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I couldn’t agree more, but they’ve said no, and the politicians are being bought, so as a citizen, besides not buying their shit slurry, what is there to actually do about it more actively. I guess it’s just local politics, ultimately I don’t know in the aggregate how much it helps with these guys who have so much money they just wield it like a hammer. Not that that should be a good enough reason to do nothing

Keeping the issues in the conversation is good, but ideas and words only work so well, eventually someone has to enable mechanisms to do these things in reality, otherwise its just corps sucking each other off at the common person’s expense all the way to hell

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SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

so as a citizen, besides not buying their shit slurry, what is there to actually do about it more actively

Well there’s a vast landscape between ‘citizen’ and ‘not buying’!

As a participant in state and local politics, you do what you can. I learned during years of NGO work that the longest lever for the non-owner class is policy.

That means working on specific issues by directing persuasion to policy makers, and often you catch those flies with honey. Appeal to the cooperative side of politicians and bureaucrats, make them feel like leaders and other ego things. Also, usually, pressuring with risks, like looming financial or political losses. This seems like very unsatisfying work because it is far from the front lines and providing direct relief, but systemic change is easier when protests aren’t necessary.

Meanwhile it’s also possible to start the Transition to a new economy, without fuss. Cooperatives are all around you, join them. Find every little opportunity for mutual aid, and take them when you can. Make non-commercial transactions normal. Participate in repair cafés, and develop thrift economy, like clothing exchanges and toolshares and small buying clubs. Electrify and find more efficiency. Group study. Build small organizations and ventures.

And crucially, participate in a little Direct Action, for your sanity and honour. What that means, whether it’s food charity or illicit art, is unique to you.

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- Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Exceptionally robust suggestions for the average person, the next step is to act on one of these for the sake of your neighbours
  
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cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
It’s not going to get resolved overnight, and it’s not going to be a smooth and direct road without any violence or suffering, we’ve seen plenty of the violence and suffering already. There will be more. But pay careful attention to the resistance that is forming, keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to resist, and until those opportunities present themselves, do what you can to make yourself and your families, loved ones, and communities more resilient and better supported. Give as much as you can, until it is time to take what we are owed.

There are protests happening. There will be more. There is active resistance. There will be more. There is civil disobedience. There will be more. There are people forming labor unions. There will be more. Labor strikes are planned. There will be more.

Don’t despair, prepare. It’s almost certainly going to get worse, much worse, before it gets better… but it will get better. Even if it takes years of effort, and maybe even a lot of violence and suffering to get there. The USA is the country that threw a tea party to overthrow a king. They will do so again, sooner or later. And keep in mind that historic event, also, did not happen overnight, it was the culmination of years of public anger, organization and preparation. It doesn’t even have to be a single definitive event. The stuff that is happening in Minneapolis right now, is changing the balance point on the scale. It may not be what tips it over, but it doesn’t have to be. The undercurrent of change is always moving even when it’s not visible. When it becomes visible, it usually gets pretty dramatic pretty quickly.

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- Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  honestly, I think it would be a stretch to say this could be resolved in the next decade barring a super hostile action government wise such as a strict wealth tax (including offshore bank accounts). but even i think that would likely do more harm than good at first and would be neigh impossible to actually track logistically without accommodation from external countries.
  
  Slow and Steady will eventually win the race, but it’s going to be a long hard process and will need actual participants.
  
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  - cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    I think that’s a fair and reasonable, but maybe somewhat optimistic point of view. I certainly hope it might be as smooth as a “long hard process” of hardworking participants that takes decades.
    
    I’m concerned it’s going to be much worse and more dramatic than that. If it’s sufficiently dramatic, it might be even faster than a decade. But we don’t necessarily want the change to be that fast or dramatic, because that has serious costs, and I think that might be the path we’re on. I think there are inevitably going to be a lot of super hostile actions from many different sides, and these will manifest as a collapse or near collapse of human civilization. I don’t see any realistic path forward through traditional or existing systems or models of economics and governance. I think empires are already falling. I think many nation-states are going to topple. I think there will be a massive reorganization of human society in the coming decades, and that will happen largely through widespread war, famine, brutality, and savagery that we had convinced ourselves we had left long in the past. Even though it’s never actually stopped happening at any point in time, it’s just been marginalized and isolated into places we mostly ignore and when we do notice it, we soon have to look away and start to ignore again because it’s so upsetting to us. When we see it happening, we find ways to do something to convince ourselves that it’s been solved, or managed, or improved in some way and then we look away again so we don’t have to think about it when it inevitably gets worse. But even having it marginalized is better than it has been, and there’s no shame in that. But we still will have to confront these realities eventually. And I think eventually is quickly becoming “now”.
    
    This is what humanity is, this is what any remotely objective view of history tells us. We have often tried to be better as people, and that’s commendable, and I think we have done a good job being at least somewhat better for a long time, and that too is commendable, and it is obviously a worthy pursuit that we should continue, but we cannot completely escape that we have our dark sides, we are capable of great evil, and great evil is being done sometimes directly under our noses, sometimes we do it ourselves without even seeing it, it is part of us, it is part of who we are and who we always have been. And I think we are facing down a serious confrontation with many of our great evils right now. And I don’t think we’re prepared for how bad it’s going to be. For how bad we can be.
    
    Maybe I’m wrong, I hope I am. I hope there’s some turning point where everyone simultaneously realizes where this is headed and everything changes direction and we address many of our great evils and solve many of our problems peacefully and promptly and continue pursuing our better selves. But I’m finding it increasingly hard to believe that’s realistic.
    
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    Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    For sure, anything of that caliber, be it a monetary violence such as a massive financial shift from wealthy to either the government structures or the people, to a physical violence such as a revolt, to a virtual violence such as banning products/companies that are not following the established mantra, I do think the end result would be the same, I doubt it would lead to the collapse of civilization but, I do have to say that it won’t be pretty and in best case scenarios the penalty is increased pricing for awhile while things stabilize, worst case scenario is dismantlement of known authorities/governments due to violent protests.
    
    For some food for thought btw on the economic scale? You could take half of amazons annual net income(income after taxes, liabilities, deductions etc) for 2024, distribute it evenly across all known people in the US (Amazons primary market) and be able to give each person $80-90. every person and that’s still allowing the company to keep 30B. It blows my mind. The same can be said about Microsoft. They made 88B in 2024, so half of that is 44B across every person would be 130ish per person. Nvidia would be ~18, apple would be ~144. It’s really sickening when you think of it the amount of money those companies have.
    
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- Tyrq@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I guess we all hope the price is small, but humanity has this way of not really learning its lessons, I hope I’m wrong on that too. I make sure to have gratitude for the things in my life that are good and wholesome, because who knows anything really, but it is good to be able to see your flowers bloom, so to speak.
  
  But humanity has witnessed the end of every other empire and made it out the other side, so yes, hold out hope for the best, prepare for the worst, and enjoy the moment
  
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