Gregory's ServerBut the maintenance work must be done or we will lose our jobs, one way or another. So the software engineers with internal motivation and the ability to work unpaid end up doing the maintenance work - in addition to a full time job. The system has succeeded in blocking the signal that would prevent the focus on generating short-term profits by forcing the negatives onto individual humans. This, but for the entirety of humanity - and that's the polycrisis
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 @vaurora In the poverty abolitionists movement we take it as a given that people won’t “decide on their own to do the right thing,” for a variety of reasons. One reason is miseducation (about the causes of poverty among other things). So part of our job is to connect people’s experiences and observations to this larger framework of policies that create poverty, and offer clear principles and actions for changing those policies. 1/2 @vaurora There are of course certain people whose interests are served by the status quo that creates poverty. So we have to organize impacted people and their advocates to become more powerful (collectively) than those folks. But for most people we have to counteract the miseducation they’ve received, and get them mobilized. 2/2 @vaurora I'm loving this analysis, but I'm still at a loss when arguing against the people who think phenomena like climate change or worker exploitation can be changed through individuals' actions. Does Davies have any ideas for how we change the systems?  @mjausson I added a few things to the thread but it is ultimately unknowable what the other side of the polycrisis will look like @vaurora I agree that we can't foretell the future. My concern is much more tactical. The reason people talk about how we should all recycle is that it's something they feel they have a little bit control over. I'm looking for arguments and actions that have a similar appeal but have a better chance of leading where we want to go. One specific recommendation from _The Unaccountability Machine_ is very simple: if a company does a leveraged buyout of another company (buys the company with a little of their own money and puts a lot of debt on the company to pay the rest) then the buyer should have to guarantee the purchased company's debts - no more limited liability for you. This is one element of Elizabeth Warren's plan to rein in private equity - and the only one Davies thinks is necessary for that A general problem is wealth concentration, and there are many solutions to that, starting from the nicest one (a global wealth tax) to runaway inflation to massive destruction of capital to guillotines and assassinations and wars. It's been nice to see that a global wealth tax has recently become thinkable in many circles. But ultimately no one really knows what will emerge from the polycrisis  |
Hopefully this analysis makes it really clear why "why don't people just individually suddenly decide to do the 'right thing'" is never never the answer, in open source funding or supporting the arts or fighting climate change...