https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
Perfect is the enemy of good (or good enough).
Or slightly less terrible
I was once explaining the upsides of UBI and someone replied “no, this would fix too many issues with capitalism, this would delay the revolution!” Like… Dude.
I always think of this post whenever I hear someone dead-set on nothing less than massive, systemic change.
True that. Do I agree modern society has gone crazy in many fundamental ways? Hell yeah. Will I reject an opportunity to do something small that will affect only a handful of lives for just a few days based solely on that? Nope
I’ve reached a point where I think if both the left and right tell you are wrong, you might just as well have arrived at the correct idea (usually, not always).
We all are the only and best witness to our individual experiences. I don’t think that’s taught enough. I’m not saying that all truth is relative all the time, but I think it’s very reasonable to be in a nation with a de facto two-party duopoly on the entire political system and come to a conclusion as an individual that there are many things and experiences, including your own, that aren’t accurately represented or advocated for by either party’s narratives. IMO, that’s common sense. Just like America has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, it’s also unique in that it (and all of the five eyes nations except for NZ and kind of Australia) is a western democracy that only has two parties with the vast control of natl. govt. instead of a coalition of many more. Competition almost always yields better results for customers in a market and in politics.
We’re in a system in which voters feel locked into a system of only two choices and then will turn around and berate other voters for not being 1000% committed to ‘the revolution’ after toppling the n*zis. Instead of providing a inclusive environment for old republicans turning away from and standing against obvious fascism, some of the left does a whole old timey Christian preacher “scare the hell out of you,” narcissism-of-small-differences routine with zero prompting to try and push for a huge cultural and political upheaval before removing the awfulness that’s currently in power. It’s the Aesop’s Fables lion giving up the rabbit (small win) to chase the antelope (ambitious win) and losing both. It’s Anakin telling Obi Wan to join him with the Sith or die, his head so far up his own butt with his own issues that he thinks that’s an actual choice for Obi Wan but it’s not. It’s shortsighted and self-centered and it’s stupid. And for the sake of just getting through elections in the next 4 years I wish it would stop.
Anyway. “Nothing is ever as good or bad as people say it is. It’s always better or worse and you have to figure out how.” Some of that is adjusting your own expectations and reactions, some of it is adjusting for the biases of others.
Haha I kind of see both your points, it kind of does the liberal thing of extending the umbrella of protection from exploitation while pushing exploitation farther to the sidelines. The worst case outcome is that you now have more defenders of the status quo, because they’ve got it good. Meanwhile the entire economy is still based on war and exploitation, especially of poor workers in other countries.
But then maybe if us workers here had some more breathing room (perhaps not the best choice of words…) we might also have more capacity for solidarity with those exploited workers. Who knows, but it would remedy a lot of immediate problems here anyway.
And all the trials have been very positive, so I’m inclined to give it a shot yeah.
‘Let them get a taste of how terrible those guys are, and then they’ll vote us in and our system will rise!’ is what the Weimar Republic said about the Nazis.
Never, ever assume making things worse will end up causing a few tiny problems and then everything gets better. Humans are, by and large, shockingly tolerant of rather terrible things. If you let things get worse, they will get very, very worse, and a lot of innocent people will die.
Right but you see the analogy of like union negotiations, like when management makes a sweet deal for a certain class of worker like full-timers, or people over a certain “grade”, then leaves everyone else out to dry.
I’ve seen it happen first hand. Things get better for us inside the new circle of privilege, but it’s only because most of us voted for self interest.
I don’t want to be like letting the 💯 be the enemy of the 👌🏻, but I also think we should talk about how we plan on keeping from being the 1% to someone else.
Does that make sense? I’m not against UBI, but it can’t be the end of the discussion.
And fascism ended up killing fewer people than the British Empire, USA, or French Empire and it wasn’t tried again for 80 years.
As you say, people are shockingly tolerant of terrible things. Especially when there is a socially constructed boundary between them and the victims (race, nationality, etc.). If you count nonwhite noncitizens as full people, fascism was less deadly than liberal capitalism.
