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Someone In An Autism Facebook Group I'm In Just Asked "How Am I Supposed To Earn Enough To Make A Living

Someone in an autism facebook group I'm in just asked "How am I supposed to earn enough to make a living without burning out?"

Someone replied: "You're not. Even neurotypicals can't right now in the system designed for them. We're the canaries in the coalmine. When we start failing, they know something is wrong."

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just-info

1 year ago

a thread of tweets by Jason Hickel @jasonhickel on twitter: People often assume that capitalism is defined by "markets and trade". But markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is only 500 years old. So what is distinctive about this economic system? Three things (well, more, but three for now):

1. First, and most importantly, it is defined by enclosure and artificial scarcity. The origins of capitalism lie in a systematic effort by elites to restrict people's access to commons and independent subsistence, in order to render them reliant on wage labour for survival. Over the past 500 years, this has taken the form of privatization of commons, forced dispossession, destruction of subsistence economies and - particularly in the colonies - taxing people in a currency they do not have in order to induce them to seek wages in that currency.

This continues today, with attempts to ensure an artificial scarcity of access to essential goods such as housing, healthcare, education, transit, and so on - goods that could very easily be provided, at high quality, on a universal public basis. Where universal public goods do exist, these have usually been won by longstanding struggles by labour movements and other progressive forces (including the anti-colonial movement).

2. Second, capitalism is organized around - and dependent on - perpetual expansion, meaning ever-increasing production of commodified goods. It is the only intrinsically expansionary economic system in history (meaning it basically has a crisis if it doesn't continually expand). Crucially, under capitalism the purpose of increasing production is *not* primarily to meet human needs, but rather to extract and accumulate profit. That is the overriding objective. (It is also the main objective of innovation).

It's important to distinguish here between small businesses, which quite often operate with a steady-state, use-value logic (and which obviously preceded capitalism), and corporations whose main objective is expansion and accumulation (which define the capitalist era). To sustain the process of perpetually increasing surplus accumulation, capital requires an ever-rising quantity of inputs (labour and nature), and requires that these inputs be obtained as cheaply as possible.

This introduces a constant pressure to depress real wages and attack environmental protections wherever possible (in the absence of countervailing political forces). The result is a system that, left to itself, automatically generates inequality and ecological breakdown. 3. Finally, capitalism is notable for precluding democratic decision-making. Even in countries that prize political democracy, democratic principles are rarely allowed to operate in the sphere of production, where decisions are made overwhelmingly by those who control capital.

The result is that decisions about what to produce, for what purposes, for whose benefit, and under what conditions are generally made in the narrow interests of the capitalist class (workers, the people actually *doing* the production, rarely get a voice at all). It is worth pondering how our production priorities (and our treatment of labour and nature) might be different under conditions of economic democracy. Existing evidence suggests that democratic conditions lead to less exploitation, more equality, and more care for ecology.

In sum, the tendency to equate capitalism with "markets and trade" naturalizes a system that is not natural, and prevents us from having a clear-eyed view of how it operates and how we might want to do things differently. (The "more" I referred to involves exploitative relations of race, gender and imperial power, which are effects of the tendencies described here, and which sustain them, but this deserves a thread unto itself - coming soon).

We can have a democratic economy organized around meeting human needs at a high standard, where production is socially just and ecologically regenerative. Such a system is possible, but it will require a political movement to bring it into being.

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capitalism

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just-info

1 year ago

The history of corporate propaganda.

'Nobody wants to work' fails to mention the poverty wages and horrible workplaces.

Reframe the narrative: Capitalists refuse to pay thriving wages.

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capitalism

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just-info

1 year ago

Since they don’t teach gay sex ed in school let me tell gay guys and anyone else that wants to use the back door that douching is bad for you. It will cause long term problems.

Also starving yourself all day will not work because sometimes it can take up to two or three days for something to move through you.

Just eat a bunch of fiber and use the bathroom at least an hour or two before your booty call if you can. If you hate eating fiber just get yourself some fiber pills to take with meals. If you eat enough fiber the section after the colon should remain relatively clean on its own. Just wash the outside part. Not your insides. Those clean themselves.

Also if he shames you for anything that happens by accident in the bedroom and/or refuses to use a condom he’s a jerk-wad and an idiot and you should dump him.

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sex ed just dont... instantly believe what some random person online says lol

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just-info

1 year ago

I know I don't shut up about this but frankly not enough people are angry about the 5-day/40 hour workweek (and I am AWARE a lot of people work even more than that). I feel like a lot more people should be absolutely furious that we only really have two days a week and some occasional hours in the evening to socialise, run errands, do chores, or relax.

It's no wonder so many people are profoundly lonely and disconnected from their communities when maintaining a social life in what little free time we have is incredibly difficult. If you have kids, a second job, a very long commute, or other responsibilities, it's nearly impossible.

We literally aren't meant to live like this and I'll never stop being shocked how many people just take it as the natural state of things and don't want to throw a brick through a billionaire's window every time they think of it.

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capitalism

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just-info

1 year ago

Good stuff.

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writing

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