A large part of violent crime is caused by capitalism.
Think about it. This is a wall of text, so I ain’t no judge you for no reading. But a little understanding helps. Let me tell you a story that has happened to millions of people worldwide. Some of them could be your cousin, child, spouse, best friend or whatever.
So, imagine you have to pay high rents and medical bills. Groceries are expensive. You cannot afford it and so sell your home, or divorce, or whatever. There can be a dozen causes.
Now you’re homeless or poor. And your situation worsens. So you try to find help, but get rejected because social assistance gets defunded by the fascists. You try again and try to find work, but to have work, you need a residence.
Eventually, it feels pointless, and you go into drugs and selling them, or consuming them. Perhaps to escape your situation, or to forget it.
But you can’t always pay for them. So you are made addicted and with withdrawal turn to violence. Had you been given access to clean, free drugs from hospitals, you wouldn’t need to spend all your savings on this, and instead could focus on pulling yourself up.
Or perhaps you’ve not used drugs. But you need money to have groceries. And so you beg, go into prostitution, or whatever.
Naturally, that draws cops, because some rich people don’t understand the hell you go through. They think, ew, shabby people, must be dangerous, because that’s what the media say.
The cops could help you stop and get back up, perhaps, right? But they’re paid for every crime they detect and arrest. And they’re not paid well. So they decide to plant drugs, or whatever incriminating ‘evidence’. Bodycam? They just disable it, or ‘forget’ they had them. And they have a gun, so they can intimidate judges.
So you get locked up. And it might not be just the case in the USA, but worldwide, imprisonment have focused more and more on punishment rather than rehabilitation. If you’re lucky, you get given resources to improve and community service, but you shouldn’t have needed to end up in there in the first place, because the system has failed. But if you’re unlucky, you’re in a for-profit prison, and need to work unpaid hours under forced labour (hello, slavery and the 13th amendment!). And especially unluckily, you get deported to Alligator Auschwitz for being an immigrant, or put into a male section with dozens of seething male rapists, as a trans woman.
Had you had universal, free healthcare, and rent were affordable or socialised entirely, had social assistance been great, you would have been back up immediately. But billionnaires don’t want to pay tax. To earn what Musk did in his less than 50 years, you’d need to earn $1 million an hour, every day, from 16 to 65. Or to work a regular job 2,000 years nonstop. You won’t be a kabajillionnaire with hard work.
All those $1 million an hour lads got that wealth through inherited luck and exploitation of people like you, making you hate the other for that $5 wage, while you earn $10.
They tell you to retire later and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, while you work harder than they fuck underage people. If you’re lucky, you’re facing an uncertain retirement and can afford a smaller house. But if you’re unlucky, even euthanasia is out of the question, because like abortion, you banned it because you hated women more than you wanted to get a proper wage.
Sobering. So how could it be different? How do we build a better world?
Everything helps. But some more than others.
To defeat a ‘peaceful’ capitalist democracy, we can strike, riot, and rebel peacefully. But to defeat fascism, I have to admit we need arms and to train and organise ourselves well. Not voting has never helped do anything (unless if a minimum turnout is necessary to validify the results), other than democracies strongly disapproving of results.
That’s a complete fantasy. People don’t rape, don’t assault, others because of only money. Yes, capitalism increases those harms. But drug addicts will exist in any society, for a variety of reasons, as long as drugs are possible to access (so off the bat there is questionable), and you can do harm reduction for that. But beyond that, there people out there who get a power high off of abusive others. There will still be that crime.
I’m well aware of everything you said, I just have a bit less faith in the default good of humanity. There will still be abusers and rapists.
I have to admit we need arms and to train and organise ourselves well. Not voting has never helped do anything (unless if a minimum turnout is necessary to validify the results), other than democracies strongly disapproving of results.
Of course. To defeat fascism, at a minimum we need to be doing protests that have a real threat behind them. A lot harder to break up a crowd when we have assault rifles.
A large part of violent crime is caused by capitalism.
Think about it. This is a wall of text, so I ain’t no judge you for no reading. But a little understanding helps. Let me tell you a story that has happened to millions of people worldwide. Some of them could be your cousin, child, spouse, best friend or whatever.
So, imagine you have to pay high rents and medical bills. Groceries are expensive. You cannot afford it and so sell your home, or divorce, or whatever. There can be a dozen causes.
Now you’re homeless or poor. And your situation worsens. So you try to find help, but get rejected because social assistance gets defunded by the fascists. You try again and try to find work, but to have work, you need a residence.
Eventually, it feels pointless, and you go into drugs and selling them, or consuming them. Perhaps to escape your situation, or to forget it.
But you can’t always pay for them. So you are made addicted and with withdrawal turn to violence. Had you been given access to clean, free drugs from hospitals, you wouldn’t need to spend all your savings on this, and instead could focus on pulling yourself up.
Or perhaps you’ve not used drugs. But you need money to have groceries. And so you beg, go into prostitution, or whatever.
Naturally, that draws cops, because some rich people don’t understand the hell you go through. They think, ew, shabby people, must be dangerous, because that’s what the media say. The cops could help you stop and get back up, perhaps, right? But they’re paid for every crime they detect and arrest. And they’re not paid well. So they decide to plant drugs, or whatever incriminating ‘evidence’. Bodycam? They just disable it, or ‘forget’ they had them. And they have a gun, so they can intimidate judges.
So you get locked up. And it might not be just the case in the USA, but worldwide, imprisonment have focused more and more on punishment rather than rehabilitation. If you’re lucky, you get given resources to improve and community service, but you shouldn’t have needed to end up in there in the first place, because the system has failed. But if you’re unlucky, you’re in a for-profit prison, and need to work unpaid hours under forced labour (hello, slavery and the 13th amendment!). And especially unluckily, you get deported to Alligator Auschwitz for being an immigrant, or put into a male section with dozens of seething male rapists, as a trans woman.
Had you had universal, free healthcare, and rent were affordable or socialised entirely, had social assistance been great, you would have been back up immediately. But billionnaires don’t want to pay tax. To earn what Musk did in his less than 50 years, you’d need to earn $1 million an hour, every day, from 16 to 65. Or to work a regular job 2,000 years nonstop. You won’t be a kabajillionnaire with hard work.
All those $1 million an hour lads got that wealth through inherited luck and exploitation of people like you, making you hate the other for that $5 wage, while you earn $10.
They tell you to retire later and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, while you work harder than they fuck underage people. If you’re lucky, you’re facing an uncertain retirement and can afford a smaller house. But if you’re unlucky, even euthanasia is out of the question, because like abortion, you banned it because you hated women more than you wanted to get a proper wage.
Sobering. So how could it be different? How do we build a better world?
Everything helps. But some more than others. To defeat a ‘peaceful’ capitalist democracy, we can strike, riot, and rebel peacefully. But to defeat fascism, I have to admit we need arms and to train and organise ourselves well. Not voting has never helped do anything (unless if a minimum turnout is necessary to validify the results), other than democracies strongly disapproving of results.
That’s a complete fantasy. People don’t rape, don’t assault, others because of only money. Yes, capitalism increases those harms. But drug addicts will exist in any society, for a variety of reasons, as long as drugs are possible to access (so off the bat there is questionable), and you can do harm reduction for that. But beyond that, there people out there who get a power high off of abusive others. There will still be that crime.
I’m well aware of everything you said, I just have a bit less faith in the default good of humanity. There will still be abusers and rapists.
Of course. To defeat fascism, at a minimum we need to be doing protests that have a real threat behind them. A lot harder to break up a crowd when we have assault rifles.