Do we care half as much about the death of a dozen people at a wedding in Pakistan as we care about Alex Pritti? Do we care half as much about the colonization of north America as about the Lebensraum doctrine? Do we care half as much as about the British colonization of India as about the holocaust and WW2?
Fascism is capitalist abusers coming home. it is horrible, as capitalism always was.
I would prefer capitalism to fall without a fascist period - not the least out of self-preservation as a white citizen of a first world country - but at this point every decade that capitalism survives is another billion dead from climate change.
If we stave off fascism by embracing liberal capitalism, all our children and grandchildren will die violently. It can not be enough.
I see way too much of this on the internet, here on Lemmy included. Thanks for posting this. I have this thought a lot but haven’t see this good of a way to put it before.
Its state sponsored propaganda using companies as proxies to bypass those pesky human rights laws and is vastly on the Republican side but you do have aipac dems and similar issues in other first world countries.
The rise of right wing extremist politicians and the world also going to shit is no coincidence.
They’ll also tell you things such as “don’t trust the government” while also being the party in control. It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
I love the ‘no true scot’ part here.
Nice argument
Actually it’s a logical fallacy. As in your previous comment makes no sense at all so it doesn’t need to be argued against. Just dismissed as the drivel that it is.
So you’re a maga/republican cultist? Or just support them? Seems like you’re just deflecting from the original point I was making since you have no argument with substance🤷♂️
Cool emoji use
Yeah I’ve had this kind of discussions with right wing folk. We were discussing socialist policies, which I was in favor of and they were against. They were pointing out there were people abusing current socialist policies and getting a free handout, so all of those policies should be cut to prevent the freeloaders from freeloading. I argued that any kind of policy, no matter what the policy is, is going to be abused by a small fraction of the population. It’s not possible to create something without loopholes and people exploiting them. We should try to prevent it in the design, but in the end we should accept that’s going to happen and instead focus on if the policy is also actually helping the people it was designed for.
Nothing is perfect, problems won’t be fully solved and / or new problems will be created. That isn’t failure, it’s life.
Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.
Often there’s a break even point at greater than zero auditing where the audits start costing more than the amount of fraud, but it’s surprisingly common that zero or very nearly zero auditing is actually the most efficient setup, because regular people just don’t commit fraud all that often. When dealing with corporations, on the other hand…
…add a few more special investigators for high tax evasion crimes to the IRS (or whatever your gov org is called) and you’ll reap more for the state than you’ll ever could with welfare fraud.
The head of the German tax union (DSTG) with 75000 members who advise German IRS employees, intervene for tax equality, fight tax evasion into tax havens and offshore companies says the yearly sum of high tax evasion fraud amounts to 200 billion, while welfare fraud amounts to 275 million. He advised the new government under the ex-Blackrock chancellor Merz at the start of their legislation to make this his priority.
What did the government do of course (in corporation with the so called workers party SPD) recently in a whimsy attempt to bring down state debt? Create a barrage of reforms all targeting the poor, especially those receiving welfare, but also working families, the health system and workers rights. Then he openly states at podium discussions the German workers are to lazy compared to Chinese workers. He actively pushed the far right AfD to record election results and his own parties to record negative results.
The corrupt finance minister Katharina Reiche (greedy POS ex fossil fuel manager) of the same party is actively working to eradicate the last chances of the country to get a foothold in green tech like wind power generation, heatpumps and green hydrogen for steel production (like she did 2012 in another gov for the solar industry) and pro fossil fuel industries.
This all lead to record level negative popularity for the conservative party, record level rates German Angst regarding economic downfall of citizens in recent public polls and record level popularity of the right wing AfD (whose level of economic profession and that of those electing them shows in a proposal to tax all income classes the same with a flat tax of 25%).
The only ray of hope is the left party who recently won the Berlin elections whose first priority there is to transfer flats in the hands of greedy flat corporations, working only for the share holder value, to state property.
