"If we didn't spend so much, consume so much, maybe they could find a better, more fulfilling, BETTER PAYING job."
Um, how do you figure? It makes sense for a particular person with limited means not to spend frivolously, but that's not the point of your holiday, is it? That hypothetical cash-strapped person probably depends on the spending of others to have the job he or she does.
"If you haven't lived poor, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the mindset or how hard it can be. I don't know how hard it can be, but I can empathize."
So you have special, extra-sensory poorness empathy which I lack, because you keep accusing me of being a Republican, which I'm most emphatically NOT? I've had to see my dad work himself into poor health to keep our family afloat. I'm currently broke, myself. I'm not, "eating ketchup for dinner" poor, but I'm not this child of privilege you keep trying to make me out to be.
I am thankful for our capitalist economy, because despite your incomprehensible belief that destroying it will make this a better world, it in fact allowed us to live in greater freedom and opportunity than we would have had otherwise.
It seems to me that you think the world is divided into two categories: your enlightened, ultra-aware camp, and pure, benighted ignorance. And you keep ascribing beliefs and ignorance upon me which simply don't correspond to fact.
Also contrary to fact is your belief that a general, all-out boycott will somehow send a message and make this world a socialist paradise. (Call it what you will, but that's what your views are, by your own words.) If someone is prone to taking the easier route and taking menial labor instead of educating himself and striving for something better, how is "buy nothing" supposed to help him? From your journals, I believe you hold two jobs yourself? I can understand how frustrating it might be to scrape by on wages earned from 70-hour weeks, I've been there. But you seem to be misplacing your anger and directing it at the hand that feeds you.
Funny, that you seem to take offense to my insinutating you're a Republican, but yet you turn around and nearly call me a socialist. Good job. You don't know me and you don't know that sometimes, I just like to argue. :p And just because I've thrown a few words into an online journal, don't presume to know what my views are. I apologize if it seemed like I was assuming anything about you. Socialist...it's a dirty word to you, isn't it?
The low-wage worker depends on our spending because that's the vicious cycle I was talking about. Do you think this is how it should be? Because it's not a balance by any means. The rich are just getting richer and the poor, poorer. Our demand for cheap goods keeps people in these jobs. It breeds more low-pay, one-skill, little-to-no benefit jobs. If the demand is there, then supply, supply, supply.
"I am thankful for our capitalist economy, despite your incomprehensible belief that destroying it will make this a better world"
I'd like to know where I said that. Apparently you can't seem to see long-term effects of our actions. You SEEM to be of the opinion that by building a factory in a poverty-striken area of the world and "giving" the lucky citizens jobs, we're helping them. Is that true? Because if it's not, by all means....
If someone is prone to taking the easier route and taking menial labor instead of educating himself and striving for something better, how is "buy nothing" supposed to help him?
You make it sound like educating yourself and finding a better job is so easy. Did I not just get through saying it's not about buying NOTHING, but curbing our spending, WATCHING what we spend it on? And I didn't say someone is PRONE to taking the easier route, people are beat down mentally, some are FORCED to take that route. Some have families and it's a hell of a lot different to take a risk with quitting your safe, low-paying job for an education and the CHANCE at a better job when you have other people depending on you.
I have two jobs to pay down some bills, not scrape by. I'm living in a fucking castle compared to some people. I have no bitterness about my two jobs thank you. So I'm not exactly "taking it out" on anyone. This is about other people, John, not me. Imagine, someone thinking outside of their own world? It's amazing, isn't it. "The hand that feeds me"?....I can't even begin to comment on that.
"I am thankful for our capitalist economy, because despite your incomprehensible belief that destroying it will make this a better world, it in fact allowed us to live in greater freedom and opportunity than we would have had otherwise."
I've read this whole thread, and you obviously see things in black and white. Either you're a commie (if you support not being a wastefdul over-consumer), or a capitalist. Wrong. I, too, support a capitalist-based economy; there are (surprise) many different ways to support capitalism and implement it. The simple truth is that North Americans are extremely *wasteful* capitalists. "Waste" and "capitalism" do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. There are a number of societies in this world which have capitalist-based economies, yet are not gluttons. Furthermore, despite all your protestations, I fail to see how over-consumption and waste make the world a better place. Quite the contrary, they're destroying it: the shambles of the environment is just the most obvious symptom of this destruction.
