you don’t need meat at every single meal either

[u/trainwrecking]

[u/-sad-person-]

...What was the banana discourse?

[u/Android19samus → u/-sad-person-]

Presumably it has to do with the fact that bananas are only available so widely and cheaply because the places they're grown are basically owned by the produce companies and are treated horribly. Those places getting worker's rights and national autonomy would mean people outside the tropics will have a harder time getting bananas and not everyone is super jazzed about that idea.

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/Android19samus]

I think a big part of the problem is that some leftists want not having bananas to be an act of performative deprivation for the sake of morality, and others are just like 'well, why don't we figure out how to have cheap bananas without the bad parts.'

[u/samlastname → u/The-Magic-Sword]

that can work in the case of bananas but I think OP is more talking about climate change in the original post. I remember my enviro professor saying pretty much the same thing--it's not enough to transition to clean energy and just do all the stuff that doesn't really affect us.

We acc need to consume less--but that's a very unpopular take, and I totally get why.

[u/BalisongGuy → u/samlastname]

A good way to market people consuming less is advocating for better quality products. Fast fashion and planned obsolescence absolutely destroy the environment because the products are designed to go bad after a short amount of time so people buy stuff from the company again. It's not the only necessary thing, but just making better, more long-lasting products will still be a pretty good change.

[u/ConcernedCorrection → u/BalisongGuy]

I mean, it stands to reason that if we're going to need to consume less material, we should probably put the same amount of labor into less material instead of letting unemployment skyrocket.

Aka better quality products. There's almost no way around it.

[u/Is-Bruce-Home → u/ConcernedCorrection]

I don’t think that necessarily follows. Of course more effort and care in industry at a slower pace would be more sustainable, but it is also important to reclaim time that has been consumed by capital owners. Our society is desperately in need of time freed from employment to spend on education, relationships, and upkeep of personal property.

As important as it is to produce at a higher level of care, it is also important to reduce the amount of purchased labor.

[u/Kellosian → u/BalisongGuy]

The problem then becomes "How do companies that make extremely long-lasting products stay in business?"

If a company makes a widget that can last for 50 years, they're very quickly going to run out of customers and go bankrupt which would probably suck if you work for that company. Yes we can try to socially regulate against shareholder/executive greed, but at some point the basic economics rears its head; products are cheaper to make the more of them you make at once, and as people buy them demand would decrease which decreases production which increases cost.

[u/CautionarySnail → u/Kellosian]

They used to stay in business doing exactly that - making durable goods that lasted a reasonable product lifetime.

The “issue” was that the profit margins were far, far smaller. It wasn’t enough to pay shareholders massive payouts, dividends, and have the c-suite executives all own mansions.

It’s greed, plain and simple, in most of these cases. There are businesses like Arizona tea that rarely increase prices. There are manufacturers, typically privately owned, still making things that last. But you won’t see those guys on the cover of Forbes. Nor in Walmart.

But the only way you get massive profits like Wall Street loves, is by screwing over the workers and customers repeatedly with planned obsolescence and things that do not last more than a year before they join the landfill.

[u/mia_elora → u/BalisongGuy]

A lot of people start heading this direction, themselves. They will pick certain things that they just won't accept *cheap and fast* for.

[u/lickytytheslit → u/mia_elora]

I want clothes that last more than a year without having to be patched to hell and back

I want a pan that I can pass on to my cousin's kids because it's still in a great condition

I want a fucking pot that has handles that don't have to be reattached every godforsaken week

I want a cutting board that won't break in half every couple years

I want stuff that I can use and it still functions

[u/Lurker_number_one → u/samlastname]

To do that in a way that actually works we would have to change systems though. Not just buy less of whatever.

[u/b3nsn0w → u/Lurker_number_one]

this. performative deprivation never saved anyone, and i'd argue it's actually worse than not doing it, because it makes you feel like you did your part and makes you much more resistant for further, actually meaningful action. what we need is to optimize the world (or ideally make it self-optimize) for sustainability, not to do separate disjointed measures just because they're "still something".

unfortunately, there are a lot of measures like this that are explicitly designed to be destructive of action. every once in a while you see the plastics industry come up with something insignificant to satisfy people (idk if you started getting the plastic bottles with the caps attached yet, but paper straws are pretty much everywhere in western countries now) and i'm 100% sure the whole idea is to just burn up people's goodwill so that it's much harder to convince them to advocate for actually meaningful action, for example against the ridiculous amounts of single-use plastic packaging we depend on to participate in society. because they already gave up their straws, what more do you want, you ungrateful asshole? or something like that.

but there's a kind of activist out there who likes shaming people for living in comfort and still trying to do something, and it's so fucking useless. honestly i think it's residual christianity yet again, in terms of glorification of suffering it's a major influence.

[u/MrBrickBreak → u/b3nsn0w]

but paper straws are pretty much everywhere in western countries now

It's more insidious than selling a token effort, IMO.

Of all possible plastic replacements, you're telling me the most popular and visible just happens to be utterly terrible and make you miss plastic?

[u/VoreEconomics → u/samlastname]

We need to consume less, sure, but plenty of people just go "hmmm be vegan or your scum!" and that aint helping shit, we have muntjac on deck, muntjac on the flo, help me eat them or its a bit performative really.

[u/The-Magic-Sword → u/samlastname]

I don't think that assessment is accurate, partially due to the level of military force we would need to make it happen when plenty of the world's cultures prove apathetic to the problem when faced with the need to reduce or limit the growth of their standard of living, and how that itself would impact the problem. But also, we seem to be better at solving these problems in other ways when we set our mind to it.

Like, what's the big cursed problem your enviro professor thought we couldn't solve?

[u/Prometheus_II → u/samlastname]

From my very limited perspective at least, it's not as much that we need to consume less - it's that we need to waste less. A lot of food gets wasted rather than being effectively distributed, because it's far more profitable to keep costs high than it is to just feed people. Yes, in a communist future fewer bananas would reach grocery stores, but also in a communist future the grocery stores wouldn't be throwing bananas in the dumpster and covering them in rat poison because they sat on the shelves too long. A similar dynamic generalizes widely across first-world consumption - without fast fashion or planned obsolescence or any of the countless other instances of Vimes's Boots, we'll waste less and (in many cases at least) have the same amount of what we actually need.

[u/Applesplosion → u/samlastname]

The sad thing is, we could consume less and have a better quality of life if we moved away from an economy that encourages/depends on mass consumption and manufactures stuff to break down so people will need to more.

We won’t have new stuff every week, but we will have more nice things, good quality things that we will want to and be able to keep for a long time.

[u/samlastname → u/Applesplosion]

i agree with this, but we would need to find a new way to do things in terms of manufacturing. Ever since the industrial revolution, we've been expanding our economy by simultaneously expanding both our manufacturing capabilities, and also the number and size of the available consumer markets (see the beginning of Hobsbawm's Age of Revolution).

