Maybe freedom as in financial freedom? I feel trapped cause of trauma and stuff but there’s layers.
Like an onion
like an ogre
The USA you’re free to do whatever you like as long as it’s these few specific things we believe are economically beneficial to the leaders but not you.
The economy is designed to keep you locked into working for the rest of your life under stress. Freedom is only given to capitalists because that’s how the system is designed.
One loophole is stealing.
Freedom isn’t the ability to do anything you want, even if you can’t afford it, that’s a cheesy, shallow capitalist view of freedom.
Freedom is knowing that you have no limitations imposed on you by society or the government. You can literally choose whatever path you’d like. How you follow that path, or afford that path is up to you, but at least your government can’t tell you that you aren’t allowed to follow that path because they said so, for whatever corrupt rationalization they claim.
We don’t have either
But the government has said we can’t follow the paths we want, they are a government of the rich that has robbed and murdered the working class and prevented them from doing what is good for them at the risk of death or imprisonment. Within capitalism there is no freedom unless you are the rich, who the proletarian must beg for wages from to live.
If the workers have a better standard of life it is only at the will of the rich, concessions gained from them have only come from different forms of class warfare.
Valid, but that just describes the government that suppresses freedom. That doesn’t describe freedom, or contradict what I said about freedom not being connected to money.
I will also dissent on this. I’ve been homeless. I’ve lived in a rural subsistence community in West Africa where everyone lived on $1 a day. Material items and money do not define freedom.
Your premise is based on a wealthy materialist American mindset. Billions of people, every day, grind just to survive, and yet can still find joy in their lives. A lot of times that’s through basic human connection. Visit any of the poorest places on the planet, and it doesn’t take much to get people to stop and take notice and smile. To experience joy. Joy is free. Freedom is the ability to have your own emotions, thoughts, and feelings.
Before you get all up about someone keeping them down to prevent some Marxist paradise, please keep in mind that rain-fed agriculture is a gamble many people play with their lives every day. A large, large number of humans grind against the weather. Not as slaves to anyone else.
And, rest assured, there are wealthy people who are miserable and wear “golden handcuffs” because they are stuck doing something they don’t love to maintain an above-average standard of living. Fuck - how many of those stupid Housewives shows are there, filled to overflowing with wealthy people showing you in grotesque detail how money and material trap people in pain and emotional suffering, exploited like an emaciated lion in a zoo.
What can YOU do for free to enjoy your freedom? Here’s a fun one, go dumpster diving! You’ll find cool shit! Some of it you can sell - that’s free money, my guy! You can forage for herbs and food, that’s always fun once you know what to look for. Oh, you can make hooch from the stuff you find! You can plant the seeds of rotten tomatoes and start a garden. Go with a friend and you might just enjoy yourself. Or go volunteer at a place that feeds the homeless and talk to the people there and get an idea of how much freedom some of them have exactly because they have changed their mindset. Freedom doesn’t mean acceptance by society. It’s not 1:1 that you are free and loved or free and appreciated, or free and wealthy or free and even fucking smart. But you can taste freedom and realize that only you can bestow it on yourself.
You and you alone own your actions, thoughts and words. What are you doing with them?
I understand that believing these things may have helped you cope psychologically with the stress of being homeless, but that doesn’t make them any less fucking stupid
The homeless people I’ve talked to with broken limbs and teeth who can’t afford to get treatment didn’t seem happy at all except for the fact that they were getting a slight amount of aid and human connection from the organization I was working with. One of the ones I talked to was on their way to the convenience store to buy alcohol to cope with their injuries.
Yeah, it’s not all sunshine and puppy dogs. The point is to get some perspective on one’s own life and to not focus on the “woah, that’s so fucked up” parts of other people’s experiences.
Are you suggesting that no one you met or saw experienced anything positive at all? No one had even a second of joy in their lives?
Driving Uber has been such a sobering exposure to the unfathomable levels of bullshit so many people are dealing with. It’s so, so much. Once you lose your footing for half a second, you’re going to bounce and drag along the bottom indefinitely.
