What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with dickheads? Is this the breaking point, has Lemmy reached critical mass?
The image represents how capitalism uses the myth of scarcity. There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground. The lie is that there isn’t enough to go around; that somebody has to go without.
That’s bullshit. We have everything.
The message is that you deserve nothing and must earn everything, not that there isn’t enough to go around.
That’s not the message either. There are homeless shelters, mental and health services, and affordable housing being priotized all over.
Necessities are in large free to those who need them. Nice to haves and luxury beds are not.
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Well you dont deserve anything that someone else has made…
Then go live in the fucking wood like your caveman ancestors so you can truly live of everything you made yourself.
Society is built on the shoulders of those before them, that they themselves built on the shoulders of those before them.
Stop being a dick and go help someone in your community, you will probably learn a thing or two.
If someone creates something to trade it for goods and services, thats fine, even if that means its free at the point of consumption.
If someone creates something for their own reasons, you have no entitlement to it. Please try to be less emotional with your responses, this is a discussion platform meme page after all.
“Their own reasons”
Homie, the word your looking for is “profit”. And it has nothing to do with helping society. It’s about hoarding wealth.
Found the capitalist.
People create things all the time for their own reasons that have nothing to do with profit. Some people create things for fun. For some, it’s called having a hobby.
Grandmothers knitting mittens, for example.
Re read the first line - not what i meant
Your initial point is that no one deserves what someone else did. My counter point is that since the dawn of humanity, every human has used someone’s else idea or tool to make their life better.
So yeah, you owe it to everyone around you for the lifestyle you have right now.
I think you two might be working with different definitions of deserve
Actually, in a socialist utopia, yes you would. And everyone else would be entitled to the thing you made too. And every pricetag would be based on the labor spent in making the item rather than inflated to satisfy the profits of some corporation that doesn’t add value to the product being sold.
That sounds like a communist utopia you’re thinking of, not socialist.
And ignores that it’s not that “everything is free”, it’s that everything is owned by everyone, the same way everyone “pays” for the police - but they don’t work for you, they work for everyone / the state.
You’re on Lemmy.
The annoying thing is that there will very likely be a homeless shelter in this city that he’s not allowed to sleep in because they have a zero tolerance drug policy.
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Your precious taxes are still going to get spent on cleaning up their mess, regardless of you wanting them to be helped or not.
That guy would walk down to the prison and give them his pay check volenteerily.
It’s annoying because people who do drugs still need homes. Also not every drug user is aggressive or disruptive or whatever other reason the shelter would have for not allowing drug users.
You might be right, but if the requirement for shelter is to not use drugs, why is it the shelter’s responsibility to alter their requirements rather than the person who’s seeking shelter’s responsibility to abide by the requirements? They aren’t owed anything, they’re being offered shelter at someone else’s cost. If I’m hungry and a restaurant offers to give me free food, I can’t then get angry that they have a “no shirt no service policy” and require me to wear a shirt to receive my free food.
Lemmy recently had a swarm of conservative sign ups and/or bot accounts in the last few days.
Has been for a while. During the big exodus from reddit we brought with us lots of typical redditors that think being a contrarian dickhead makes them cool.
As well as lots of the usually sad little losers from across the internet that see people enjoying themselves and get the irresistible urge to make things worse.
“irresistible urge”, sure, but I wouldn’t give them credit for making things worse. Sure, they snicker at sticking their old gum under the desk, but it’s a whole set of other issues that’re burning down the building in the meantime.
There’s a ghastly number of people who are aggressively ignorant assholes.
The point is that we don’t have people sleeping on the street for a lack of… anything, really. Including beds. The point is that, when nearly everything is run for-profit, and it’s even slightly more profitable to let people suffer and even die, then people will suffer and die. We do a better job selling beds than we do making sure everyone has a bed to sleep in. We could make sure everyone has access to a warm bed, shelter, food, medicine, etc., but we don’t, and it’s less and less acceptable to just accept the status quo just because it’s the status quo. If someone thinks the status quo is defensible, it’s on them to defend it.