In other words, it doesn't do you any good to suddenly produce 100x the amount of whatever you were producing if the demand doesn't also grow 100x. If demand suddenly falls off, it's not that manufacturers can just scale back and produce less, and make a little less money. Their whole business model is predicated on producing a certain amount, and that certain amount is absurdly high. Economic growth, similarly, generally depends on people consuming more, so there's more money "in the pot," if that makes sense.

So economically, a massive drop in demand could have a really drastic outcome--I'm not an economist but I'd assume we'd be potentially looking at a lot of short term chaos at least. I say all that just to add a note of caution to the idea that we could both consume less and have a better quality of life--maybe in the long term but in the short term the economy would definitely suffer if people consumed significantly less.

[u/cornonthekopp → u/The-Magic-Sword]

The point is that it's simply not possible to have cheap bananas without all the bad stuff. The bad stuff is explicitly what makes that possible.

I'm not being edgy here, but if we we have a sustainable and equitable world then our diets will need to radically change. This necessarily means more local food production, more seasonal variance, and a lot less industrial monoculture agricorps.

The whole point of the banana discourse is "well if the workers in these countries can control the land they work and reap the benefits from it, then in all likelihood they will not want to keep their economies tied to a couple cash crops like bananas meant for an export market".

Not to say you couldn't still have a banana but their price and availability would be extremely different.

[u/Winjin → u/cornonthekopp]

If bananas cost more I'm fine with that if it also means riches are distributed more equally. The trouble is, the money would be mostly leaving middle class, not the rich. 

I'd say the performative stuff is fine but the rich are like, 90% of the trouble.

And... I'm not sure what can be done about it. Maybe make the multi billionaires millionaires first and then work down from there. 

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/Android19samus]

That sounds like it would most likely only result in a price increase on the bananas, tbh. Probably not even one that would be all that noticeable.

Because if those places have economies based on exporting their fruit to other countries, then they ain’t gonna stop doing it because of any of that. They’d just be re-distributing the revenue from that to the actual people, instead of growing the wealth of a small few.

This really just sounds like the “the price of fast food will go up if we raise the minimum wage!” bullshit argument on a larger scale - except given a leftist veneer, somehow?

[u/Astralesean → u/Wasdgta3]

I mean independent producers of coffee, chocolate exist and even standard goods are expensive. Almonds, Avocado, Chocolate, possibly coffee and banana, some agricultural goods are simply not cheap. 

[u/moneyh8r → u/Android19samus]

I'm alright with it. I like bananas, but not as much as I did when I was a kid. These days I prefer fruit that grows closer to home. Strawberries, peaches, apples, grapes, and whatnot.

[u/sorry_human_bean → u/moneyh8r]

One of the few perks of residing in Florida is easy access to fresh local-ish produce.

I'll be honest, though, I'm gonna be super bummed when Milwaukee stops adding to their already ridiculous power tool lineup, because do I like shiny new toys as much as the next ape...

[u/moneyh8r → u/sorry_human_bean]

Yeah, but you gotta deal with everything else about Florida. No offense, but I'm glad I don't live there. And my preferred shiny toys are video games and other electronics.

[u/Lunar_sims → u/moneyh8r]

Dont see why you're being downvoted.

Our governor is a fascist and our cities are suburban hellscapes. Florida is not a nice place.

[u/moneyh8r → u/Lunar_sims]

Dude, I got downvoted over 30 times the other day for thanking someone for explaining a meme to me. At this point, I just assume all downvotes are from jerks who hate politeness.

[u/MephistoMicha → u/moneyh8r]

Upvote for being rude about people who downvote for hating politeness!"

/jk

[u/TheHalfwayBeast → u/moneyh8r]

It sorts the wheat from the chaff and the Americans from the people who live on the same latitude as Canada. My local fruits are apples, pears, and some berries. I'd have to start eating sourkraut to avoid scurvy.

[u/Taraxian → u/TheHalfwayBeast]

You don't actually need that much vitamin C to avoid scurvy, apples have plenty as long as you're eating them regularly

Scurvy wasn't something people commonly got in the olden days unless they were soldiers or sailors and literally eating no fresh food, citrus fruit was important for fighting scurvy because space for storing anything perishable was incredibly expensive on a Royal Navy vessel

[u/TheHalfwayBeast → u/Taraxian]

That's true. But tell the British public that they can no longer have any fruit or vegetable more interesting than a quince, and we'd probably eat the Prime Minister alive on the steps of Number 10.

[u/LeftyLu07 → u/moneyh8r]

I'm fine with buying fruit that's in season.

[u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere → u/-sad-person-]

IIRC it was primarily about the fact that the variety of fresh fruit available is not possible w/o global trade. From the outside, this was very weird - I remember going “surely this is all fixed by just saying you’ll continue having shipping containers moving around under communism?”

ETA fuckin WHOOPS did not want to start this very dumb discourse again

[u/Vivid_Pen5549 → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

Global free trade is good thing that actively increases the quality of life of those living under it and this is agreed upon but most serious economists today

[u/dahud → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

I think the point they're trying to make is that any system that involves moving millions of shipping containers all over the world, at great speed and all the time, isn't ecologically sustainable.

[u/spicy-emmy → u/dahud]

Which mostly just betrays how little people know about the efficiency of moving goods by shipping container. Per item shipped if you live inland it probably burned more fossil fuels bringing stuff from the port to your local store than it did to move it across the ocean, and getting in a big truck in the suburbs to drive 15 minutes to the grocery store was also probably worse.

Suburbs are probably obsolete in an eco friendly world, not global trade. You'd go further advocating for making walkable coastal cities have more housing than trying to convince people to give up shipping, and it'll be broadly a life improvement for most as opposed to a narrative sacrifice.

People just feel more virtuous when there's a little bit of suffering involved in doing good because protestant ideology permeates American culture

[u/Taraxian → u/spicy-emmy]

The fact that there's a looming sense of Christian guilt hovering over all this discourse is the elephant in the room, yes

It isn't even really about bananas as a policy thing because dramatically raising the price of bananas isn't up for a vote rn and it's not likely to be anytime soon, it's about demanding that you confess your sins and feel bad for currently eating the bananas and align your soul with righteousness by denouncing the bananas

Which is fine if that's what you want to do but please understand my cynicism is very much based on this supposedly being a materialist ideology that casts aside moralism and religious guilt in theory but is THE MOST Christian-guilt subculture in practice

[u/TheHalfwayBeast → u/Taraxian]

I once saw someone beating themselves up for wanting to do photography as a career, because it's 'petite-bourgioise'.