It’s great that you found a way to be happy in the situation you were in. Personally, I wouldn’t have been. All the time I don’t have to spend worrying about whether I can feed my kids, or give them a roof over their heads, or worrying about them getting sick and me not being able to afford treatment, I use for things that enrich my life. I spend it with friends and family, I read books, every now and then I travel to a place I haven’t been to before.
If you consider wanting to feed your kids and spend time with family materialistic, fine. But some folks need such shallow materialistic things to be happy. I’m one of them.
That’s 100% not what anyone considers materialistic.
Obviously, feed your children. Feed yourself. That’s not materialism, that’s surviving. I’m not talking about starving as some moral high ground.
I’m talking about people who stress about not going to brunch or having the latest whatever BS phone. That is materialism.
Yep, for more information on that read Debt: the First 5000 Years, it goes pretty deep into it from both anthropological and political perspectives
Unironically what natives of the Great Lakes region have been saying about the “civilized” western way of life for centuries.
You have stumbled onto one of the most fundamental criticisms of modern capitalism, freedom & plenty for the few. It’s better than a hereditary feudal system in that upward class mobility isn’t categorically forbidden, but the reality for the vast majority of people is that actually moving up is not possible because the game is still rigged to produce almost exactly the same results as the old system.
I would say more to the point if everything in life needs to make a profit then freedom isn’t free
it’s a different kind of freedom.
freedom exists in your mind. ask sartre. i am burdened, but i am radically free.
Sartre is dead.
he died to go kill god directly
its by design, politicians billionaire class intentionally instigated this way so people dont start pondering about politics, rising up against the aristocrats.
UBI is far more pluralist than democracy, because democracy is corrupt promises with Zionist/CIA and other power supremacist agendas that only has money for those goals. UBI is the freedom to do anything, including cooperating with others on group enterprises where payoff is future success based.
Where government’s role is an administrator taking care of pluralist prosperity/needs of its people, instead of a king/power hierarchy that steals prosperity for its “in group”, only UBI can provide the function because people can afford to take care of themselves, and prosperity programs fund more UBI. Every single program/war proposal must be compared to an increased cash dividend to people.
Only pure evil that needs hierarchical slavery for their political power, including the left, opposes UBI, and so UBI cannot come from existing political systems, because they are all pure evil power maximizing.
Yeah. Marx called it formal vs. real freedom. All the people are free to sleep under the bridges or at a five star penthouse. But some are forced to sleep under the bridge and only a few have means to exercise the freedom to enter the penthouse.
Marx misses the point of equality and conflates it with equity. In the ideal u have the freedom to work hard get well educated and make a shitonne of money then have the freedom that grants. Or u can choose to be lazy and not do any of that. It’s your choice.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge. And if unit truly isn’t then it was ur genetics that denied you the possibility to do better at which point we have to start talking about Charles Darwin.
OP shared a thought. I pointed this is a formal concept and pointed the name, so they can search for more. The concept describes a real and observable phenomena.
Why are you bringing moral judgement of people here? Even if poor people are guilt of their own poverty (they aren’t) like you are implying, it doesn’t change they are formally, but not really free. Marx description stills holds up.
Not to mention that his argument started swaying a little too close to Eugenics in that last sentence
OP shared a thought. I pointed this is a formal concept and pointed the name, so they can search for more. The concept describes a real and observable phenomena.
Not attacking you just ensuring my ideas are visible enough to help insure that anyone falling down the rabbit hole has had enough exposure to my ideology that they will accept the propaganda as it gets mainlined into their veins.
Why are you bringing moral judgement of people here? Even if poor people are guilt of their own poverty (they aren’t) like you are implying, it doesn’t change they are formally, but not really free. Marx description stills holds up.
I can’t debate morality about an idea from a philosopher? What has the world come to?
If I tie myself to a pole I’m also not free. Marx excellently diagnosed society yet continuously failed to treat a single one of its ailments. Also are you saying that we should deny people freedom to deny their own freedom seems like a paradox to me.
Your point assumes that everyone putting the same amount of effort gets to the same place. That there’s no golden youth and no kids have to work since the early age to support their parents. That everyone is given equal opportunities regardless of health, connections, and other factors. That industries are not exploitative to either workers or retail clients. Until that is true, there’s neither equity nor equality.