There are a number of other points I fully disagree with you on, but mogador and blustocking have done a fine job contending them, already. I just wanted to point out that things are not as extremist as you present them, and the world would be doing just fine - probably better - were it not for the extreme waste which overconsumption has bred. If that makes me a commie, so be it.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-02 12:15 pm (UTC)Um, how do you figure? It makes sense for a particular person with limited means not to spend frivolously, but that's not the point of your holiday, is it? That hypothetical cash-strapped person probably depends on the spending of others to have the job he or she does.
"If you haven't lived poor, you don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the mindset or how hard it can be. I don't know how hard it can be, but I can empathize."
So you have special, extra-sensory poorness empathy which I lack, because you keep accusing me of being a Republican, which I'm most emphatically NOT? I've had to see my dad work himself into poor health to keep our family afloat. I'm currently broke, myself. I'm not, "eating ketchup for dinner" poor, but I'm not this child of privilege you keep trying to make me out to be.
I am thankful for our capitalist economy, because despite your incomprehensible belief that destroying it will make this a better world, it in fact allowed us to live in greater freedom and opportunity than we would have had otherwise.
It seems to me that you think the world is divided into two categories: your enlightened, ultra-aware camp, and pure, benighted ignorance. And you keep ascribing beliefs and ignorance upon me which simply don't correspond to fact.
Also contrary to fact is your belief that a general, all-out boycott will somehow send a message and make this world a socialist paradise. (Call it what you will, but that's what your views are, by your own words.) If someone is prone to taking the easier route and taking menial labor instead of educating himself and striving for something better, how is "buy nothing" supposed to help him? From your journals, I believe you hold two jobs yourself? I can understand how frustrating it might be to scrape by on wages earned from 70-hour weeks, I've been there. But you seem to be misplacing your anger and directing it at the hand that feeds you.
a socialist paradise?
Socialist...it's a dirty word to you, isn't it?
The low-wage worker depends on our spending because that's the vicious cycle I was talking about. Do you think this is how it should be? Because it's not a balance by any means. The rich are just getting richer and the poor, poorer. Our demand for cheap goods keeps people in these jobs. It breeds more low-pay, one-skill, little-to-no benefit jobs. If the demand is there, then supply, supply, supply.
"I am thankful for our capitalist economy, despite your incomprehensible belief that destroying it will make this a better world"
I'd like to know where I said that. Apparently you can't seem to see long-term effects of our actions. You SEEM to be of the opinion that by building a factory in a poverty-striken area of the world and "giving" the lucky citizens jobs, we're helping them. Is that true? Because if it's not, by all means....
If someone is prone to taking the easier route and taking menial labor instead of educating himself and striving for something better, how is "buy nothing" supposed to help him?
You make it sound like educating yourself and finding a better job is so easy. Did I not just get through saying it's not about buying NOTHING, but curbing our spending, WATCHING what we spend it on? And I didn't say someone is PRONE to taking the easier route, people are beat down mentally, some are FORCED to take that route. Some have families and it's a hell of a lot different to take a risk with quitting your safe, low-paying job for an education and the CHANCE at a better job when you have other people depending on you.
I have two jobs to pay down some bills, not scrape by. I'm living in a fucking castle compared to some people. I have no bitterness about my two jobs thank you. So I'm not exactly "taking it out" on anyone. This is about other people, John, not me. Imagine, someone thinking outside of their own world? It's amazing, isn't it. "The hand that feeds me"?....I can't even begin to comment on that.
no subject
Date: 2002-12-04 10:46 am (UTC)I've read this whole thread, and you obviously see things in black and white. Either you're a commie (if you support not being a wastefdul over-consumer), or a capitalist. Wrong. I, too, support a capitalist-based economy; there are (surprise) many different ways to support capitalism and implement it. The simple truth is that North Americans are extremely *wasteful* capitalists. "Waste" and "capitalism" do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. There are a number of societies in this world which have capitalist-based economies, yet are not gluttons. Furthermore, despite all your protestations, I fail to see how over-consumption and waste make the world a better place. Quite the contrary, they're destroying it: the shambles of the environment is just the most obvious symptom of this destruction.
There are a number of other points I fully disagree with you on, but mogador and blustocking have done a fine job contending them, already. I just wanted to point out that things are not as extremist as you present them, and the world would be doing just fine - probably better - were it not for the extreme waste which overconsumption has bred. If that makes me a commie, so be it.
*claps*
Date: 2002-12-05 12:30 pm (UTC)Ah the good ol' days of Kat-dom and cool-ass people at Spookyland. The troll-hunting and the discussions. *sighs* :)