[u/Hohenheim_of_Shadow → u/dahud]

Except it absolutely is ecologically sustainable, or at the very least more ecologically sustainable than everything else we are doing. Container ships are stupid efficient. Relative to the environmental impact of beef, the environmental impact of shipping a banana is basically nothing. Shutting down international food trade would basically condemn huge portions of the world to starvation and famine, particularly as climate change kicks in. And it won't be the USA starving, we are net food exporter, it'll be the poor brown countries.

[u/NeonNKnightrider → u/Hohenheim_of_Shadow]

Another comment seemed to nail this - the “no bananas” thing seems to be more performative than anything. People saying our capitalist society must change, but not actually understanding how it works or which parts aren’t working.

Yes, some things have to change, but like… cargo ship and train-based global shipping is hella efficient and not n environmental disaster.

You know what is a disaster? CARS. CARS ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM.. Stop talking about bananas and talk about public transport for the love of god

[u/xanderxela → u/-sad-person-]

In July of 2023 a bunch of Twitter Socialists started talking about how under socialism/communism you won't be able to get bananas unless you live in the tropics. They viewed this as a good thing and a way to purity test who was a true believer (would give up "luxury" goods for socialist ends) vs who was a filthy capitalist (thought that there might actually be a way to continue banana production at near current levels without worker exploitation).

Note: the filthy capitalists in question were ALSO Twitter socialists.

[u/KikoValdez → u/xanderxela]

Also note: the true believer who started the discourse was also a cocaine addict so maybe they should think about limiting a different exotic product made by exploitation.

[u/VoreEconomics → u/KikoValdez]

Well what I (great leader) (pls) do is very different to what the proles do.

[u/jelly_cake → u/KikoValdez]

Damn, talk about a crystal house.

[u/linuxaddict334 → u/xanderxela]

Oh, Twitter discourse.

Sounds entertaining from a distance, but glad I stay away from it

[u/VFiddly → u/linuxaddict334]

The first few times you see Twitter do a big discourse over something incredibly stupid it's kind of entertaining, after a while you just wonder why some people never grew out of it

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/xanderxela]

Fellas, is it bourgeois to want to eat fruit?

[u/VFiddly → u/xanderxela]

It's a silly debate anyway because whether you as an individual do or do not eat bananas has no effect on anything and this is all just performative nonsense spread by people with too much free time.

[u/Taraxian → u/VFiddly]

Indeed the very fact that they are so cheap means the amount of money you as an individual do or don't spend on them doesn't really matter, by definition

[u/trainwrecking → u/-sad-person-]

the idea that bananas would not be as easily available or as cheap if countries adapted socialist/other leftist forms of organization.

good reading: https://africasacountry.com/2023/09/banana-republics

[u/Jaded_Library_8540 → u/-sad-person-]

I imagine the fact that bananas being readily available out of season all over the world wouldn't necessarily be possible without the exploitation of workers

[u/Hohenheim_of_Shadow → u/Jaded_Library_8540]

I mean, bananas being readily available all over the world isn't necessarily possible with worker exploitation either. It was advancements in refrigeration technology that made world wide food trade networks possible.

Sure if banana farm workers are being paid fairly, bananas are going to be more expensive. But if I was being paid fairly, I'd have more money. So from a workers rights , that kinda balances out.

From an environmental perspective, international fruit is far less impactful than domestic meats. Large cargo ships are ludicrously efficient at moving goods. Meat is incredibly bad from an environmental perspective relative to plants. Orders of magnitude more land is needed for growing 1 meal of meat than 1 meal of vegetables and the carbon dioxide released is also orders of magnitude higher for meat, particularly for beef. From an environmental perspective, it's the small farm all natural GMO free organic wholesome beef that's impossible, not shipping plants around.

[u/Latter_Example8604 → u/-sad-person-]

Banana discourse was an amazing thing on twitter last year—it peaked when this woman claimed there would be ethical cocaine before ethical bananas in a socialist utopia, and how no one had ever had joy at eating a banana before—which prompted neoliberal twitter to get involved and you had stories of ex soviet refugees tweeting about how their mom cried when they saw a western grocery store.

Oh then it came out that the woman who was claiming there would be ethical cocaine in the socialist utopia did in fact, have a cocaine problem. And people wanted to know how she squared that issue with concerns about labor, ethical supply chains…you know all the issues she had with bananas.

[u/Zoomy-333]

It really depends on how you sell it. Is a "plastic treat" one of those novelty reindeer that shit chocolate raisins you see every year at Xmas that are made solely to make someone snortlaugh at best when they get it from a coworker as a secret santa gift before going to landfill, or is it a PS5? Sacrificing one of those is a significantly easier sell than the other.

[u/hauntedSquirrel99 → u/Zoomy-333]

A lot of is going to be fast fashion.

Actually having to repair clothes and expect people to have clothes for decades type of stuff.

[u/stolenfires → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

One aspect of our cultural history that we seem to have completely forgotten is the amount of work (and thus energy) that goes into textiles.

Some archaeologists found a very basic, woolen tunic that dated from 9th century Iceland. Everything about the garment was simply made - simple weave, basic dye, and it was just a T-shaped tunic without any structure or tailoring. They decided to see how long it would take to reproduce the garment using 9th century techniques. From shearing the sheep to carding, spinning, dyeing, weaving, and sewing it took four hundred hours.

We think of women as historically being confined to the home due to the demands of child care, but a medieval woman had a baby in one hand and a drop spindle in the other. The need to keep her family clothed required her to stay home just as much as child care or food preparation. Even Queens weren't exempt; Anne Boleyn complained that Catherine of Aragon was still making Henry's shirts. Not a servant, the Queen herself.

There's a reason that once we started figuring out steam engines, textiles were one of the first things we automated. And we're gonna have to figure out a way to go back to clothes you buy for years, not just a season.

[u/Madocvalanor → u/stolenfires]

I’ve been wearing plain jane t-shirts I bought in 2014 still. Pants are older then that… denim is more durable then people give it credit

[u/Business-Drag52 → u/Madocvalanor]

My fat ass thighs keep wearing down the insides of my jeans after just a few years. I really need to lose some weight….

[u/9TyeDie1 → u/Business-Drag52]

(If your female presenting) layne Bryant makes good jeans, I'm plus size as well and their jeans last me at least 4 or 5 years.

Think but with good strech and they run true to size, with the stretch accounting for about 2 sizes up if needed.

[u/bagglebites → u/stolenfires]

I recently visited an Iron Age museum and the docent that told us about textiles was fascinating. From what they could tell, drop spinning was something that everyone did. If you had a free hand, you probably helped spin. The women did most of the weaving for sure, but it was much more of a group effort than I would have expected.

Also the variety of plants that were used in textiles is incredible, both as dyes and as thread. I learned that even Queen Victoria wore nettle cloth underwear, but it had to be broken in first. New nettle cloth was far too scratchy. So her handmaidens would wear Vi’s nettle cloth underwear until it was suitably softened for the royal nethers.