Besides, Marx does not object working hard and earning big. He objects robbing others of monetary value they produced to fill up your bank. At that point, you create opportunities for yourself at the expense of someone else, which is antithetical to equality. Or, to frame it in your wording, someone else makes an effort, and you get the money. Or, more commonly, vice versa.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation.
That really depends on where you live, your health and possibly several points about your parents. Millions and millions of people never get a chance to grab, never get an opportunity to pursue.
It is entirely within your choice to live under a bridge.
Lots of people don’t have any better options than to live under a bridge, despite being in an area where that is illegal and not a real option.
I live in the first world nation of Australia where I get free healthcare and practically free education.
U can make changes and make opportunities. Almost everyone has access to the internet or at least a library. If ur born someone that isn’t Australia then perhaps try unfucking whatever place you live my ancestors threatened a king to get rights under the magna carta then build the greatest empire this planet has ever seen. Nothing is stopping the bridge dwellers from doing the same except the motivation to do so.
Austrália
A nation built on stolen land where the better predictor of your class is is you are descendants from the settlers or from tha natives.
Nothing is stopping…
Except the inequal distribution of aducational and work opportunities, that assure the intergenerational inequality reproduction.
a concerned note:
Your comment about some people having fought for rights and others not is borderline racist. With precious comments about Darwin, it’s a red flag.
All people fight. Some fights are smashed with unimaginable violence. We are watching a live genocide in Gaza to prove this point. Oceania colonization is built upon a genocide. I’m not assuming you have conscience of how disturbing these comments are for a person like me, in South America, where all attempts to built a decent society where meet with USA interventions. Try to think in more broad terms, not only based on your experience, but trying to encompass the multiple experiences in the world.
A nation built on stolen land where the better predictor of your class is is you are descendants from the settlers or from tha natives.
Does it matter how many times the land was stolen? Cos all of Europe has been stolen by the rest if Europe hundreds of times. Or in Europe do u just call it losing a war? By ur logic I want my Lordship title and land in Prussia back.
Except the inequal distribution of aducational and work opportunities, that assure the intergenerational inequality reproduction.
Australia has very good public education many public schools rank at or near the top of year12 results. Any citizen granted (gives adequate grades) a loan by the government to go to university (which u pay jack shit for cos its just part of the tax system and maxes out at 10%). Ohh and we noe have free Tafe (trades work education). Work opportunities come from the education its highly illegal and well policed to ensure that workplaces don’t discriminate based on race, sex, sexual orientation etc etc. Australia has some of the most extreme wealth mobility in the world. Every word u just stated was comolete bullshit.
Your comment about some people having fought for rights and others not is borderline racist. With precious comments about Darwin, it’s a red flag.
How is it racist are you saying that certain racial groups are incapable of such things? That’s racist as shit my dude. I’m pretty sure I remember history talking about the black Americans successfully fighting for their rights or did u miss that lesson?
My comments about Darwin have nothing to do with race and where purely about intelligence. Your insinuation that this is about race is highly racist in itself.
All people fight. Some fights are smashed with unimaginable violence.
Yeah that’s how fighting works ether u have more violence and u win or u don’t and u lose.
We are watching a live genocide in Gaza to prove this point.
Due to Australia censorship laws I can’t comment anything about Israels actions.
Oceania colonization is built upon a genocide.
Same as when the Vikings invaded the British isles? Or when the Romans tried to crush the Germanic tribes. It took my ancestors 800years of oppression to topple the Roman empire but in the end we won and Rome fell.
I’m not assuming you have conscience of how disturbing these comments are for a person like me, in South America, where all attempts to built a decent society where meet with USA interventions.
I don’t bring emotions into discussions it distracts from rationality and leads to poor decision making often resulting in the aforementioned case known as losing.
Try to think in more broad terms, not only based on your experience, but trying to encompass the multiple experiences in the world.
Its not my job to unfuck everyone else’s countries. U want me to come to some country and make it like Australia? That can be done but turns out this practice tends to be called colonisation and u don’t seem to be a fan. My experience is of a prosperous first world nation that is prosperous and first world precisely because of the actions you are fighting against. The options are either unfuck ur own nation by urself or get colonised and have someone unfuck it for you. Insert something something having and/or eating cake.