That doesn’t mean the mattress seller is evil, or (and I can’t understand the logic in one of the other comments) that wanting people to be housed makes you a hypocrite if you have your own housing. And the absolutely shameless comments that openly admit they won’t (really can’t) explain their position, but are going to condescend anyway.
But there being a salespoint for bed does not take home from the homeless. The issue is them being without shelter.
This is Symbolik, but not the issue at hand. Also turning commercial buildings into flats does not seem like a good/efficient solution to a complex issue like homelessness. (Disregarding living out of a car homelessness)
The other guy said it perfectly:
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
It really isn’t more complicated than that. Any explaination why this person is not allowed to sleep in this bed or why this person should not be able to sleep in this bed is absolute bullshit.
There’s a bed there, and there’s a human being sleeping on the ground.
In what system would the homeless people sleep their nights in bed stores?
The scarcity isn’t primarily the beds. The scarcity is where to put the beds, which is perhaps artificially upheld by zoning laws and other governmental shenanigans.
That’s just unfaithful interpretation of the argument, and you know it. US on average has 27 empty houses per a homeless person.
Right so the problem is that they don’t have money to buy those homes. It’s still not a problem with the bed store
Well, bed is not necessary since you can sleep anywhere as long as you can lie down. To make bed - trees were cut, the ecosystem were damaged. The birds who had their nest in those trees lost their home. Is this worth it?? /s
I think people’s issue with it is it’s just not very well thought out.
The bed store would never under any circumstance provide the bed for homeless people to access what world would that ever happen in? The problem is the homeless person doesn’t have access to shelter but that’s not the fault of the bed store that’s the fault of the state.
The image seems to suggest that the bed store are holding all the beds for some kind of weird show of economic supremacy rather than you know the fact that it’s a display room. No one’s buying those beds they’re display models.
No one is arguing that homeless people shouldn’t be held but that particular image isn’t really anything.
You’ve understood about 90% of the argument. That 10% is capitalism is the link between the bed store and the homeless person.
BTW, let’s all go hold a homeless person. Unintentional wholesomeness.
Why don’t we just convert all the bed stores into homeless shelters?
That way you can try out a bed, get some feedback from actual users (the homeless sleeping on the bed), all the store profits can go to pay for housing the homeless, AND government won’t have to provide public housing!
It’s a win-win, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.
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So do you let homeless people sleep in your house with you? I’m sure you have plenty of extra space…
We have more empty homes than homeless people.
I have. Also sheltered illegals before. Which at one point involved me having to stare down and bluff a process server. Not a moment I would like to revisit but proud of myself for doing.
👑
I had a friend who did that too, once.
Her roommates did not approve. She became homeless too at the end of the month.
Just because someone may or may not want homeless people sleeping in their house, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t support social safety nets to make sure people aren’t freezing to death sleeping in indignity on the streets.
It’s easy to advocate for things that you bear no responsibility for. It’s no different than politicians war mongering and advocating for wars that they will send other people’s children to fight and die in.
I don’t want anyone to die on the streets, but I also recognize that at a certain point giving help is enabling, and individuals are responsible for their own well-being and decisions. The help should absolutely be offered, but society should not be required to suffer those who refuse to take it/change their lifestyle.
What the fuck is with this thread being overrun with
dickheadsliberals?Fixed.
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is center right on anywhere else but the US.
You’ll shit your pants when you will learn that liberal is
center rightright-wing on anywhere else but the US.There is no such thing as “center-right” - the only differentiator between one right-winger and the next is how comfortable they happen to be with the violence that maintains their precious status quo.
Liberals are just right-wingers that prefer the violence happening somewhere where they don’t have to witness it.
I still think that center is useful in that context because it tells you where their policies actually lands usually. But otherwise, I agree with you.
Fair enough.
I don’t get it… is that store supposed to let people in to sleep on their beds?
Just a statement about how we have the resources readily available yet unobtainable to some.
Lemmy. Huh. It gets tiring aftet a while.
Go outside then.