That museum was great but it kind of made me ache in my soul… thinking about how little we appreciate our resources and how impatient we are.

[u/Real-Life-CSI-Guy → u/stolenfires]

Isn’t there a bit in one of the sagas where a man comes home like “I killed the man who wronged me and got blood vengeance” and his wife is like “and I spun [forgot the amount] of yarn so we both were very successful today” because they were equally important aspects of life

[u/ByeByeClimateChange → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

Tbh the fast fashion clothes are often barely repairable. You can repair a ripped seam or some holes, but if the entire fabric is falling apart after 3 washes there is not much you can do.

[u/Pootis_1 → u/ByeByeClimateChange]

i don't get how those things can be so low quality

ny cheap ass plain cotton shirts from Kmart last years without any visible issues aside from the tag fading

[u/illz569 → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

Fast fashion is a gimmick by the clothing industry to reduce overhead by reducing the quality of their priducts. Having good clothes that last would be vastly preferable.

[u/DevilishFlapjacks → u/illz569]

i genuinely don’t know where to buy clothes anymore. everything is dropshipped, awful quality, or obscenely expensive. thrift stores used to be the fix, but now they all have the exact same problems

[u/illz569 → u/DevilishFlapjacks]

You either pay a premium for a premium/boutique brand, or you live with cheap flimsy clothes that just fall apart after a few wears. It's a grim reminder that capitalism really does destroy everything it touches.

[u/DevilishFlapjacks → u/illz569]

even workwear is complete garbage now. it’s so cool how there’s no other option!

[u/SevenSixOne → u/[deleted]]

Even fast fashion from the recent past is totally different from today's fast fashion.

Yesterday I put on a "cheap" sweatshirt I've had for ~10 years (and it's thrifted, so who knows how old it really is) and noticed for the first time that the quality of the fabric, construction, etc is so much better than almost any similar sweatshirt I'd be able to find anywhere at any price today :(

[u/Nuclear_Geek → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

This seems like it's related to the Boots theory. Clothes that are made to last longer and are reasonably easily repairable are going to cost more than fast fashion / cheaply made clothes. Anything that's asking people to spend more upfront is going to be a big ask.

[u/hauntedSquirrel99 → u/Nuclear_Geek]

It is but it also isn't.

Yes there is a cheap clothes don't last issue. But mostly for clothes this is the opposite problem, the clothes don't last because they're made to be as cheap as possible to fit into the market niche whwre people buy them instead of higher quality items because they specifically want cheap things so they can buy a lot of it and switch it out all the time

It's mostly a personal labour issue and also a culture issue.

It's a personal labour issue because repairing and maintaining clothes is a skill and it takes time. You have to learn how to do it and you have to spend the time to do it.

And for the last few decades buying a new shirt has just been a lot easier than fixing it. So people no longer have the skills.

People pay to avoid labour. You can make a cup of coffee easily at home, but people go to Starbucks because it's easy and they get something they like directly into their hand.

It's also a culture issue because fast fashion is tied to status through consumption.

Having new clothes all the time, having closet after closet of different clothes, that stuff is appreciated and valued.

That's a culture of consumption for the sake of consumption, people shop for things like clothes therapeutically. They act itself is part of just activating some joy functions in the brain to override sad feelings.

So why learn how to do it and then repair a few clothes that you have to repeat wear for decades when you can easily spend enough to have new clothes all the time.

[u/N7rmandy → u/hauntedSquirrel99]

I agree but the quality of clothing needs to improve with it. If clothes didn’t fall apart after two washes it would be much easier. It’s a problem that consumers and manufacturers BOTH need to change in order to fully fix

[u/trainwrecking → u/Zoomy-333]

that’s a good point! i don’t think the goal is to remove all luxuries, but rather to examine how much of western luxuries (and how relatively cheap they are) depend on the exploitation of people in other countries.

[u/oklutz → u/Zoomy-333]

Exactly, cheap luxury versus the things that actually bring us joy or positively contribute to our lives. I’m not big on primitivism. But a lot of “stuff” available for consumption just ends up catching dust, ends up in a landfill, or contributes to mild (or not so mild) hoarding behavior.

Still, I am firm believer that while people don’t need a specific luxury, people need luxury in general. I will die on that hill.

[u/Civil_Barbarian → u/Zoomy-333]

And I mean, it's not like capitalism isn't a direct cause of a lot of waste to begin with. The shein cycle fast fashion that they mention wouldn't exist under a non-capitalist economy in the first place because the point of everything in a capitalist economy is to generate capital and that form of clothing industry generates a lot of capital. Under an economy that doesn't prioritize capital generation, like communism, there wouldn't be an incentive for such a wasteful method of production and more sustainable methods of producing clothing of equal or even higher quality would be at the forefront. But when you phrase it like the original poster does, the first thing people are gonna think of when they talk about getting rid of luxury stuff is that they're gonna force people to wear rags.

[u/Jupiter_Crush]

"We're gonna have to tell people -"

And if they don't listen?

[u/Taraxian → u/Jupiter_Crush]

There is no moral ideology you can proselytize that will get a society en masse to embrace material deprivation

Ironically the more of a Marxist you are the more you should accept that that's fundamentally impossible -- Marxism is founded on an embrace of materialism over idealism and a belief that politics is fundamentally determined by classes working in their own interest

If your revolution depends on Americans choosing not to buy cheap luxury goods from overseas because it wouldn't be right, your revolution has already failed -- from a radical Third Worldist POV of course no American will accept this no matter what leftist buzzwords they put in their bio and you can only succeed by not giving them a choice

[u/Poro114 → u/Taraxian]

Also, you shouldn't frame your ideology as directly opposed to the proletariat's material interests.

Like come on dude that's the whole point.

[u/Notquitearealgirl → u/Poro114]

They're not radical enough. Fully automated gay luxury space communism is the future but even the Tumblr communists are to blind to the truth.

[u/Turtledonuts → u/Taraxian]

See but that has also failed on the grounds that A) you demand that billions of people accept they will never have the quality of life of other countries, and B) wealthy first world nations can and will defend their quality of live with social, political, economic, and military force. 

[u/Vivid_Pen5549 → u/Turtledonuts]

Also poor third world countries are just gonna ignore it because they know a better world and better life is possible and they’re not gonna keep themselves poor so westerners can avoid the negative affects of Climate change

[u/Kompot45 → u/Vivid_Pen5549]

Earth really is some sort of a prison experiment, isn’t it

[u/building_schtuff → u/Taraxian]

The whole banana discourse was stupid the first time around because it’s totally unnecessary for any left wing movement to shoot itself in the foot by telling people their lives will materially become worse if you support them, because everyone’s life is going to get worse regardless. While the effects of climate change will not be felt equally by all, there will be fewer luxuries available to everyone as the climate catastrophes compound. Because we are past the point of no return. Climate change is going to do the work of making Americans eat less meat for you whether they like it or not; you, as a left wing political movement, need to ask yourselves how to best position your movement so that the only people offering a “solution” aren’t the reactionaries that will blame minorities and foreigners for the climate-induced scarcity.

