https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2026
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I was once explaining the upsides of UBI and someone replied "no, this would fix too many issues with capitalism, this would delay the revolution!" Like... Dude.
I always think of this post whenever I hear someone dead-set on nothing less than massive, systemic change.
True that. Do I agree modern society has gone crazy in many fundamental ways? Hell yeah. Will I reject an opportunity to do something small that will affect only a handful of lives for just a few days based solely on that? Nope
I've reached a point where I think if both the left and right tell you are wrong, you might just as well have arrived at the correct idea (usually, not always).
We all are the only and best witness to our individual experiences. I don't think that's taught enough. I'm not saying that all truth is relative all the time, but I think it's very reasonable to be in a nation with a de facto two-party duopoly on the entire political system and come to a conclusion as an individual that there are many things and experiences, including your own, that aren't accurately represented or advocated for by either party's narratives. IMO, that's common sense. Just like America has one of the highest per capita incarceration rates in the world, it's also unique in that it (and all of the five eyes nations except for NZ and kind of Australia) is a western democracy that only has two parties with the vast control of natl. govt. instead of a coalition of many more. Competition almost always yields better results for customers in a market and in politics.
We're in a system in which voters feel locked into a system of only two choices and then will turn around and berate other voters for not being 1000% committed to 'the revolution' after toppling the n*zis. Instead of providing a inclusive environment for old republicans turning away from and standing against obvious fascism, some of the left does a whole old timey Christian preacher "scare the hell out of you," narcissism-of-small-differences routine with zero prompting to try and push for a huge cultural and political upheaval before removing the awfulness that's currently in power. It's the Aesop's Fables lion giving up the rabbit (small win) to chase the antelope (ambitious win) and losing both. It's Anakin telling Obi Wan to join him with the Sith or die, his head so far up his own butt with his own issues that he thinks that's an actual choice for Obi Wan but it's not. It's shortsighted and self-centered and it's stupid. And for the sake of just getting through elections in the next 4 years I wish it would stop.
Anyway. "Nothing is ever as good or bad as people say it is. It's always better or worse and you have to figure out how." Some of that is adjusting your own expectations and reactions, some of it is adjusting for the biases of others.
Haha I kind of see both your points, it kind of does the liberal thing of extending the umbrella of protection from exploitation while pushing exploitation farther to the sidelines. The worst case outcome is that you now have more defenders of the status quo, because they've got it good. Meanwhile the entire economy is still based on war and exploitation, especially of poor workers in other countries.
But then maybe if us workers here had some more breathing room (perhaps not the best choice of words...) we might also have more capacity for solidarity with those exploited workers. Who knows, but it would remedy a lot of immediate problems here anyway.
And all the trials have been very positive, so I'm inclined to give it a shot yeah.
‘Let them get a taste of how terrible those guys are, and then they’ll vote us in and our system will rise!’ is what the Weimar Republic said about the Nazis.
Never, ever assume making things worse will end up causing a few tiny problems and then everything gets better. Humans are, by and large, shockingly tolerant of rather terrible things. If you let things get worse, they will get very, very worse, and a lot of innocent people will die.
And fascism ended up killing fewer people than the British Empire, USA, or French Empire and it wasn't tried again for 80 years.
As you say, people are shockingly tolerant of terrible things. Especially when there is a socially constructed boundary between them and the victims (race, nationality, etc.). If you count nonwhite noncitizens as full people, fascism was less deadly than liberal capitalism.
Do we care half as much about the death of a dozen people at a wedding in Pakistan as we care about Alex Pritti? Do we care half as much about the colonization of north America as about the Lebensraum doctrine? Do we care half as much as about the British colonization of India as about the holocaust and WW2?
Fascism is capitalist abusers coming home. it is horrible, as capitalism always was.
I would prefer capitalism to fall without a fascist period - not the least out of self-preservation as a white citizen of a first world country - but at this point every decade that capitalism survives is another billion dead from climate change.
If we stave off fascism by embracing liberal capitalism, all our children and grandchildren will die violently. It can not be enough.
Right but you see the analogy of like union negotiations, like when management makes a sweet deal for a certain class of worker like full-timers, or people over a certain "grade", then leaves everyone else out to dry.
I've seen it happen first hand. Things get better for us inside the new circle of privilege, but it's only because most of us voted for self interest.
I don't want to be like letting the 💯 be the enemy of the 👌🏻, but I also think we should talk about how we plan on keeping from being the 1% to someone else.
Does that make sense? I'm not against UBI, but it can't be the end of the discussion.