It’s a critique on capitalism, where we have the technology and products to improve our quality of life but restrict access to them for a considerable percentage of humas. You’re welcome.
Even in a utopian communist society there would be showrooms for products, to help people select what best meets their sleep/medical needs. Those beds would be unused too.
It is a separate issue, that the showroom is not responsible for, that resulted in a homeless person not having a bed.
Systemic issues have systemic solutions. If you try to apply a local solution to a systemic problem, you just kicked the can. (As in, letting homeless people use the showroom beds).
No. In utopian society there wouldn’t be the person who doesn’t have a bed.
Ok? That’s not contested in my comment.
The idea is that a socialist/communist utopia wouldn’t concern itself with the pursuit and hoarding of capital. So the “showroom” wouldn’t really be a concept. We’d have catalogues and stores, but the fancy aspirational dressing that comes with the wastes of space known as furniture stores would be less prevalent.
But there is the assumption that bed showrooms need to be filled with inventory so that people can decide what bed they want to buy while others don’t even have a bed.
I’m not communist because I think skill and effort should be rewarded. But I guess you could say I’m basic need communist in that I think society should do their best to ensure everyone has their basic needs met and rewards those supplying those basic needs beyond their own basic needs.
Luxury options and upgrades should be waiting until after everyone has the base version. And that base version should be efficiently and effectively designed, not designed deliberately to make the user want to upgrade.
Then you missed the point.
The systemic solution is not a utopian communist society, but a system which provides beds for those who need it. The picture highlights this problem.This is not a critique on the showroom, or the store owner (which is how you interpreted it), this is a critique on society. You were the one who muddied the waters (and assumed that someone is proposing a communist society, another argument fallacy). The point is not “letting homeless people use the showroom beds” but rather “letting homeless people use beds”.
Considering we have multiple people suggesting that the homeless person should, in fact, be allowed to sleep in that bed, I think that a lot of people are interpreting it that way.
I didn’t muddy anything. I handled multiple points. The second point in my comment is the one you are discussing.
Further, it is not “another argument” fallacy when “capitalism” is written on the photo. The prominent differing economic model is communism or like systems, where needs are systemically met before profits are considered. So it is implied one can discuss other economic models by the presence of “capitalism” in the source material.
The part where you did actually muddy the waters is that you assumed that the picture depicts problems in a “showroom - homeless person” context, which is clearly not the case (as you contradictingly say yourself and even recognize when you said: “when “capitalism” is written on the photo”). The picture clearly criticizes capitalism as a economic system, but you wanted to make the showroom the focus point of the photo. That is muddying the waters. You dismiss the original critique. Or at least that’s how I read your comment. The difference between “I was talking about multiple points” and “muddying the waters” is not that big.
On the other part, yeah, fair enough. I would compare it to a “utopian socialist society” rather than communistic, but sure whatever. I mean there are countries in the world where taking this picture is very easy, and some (socialist) countries where it’s take a bit of effort to find a situation like this to photograph in the first place (most nordic european countries, for example).
The whole point of the image we are both commenting is a critique on capitalism. You are moving the point slightly towards “critique on showroom owners”.
However let’s not get sidetracked here. In a utopian society there would be showrooms, yes. But the person would not be forced to sleep outside without a bed in such a society, be there showrooms or not. That is the point. Capitalism allows this, a socialist society doesn’t (just look at the countries with least homeless people and you’ll see)
None of which I contest. I discussed 2! things.
You are fixating on the first.
I am fixating on the thing that relates to this picture. It seems to me (honestly, I don’t mean to come off as an ass) that your 2nd point of discussion is very much my “muddying the water” point. I don’t want to discuss that point, as that was totally irrelevant here. If I understood correctly, your 2 points were: (I’m paraphrasing, but) “I don’t understand, why showroom owners should let homeless people sleep inside their premises” and “every other economic system besides capitalism also has these qualities”
Right? And I think I have provided arguments against both of these. What am I missing?
According to all the kids here, yes.
“kids”
You are not superior for not having empathy for homeless people
Do you think the homeless need our empathy or do they need something else?
