This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America’s economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
This cartoon from The Seattle Times illustrates how America’s economic pizza is actually sliced per capita, highlighting the massive disparity between the Top 1%, the merely wealthy, the upper middle class, and the lower 50%.
Reject consumerism, make things instead.
We have friends coming over, instead of ordering food from a mega corporation I am going to make pizza and potato wedges.
Where do the ingredients come from? Are you growing your own grain and milling it into your own flower? Do you have your own cows or goats to make your own cheese? Did you build your own oven? Fired with wood you cut down yourself?
Not buying the very last link in the chain doesn’t matter. It only makes you feel like you’re doing something.
You’d be more effective buying the pizza from a locally owned place.
You’re right, guess I’m just gonna give everyone hand jobs or are you going to tell me I need to build my own sex robot from scratch?
Giving someone a hand job, is doing it from scratch.
What’s the sex bot for?
Don’t let perfect be in the way of better.
I’m not.
I’m asking people to not treat better as the solution; They way they do with rent controls and school loan forgiveness. Buying locally is fine to do, for you in your life, but it has no effect on the larger problem. Too many people pretend it does.
When making something nice I would buy the ingredients from local independents where I can. I can almost see the farm I get cheese and garlic from on a clear day but there is a hill in the way.
Its also risky though, they sell fucking massive slabs of halloumi style cheese. Its a lot of money but also a lot of cheese.
Can’t do it for every ingredient with every recipe, but I am fed up of the just give up attitude I often hear simply because something isn’t 100% perfect in every way and using that as a reason to not even try. So I do what I reasonably can.
Also, ingredients are cheaper than a fast food place. Better quality too.
Like I said, it makes you feel better, that’s fine.
But don’t pretend it’s fighting the fight. Though if you don’t pretend, it may not make you feel better.
Other than refusing to consume, what do you suggest doing that will achieve more and is easy for most people to do?
Organizing, protesting, voting and voter registration drives, marketing and coms. Even starting a union owned business, or something similar. Those kinds of things make a difference. Individual purchasing decisions don’t.
Many of those are much more difficult for most people to do, are of questionable benefit or they already do.
Refuse to give them money, it is the only language they understand.
If you play the “vote with your wallet” game, the biggest wallet wins.
Who’s wallet is bigger?
Also, no battle worth fighting has ever been easy. You should let go of that idea.
If I vote with my wallet and stop buying pizza. And I get my friends to do the same. And they get their friends to do the same. Then I don’t think it really matters the size of the wallet. Are billos suddenly going to start buying up all the pizza to make up for it? I doubt it.
Hey everyone. You want to change society? Just start a business. Easy peesy! Don’t make small changes in your life, make massive financial overhauls.
That was just one, of a few suggestions.
Obviously not everyone can start a business. Who will work at your business every everyone else started their own?
But yah, if you want to make big changes fast, you need to make big moves.
It absolutely does. You’re cutting out the part with highest markup. Skipping an entire manufacturing process.
You can get the ingredients for a fraction of the cost compared to a finished product.
Maybe. But price wasn’t the argument being made. That’s a non sequitur.
I’m sorry where do you think profit comes from? It’s not grown on profit trees, it’s baked into the price. Higher markup, higher price, higher profit.
Non sequitur my ass
The idea is capitalism. As in, buying from large corporations. Whatever the price or profit, the topic was about who and where you’re buying from, not for how much.
“You want to change society. Yet you participate in it. Curious…”
I buy the majority of my groceries from a local farmers market. Things I can’t get there I buy from Wal Mart. I buy pizza from a local mom and pop shop, where they live above their restaurant. I do everything I can to make buying from mega corps a last choice decision. My partner and I will be starting our garden next year and growing a lot of our own vegetables. We’ll be raising pork pigs so we don’t have to buy factory pork. There’s so many little things you can do as an individual to choke off the billionaires.
But if you want to keep bending over like you seem to be acting, more power to you. Just don’t blame others for society collapsing.
Those things are all good to do, because they support your local economy, and probably have better quality food for your own health.
But Walmart doesn’t care, and doesn’t view your local farmer’s market as competition. As you said they don’t have everything, and you still go to Walmart when you need to. I’m just saying be honest about your reasons. Buying from your farmers market isn’t fighting capitalism. It’s just buying better local food.
Both can be true. If I spend $80 at my market, and $20 at Wal Mart, the mega corp is only getting a fifth of what I planned on spending for groceries. I really don’t give a shit personally if Wal Mart doesn’t feel the sting of not getting an extra $80 from me, I feel better as a person spending that locally on small individual markets.
I’m not trying to take down Wal Mart by myself. But I can do little things individually that helps.
And unlike you, I am honest in my reasons. You seem to be projecting some serious animosity against those who are doing little things to shake the bird cage.