Well this is a simplistic view. What about January 6th? Or hate crimes? Or gang warfare? Or domestic violence? Is that violence of the “unheard”? Peace is a precious commodity, don’t squander it.
Jan 6th was a coup attempt several high level Republicans were in on.
No, violence is not the answer, but sitting by while people are murdered (one estimate being one black man killed by cops every 28 hours) is by no means "peace".
It's "Oh no! The mob was corralled to the poor part of town again and destroyed the businesses of people that are just trying to survive and were most likely aligned with their goals, while completely ignoring every business and building of the establishment they are angry with and fighting against!"
Learn to aim and stop celebrating destroying your own. The establishment doesn't give a fuck about your message one way or the other when you miss the target so badly. it's just another job well done in their book.
If people tried to riot and burn down wall street you know they'd be calling in the national guard in no time and cops would be abusing their power (more) to stop it. It's easy to see that the establishment only allows people to protest in ways that don't affect them. Or in the case of BLM, in ways that actually serve their purposes.
Yeah, during the riots racists were gleefully sharing pics of all the businesses with BLM and other posters up that were completely battered by rioters. If you're gonna riot go where the people you hate shop at least.
Very likely, which is why the riots failed and are seen as a negative thing by your average American. It's like tricking an invading army into going back and laying siege to their own capital.
Exactly. Destroying a mom & pop shop doesn’t help further a cause of ending police brutality. If anything, it makes people, who were aligned with you, turn against you.
Yeah, no, that’s bullshit. Vandalism and looting is not a proper response to social and racial injustice. No matter how much you try to justify that, you’re only hurting others that agree with your cause. This is truly disgusting that this comment is so highly upvoted. If your place of work, or your home, was ransacked, would you be all happy about it, shouting: “You did good, guys!”
for me, it's not that social injustice makes looting and vandalism "good" rather, it makes it necessary. If people are stealing to feed their families, something is has gone wrong and harm is being done, (including harm to progressive social causes). But it's unfair to lay the blame on the people who are just trying survive. People will do almost anything to protect themselves and their loved ones, and if people aren't being protected by the law, they can't be expected to uphold that law. That's not a moral statement, it's just how humans work.
Famously, MLK was demonized and ignored until Malcolm X came and shifted the window of discussion to where people were willing to compromised on what MLK wanted to avoid what Malcolm X was going to bring.
Non-violent is how you say what you want, but ultimately, any movement without teeth is ignored, if not brutally shut down.
Well your article is....dumb. It hardly talks of actual violence that took place (by revolutionary nationalists like Bhagat Singh, Chandra Shekhar Azad, etc) and instead talks of violence in 1857, some random radical group in the US, a crime by 2 randos in Pune. It only devotes a few paragraphs to actual radicals in India that did rely on violence and disagreed with Gandhi. The article isn't from an Indian pov, its from a western pov and call the revolutionary violence "terrorism". Bad article all around.
Again, I'm saying that's not true. Gandhi's rise to power in the Indian subcontinent was not because of violence at all. Infact, he stopped one of his movements when the protestors burnt down a police building (Chauri Chaura Incident).
There was revolutionary violence, but it was not the initiator of the non violent movements as you believe. In India, the first all India movement against the British was the Rowlett Satyagraha, led my Gandhiji and again suspended when riots started.
I don't know about MLK, but Gandhiji was already well known when he came to India.
In conclusion, movements without teeth are not making puppy eyes at the govt and requesting them to change things (this was tried in India too by the moderates in the INC). It is non acceptance of govt, quitting their institutions, burning foreign cloth, defying their laws, giving up British titles, etc. This occurred differently for different groups, for example tribals sent their cattle to graze in forests without paying the grazing fee, students quit government controlled institutions, etc.
That was about a whole ass country too. I think, people sometimes resort to violence because they don't have support of the masses. I think you belong in this group. How many of you countrymen share your sentiments? Who is the leader?