The easiest way to avoid freeloaders and abusers is to make services available to anyone who wants them. Then the only abuse is trying to count one person as multiple people to get an unfair amount of benefits which isn’t even possible for things like universal healthcare.
current capitalist approaches are being exploited RIGHT NOW to consolidate wealth and power (see: kushner buying the lakers, ellison buying warner bros and thats just los angeles alone). i’d much rather have a handful of everyman freeloaders than concentrated greed.
But the rich abusing policies so they get pure bail out socialism is fine. Just dont want a poor brown person to have it heavens no.
It’s a demoralization propaganda tactic to effectively blunt any issue. People have internalized the idea that they can do nothing on an individual level. Like habits that form out of persistent actions, people have been demoralized into giving up completely. It’s some sort of ego trap. Where the presumption is that an individual is supposed Superman saving the world, but of course they aren’t. Nobody is. So why bother at all. That’s not the point. It’s about the the population as a whole determining the norm. Everyone is convinced it’s pointless and hopeless. That sets the tone. The issue is dead in the water. Any issue can be killed this way. It’s extremely effective. People fall for it every time.
That’s where climate change is right now. That’s where wealth inequality is right now. People have listened to social media. They’ve internalized the quote repetitions. The demoralization mantras they saw on social media.
Your adversaries can handle words on social media. It’s meaningless to them. It has no effect on their daily lifestyle or their bank accounts. Throwing words into the cloud. Somebody else’s computer. Those servers are owned by your very adversaries. You’re throwing your comments into a meaningless suggestion box. In all likelihood the quote repetitions were seeded by them.
Everyone is convinced that “the rich” consist of a few billionaires named Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg. This blinds people from seeing local issues. Like crony politicians or localized inequality issues. Ones where they actually have more of a voice. One where they can actually effect change.
There’s no more blatant manifestation than when reddit (happens on lemmy too) bleeds their hearts over those posts about some rich asshole. Those carbon copy posts about how hard it is to be making techbro level money while “struggling” to live in the most wealthy cities in the world. Who gives a shit. Why does everyone have sympathy for those rich people at all. Everyone crazy? These people are part of the problem. They are the rich too. They are the source of issues that affect you locally. The guillotines are for them as much as Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg. They’re out of touch rich people who have dragged you all into their reality where they’re victims too. How convenient for them to have a few billionaire scapegoats that are untouchable. Whereas the average working class person can actually effect change on a local level.
People have given up on climate change because they’re convinced the one or two people must stop flying private jets then the problem will be solved. It’s quote repetitions. Fed to them from social media. “If those jerks can fly private jets, then why can’t I consume as much as I want myself. I’ll use all the plastic bags and straws that I want.” It’s not about the bags or the straws. It’s about the collective demoralization. The propaganda is so effective.
There’s a good chance that anyone making this argument doesn’t see it as a problem in the first place.
That’s correct. Dismissal of the effort and disgust for the goal seem to go hand-in-hand.
Digital privacy? They’ve got you anyway AND I don’t care about privacy Environmentalism? Nothing is 100% green anyway AND I don’t care about the environment
Lots of examples like that.
They want to beat down both your goal and effort, because admitting even one of those being reasonable threatens their worldview.
Yes, but this message gives them the chance to expand their view. The chance.
A monkey is gonna monk. No matter what you tellem.
Look man, you’re only saving 50% of the children from starvation, so obviously your idea is bad and we should continue letting 100% of the children die until someone comes up with the perfect solution.
This is a very serious take around Lemmy tho
I suggest we start calling this The Musk Argument.
As in, I won’t spend an inconsequential fraction of my money to solve world hunger – after I literally challenged you for a proposal to do so – because I don’t think you will be 100% successful.
Instead, I think I will take public actions to kill untold numbers of poor people around the world while I continue my quest to be the first smart boy with one million million dollars.