I certainly think they will get nothing if people don’t have empathy for them.
You’d be surprised by how far just caring can go. And by that, I mean genuinely, empathically, caring.
You’d be surprised by how far just caring can go. And by that, I mean genuinely, empathically, caring.
Depends a lot on who is doing the caring. For instance, if a homeless person has infinite empathy towards another one, not a lot will happen. If a particurarily unskilled politician has a lot of empathy, what they do with it might be a net negative.
So I kinda disagree with the sentiment here. Empathy alone does about as much as thoughts and prayers. Empathy isn’t even required in order to help a lot of people. You can be the driest, most temperature-room person on the planet and do good things.
I’ve always pointed to the fact that over half the food in the US is left to rot until it ends up in a landfill yet food insecurity is rampant in the richest country in the world.
When they send police to arrest people, including homeless people and parents trying to feed their kids, for dumpster diving behind grocery stores and some grocery stores now literally shred or pour bleach on the packages of still sealed food that they throw away, maybe it’s a sign that society needs a pretty major paradigm change on how goods and services should be distributed.
When police arrest people for giving homeless people food, maybe we should question who they’re really here to serve and protect.
This is a chat between my husband and I the other day and I’ve just felt so sad about it since then. Horrific display of wastefulness to humans AND birds
Sigh, remember when small restaurants and bistros literally used to let employees take unsold food at the end of the day, and if there were still food left after going through the employees it would be set out on the counter for anyone else to take? Remember when that used to be a massive perk of working in food service?
Apparently many large chain venues aren’t even letting employees take unsold food anymore, using “safety” as an excuse even though the sellable and unsellable food are often literally minutes apart.
I used to dumpster dive, and got told time and time again how disgusting it was, despite the fact that the food was packaged, inside a large trash bag with other non trash merch. You’d wear gloves and wash the packaging before opening as a precaution. It was no different to that item being in a plastic shopping bag, yet somehow the transition to inside a dumpster made people freak out about it.
We’ve become so disillusioned about food, it’s crazy.
It’s not a war against homelessness, it’s a war against THE homeless. I completely agree.
also when it’s illegal to give food to homeless people
maybe it’s a sign that society needs a pretty major paradigm change on how goods and services should be distributed.
The disparity in wealth just needs to continue to grow until enough people recognize they are not on the receiving end of it.
Wasteful is the wrong word. Waste implies this is some kind of poor planning, inefficiency or oversight.
Capitalism truly is all about efficiency, literally at the expense of basic humanity.
This isn’t unintentional waste, this is intentional separation of the poor from resources. This is intentional artificial scarcity. The fact that many are literally separated from and thus lack a bed (or a roof, or food, etc) is what makes a bed a more valuable commodity for those with enough capital to purchase one from the private owner class through vendors like this one. If basic twin beds were publically available or subsidized, it would lower the capital value and profit potential of the swankier beds. And that is something the owners won’t tolerate.
Under unrestrained market capitalism, there need to be people dying in the streets, otherwise people won’t appreciate the capital value of purchasing what they need to live.
We Americans cast our sub-optimal capital batteries out to die of exposure. This is by design. If, as an American not born into wealth, you refuse or are unable to generate value for the owners directly, you will still have an important economic function you will be forced to fulfill: a capitalism scarecrow, meant to scare the wage slaves back to work on Monday, making money for the owners in exchange for minimal subsistence.
We could house and shelter all our fellow Americans, it isn’t a matter of resources or space. We choose not to, and we also antagonize our powerless homeless as the villains selfishly lowering our property values by continuing to exist while destitute. We don’t, because market capitalism incentivises cruelty for profit, and we refuse to reign it in for fear of slowing its self serving growth/metastasis at the expense of the society it is supposed to serve.
This is an image of our economy’s and society’s
wasteintential, greed incentivised cruelty. We Americans are a cruel people far more interested in getting more than our neighbors than entertaining being part of a society.Depends on your definition of waste. Capitalism produces a lot of waste, arguably part of what has gotten us into this pickle with climate change.