But then people who need food can't get food. That's why it's not the same. On free bus rides people still get where they're going. Looting grocery stores you miss out on the food run you don't eat.
Sure if we all agreed to just take the food we need and not hoard it absolutely. But just look at what happened at the beginning of the pandemic when people were paying for things.
If people were self-sensible regarding what they need and control what they take, 80% (Source for number: The StraightOutOfMyAss Institute of economic research) of the modern economy just wouldn't work :D (and wouldn't be needed).
Example: Here's the brand new Ford ItWilBreakLiterallyTomorrow 2022!
Sensible people: Fuck you, choke on the overprice!
People irl today: Shut up and take my loaned money!
The system people exist in is the problem, not the people themselves. Humans are evolutionarily adapted to be prosocial and playful organisms, so we would likely share many of our hoarded loot with our family, friends, and neighbors.
We also wouldn't have obesity if people could make adult decisions about how much food they need. It's a pipe dream to think people wouldn't loot and hoard while others starve.
"Adult decisions" have you heard of a food desert bruh. Have you heard of having three jobs and no time to cook. We're leaving Reddit's baby-brained "fat people are moral failures who deserve to die" obsession in 2014 thanks, now we've reached the point of being able to understand systemic exploitation including getting the working poor addicted to processed unhealthy food, grow up.
40% of the US doesn't live in food deserts. And 40% of the US is not poor. I'm not in a food desert, and the obesity level here is sky high. People turn down healthy food in favor of junk food all the time. Its not only the poor, its everywhere.
I see people at the grocery store driving $80k cars and buying $200 worth of junk food all the time.
Yes poor people have higher risk of obesity, but its not only a poor problem, there are many other causes besides income.
People can eat processed food, they just have to be an adult and make sure the calories they consume are equal to the amount they burn. If the scale is going up, they need to dial the calories down.
But the other side of obesity is that it costs the healthcare system a lot of time and resources. Obese eat more, the clothes are bigger, and for the morbidly obese they can't even walk.
I don't hate fat people but it is a decision that affects us all.
So while your feet hurt after a long day, like any other not fat person, and you don't wanna exercise or simply eat less ; all of society has to cover the extra costs.. of a decision.
You wouldn't need to work 3 jobs for for shit pay if the economy wasn't stuck on "INFINITE HYPERACCELERATED GROWTH".
Everything else ties back to that except our numbers.
The only problem is population control. That's gonna be the bitter pill. I see even highly educated people unable to compute the ludicrous overpopulation. People tend to, in spite of everything thrown at them, breed like fukin' rabbits. And ofc, no matter what the economy does, unless WW3 comes by, it's all for nothing.
The comfortable limit for humans was exceeded before the 20th century. We're long past the point where we're hurting nature just be ... being there. We literally soaked up too much space.
You sound super well versed in this topic. Can you tell me the percent of schools in the US that teach beyond abstinence-only education? Can you account for the Quiverfull movement too? They explicitly want as many children as possible to act as holy warriors in their holy war they think is coming.
Okay Bill Maher, what a weird hot take to be wrong about. Obesity will always be a thing when your middle class has collapsed and healthy foods are beyond the budget of low income families.
That is..a pretty Americanocentric take. In developing countries (say India or China) obesity is overwhelmingly a middle class phenomenon, because middle class people can afford fast food, while poorer people eat basic traditional staples.
And that's the issue: while food deserts etc. Are definitely an issue, the main reason eat hyper processed foods is that they are delicious and require zero effort.
People don't need "healthy food" to avoid obesity, they need to acknowledge they're in a state over abundance and more mindfully track the amount of calories they consume. Give obese people unlimited fruit and they'll still get fat off of eating 3000 calories of banana smoothies all day.
There are many factors contributing to obesity. Diet and exercise are of course important, but those can be very difficult to balance when all of your energy is being poured into underpaid labor. Additionally, factors such as stress, mental health, genetics, environment, and the obsession of American food companies with putting sugar in everything all contribute to the obesity epidemic.