It’s such a lazy answer and we see it everywhere. Check any discussion on veganism and you’ll spot it.
moral envy:
feeling of envy and resentment directed at another person, not because the person is wealthy, or gifted or lucky but because his or her behaviour is seen as upholding a higher moral standard than the envier’s own
it’s one thing to do something ineffective, but be optimistic. it’s another to waste others time and morally grandstand if they won’t do ineffective things with you
Problem is in this case it’s effective
Would be even worse if we all ate animals:
I’m sorry you ran into assholes.
Edit: yeah you can tag this one as an antivegan debate pervert and move on.
I went with “anti-vegan troll moron”
I’m not antivegan
I think you’re anti-brain.
this is a counterfactual and cannot be proven
In this paper, we link a validated food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) to estimates from a review of 570 life-cycle assessments3 (LCAs)
lca studies are disparately methodized, and cannot be combined. this is junk science
I.e. eating less meat does not affect animal welfare, zoonosis and land use change?
Are you an imbecile or a troll?
Troll, it appears. But. Maybe both.
calling me names won’t change the facts
The growth of total meat production is not indicative of the change in harm done by developed countries. It can only be combated by increasing poverty, decreasing population or imposing laws onto developing countries. Most people would be unwilling to impose that.
Quoting rising meat consumption as an example of how vegans are wrong is… Non factual. Naming those that do consume animal (products) in smaller amounts just as bad as those habitual carcass consumption clowns isn’t conducive to the goal of reducing meat consumption either.
vegans aren’t wrong to be vegan. but it would be wrong to say being vegan causes systemic change. which I thought was the point I made to begin with, and to an extent, the point of this post
Where “the facts” is just a baseless claim that since things look bad, they couldn’t be worse, therefore vegans have never made any impact whatsoever. 🤮
counterfactuals can’t be proven. that’s the only fact that matters when the actually baseless claim that it would be worse without a few people buying beans is raised.
That’s exactly what I thought when I read this. We have multiple antivegan accounts on my instance that spout this crap and troll others. If they get banned, they come crying back instead of realizing how unwelcome they are. What a waste of time to spend it this way instead of actually helping people. You can’t talk about veganism on here without the same type of asshole coming out of the woodworks.
Make a comment about the benefits of fully eliminating direct usage of fossil fuels from your life and inevitably you get replies like: I can’t do that because I rent. You are so privileged, most people can’t afford an EV.
I think many have this idea that removing fossil fuel usage has to be expensive. It can also be by just not buying them. Yes I know not 100% of people can remove 100% of their direct usage right now, but a lot of people could do more than they are doing but don’t. Some because they don’t care, but others may not realise options they have, and positivity posting can help spread that kind of message.
How I fully removed direct fossil fuel usage from my life: never learnt to drive because I couldn’t afford it, for years used the bike from my teens before getting a new bike in my late 20s. Once I bought a house I had the broken boiler replaced with a heat pump, due to how old the central heating system was it all needed replacing anyway do it didn’t really cost any more than staying on fossil fuels. Had the gas meter removed from the house after a long conversation with the provider that no I really don’t need or want it, get rid of it. The engineer said he would see me again when I need it turned back on, not seen him in a few years now. Still don’t want it.
Total electricity cost is under £1k a year and winter usage is 3-4x summer usage. Recently switched to working in office so I can adjust the heating timing and zone layout this winter which should save some energy too.
Conscious consumption! I like it. It’s a big part of what they advocate on the Frugal Friends podcast. Just need to figure out the “we have McDonalds at home” of fossil fuels. Hybrids & bikes can be a good first start.
Frugal/anti consumption. It used to be by necessity but now I continue by choice, to the point I don’t really know what to spend my money on since I started earning full time adult minimum wage. Now on £29k and continue to not really know what to spend it on! I do get nice things but most of them don’t really cost much. Like a cast iron pan I need once and doesn’t cost much.