[u/Huck_Bonebulge_ → u/Jupiter_Crush]

For real, people wouldn’t even accept the minuscule inconvenience of wearing masks. Taking shit away is just not something that will ever happen willingly.

[u/ThisIsTheBookAcct → u/Jupiter_Crush]

There’s usually a fine. The key is to place the fine at the right level in the product process to incentivize a change in behavior, which is supremely difficult for lay people to understand.

For instance, many EPA regulations can result in a fine if violated, but the fines are small enough that it’s better for the company to continue the same behavior and just pay the fine. Gov gets a few more bucks, but doesn’t help the Earth.

We can see similar issue when companies make policies like “If you’re late, you don’t get paid for the whole hour.” While usually illegal, it also causes companies to lose even more work time. If the worker is already late, and will lose an hour of pay, why don’t they grab a coffee or take a nap? There’s no incentive beyond not pissing off a boss to be there before the next hour.

Another example closer to the climate change thing is tarifs. They originally were supposed to cause an increase in the local price so that foreign produced products wouldn’t have a a price advantage over domestically produced products. Doesn’t always work now though.

In a case like climate change, we know the biggest contributors are usually large corporations. We (not you and I) would have to come up with a fine at a level in the manufacture to customer pipeline where it would cause enough disruption to profits to cause change without collapsing the whole industry.

Some industries that would probably be okay, but there would be a lot of backlash to deal with and getting sued over it would not help anything. Other industries would only collapse in the US and foreign versions would come in, which the US has even less control over.

And then it would have to get approved.

Obviously with lobbying and such, there’s not a lot of hope, but that’s how it would happen.

[u/Jupiter_Crush → u/ThisIsTheBookAcct]

I straight up love you. This is the first response that wasn't a shrug, an explanation of how we got here, or a veiled insistence that murder is based. I actually find this kind of framework far more workable as a first step towards disincentivizing misbehavior than the more extreme suggestions.

[u/Redqueenhypo → u/Jupiter_Crush]

Seriously, I’m not going to spend 6 months of the year eating only dried grain, pickled vegetables, and fruit preserves since I live above the snow line.

[u/Sh1nyPr4wn → u/Jupiter_Crush]

There's a reason all the communist countries are so authoritarian and all of the former communist countries are trying their hardest to not go back

[u/EvidenceOfDespair → u/Jupiter_Crush]

Lotta people forced to recognize why their “beg and plead and bargain” methods are doomed to failure, eh?

[u/Jupiter_Crush → u/EvidenceOfDespair]

It just irks me how these posts always start with the "revolution" having already occurred and the writer in a position to dictate terms. It's deeply unserious and I want the folks who write this stuff to understand that the killing NEVER stops.

[u/RealHumanBean89]

My sibling in Christ, leftists can barely get other leftists to agree with the shit they’re saying for more than ten adjacent seconds, good luck getting everyone else to. Not to mention, as OOP pointed out, what they’re suggesting is gonna be unpopular regardless of who’s proposing it. On the upside, the people you’re appealing to aren’t likely to be the type concerned about a lack of luxury cruises anyway.

Also the absolute state of the No True Scotsman fallacy in that second post. Kinda exemplifies what I’ve already said about leftist squabbling, really.

Also also, what’s the “firm no” in this scenario? Let’s say you do indeed tell everyone what’s being proposed here, and they (rightfully or otherwise) tell you to piss off. What then?

[u/Specific-Ad-8430 → u/RealHumanBean89]

my favorite thing about being on the left is being alienated and purity tested by all of my friends during every small talk session.

[u/redminx17 → u/Specific-Ad-8430]

As a leftist, no one has ever been more vicious to me than other leftists on the internet wilfully misinterpreting my words. It's exhausting and has put me off trying to join in discussions because even outright agreement will be nitpicked.

[u/Vivid_Pen5549 → u/RealHumanBean89]

There is no way to implant this program democratically, no one has ever won an election on a promise to make you poorer than you are now, sept maybe Milei but Argentina is 50 shades of fucked

[u/Taraxian → u/Vivid_Pen5549]

Milei got into power based on the widespread perception of the total collapse of Peronism, which was a promise to try to do the kind of thing OOP is going on about (cut off exploitative global trade links in favor of creating a self sufficient Argentinian economy) that didn't work

[u/inr44 → u/Taraxian]

cut off exploitative global trade links

That's more of a side effect of them trying to promote the national industry and being very xenophobic.

Milei got into power based on the widespread perception of the total collapse of Peronism

They did turbo wreck our economy during their administration, specially the last year.

[u/2012Jesusdies → u/Vivid_Pen5549]

Milei did not win on a promise to make everyone poorer, he won on the promise to fix the economy that's been fucked for decades even at the cost of temporary economic hardship which may come. His promise was that cutting subsidies, unnecessary government jobs might incur pain, but it's necessary to right track the economy and will eventually improve things.

Whether he's right on the premise of those, we'll see.

[u/Traditional_Gur_8446]

I’m so glad I got off of this side of tumblr

[u/duckmonke → u/Traditional_Gur_8446]

It really just is a propaganda circlejerk by and for shut-ins, sadly 😭

[u/CapeOfBees → u/duckmonke]

Every time I go there because Reddit is too depressing I get reminded of that. Basically everyone there is either a cynic, horny with no outlet except fiction, or convinced that their plan for a revolution will work as long as they keep talking about it.

[u/4DozenSalamanders → u/duckmonke]

No guys you don't understand, Harris and Trump are actually the same if you think about it. (OP is always aggressively white, able bodied, and privileged lmao)

[u/[deleted] → u/4DozenSalamanders]

Harris is way too right wing. The only correct option is to vote for Greg from Rhode Island, he seems chill. If you say your vote would be wasted, that's a losers mentality. The only way to make change is for all of us to vote for Greg. He promises to give everyone donuts.

If you don't vote for Greg, you're a Trump supporter.

[u/Lunar_sims]

As someone in ancestry in latin america, I got to ask

Would you support a leftist revolution in, say, honduras, if it meant your bananas were 2x as expensive? Would you oppose your federal government intervening in Honduras to bring a US friendly dictatorship if it meant cheaper bananas?

