this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Could you explain why this contradiction is something worth focusing on or explaining? I see it and don't fully understand it. I like pineapples every now and then but I agree I am far more fearful that we survive on the whims of capitalists. If you believe that rising food costs (which is terrifying) have a liberal economics external cause you can misdirect that anger towards whatever the NYT tells you, but when you realize it is done by capitalists it becomes a lot scarier for people who need to feed, house, and provide for their families.
Is that something you think should be confronted first and most importantly? Or am I missing a more basic point?
The pineapples thing is a reference to undercosted exports from global south countries which are a good example of a way that workers in the imperial core benefit. I'm using this example since it points to rising food costs, which show where the exploited wealth actually goes. You can also contrast the cost reductions of imperialism (which are being yanked back pretty severely) with the financialization of the lives of workers on top of increasing hardships.
Nobody in their right mind would care if pineapples were $11 if they got paid more, or had at least a thousand more dollars a month from socialized housing and medicine rather than this bloodsucking insanity, nobody wants food picked by wage slaves who get treated like shit, as evidenced by where most people spend their money at the grocery store when they have more of it (healthier and more ethical choices).
I am also deliberately using different terms for high/low income countries interchangeably.
Do you think it is worth highlighting this contradiction in particular over other avenues? That most of an imperial core workers wages go to rent, insurance, taxes - all made up bullshit that are there to protect the investments of long term assets by various leeching intermediaries?
I and everyone I know would take universal healthcare over any amount of cheap citrus. I and the people I respect/care about would take ethical consumption over saving a few bucks at the grocery store if we had any guarantee that the workers were getting that extra compensation. For all the "choice" that capitalism gives there is never an option without pigs extracting rents at the trough.
How does highlighting these contradictions help? I don't think you are advocating reminding friends that the oranges in their salad are fertilized with blood and suffering. I think highlighting the rampant increasing cost of housing and medical can be helpful, but how do you direct/incite anger at the ratio of an imperial core workers salary in to something productive that won't just alienate us further?
It's more being highlighted as part of my response to some unusual criticisms of the analysis of how financialization has destituted so many people in the US. Saying that it's somehow trying to paint industrialist exploitation of workers as being okay, but financial exploitation of workers as bad. That's not what highlighting the contradictions between finance and industrial capitalism is about. It's examining the further exploitation of workers more in depth than just looking at the low cost goods taken from poor countries like tropical fruits, and higher wages overall. (Alongside looking at how financialization is disintegrating the economy and deindustrializing the first world BECAUSE of the exploitation of the third world, it's not some Infrared shit about how baristas are the labor aristocracy and only industrial shit matters. People think everything is Patsocs. There's only like 400 patsocs. Most of the likes "patsoc" posts get are coming from African uncles who know what Hillary Clinton Emails Revealed) I'm saying only 10% of the population even belongs to the global labor aristocracy but I'm open to hearing arguments against it. Maybe my definition of labor aristocracy is too narrow.
People say this but I think the actual reality of living it is a lot different. I've read accounts of a lot of people who defected from socialists countries, particularly Cuba, and lack of access to consumer goods was often the number one thing they complained about. Ive also read accounts of westerns who defected to socialist states and a lot complained about being bored as fuck cuz there wasn't much to do in their free time. Free healthcare is great but you only really worry about that if and when your sick, meanwhile the boredom of eating nothing but rice and beans gets to you every day. Now sure, I've also read a lot of those defectors ended up regretting their decisions cuz once the novelty of cheap fried chicken and good TV slop wore off the crushing weight of having to work 2 full time jobs to afford an apartment set in. And also yes a big part of the reason it's that bad in a lot of socialist nations is embargoes by the west, if they were able to trade freely you could probably do socialism with more ice cream and video games. But I do think even in the best case scenario international socialism is gonna mean there's a few generations of belt tightening for most westerns in terms of consumer goods. Free housing and healthcare may be a salve on the wound a but a lot of people are gonna be pissed about no more avocado toast in winter.
