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  • 23 Comments
Joined 2 months ago
Cake day: April 7th, 2025
  • the_abecedarian@piefed.socialtoAsk Lemmy@lemmy.world•Could socialism work without any limit to procreation? Why or why not?English
    73·
    2 days ago

    Socialism would certainly work better than capitalism does. Under capitalism, because every company is driven to increase profits and the rate of profits, we have tons and tons of:

    • Production of shit we don’t need (which people buy because of desire manufactured by marketing and a sense of having little control or meaning in their lives)
    • Overproduction of shit we do need (e.g. fast fashion)
    • The replacement of diversity with monoculture everywhere, making ecosystems less resilient and outright destroying them
    • War for resources among competing empires and companies

    In a socialist society (and, I would argue, a [libertarian socialist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism society) society in which there were systems in place to prevent the accumulation of power), the base incentives of the system should be to fulfill human needs and promote human flourishing, as part of a web of ecosystems on Earth, and not to make a profit.

    Here are a few examples of how that would make society much more efficient in its use of resources:

    • We wouldn’t need to produce useless things for profit like superyachts or fast fashion. Instead, we could produce high-quality, long-lasting clothing and come up with interesting ways to wear, share, and repair it.
    • Instead of growing mostly crops to feed livestock, produce corn syrup and other flavorings/additives, and ethanol (as we do in the US); we could grow a greater diversity of human-edible, nutritious food.
    • We wouldn’t need to manufacture desire for consumption through marketing
    • We wouldn’t have to fight or exploit each other to gain market access
    • Programs like universal free healthcare would make for a healthier population that would need less emergency medical care
    • People would have more agency in their own lives and more say over the decisions that affect their community, which would provide a level of satisfaction that would reduce “retail therapy”

    I would also argue that there is no true socialism if it is not anti-hierarchical, which includes liberation and full bodily autonomy for everyone having childbearing anatomy. Among other things, that means the right to choose when and when not to have a child.

    If we could achieve a libertarian socialist commune-of-communes in which we could guarantee ourselves and each other a dignified and abundant standard of living, in which we could provide for the varying needs of different kinds of people instead of demanding that we fit one or two pre-approved molds, and which has mechanisms to prevent the accumulation of power, then I think we can turn to questions about the number of humans who can exist on Earth, how we might travel the stars to find/create additional homes, and so on.

  • the_abecedarian@piefed.socialtoShowerthoughts@lemmy.world•The world was a nicer place before the advent of leaf blowersEnglish
    143·
    8 days ago

    They’re loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you – heaven forbid – want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you’re going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.

    I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don’t happen. People usually don’t have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn’t do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don’t, but doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.

    I understand that it’s really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they’re much better for the environment.

  • the_abecedarian@piefed.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How would you define your white American culture?English
    2·
    8 days ago

    Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture

    It’s possible, sure, but you’d have to do a study. As I mentioned, there are plenty of ways to interpret it.

    I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?

    Ah, OK! I think “if white people were defensive of their culture” is what threw me.

    What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it?

    To begin with, there can always be some jerk out there who gives you a hard time no matter what, or who has had so many bad experiences with ppl thoughtlessly appropriating culture that their mind is just closed and they react badly. You’d just have to defend it and let reasonable ppl see that that person is wrong to call you out. That aside, I think showing respect means that if an instrument is sacred for some reason (I have no idea if the Erhu is), you don’t play it in a profane or silly way. Outside of that, using an instrument as like a way to make fun of the culture would be bad (e.g. playing it whenever a stereotyped character appears on screen). Just my two cents.

  • the_abecedarian@piefed.socialtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•How would you define your white American culture?English
    11·
    9 days ago

    Basically, your instincts are right and the question in the last line of your post is a good one. Here’s why:

    “Whiteness” doesn’t come from biology or culture. It’s really just a way of describing a hierarchy that was set up by European empires and early corporations at the dawn of capitalism to justify the enslavement of people around the world, the colonization of their lands, and the exploitation of their natural resources for profit.

    This hierarchy is used to steamroll over the huge number of ethnic and cultural backgrounds people have, in order to label some “white”, others “black”, others “asian”, and so on. There can be no “white” culture (even within one country), because the boundaries of who is accepted as “white” have shifted more than once in the past few hundred years and could easily shift again. For example, look up when and why Irish people and Italian people were accepted as fully white and look up the “contingent” whiteness that Jewish people have had in the US. See How the Irish Became White, for example.

    Another reason there is no white culture is because, even for people accepted as white, whiteness has erased the cultures they brought to America when they immigrated by forcing them to conform to its rules. Think about how badly even light-skinned immigrants were treated by others whose families had been in America for generations. The immense pressure to look, sound, and act “American” and “white” to avoid being bullied at school, to be able to get good jobs, and to be seen as “respectable” in the neighborhood, meant for many people that they had to give up large parts of their culture to be accepted. This compounds over the generations, until we end up with people asking questions like the post you’ve made right here.

    Racists proudly defend white (or “western” if they’re cowards) culture. They’re completely unable to see how whiteness has stolen big pieces of the cultures of everyone it touches. It has bleached them into a blander, more sterile version of what they once were.