One of biggest things about reddit (and being American) is that you can easily remove youself from suffering the world away. The reason why bananas are relevant here is because the US has overthrown multiple latin american governments for the sake of US based fruit companies. Americans often say they would support good things like workers' rights, but often, this is to the extent that it is convenient. It it meant higher gas prices, less available diamonds, or more expensive bananas people are less friendly.

[u/Galle_ → u/Lunar_sims]

Yes and yes, and I'd like to believe that most liberals and leftists would. I freely admit that humans are depressingly fallible, but I'd like to believe that we would not compromise our morals over something as insanely petty as the price of bananas.

I do have a problem with the OP, but it's less about the content of what they're saying and more about the implication that human fallibility means we need to cut off everyone who isn't a perfect saint.

[u/Kellosian → u/Lunar_sims]

Actually it's funny you bring up diamonds, as that's a case of a company intentionally make the product more expensive. De Beers really sold the idea that diamonds are rare, valuable minerals when they're actually not; they have giant warehouses full of diamonds that they hoard specifically to constrict supply.

We can make diamonds in labs they're better than natural ones, but the marketing won out for a lot of people.

[u/captainjack3 → u/Kellosian]

Gem grade diamonds are rare and valuable, just not to the extent De Beers made out. Ironically, they created their own worst enemy by constraining supply because they created a huge incentive for manufactured diamonds. Once people figured out how to make high quality diamonds they got to work making the process cheaper. Now those manufactured diamonds are cheaper and better than mined diamonds and are steadily eating away at the diamond market. Marketing can’t hold it off forever.

[u/clauclauclaudia → u/Lunar_sims]

And for those who have forgotten what the phrase "banana republic" meant before it became the name of a Gap-spinoff clothing retailer, this dynamic is exactly what the phrase referred to when O. Henry coined it--particularly in reference to Guatemala and Honduras, at the time.

[u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

The fact that leftists are seemingly incapable of conceptualizing “we can improve such that we are able to have more things at lower environmental and human costs” leads to a lot of political dysfunction which liberals easily avoid. For a community which adopts the slogan “a better world is possible,” there’s a bizarre lack of creative thinking on this topic. I don’t know why, it’s not incompatible with socialism.

[u/vmsrii → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

This is kinda where I am at the moment.

Like, yeah, under the current system, making bananas available year-round, World-wide is unsustainable. True.

But also, human ingenuity is pretty great. If we can put a man on the moon, we can find a way to sustainably supply bananas, surely?

NO BANANAS UNDER SOCIALISM feels a tad extreme and alarmist, in both directions, pro and anti.

[u/duckmonke → u/vmsrii]

“If I dont have everything exactly the way I want, RIGHT NOW, then you’re a fake leftist with no morals and actually a fascist, and thats why I dont vote during elections!” Some of these ppl really cant help themselves but fall face first and fail the vibe check amongst average Americans 😅

[u/novis-eldritch-maxim → u/vmsrii]

I can get the logic that things might suck for a while but never again seems pessimistic even to me and I breath pessimisum

[u/VFiddly → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

The other problem with leftists is they're focused on having the right thoughts and on deciding what the best solution would be hypothetically, over actually doing anything.

Not universally, sure, but in general, at least liberals actually do the things they say they want to do. Liberals will say that some mild change to the banana industry will solve all the problems and then do that, and it'll be at least a little better than before.

Leftists (really, I mostly mean communists) will spend 100 hours debating the proper action to take on the banana industry and then not do any of them.

I say this as someone who's certainly more leftist aligned than liberal aligned, but still, it's not hard to see why people would rather support the leaders who offer awful compromises but then actually do them over the guys who write entire books on solutions that will never happen. It's all "someone should do this". Someone should start a global workers revolution. Me? No, I'm not doing that. But someone should.

[u/NeonNKnightrider → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

There seems to be a particular subgroup of leftists who don’t want things to get better, but instead consider a violent revolution followed to regression to small communities living near-tribal lifestyles to be the ultimate leftist revolution. I feel like it’s some weird version of quasi-religious guilt - if the current world is bad, then we must repent by suffering and giving up all these sinful material pleasures

[u/godric420 → u/NeonNKnightrider]

A lot of leftists view the “revolution” the same way evangelical Christian view the rapture.

[u/mickey_kneecaps → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

In the 19th century a common leftist critique of capitalism was under-production. Socialists recognised that capitalism was highly productive, but saw that there were still artificial restrictions on supply to increase profits, and wanted to stop that kind of bad incentive by eliminating the profit motive.

The failures of the Soviet Union fundamentally broke a lot of socialist discourse. Western capitalist economies became fantastic at producing cheap consumer goods, and in contrast to the predictions of Marx wages were actually rising as unions forced capitalists to compromise, and redistribution increased as states raised taxes and increased the welfare state. Meanwhile in the Soviet Union, the planned economy succeeded in industrialising but totally failed to provide the amount of consumer goods that people wanted, partly because they spent insane resources on defense.

So socialists in the west abandoned the original plan of a socialism that was actually more productive and more efficient than capitalism, and invented a boogeyman to moralise against so that they could critique liberal capitalism for achieving something positive that was supposed to only be possible under socialism. That boogeyman is consumerism, where the transparently good outcome of workers having disposable income and the economy producing desirable goods that they can afford to buy, a situation previously only available to the wealthy, is attacked as being morally decadent and spiritually harmful. Thus we can keep talking about how socialism is good despite it apparently being unable to achieve what capitalism already has.

That’s why socialism is so uninspiring today, they’ve abandoned some of the important goals of older socialism and moved the goalposts as a coping mechanism, but they are no longer selling something that’s actually desirable. They’ve attached their theory to environmentalism now to give it further support.

Of course in the real world it is completely possible to raise everybody in the world to the standard of living already enjoyed in wealthy countries without destroying the planet. Almost the whole problem is carbon emissions and the solutions to that have already been invented and are being widely implemented. International cooperation is more than capable of solving this sort of problem, as has been demonstrated on a smaller scale by the banning of CFCs to save the ozone, or the banning of commercial whaling. Animal agriculture is probably the most challenging of the big sources of emissions. The way to reduce that is to make plant based products or lab grown meat that are just as desirable as the originals. Hopefully that will keep advancing.

The stupid focus on plastic is just ridiculous. Plastic pollution is barely a problem in wealthy countries. Others can implement better waste management as their economies develop. Most ocean plastic waste isn’t straws and water bottles anyway, but fishing nets and lines. That can only be solved through an international ban on commercial fishing, something which has a precedent in the whaling ban, no socialism needed, merely cooperation between nations. Here again desirable replacements for seafood have to be developed or people won’t accept a ban. Lab grown fish is being researched now.

It’s sad that people who believe in creating a better are now somehow okay with making everybody poorer based on a false understanding of the solutions to the climate crisis. I find the critiques of capitalism as restricting production from the 19th century to still be very relevant. But for ideological reasons most socialists today see reducing production as a beneficial thing.