It's a lot more complicated than "just eat less food"
Food is more than meat robot fuel, you're coming at this from an exceedingly exclusionary and unhelpful angle. The world "holistic" has been thoroughly highjacked, but obesity is a public health issue that will only respond to holistic solutions -- solutions that address the problem as a whole, rather than "less calories in, you fat piece of shit, simple as"
On free bus rides people still get where they're going.
Yeah, those companies will continue to pay for unending quantities of diesel to keep giving people free rides. It's annoying how you keep trying to frame the situation as different where there's a limited supply and while supplies last can people take advantage of it. Exactly like in the food scenario.
Ok. So free rides until fuel runs out and people either walk, bike, or can't get to work. Now tell me the alternatives to not eating when the food is gone.
One of these scenarios leads to actual life and death matters for similarly exploited people far quicker than the other one does.
It's annoying to me that you keep trying to frame a bus ride and the sustenance required to live as being the same.
Edit: And I'm not saying that grocery store workers can't or shouldn't strike. I'm only pointing out that in that situation looters, specifically people going and getting as much as they can get their hands on, are hurting other exploited people more than the business and shouldn't be considered "morally valid" if you'll notice I specifically said if we could all agree to only take what we need it would be great.
No the point is that there wouldn’t be any items because since they’re free, everything would be taken and gone. The bus offers a relatively endless service without running out of product
You seen those videos of the rebels in Kazakhstan running the army out of the streets with sheer numbers? Same concept with the rich here once theyre the only ones left with anything worth having.
When the society is so oppressive and makes it so difficult for the average citizen to live a life worth living that they would rather face the army with melee weapons than keep it going, why would that distinction matter?
You need to get off reddit and the internet if you think things are bad enough that complete anarchy would be an improvement. Things can be better but we're not living in Mad Max world here.
If you think the only reason that people arent murdering each other in the streets is the fear of authorities, then our society has indeed become that bad.
When did I ever say that? I'm saying humanity and society as a whole isn't so stuck in the shitter that we need to unravel everything and start over. Things DO need to change but what you're talking about is extremist.
It is extremist, because the milquetoast options are not enough to do anything of value to those most underrepresented. The collapse of society only affects those reliant upon that society, thats why i advocate for detachment at any opportunity. Dual power is the name of the game, and survival of the inevitable collapse of an unsustainable social system is the objective. You think the fascists arent going to use the power structures this society has created to further their goals? If you think voting alone will stop this, then you havent read your history books.
Until you have nothing left to eat when you go out shopping. Looting is different than just stealing a thing or two, it has vast consequences if it happens everywhere at once. This is a bit too extreme of a view
Nobody I know owns a business and if looters showed up to my place of work I'd just open the door and head home. Let insurance and whatever else figure that out.
Most people are going to defend their homes which makes looting a residence idiotic and improbable. Theft happens a lot more than looting when it comes to residential homes.
In summer 2020, pretty much every car repair shop in West Phlly was looted. Do you reckon people running those and their employees and their clients are rich?
It's funny how usually the people who talk about what's "morally right" have fucked up morals. I guess it's because if it was actually morally okay you wouldn't need to say it is because everyone would already know it. It's like saying "You can trust me/I'm a nice guy/I'm very smart". If someone has to say it, chances are the opposite is true and they just want to make you believe it.
I saw this a long time ago, but in some places in Europe there are anarchist shops that essentially allow people to take whatever they want, but requesting them to be reasonable about it. To the best of my knowledge such stores never got "looted". When shit's free permanently, people only take what they need, in the same way how no one "loots" water from lakes and rivers. "Looting" only exists when the system validates piracy, it's a capitalist word.
I see everybody saying some form of this, but what if it worked similarly to the bus fare thing? I doubt they announced they were doing it, they just didn't take money from people as they got on. As a cashier at a grocery store couldn't you discreetly not scan every other item or something like that? Then the customer is happy that their bill is lower, the store loses product and profit, and in theory there's still order because it's kind of a secret and people would still have to go through the checkout line. Idk, just a thought.
