Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,

Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,

Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat,

Buy, Sell, Eat, Repeat.

  • 6 Posts
  • 229 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • You should check out Willam Blum’s “Killing Hope” (pdf link), and/or “America’s Deadliest Export”, by same (pdf link).

    “During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them.

    If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”

    ― Michael Parenti, Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism




  • I was trying, but it was yet another thing to manage when I already was barely able to keep up with the daily expectations of modern life. Ultimately, though, I am not sure it was that. My body had been adapted to a certain diet for decades by the point I’d given veganism a try, and given what we’re learning about cell memory, I wonder if my body/gut biome was mostly just mad that it had learned to expect nutrients in a certain format and struggled to adapt to the new way. Maybe, given more time, I’d have adapted. I don’t know. I just knew I couldn’t keep going on feeling like that while managing my depression.

    Either way, I’m happy enough with my flexitarian diet. I eat very little meat that I didn’t buy on clearance from my local grocer. Saving already-butchered meat that’s imminently destined for the landfill helps me to feel less bad about my animal consumption, though I’m sure some people would say I’m still enabling the meat industry anyway. Some weeks there’s not much clearance meat available, though, and that’s fine. During those times I don’t eat meat, or pull from my freezer. Ultimately I feel that I’ve done more for the environment by choosing to have no children and avoid air travel, given what we know about the emissions numbers. I do own a car, but am working on moving away from using it as much as is possible given my circumstances.


  • I appreciate your concern, and your candor.

    I generally agree that life is worth living, and don’t have any immediate plans to take the sort of drastic action you seem to be supposing. This is a good summation of my situation. I’ve been to therapy, and don’t currently feel that it’s needed. I’m doing well these days, overall, both economically and mentally. I’ve been dealing with my post-teen-angst depression for over 30 years now, and I choose not to medicate against it, as it’s not solely the product of a chemical imbalance, but rather primarily a reflection of the material conditions of humanity at large.

    As for humanity being worth saving… we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I won’t cheer on its downfall, or vote for accelerationism, but I’ve yet to see compelling evidence that humanity is valuable to anyone or anything but ourselves.




  • There was a time, ten or twenty years ago, that I cared; When you could strum those chords on my heart-strings. I used to think that humanity was worth saving. That each human life had some inherent value.

    Human life is not inherently more valuable than the cow that died to make the cheeseburger I had for dinner last night. It had a family, too, and probably did less damage to the earth than any of us humans can claim to have done.

    I’ve lost patience with my species and their constant bickering and one-upsmanship. Endless competition is tired and trite. I’m bored of it. We’re not each-other’s enemies in any material way other than the ways we’ve created in our own minds, and with our own geopolitical and financial games. We’re one species, and none of us are so valuable as we’d like to think. Frankly, at this point, I’d completely understand if I were one day killed by a foreign adversary intent on teaching my government a lesson. Without consequences, nothing matters.

    I hate that this is what I’ve become, but it’s the honest truth of how I’ve come to feel about us. I don’t even know where that leaves me, but something’s got to give. I’ll hold on to hope, but I don’t think we’ve got it in us to come together to save ourselves. We’ll be fighting each-other even as the world burns around us.




  • Perhaps to you the saying is a platitude, but that seems subjective. To someone who hasn’t considered the impacts of their consumption habits, or the ways that different economic systems can serve to reward different patterns of human behavior, it can be a thought provoking statement.

    There is no ethical consumption.

    If you view ethics as a binary, then sure. If you view ethics as a complex and nuanced spectrum, well, not so much.

    Capitalism doesn’t encourage anything.

    What a reductionist take, especially considering the paragraph you’d written just above it.









  • I agree, and came in here to say the same thing. I think the data is being skewed by the fact that many (not all, of course) rental properties are subdivided into multiple units (or built that way in the first place). People commenting about how it’s considering modern costs, well, they must not have read the first two sentences of the article:

    On paper, owning a home is almost always more expensive than renting — about 14% more, on average, after factoring in expenses like insurance, taxes, and upkeep.

    But the difference has grown much more extreme in recent years as just about all homeownership costs have ballooned.

    The only way you can arrive at that 14% number is if you’re averaging in multi-unit apartment buildings. Very few, if any, landlords are out there subsidizing their non-family tenants by charging less than the normal costs of ownership. If most landlords are losing money year over year, well… at that point just sell the property.