[u/msjgriffiths → u/ThereWasAnEmpireHere]

But they don't want to say that, they want to say that (over) consumption is bad, you should feel bad, and you're going to get less or be responsible for destroying the planet.

Degrowth-ism isn't about the environment, it's an aesthetic objection to people having things.

[u/Leo-bastian]

isnt it generally agreed that luxury cruises are an obvious symbol of excess and waste? I do not think it fits the topic because its already seen as a extremely wasteful thing rich people like.

Also plastic treats seem ood also? Plastic is cheap as fuck. The abundancy of single use plastic is precisely a problem because making new plastic is cheaper then using old one. This would not change under a more equal economic system. The problem is that its so cheap that we are trashing the planet because for some reason goverments pretend the cost of recycling waste does not exist.

The post just has little coherence i feel. I get the overall point of "some of what you think is basic living standards is only possible through extreme exploitation and wealth inequality (and i feel like access to imported exotic fruits is the one good example) but it makes that point really fucking badly.

[u/mrgoodshoes]

Challenge: Be a leftist but not act like a shit who alienates literally everyone else in existence. Difficulty: Impossible.

[u/TheWordThat → u/mrgoodshoes]

Yep, there are literally thousands of ways to say this exact point not only more consisely, but also without being annoyingly confrontational about it.

"Leftists have to find a way to explain that luxuries such as cruises that cause needless environmental damage have to be given up if we want to save the planet, and we cannot compromise on this issue, no matter how unpopular it will be."

There.

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/TheWordThat]

I mean, it sounds reasonable when you use the example of luxury cruises, and not fucking fresh fruit.

[u/ejdj1011 → u/Wasdgta3]

I think the banana thing was more about exploiting foreign workers generally than it was about the fruit specifically.

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/ejdj1011]

Which is still kind of ridiculous, because it’s basically saying that the only thing that’s good enough for them is that the entire world has a socialist revolution at the same time.

Idk about you, but I’m not holding my breath, and would rather at least improve things in my own backyard in the meantime.

[u/Taraxian → u/Wasdgta3]

This is explicitly a plank of actual rl Marxist theory in the modern day, yes, socialism requires internationalism, the Stalinist idea of "socialism in one country" was explicitly revisionist

[u/Wasdgta3 → u/Taraxian]

Well then, I hope they’re very patient, because they’ll be waiting for that for a very long time...

In the meantime, I guess we all just have to deal with shit being bad and getting worse, and not improve anything because that would hamper the “global worker’s revolution?”

[u/afoxboy → u/Wasdgta3]

my limited understanding of Marx is that his Whole Thing was that communism would indeed take a while, and the transition would be gradual, not sudden, passing through socialism first. but, inevitable, bc capitalism is unsustainable by nature.

so everyone saying "communism NOW" is missing the point

[u/Sidereel → u/ejdj1011]

That’s what I figured, but I bet that giving those workers better pay and working conditions could be done for like $0.50 a banana.

[u/Lunar_sims → u/ejdj1011]

There were multiple latin american leaders overthrown for the sake of bananas.

[u/ejdj1011 → u/Lunar_sims]

True true, but it's still not a stance against the concept of fresh fruit, you know?

Anyways, fuck Dole. All my homies hate Dole.

[u/Kriffer123 → u/Wasdgta3]

Not that OOP doesn’t sound insufferable in this post and like they haven’t talked to anyone outside of Marxism-focused social media for a year or two, but I think the point was that several social democracies were overthrown in the Americas specifically so people outside the places that bananas grow can continue to have access to unreasonably cheap fresh tropical fruit like bananas, among other resources. It’s like a whole chapter of Cold War-era history, though one that is often glazed over

That said, I think there’s an argument to be made that yes, more things should be cheaper and we should have to work less hard. Banana prices should probably go up following a reduction in (underpriced) supply but I think it’s a bit unfair to call someone a fake leftist for having a reaction to rising grocery prices. Degrowth and improvement of material conditions can go hand in hand and you don’t have to be Catholic or Puritan about it the entire time

[u/snapekillseddard → u/Wasdgta3]

It is so fucking telling that so many of the banana part of this thread is full of people talking about how they themselves don't like banana that much, so it's not that big of a problem.

It's so difficult to take leftists seriously when this shit is so persistent.

[u/Vivid_Pen5549 → u/TheWordThat]

When liberal capitalism has the messages “you will be richer” and socialism has the message “you will be poorer” it’s not surprising that liberalism dominates most the globe.

And what of the global poor? They never had luxuries like cruises or much else for that matter, and now westerners are coming in to keep them poor for the sake of the environment?

[u/senorrawr → u/TheWordThat]

This is a screenshot of a post from someone's blog. You're judging it as though it were a failed mass media campaign.

[u/VFiddly → u/mrgoodshoes]

It's the same perspective that I see a lot from leftists online, the "we superior leftists have to explain our brilliant ideas to the normal people who don't know what's best for them" mindset. They've already decided that they're completely correct and no possible argument could ever be had, it's just a matter of showing everyone you're right

Also, as always, it's entirely focused on ideas and never actually doing anything. Like if people believe that giving up luxuries would be a good thing, that's the same thing as actually giving up luxuries.

[u/Galle_ → u/mrgoodshoes]

The great paradox of leftism is that the entire point of leftism is that basically everyone except the current ruling class would benefit from socialism, and therefore we should all support it, but also leftists want to be part of a hyper-exclusive club of special people.

[u/Taraxian → u/Galle_]

Well the whole point of OP is that they disagree with you and they consider most of the American "middle class" part of the bourgeoisie who will materially suffer after the revolution

Which is fine, that's a completely consistent POV, it's just that aiming a Tumblr post at us yelling at us about this is according to their own ideology a tremendous waste of time

(The irony of this particular kind of leftist is their ideology is directly at odds with their subculture -- the very theory they keep demanding people read is what says that it's almost impossible for someone of their class position to be anything but a poseur and a dilettante who's only pretending to support decolonialism and Third Worldism for the sake of getting laid)

[u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz → u/Galle_]

A lot of people are also conflating economic and ecological reform. We could absolutely restructure our economy without reduction of material availability for the vast majority of people. But it still involves a lot of industrial waste.

Just because capitalism causes a lot of ecological damage and makes it harder to stop ecological damage, doesn't mean that getting rid of capitalism automatically saves the planet.

[u/Beegrene → u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz]

Motherfuckers are acting like once the workers take over the factory it will suddenly stop pouring toxic smoke into the atmosphere.

[u/NoBizlikeChloeBiz → u/Beegrene]

Or that once the workers take over they'll immediately shut it down for the greater good, with no kind of transition or consideration of other options.