Capitalism itself doesn’t define that as waste. It defines the damage it inflicts on the commons, the earth, and the poor in pursuit of profit as an externality.
Externalities of course being Orwellian double speak for “lol not my problem you fucking suckers 🤑.”
But perhaps China is indeed Capitalist.
Why do you think that China’s per capita carbon footprint is higher? I’ll give you a hint: it rhymes with “Manufacturing all of the toys and treats that Capitalism is selling”. But also yes, China is capitalist. They weren’t really ever communist by definition. Just like how North Korea isn’t a democracy, despite calling themselves one.
This should have more up votes. Well said.
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Fair point, friend.
I upvoted you, Im sorry others didn’t.
Guy can’t even take a nap without being abused by propagandists.
Yeah, we should own those dirty communist propagandists by housing every homeless person.
The commies will be sooo owned if we do that.
There are some capitalist countries that have a pretty low number of homeless people. Finland, for instance: 3,686 in 2022 (0,07% of whole population). So yeah, perhaps USA could do a lot better in this, but also being capitalist doesn’t really correlate with this.
Then again, could be that the reason for the low number of homeless people in Finland is that you don’t survive the winter if you’re homeless in Finland.
Here is some capitalism and oligarchy propagandist for you:
You know what’s so sad about something like this?
The conservative seeing this will opt to blame the individual. This conservative will most frequently espouse themselves to be a Christian nonetheless. “Jesus-like” in aspirations and idolatry.
And yet, they’ll have the knee-jerk reaction to this image that is saying, “Well they put themselves in that position.”
“It wasn’t the happenstance of birth locations,.”
“It wasn’t the culmination of external forces and externalities building to this moment.”
“It wasn’t the fact that their life was harder than my own.”
“Or perhaps my life was hard and I’m using the survivor-bias fallacy to justify kicking the ladder out from under me.”
The conservative believes there are lesser people who deserve what they get coming. It’s seemingly incomprehensible to them that we humans are quite literally of the same species, and that you must come to the conclusion one of two possibilities: Either (1) We are all a blank slate from the start and thus products of our environment. Nurture comprising the vast majority of what influences us. Which means those left out on the streets; those who take drugs in an ideal state of mind don’t want to be there, but are already too far broken from past experiences to reconcile their immediate choices (and need saved; protected; rehabilitated by the same outside forces that put them there in the fist place). Or (2) It is genetic, which means there is a predisposition incompatible with the inherently-flawed system we’ve built for ourselves. They’re a circle in a square system, and it’s thus just the same not their choice. And so again, the system should adapt and accommodate them just the same to promote a healthier society overall.
THAT would be more Jesus-like. Not the lazy cop-out that casts them off as degenerates. Such people lack empathy and cannot comprehend the bigger picture.
I’d not just put it on the conservative. They are being brainwashed by a larger force that puts money as a goal above people. Eg: sackler and his punching down motion to witch hunt addicts in order to try to save the OxyContin face.
As a result the easily influenced will go as far as see humans as subhumans if they threaten the almighty dollar. No doubt they are already in the tipping point as you said too. A perfect storm of apathy.
Which would be fine, if it weren’t for his third sentence.
You know what? I was going to methodically refute each thing, but you’re so wrong that I’ll just say you’re wrong and then this: you assuming things about people and boxing them up as your own preconceived “stereotypes” is a way more toxic trait than your street side christian hypocrisy.
“I was gonna, but then I decided to just call you toxic cause I don’t like the things you said, and this way I don’t actually have to have a nuanced opinion or refute anything.”
but at least you got to feel morally superior for a bit after posting, right?
I specified the behavior that I don’t like, and have said what I had to say. Further rebuttal would be pointless, because you can’t argue with stupid.
And another reason I didn’t put so much effort in is because that comment made me mad. This person managed to smear two separate groups of people in the same paragraph, quite thoroughly, while also being incredibly narrow. I don’t think that the descriptions actually represent the majority of these two groups of people. Perhaps it does describe some of the people in the middle of the Venn diagram, but certainly not all. You can’t just go around accusing entire groups of people of being “bad”. That makes you no better than Trump.
