And this is why we used to make cars out of STEEL instead of FIBERGLASS! Sure, fiberglass is a lot lighter in weight and hence a hell of a lot better for gas mileage. But you hit anything at more than 20 mph and the entire body explodes off the fucking thing, and now you’re spending more to repair the car than it’s worth because you need a entire front end, read end, or side panel. They can’t just take the damaged section off, beat it out with a hammer, sand it, and repaint it.
Everything is made with the idea of it being easier to replace than to maintain, aka planned obsolescence. Thanks, capitalism
You guys are obscenely, dangerously wrong.
It’s not planned obsolescence, it’s physics.
Modern cars crumple to absorb and distribute the forces of impact in an accident in an effort to protect the occupants. When cars didn’t have those crumple zones, the occupants, being the soft, squishy things they were, took those forces and were mangled or killed in horrible ways. Also, those older cars took hidden damage that often went unnoticed and made them very dangerous to drive.
I recently watched a TV show where a small sedan was run over by the trailer of an eighteen-wheeler. Run. Over. They had to unwrap the crumpled ball of a car from the undercarriage of that trailer. Guess what? The driver suffered only minor injuries because the car collapsed in exactly the way it was designed to so that she, in the very strong frame surrounding the passenger compartment, was protected.
And no, don’t thank capitalism for these modern cars. Thank Ralph Nader and countless other safety activists who worked tirelessly to make car manufacturers accountable for the safety of the people who drove their cars.
Although it is good for people to not be an asshole while driving, to not block the intersection, to move over to let people pass, to not double park, stricter and stronger traffic laws disproportionately punish black people and poor people and perpetuate a racist state that profits from overcriminalization.
Although it is good for people to not abuse substances and to not develop dependencies on those substances, stricter and stronger drug laws disproportionately punish black people and poor people, perpetuate a racist state that profits from overcriminalization, and doesn’t help people who have substance dependency.
Although it is good for people to openly discuss their past, to forgive each other on a personal and structural level, questions about criminal backgrounds
disproportionately create barriers to employment and education for black people and poor people, perpetuate an economy that deprives people of their basic needs, and increases recidivism.
We have to approach policy in a way that is not “What do I think is the perfect way for people to act at all times and how can the state enforce it?” but “What can we do structurally to reduce the harm of the world and encourage the good?”
Jameela Jamil calling out the Kardashian-Jenner’s for selling women and little girls self-consciousness and unhealthy habits is not slut shaming, y’all are just stupid.
Assuming people having relatively benign conversations on things you deem unimportant (like how important it would’ve been to see Honey from the Incredibles on screen rather than as a disembodied voice) are not also doing things about “actual racism” is lazy because…we can multitask. In fact, I’d argue that tiering your activism is a good idea. I should give a TED Talk.
Systems of oppression are MADE UP. They are FAKE. The ways that people are categorized into oppressed/oppressors
castes are also MADE UP. Human beings
created these divisions, benefit from these divisions and enforce them…which
means that we, who are also human beings, can change them. We can, at least, be
a small part of the long, difficult work of changing them and live with the hope
that this all adds up some day.
Not one person “naturally” has the traits of the oppressor
class. It is in no one’s essential nature to cut off their empathy for other
humans beings. It is taught. It is
taught constantly, violently, by every social institution from the youngest
possible age in order to brainwash us into believing these systems are
natural. What’s natural to human beings is empathy and trust and vulnerability and that’s why our society has to spend an enormous amount of energy punishing those natural impulses. Part of what we have to do to
fight back against these systems is name their artificiality and identify the
ways that we are brainwashed into believing otherwise.
it upsets me deeply to see “anarchists” rejecting decolonization and self-determination for oppressed nationalities.
decolonization means acknowledging the social system we want to negate is built on stolen land and genocide, and that a free society requires negating the social relations that allow white settlers to exploit everyone else. self-determination for oppressed nationalities means that acknowledging that indigenous, black, and chicanx ppl are colonized and oppressed ppls who should be able to take their own futures into their own hands and take back what is being stolen from them.
if u cant reconcile these things with ur anarchist politics, which are based precisely on self-determination, self-management, and liberation for all, then maybe ur not as much of an anarchist as u think u are.
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