We live in a society with a lot of equality almost anyone smart enough can work hard enough to get themselves out of almost any situation
[Citation Needed]
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can’t get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn’t work hard enough.
It’s why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He’s a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn’t even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can’t be overcome by any amount of gumption. (And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?)
[Citation Needed]
My experience and all the people I’ve spoken to throughout my life. Not 1 single person in a shut scenario didn’t have options to negate or escape said scenario.
The problem with statements like this is tautological. If somebody can’t get themselves out of a situation, one can just breezily dismiss it by saying that they didn’t work hard enough.
Or they weren’t smart enough. Or they where not fit (in the Darwinian sense) enough to get out of it.
It’s why I think that we need to send Elon Musk to colonize Mars. By himself. He’s a self-made job creator, so he can start up a successful business first, create those jobs, and then send for workers later, right? He wouldn’t even need heavy, expensive life support equipment!
That’s an excellent strawman. He went from a middle class situation (similar to thousands of people of people myself included) to the worlds richest man. He was not handed everything he has on a platter. He admittedly started with more than most but he still did infinitely better than anyone else born to similar level of advantage.
If you think that this is ridiculous, then you have to concede that there are actually some structural obstacles that can’t be overcome by any amount of gumption.
Their absolutely are structural obstacles just that these obstacles are infinitely less than previous. I mean by your logic we claim claim that the dictatorial control of Iran by the iatola is a structural obstacle and justify trumps actions in Iran hell we can justify the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Japan or go a step further and justify Hitlers actions as he confiscating property from an entire class of people and redistributed to those with less this still counts as removing structural obstacles regardless of the morality of such actions. Blind adherence to your argument takes us to a very dark place very quickly.
And is it really just a lack of effort that explains why nobody born in Soweto in 1971 is a near-trillionaire?
I want u to go to south Africa on Google street view and scroll back through time just looking at the streets and what u see. Then I want u to think about why the changes ur witnessing have happened and what changed into the period of time for which these changes happened (demographic changes might be a good indicator).
Elon Musk was not middle class. Unbelievably dumb statement. He grew up in one of the largest houses in Pretoria. Don’t get jealous though as his father was a child rapist. Like most wealthy people, rotten to the core.
I did some googling and I would say comfortably upper middle class. I guess ur definition and mine are different.
Glad you did the right thing and looked it up instead of talking out your ass.
Is that u admitting I was right wrapped in a bad faith personal attack? Perhaps let’s try keep to discussing ideas instead of insulting each other like mid witted barbarians.
My experience and all the people I’ve spoken to throughout my life.
That only shows that SOME of the people who somehow relates to you, have options.
Have you ever wondered why they don’t take those options? You might have missed something that prevents them.
Or maybe better: Have you wondered about the people further away from you? I can guarantee you, millions of people literally don’t have any good options. If you haven’t met any, that only means you have met any.
I’ve met many people of many different nations of many different levels of wealth and success. Every single one of them in a shit scenario got their by choices they made.
Why don’t I take those options? Cos I can read the statistics on everyone before me, I paid attention in school, I realised that drugs, debt, gambling, criminal behaviour etc don’t improve my life. I chose an education path and career that make it impossible for me to end up a brokie loser
Lots of people don’t have access to any of the information sources you had, or the ability to take any of the options you did.
You had plenty of good options, and you chose from those. Some people only have bad options. They pick bad options, because that’s all they have.
Almost every single person on this planet has internet access and that can teach u literally anything. And please explain when doing crack is the best of a set of bad options?
Welcome to the resistance, comrade
Eh, yes and no.
People often don’t really appreciate how much freedom they have until it’s taken away.
But even with no money at all, I have a bike, and I can ride it as far as I care to in any direction I want (well, at least until I hit a border). And that is so much more freedom than I’ve had at other points in my life.
Okay… but what happens when you’re hungry and broke at the same time? Just gonna ride your bike until you happen to come across someone handing out free food? The ‘ability to bike around the block’ isn’t the kind of freedom that OP was talking about, it’s the freedom to do what you want with your life without being forced to do something else (make money) first
How would you get food and healthcare? What about people with a chronic condition where if they lose their healthcare they won’t physically be able to?
Hint: we don’t get healthcare typicaly anyway.