You didnt put any effort in, you saw something you didn’t like because you disagree so you just decided to pretend to have some sort of bag of tricks to prove your point, for some inane reason.
There are two types of Christians.
- The fake ones. Ultra-conservative. Personal responsibility blah blah blah.
- The real ones. Saved by grace, not by works. These are very rare. Some churches do not have a single one.
Wake me up when you have something substantive to say. Otherwise you’ve got nothing.
Lemmy try not to blame capitalism challenge/s
Why? I’m not going to avoid pointing to the source of a problem just because people don’t want to hear it.
Yeah you’d think most of our societies problems are a direct cause of late stage capitalism cresting a system where only profits matter and once its not profitable to feed or house someone then they are left to starve and go homeless or something. Haha I’m so glad that’s not the case, haha…
Lemmy try not to give a correct answer to a problem…chalenge for some reason
You don’t benefit from it, so why are you defending it? You don’t think you’re going to be a millionaire one day, do you?
Please see image, it’s really that simple /s
It gets tiring huh.
Indeed, capitalism is tiring unless you’re part of the owner class.
Heck, did I lose?
Now is time to upgrade to linux haha
The real capitalist crime is that a mattress sells for such ridiculous prices that they charge thousands of dollars for a chunk of foam and some springs.
Most mattress stores print money, and only need to make 4 sales a month to stay in business.
They are insanely overpriced. Why doesn’t everyone just buy cheap beds from Costco and IKEA?!
I will say that sleeping on ikea beds wreck my back. I’m not arguing that beds are over priced, but not all beds are built the same. Unfortunately I needed a pricier mattress to suit my needs.
That’s a young man’s game 😔
IKEA used to sell great mattresses, but when I had to replace my old one a few years ago they only had hard and semi-hard ones.
And over time the mattress I ended up buying because they didn’t sell the one I wanted anymore sunk in and has formed an uncomfortable indent.
Sacrificing the needs of the many for the wants of the few.
Grossly oversimplified. Dumb meme that adds nothing substantive
Captures the spirit of society pretty well tho.
Not really. Displaying something for sale instead of giving it to the homeless? What kind of argument is that?
Who tf need 8 pillows of various sizes on their bed?
2 head pillows for some people who are restless and would keep moving in the bed, so they don’t miss any pillow zone with their heads. One for hugging. One for spooning them from behind for emotional support. One for crotch support to keep male reproduction organs comfortable by giving a bit of space between legs when sleeping on the side.
Remove one spooning or hugging pillow when having 2 people sleep in the same bed, then multiply the rest. You get 21, and that is the number of pillows you shall have.
How did you get 21? 2 + 1 + 1 + 1 is 5 for one person, and even if you remove nine and multiply it by 2, I got 10
I think you took that a little too seriously.
My wife. And it annoys me because they keep getting onto my side and I need one pillow.
I have 6
Right? Those pillows could be used to feed the homeless.
Why are you calling me out like this, it’s a sensory thing 😔
In a wasteful system there’d be some factory churning out obsolete mattresses to fill a warehouse that nobody needs because there’s a quota to be met.
Meanwhile the workers can’t eat enough because resources were allocated by a bureaucrat last year who’s got no personal incentive to see either system work smoothly.
Yes, in your 100% hypothetical scenario.
“You don’t like an athrocity? But what about that other athrocity on the other side of the globe? Check, mate. I am very intelligent.”
But the shareholders need to be able to extract a return in return for no work - we couldn’t give others a shot at dignity.
Is’nt Capitalism about exploitation? You know, utilising under valued resources - minimising waste!
That’s an effect. Capitalism is about tying economic effects to owners, encouraging industry
Only until making waste means people buy more stuff
You are conflating Capitalism with consumerism. The former under free market conditions allows the use of all resources. The later under government has Intellectual Property which hinders re-use and recycling as well as encouraging unsound spending with inflationary currency.
