thing Brian Thompson did just without his picture on the website.
It’s a lot easier for me to burn everything to the ground and leave it than to fix a broken system and to expect everyone to be selfish, and to let me down. It’s a lot easier to be cynical on the internet than it is to get up and out and helping people who I disagree with become more powerful because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s easier for me to call everyone an idiot than to actually go outside and find like minded people and start working with them, but I’ll tell you this. I’ve done a lot more in the last few years working with people I would have considered traitors just 15 years ago. A lot of that has actually been free food, cheap drinks (when possible), a guided conversation and an enormous amount of patience from my part and any of my colleagues.
Fuck the hard way, just do it the easy way, right?
At a certain point you’re at a local maxima and incremental changes just don’t work. They have to be big changes to knock off the hill to another valley and then society has to do the hill climbing again. Sucks and painful but no other way IMO.
Okay, so Luigi didn’t cut healthcare costs. Did you working with people locally cut healthcare costs?
I volunteer in a few things in my neighborhood but I basically do it for warm fuzzies and because I want to make/keep my neighborhood nice. I don’t have any aspirations that it’ll become grander.
People don’t want to organize around homeless outreach, that’s why the huge, costly, and incessant efforts in most cities never turn into literally any useful political action. Most people are more selfish than that, and it’s also unclear how giving away donated food and socks translates to anything, anywhere else, in society.
Parents/teacher groups and labor unions are a lot closer to the mark because that stuff has actual impact on the people involved. Although I’m skeptical - the parent/teacher zeitgeist is now one of conflict after the COVID school closures. But it’s a place to get traction.
The old school anarchists used grand acts of violence, i.e. propaganda of the deed. Luigi tried that, seems to have dissipated.
Everyone’s just rich enough to not care about shit like this any more.
We need worker cooperatives. Unions are a bandaid over the misaligned incentives that capitalism creates. We need better education on exactly how these things work.
Yeah okay I gave bad examples off the top of my head of things that I have done that have worked. Just saying grand acts of violence doesn’t do anything unless there are organizations of people who can fill the vacuum that act of violence made. The only thing Luigi changed was the conversation, and CEO’s private security. Did insurance prices drop? Did the new CEO say ‘Brian Thompson was an immortal man who used his power and privilege to extort exorbitant amounts of wealth from the people, and we’ll see to it that no one can leverage an individual’s health care against them again.’ No, some other suit named Mike Baker is doing the exact same thing Brian Thompson did just without his picture on the website.
It’s a lot easier for me to burn everything to the ground and leave it than to fix a broken system and to expect everyone to be selfish, and to let me down. It’s a lot easier to be cynical on the internet than it is to get up and out and helping people who I disagree with become more powerful because the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It’s easier for me to call everyone an idiot than to actually go outside and find like minded people and start working with them, but I’ll tell you this. I’ve done a lot more in the last few years working with people I would have considered traitors just 15 years ago. A lot of that has actually been free food, cheap drinks (when possible), a guided conversation and an enormous amount of patience from my part and any of my colleagues.
Fuck the hard way, just do it the easy way, right?
At a certain point you’re at a local maxima and incremental changes just don’t work. They have to be big changes to knock off the hill to another valley and then society has to do the hill climbing again. Sucks and painful but no other way IMO.
Okay, so Luigi didn’t cut healthcare costs. Did you working with people locally cut healthcare costs?
I volunteer in a few things in my neighborhood but I basically do it for warm fuzzies and because I want to make/keep my neighborhood nice. I don’t have any aspirations that it’ll become grander.