If we change our thinking from acquiring wealth to equitably distributing the resources we all need, we can create a post-scarcity world where everyone has the basic necessities of life. This blog is to that end.
![fullpraxisnow:
““ “Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction. …[A]re we brave enough to imagine beyond the...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ec333770c4191f8b9777c0475c27abfd/tumblr_pcsmp0ieUo1qexjbwo1_640.jpg)
“Whenever we try to envision a world without war, without violence, without prisons, without capitalism, we are engaging in speculative fiction. All organizing is science fiction. …[A]re we brave enough to imagine beyond the boundaries of “the real” and then do the work of sculpting reality from our dreams?”
– Walidah Imarisha | Octavia’s Brood
Elon Musk wasn’t charged by the SEC for offering to buy back all Tesla shares at $420, which is what I’ve seen some people on here misunderstanding. He actually committed quite a serious financial crime.
Musk announced on Twitter that he had the money (from funders) to buy back all Tesla shares for $420 each. This meant that if you owned a share in Tesla, it would soon become worth $420. At the time he made that tweet, a share in Tesla cost $341.99. Therefore, because he made that tweet, people started buying shares at that price, in the belief that soon Musk would be buying all those shares back and they would make $78.01 for every share they bought.
This caused a spike in the price of shares in Tesla, as everybody competed to buy up as many as they could. This increased the value of Tesla as a company.
However, Musk actually did not have funders secured to carry out buyback of all Tesla shares. He knowingly misled the public about the plans of the company, and financially benefited from doing so. Fuck him.
I hear you, but how many of us have enough discretionary income to buy even one share of Tesla stock? A bunch of rich old geezers bought shares hoping Musk would buy them back. The SEC cut a deal and allowed Musk to stay on as CEO if he quit as chairman. And the stock STILL went up and the geezers STILL made money. So don’t feel sorry for them.
Charity under capitalism is “giving back” mere fractions of what you already stole from the commons.
Brittany DeBarros is waging the kind of vehement public protest via Twitter against the Defense Department and US government that’s commonplace in the Trump-era — except that DeBarros is a captain in the US Army Reserve assigned to the Army’s Psychological Operations Command.
According to DeBarros’ Twitter account , she has been called up on two-week assignment since July 14, but each day since then DeBarros has posted tweets criticizing “the horror being carried out by our war machine for profit,” with the Army moving to investigate the officer’s remarks.
“Defense corporations made contributions to 496 of 525 Congress members in 2018,” DeBarros said in her most recent tweet, posted on July 20, the seventh day of her assignment. Defense contractors are prolific political donors , though many of their contributions come from their political-action committees, owners, employees, or employees’ immediate families.
DeBarros, however, has stopped short of directly criticizing President Trump during her July protest; using “contemptuous words” against the president is a violation of military law.
During the speech, DeBarros said she was a combat veteran who identified as a woman, Latina, white, black, and queer, and that as a person “existing at the intersection of these identities, I carry a grave conviction in my core that there can be no true economic, racial, gender liberation without addressing the militarism that is strangling the morality and empathy out of our society.”
“For decades, we have been lulled into complacency and inattention as our drones have obliterated weddings, funerals, religious ceremonies, ordinary homes, and ordinary people,” DeBarros said.
For those wondering why she’s in the Army, many of join young and naive, as I did. Then I went to college, ironically thanks partially to the Army, and learned about our history of overthrowing sovereign nations and leaving them less stable than before we invaded them. I also saw some troubling things firsthand. But I still had an obligation to fulfill.
people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.
i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)
at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)
i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.
this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.
to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.
now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?
the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?
the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.
the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.
what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.
what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.
that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.
the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.
the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money.
when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”
every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.
seriously . what the fuck is wrong with white people
🤦🏾♀️
Food Stamp Frances is on the prowl!
^^^^😂😂
LMAOOOO
“We’re gonna build this wall” BITCH! BLACK PEOPLE STILL GON BE HERE 😂
^^^
“so you gonna sell food stamps”
bitch tf
LMFAOOOOO
It’s like my mama always says, “White people be like that.”