This random stranger is really proud of you! Good on you, for real. :) Keep up the good work! <3
Same. When I was at a point where I was skipping a meal a day to save for rent, it was the boots problem. If I could get the nicer, more durable thing, it was always worth it in the long run but not usually affordable up front. But sometimes there are easy wins. I found my first and only cast iron skillet I’ve had in the last 15 years covered in grease & surface level rust next to a dumpster on the way home. Some oven cleaner and flaxseed oil and it has been good to me ever since.
It started then by saying no to eating out bc it’s unaffordable, now it’s saying no to eating out at a lot of places bc they have awful food, service, and management treats their workers like crap. Starbucks wasn’t worth it to me for a long time before the anti union stuff, now I have two reasons (actually more) never to go there again.
This is only valid as long as your partial/incomplete solution doesn’t encourage people who would otherwise keep working on solving the whole problem to decide that since there’s a solution they can just knock off for brunch and leave you to it.
Partial solutions to a polluted creek that’s choked with litter? Yes please, then we can see what comes next
Placebo solutions that make people who’ve made no difference feel like they’ve done their part to fight fascism and can go back to brunch? Gtfo with that shit.
Hint: if the “problem” is a societal one, nothing you see or hear suggested by anyone who has advertisers is going to actually solve anything, and is likely to work against anyone trying an actual solution.
for all the good tankies might do in a moment at the end they just create new issues, which if they are successful will be quite bad again. so not worth it since it’s completely unnecessary
Because people are fucking stupid, i deal with this shit at work everyday nothing to do with global politics or whatever. Sometimes our vendors fuck things up for us, so therefore there’s no point in us getting more organized at work – literally how my supervisors think.
I generally agree but not across the board. Bandaid solutions, half-assing things, etc often leads to worse problems down the road than you had to begin with.
Yeah but at some point you have to try knowing you’ll fail so you can make a better attempt next time. A lot of people are just sitting at like zero level of organization and refuse to even start trying ever.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If you wait until you feel great and have all the time in the world to ever go to the gym you might work out 1-2 days a year. If you wake up late and are tired but commit to at least going out and walking down the street and back at lunch and you do the latter more often then you’ll be way ahead of the former situation. Maybe different strokes for different folks. Perfectionism ruins a lot of dreams and ambitions of people that would accomplish a whole lot more if they just stopped overthinking about it and learned to leave well enough alone. Just ask any former ‘gifted and talented’ student.
I think the OOP describes situation where you did your best to chip at the big problem, but it wasn’t enough.
Half-assing is when you could act more, but you didn’t.
The difference is effort and intention.
What a person should do is pretty contingent on their agency… If someone doesn’t have leverage to organise a systemic solution, they should absolutely apply a bandaid solution. Ideally while keeping half an eye on the possibility of a better solution in the long run, but yeah… Depends on context and capacity.
Thing is, a bad solution is more likely to be fixed into a good one than that good solution is to be done in the first place.
Gotta get that sunk cost working in your favor.
Yeah, but this post won’t stop everyone from saying that /s
Im saving this in high hopes that I will remember it when I could send it to somebody, butt (&titties): I have observed that older posts seize to exist after some time on lemmy (I’m saving it to my device)
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
The difference is I can look back across the decades and see a lot of people who I have helped, and who have helped me in turn, things have been directly made better as a result (well, at least some of the time). Meanwhile, their “more realistic” approach centred on voting has seen periods of glacial progress and rapid retreat, leaving them further back than ever before in my lifetime.
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
Same. Ive never believed it.
Be a helper.
Individual actions rarely cause big changes, but they help individuals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.
For the sake of clarity, I meant actions in the sense of direct action; typically some sort of anarchism flavoured so prefiguration was often at least kept in mind. Nothing has ever snowballed of course, although some actions have spawned some lovely little related communities that are thriving too (and others that since ran out of steam, true); I’ll always choose small victories over chasing the best loss as electoralism endlessly expounds. But I don’t at all disagree with the sentiment!