I really don't understand what either of you are talking about tbqh. Since Clinton's presidency upwards of 50% of Americans are in service work, very few people are in these industries where people actually take propaganda seriously (ritzy tech workers are). But it's like advertising, you know it's bullshit, but it hints how people will view you for buying a product, and that's pretty unavoidable.
For 90% of us propaganda works primarily by 70% omission, rest is some depressing watered down truth to direct our attention towards, and indecipherable screeds which as we read them we can tell are not for us, or sometimes even talking down to us with bloodcurdling austerity bullshit. With our eye for media criticism we can translate them: "i am a failson and i was handed this job" "i want to bomb iran so bad it hurts" "fuck you die die die get sick fuck your kids, i think your bodies will sponge the virus for me, only my kids get air filters muahahaha" etc.
There is of course a reason people are coming to the US to be exploited for higher wages than they can get at home, but US workers are still headed into a position where they have no way to survive in this shrinking empire. Many people are losing their homes and dying.
We don't need to try to reason with people who really take the NYT really seriously or have a bunch of reddit karma, that's a small fraction of the population. It's good to relate this to dependency theory but not if we leave out inequality and where all the wealth and debt is in the US.
Yeah and a lot of those workers still make enough for afford Xboxes and meat on their plates for all 3 meals a day. They're getting fucked by the housing market and it pisses them off, but it hasn't occurred to most them that having a government with an actual socialist housing policy may mean having to cut back on the treats. There's a reason why NATO-anarchism is the most popular leftist current in the West.
I mean, what structure is there to translate their political will into reality in order to assume this not happening is because of a lack of interest? Also stamping shit out is getting more expensive as things get worse. All the main orgs here are not just compromised but a hydra that's part of the NGO complex.
what metrics are we even using here. wouldn't that be larger shitty-unionism? what are you basing this off of?
The fact that for every one ML I encounter in the west I encounter about 20-30 succs or "anarchists-who-want-to-nuke-Iran"
Everyone's pretty high too, and US central banking is a smorgasbord of international organized drug smuggling. It's less about people thinking everything is just fine and more about them being caught in a vise and trying not to get arrested again, rented to Wendy's or a Clinton mansion out of prison if they fuck that up.
This whole place is a prison for a lot of people. A LOT of them.
No offense but you keep going on weird tangents that are barely related to what I'm talking about. Like your last comment got into propaganda when propaganda wasn't what I was talking about, I was talking about how I think most humans value treat accessibility way more than we may think, to the point many would even be willing to sacrifice a certain degree of housing security for cheap treats. NYT readership has nothing to do with that.
I don't think access to weed really affects what I'm trying to illuminate here either.
That tracks, I was exaggerating on the "everyone" line now that I think about it. Like I do like a pineapple every now and then but if there weren't any I find it hard to imagine there are people that decide they gotta
for their treats.
It's not JUST pineapple though, it's a lot of stuff. Honestly it's even stuff I don't think it's fair to categorize as "treats", doing away with unequal exchange via imperialism could even make a line of necessities, or near necessitated, less easily available. Like, ending the exploitation of workers in Bangladesh is probably gonna make my underwear more expensive which sucks for me cuz I'm always wearing holes in the inner thighs with my fat ass and then I get all chaffey at work. May seem petty me bitching about more expensive boxer briefs but you try working a warehouse floor with chaffed thighs!
No, I get that. I mean I have no clue what the scope of the reduction would be, but I get that it would extend to things I take for granted and couldn't predict. I do wonder when i'm enjoying things - what if I couldn't have this? maybe I'd have a scratched lib moment when I can't have comfortable shoes or tumeric. Or maybe i'll be dead in whatever nuclear exchange precedes that. I prefer not to think about it too much.
What actually worries me is the US has lost so much of its industrial capacity. The chuds are right about that aspect - if the US did have to trade on even terms wtf does this country have to offer that's not being stripped out by the capitalists and sold off.