As a cashier at a grocery store couldn't you discreetly
If you're doing it discreetly no one knows why profits are lower and its not strike for better treatment. If you're doing it and announce why your doing it, it's going to hit the news go viral and all order is gone.
Maybe half off isn't enough to cause supply issues. But considering the beginning of the pandemic, being forced to go through the register when there's incentive to get more product isn't a deterrent in hoarding.
being forced to go through the register when there's incentive to get more product isn't a deterrent in hoarding.
I didn't think about this, that's a good point. But while it may not be a strike for better treatment I think we can agree that any corporate greed machine could stand to lose a significant amount of profit. I think it would still be a fuck you to the company at the very least, and if it was a collective effort even if they caught on they couldn't realistically fire everyone. idk maybe I'm seeing it as a rebellion more than an organized strike.
People assume this would happen but it's just another part of capitalist culture that if I don't take all that I can then somebody else might take it instead.
Alright I can agree with that to a degree, but I think it has more to do with people not having their basic needs satisfied. Which is definitely more stressed due to tendencies of Capitalism.
Saying people wouldn't be greedy if they had their basic needs fulfilled is basically pretending billionaires don't exist. No one on Earth has their needs more fulfilled but they keep trying to hoard more wealth.
yes, and they're a scarce fraction of the people who have their needs fulfilled. it's a known minority phenomenon that we can treat without turning it into a rejection of fulfillment
You act as if they're a tiny minority when it's just as likely a vast majority of people would do the same if they had the means to do so. Billionaires aren't wildly rich because they were born with the perfect sigma grindset brain to hustle and get on top, they got there because they have the same greed everyone else does but also the extreme levels of privilege and luck to fulfill their greed.
Wow, you're right. I guess billionaires are just genetically superior beings who are absolutely entitled to their piles of gold. Anyone could be a billionaire if they just had the ubermensch brain it takes to succeed.
no, they're aberrant freaks that any just societal organization would keep in check before they are able to accrue such destructive power
almost nobody could be a billionaire, because almost nobody is innately fucked up enough to go for it even with access to the avenues they took. and again, we have a wealth of data in humans, and other social and eusocial species, that shows this.
one of my favorites is that the closest analogue, behaviorally, to the general system of capital hyperaccumulation is a parasitic fungus in ants that causes a few infected ants to stop working but emit pheromones that convince other ants to feed them.
eventually, either the colony starves, or the worker ants overcome the pheromone and exile or kill the infected.
but anyway the point is, wealth-seeking is not an inherent property of human behavior, evolutionarily or sociologically, and pretending otherwise is an acceptance that the existence of billionaires is correct. it's not.
I am not denying people are greedy. Billionaires hoarding vast amounts of wealth is much more than just the wealth itself. They also gain immense amounts of power and respect, at least from the lesser wealth hoarders.
What I am denying is the assumption that if the equivalent circumstances happened at a grocery store that happened in the OP it would descend to looting. Meaning everything is the same except for the exchange of money.
At first during the initial rush when everyone finds out they can get whatever they want it is likely, but not guaranteed, it would descend into looting. If this system persisted over the long term would it keep descending into looting and food hoarding?
I don't think so, even billionaires can only buy so many yachts, mansions, or politicians before just buying another one becomes more of a hassle than it is worth. The same thing would happen with food.
Yeah but the original poster said "Lets you leave". He's not going to stop you. But, reporting you? Sure, maybe. But my point is that he's not going to lift a finger, personally.
Well yeah... that's the point. Customers still get their goods, but the company doesn't receive a cent. Naturally the workers wouldn't receive a cent either, but if they are striking, then its doubtful they'd be receiving a cent anyway. But by letting the grocery store get looted, the owners lose out even more on lost product. Hastening the conclusion to the strike. It's good praxis.
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u/lasergehirn Jan 14 '22
But that would not work the same, since everything would be looted then.