teslasexual

“They’re not smarter or faster they’re buying up others’ lifetimes to do their chores”

this is capitalism in it’s final form

First, it’s not that new.

Did you know that there was a time in U.S. history—which is by definition recent history—when a corporation was generally intended to have some sort of public interest that they served? I mean, that’s the whole point of allowing corporations to form. Corporations are recognized by the commonwealth or state, and this recognition is not a right but a privilege, in exchange for which the state (representing the people) is allowed to ask, “So what does this do for everyone else?”

The way the economy is now is a direct result of a shift away from this thinking and to one where a corporation is an entity unto itself whose first, last, and only concern is an ever-increasing stream of profits. What you’re calling “benevolent capitalism” isn’t benevolent at all. It’s a pure profit/loss calculation designed to distract from—not even paper over or stick a band-aid on—the problems capitalism creates. And the fact that you’re here championing it as “benevolent capitalism” is a sign of how ell it’s working.

Let’s take Toms, as one example. The shoe that’s a cause. Buy a pair of trendy shoes, and a pair of trendy shoes will be given away to someone somewhere in the world who can’t afford them.

That’s not genuine benevolence. That’s selling you, the consumer, on the idea that you can be benevolent by buying shoes, that the act of purchasing these shoes is an act of charity. The reality is that their model is an inefficient means of addressing the problems on the ground that shoelessness represents, and severely disrupts the local economies of the locations selected for benevolence.

(Imagine what it does to the local shoemakers, for instance.)

The supposed act of charity is just a value add to convince you to spend your money on these shoes instead of some other shoes. It’s no different than putting a prize in a box of cereal.

Heck, you want to see how malevolent this is?

Go ask a multinational corporation that makes shoes or other garments to double the wages of their workers. They’ll tell you they can’t afford it, that it’s not possible, that consumers won’t stand for it, that you’ll drive them out of business and then no one will have wages.

But the fact that a company can give away one item for every item sold shows you what a lie this is. A one-for-one giving model represents double the cost of labor and materials for each unit that is sold for revenue. Doubling wages would only double the labor.

So why are companies willing to give their products away (and throw them away, destroy unused industry with bleach and razors to render them unsalvageable, et cetera) but they’re not willing to pay their workers more?

Because capitalism is the opposite of benevolence.

“Charity” is by definition exemplary, above and beyond, extraordinary, extra. “Charity” is not something that people are entitled to. You give people a shirt or shoes or some food and call it charity, and you’re setting up an expectation that you can and will control the stream of largesse in the future, and anything and everything you give should be considered a boon from on high.

On the other hand, once you start paying your workers a higher wage, you’re creating an expectation. You’re admitting that their labor is more valuable to you than you were previously willing to admit, and it’s hard to walk that back.

Plus, when people have enough money for their basic needs, they’re smarter and stronger and warier and more comfortable with pushing back instead of being steamrolled over. They have time and money to pursue education. They can save money up and maybe move away. They can escape from the system that depends on a steady flow of forced or near-forced labor.

So companies will do charitable “buy one, give one” and marketing “buy one, get one” even though these things by definition double the overhead per unit, but they won’t do anything that makes a lasting difference in the standard of living for the people.

Capitalism has redefined the world so that the baseline of ethics is “How much money can we make?” and every little good deed over and above that is saintly.

The smell of rotting flesh on a living person is something you never forget.

I don’t hold with a lot of things, but you’d never catch me advocating that we illegalize some other kind of surgery on consenting adults. People do it anyway, and they do it wrong. And they show up with bacterial soup where flesh used to be, and they can easily die of it. Especially now, with resistance to antibiotics such an issue that our hospitals have a chart of what diseases are most resistant to what antibiotics just in our area. I may think liposuction is a surgically unnecessary unacceptable risk, but no one deserves to die from a botched liposuction by an illegal provider, or a botched silicon injection.

Legalize all surgeries by competent and well-trained providers. Illegalize all others. Make care accessible to everyone. Make informed consent the cornerstone. God, the days I spent shadowing in an abortion clinic, I went from being apologetic about abortions to thinking “This? You can’t even see the villi yet.” Let alone the embryo. In the first eight weeks or so, you cannot recognize anything even vaguely human-like, even crouched over the uterine contents squinting at them in a water-filled glass bowl over a light source, which you do every time to make sure that there aren’t any unexpected findings. There are certain conditions that are rare, but for a provider in a major urban area with few clinics, like the one I shadowed, who might do hundreds in a year, the odds are she’ll encounter them at least occasionally and someone with, for instance, a hydatiform mole, which is something like “what if the blastocyst turned into aggressively invasive cancer instead of an embryo,” needs urgent medical attention.

In general, I think high schools need to devote more time to human physiology. Everyone should know how their blood and guts work, at least at a basic level. When I took a specific class on medical terminology in high school, part a prep course for people interested in nursing, I was shocked to discover how little I knew and how little my classmates knew–things that any medical professional would consider absolutely basic, we had no idea. We filled in the gaps with intuition that was wrong. And for many people, that’s never remedied.

We’d be having completely different national conversations if everyone knew how bodies work. That’s just a fact. You’ll never meet a competent doctor who wouldn’t make birth control freely available to literally everyone if they had the chance. They’ve seen the consequences. Not just botched abortions, back in the day, but I saw a kid whose mother was on meth during the pregnancy. The mother cleaned up afterwards, but the kid has excruciating constant migraines. At six, that’s a hell of a burden, and the mother’s guilt was palpable and unrelenting. It may not have even been related, but what if that poor addicted woman had had actual control of her reproduction? I doubt she would have chosen to be pregnant then. An IUD, a Norplant, would have meant she could have waited until she cleaned up and felt ready for the responsibility, even without the presence of mind and resources to use a condom. Addicts deserve medical care, too. They deserve choice.

You have a right to:

Food

Water

Clothing

Housing

Medical care

A clean and safe environment

The second week of training, right after lunch, she literally dropped dead in the middle of class. Just fell out of her chair dead. Because she hadn’t been able to afford her medication. When she finally got a shitty-ass job that was benevolent enough to provide health insurance after three months.

Now, I’m not saying that folks who worth in the healthcare industry should work for free or anything like that. God knows there are so many healthcare workers who are getting the shit end of the stick (nurses, I’m looking at you), and it takes a lot of schooling and expertise to be in that line of work. But I want you to look me in the eye when you tell me that healthcare should be a for-profit industry.

Bruh. 

There are wild animals that make it into suburbs and make it out alive escorted by police, but a naked, black man is shot on sight? Jesus.

March 9

DeKalb officer shot and killed Anthony Hill, who struggled with mental illness and was unarmed and naked at the time of the shooting. 

Everyone needs to see these #MuslimLivesMatter tweets after the Chapel Hill shooting

Twitter is hearing the message loud and clear: #MuslimLivesMatter. The hashtag is taking over social media following the shooting deaths of three Muslim students Tuesday near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Bitter Lake