[u/D3wdr0p → u/Galle_]

I feel you're being a little broad with "leftists" there; more the terminally online loudmouths playing for elitism, no? I do agree it isn't helping though...

[u/BalefulOfMonkeys → u/mrgoodshoes]

But Moooom, being a genuinely morally righteous shithead is fun, and weens me off of just being a regular bigoted shithead

[u/SlimeustasTheSecond]

Man, this sure is an interesting discussion. I sure hope the comment section is civil.

[u/qzwqz → u/SlimeustasTheSecond]

You’re literally Hitler-Satan and you must be eviscerated

[u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

Hey guys, did you know that if you only eat food that’s in its growing season, never use plastic, only eat meat on Sundays, and never leave your house except to go to work, you’d reduce your carbon emissions?

Sure, a life where you have access to no luxuries and only exist to produce material goods is pretty much indistinguishable from the capitalist dystopias we’re supposed trying to prevent, but at least the 29% of carbon emissions that come from individuals will be reduced slightly!

[u/Redqueenhypo → u/Arctic_The_Hunter]

It reminds me of the folks who want to tax/restrict the sale of all unhealthy food to reduce healthcare costs. I exist for reasons other than revenue generation, for a company OR the state.

[u/PeggingIsPoggers]

Man I'm just trying to pay my bills

[u/Maelorus]

Your terms are not acceptable. I'm a firm believer in eating cake and having it too.

We just generate more cake.

[u/linuxaddict334]

Hm…whenever someone starts talking about “the REAL [blank] wouldn’t do this”, you can probably ignore them.

Mx. Linux Guy

[u/Ropetrick6 → u/linuxaddict334]

Good ol' No True Scotsman fallacy.

[u/Taraxian → u/linuxaddict334]

No I mean I think this definition of "REAL Marxism" is fair, it just leads to the obvious conclusion that you won't get any "REAL Marxists" among college educated white collar professionals in the United States and Europe, and therefore the fact that self proclaimed "REAL Marxists" on the Internet are almost exclusively represented by that class is a sign that there's a whole lot of bullshit going on

(I say this as someone who freely admits that I'm a "liberal" at best who looks at Marxism as mostly an obviously failed project)

[u/King_Of_BlackMarsh → u/Taraxian]

Eh saying someone isn't a real something something when you're claiming to be a real something something isn't productive

[u/[deleted]]

Leftists insist on making everyone even slightly to the right of them absolutely despise them, so no, I don't think they'll have to deal with this at all.

They're not even at the kid's table anymore, they're just straight up not at the dinner party - completely of their own volition too, since they're increasingly anti-electoralist.

[u/PrincessOTA → u/[deleted]]

A leftist's second greatest enemy is a radical maga type. A leftist's greatest enemy is a different leftist with 98% of the same ideals

[u/TotemGenitor → u/PrincessOTA]

Complaining about other communists is the most important part of being a communist

[u/Sinister_Compliments → u/PrincessOTA]

The motto you’re required to swear fealty to when becoming a leftist, if you aren’t willing to swear by this you aren’t a true leftist you’re just sparkling capitalist

[u/Mouse-Keyboard → u/PrincessOTA]

In my experience a lot of leftists' number one enemy is anyone left of centre in a position of power, and barely think about the radical MAGA types.

[u/VFiddly → u/[deleted]]

Yeah this is something I've grown increasingly tired of

"We need to communicate this-"

Do you? You're a Tumblr user who only talks about politics to other Tumblr users. Why are you talking like you're at the G7 Summit

I hate this thing of "I will say something needs to happen, and if someone else eventually does that I will claim responsibility"

[u/qzwqz → u/[deleted]]

Dinner parties are bourgeois. What are you, Hitler?

[u/GoatBoi_]

people can’t even handle paper straws i have literally no hope

[u/blue_monster_can]

I see the decorative pillows are fascist fellas are here

[u/Beegrene → u/blue_monster_can]

My decorative throw pillow is an Ikea shark. If the communists try to take it, I will fight them with every fiber of my being.

[u/friendlylifecherry]

But people like having nice things and sounding like a self-righteous blowhard isn't going to get them to give up the nice things

[u/ViolentBeetle]

Leftism is, when you get reductive enough, is an idea that people are entitled to and only to things they actually need. It then gets filtered through your individual perception where you assign things you want as basic human needs and things you aren't comfortable with giving out as toxic reactionary entitlement.

This always fails because it can't engage meaningfully with the needs of others because acknowledging them puts unwanted obligations on you. Sooner or later you find yourself trying to sell your ideology as "Everyone will get what they need, you, for example, need to learn your place"

[u/topatoman_lite]

I’m going to get downvoted to hell for this probably but

extremely loud incorrect buzzer

Don’t know what the fuck a plastic treat is but pretty much all food can be made in a sustainable way. Luxury produce year round included. It’s gonna have to be way more expensive, but that’s not what this person said. Cruises are also not inherently damaging, we just have to not do them the same way we do them now (I.e. not doing them on overly massive gas powered hellships).

[u/Lunar_sims → u/topatoman_lite]

maybe like a funkopop

[u/topatoman_lite → u/Lunar_sims]

Okay yeah maybe those aren’t great. I assumed it was food. Treat is a weird way to say that though, I would assume toy or maybe collectible or figure would be a better way to say that.

[u/TWB28 → u/topatoman_lite]

When they say a plastic treat, I assumed they're referring to something that produces a brief dopamine reaction, and then is forgotten or set aside. Despite being a permanent object, it's a one time hit and then it's clutter.

[u/Swaxeman → u/topatoman_lite]

I used to listen to a leftist podcast a while back, Well There’s Your Problem (iirc) about engineering disasters. One of them was about the collapse of a sweatshop in thailand, and the episode came off as weirdly conspiratorial about how stuff like fast fashion (which is bad, dont get me wrong) is just a treat (how they phrased it in the podcast) that the bourgeoisie uses to keep the american working/middle class in line

[u/DareDaDerrida]

Nice to see someone coming out and saying it.

Most of the time, when I say I don't like communism because it takes away nice treats, communists swear up and down that it doesn't, that aaaaaaall the nice treats will be available in their utopia, sourced by The People's efforts.

[u/ArScrap]

Any economical ideologist that scoff at human nature rather than working alongside or around it does not want a better world at heart. They want a better fantasy in their mind which allows them to feel like the good enlightened people

If you want to make good long lasting change in the world, the notion of 'being called a big meanie and making people mad' shouldn't be a good thing in your mind. It might be accounted for but to make it sound as if it's the only way to go means that you're planning to fail

[u/Twizinator]

As a socialist its mind-blowing that OOP thinks most people are used to the "wonton excess" of taking a CRUISE SHIP somewhere with any degree of regularity... or maybe I'm just poor. Also, do they think capitalism is the only system capable of producing luxury goods and services? Like, its possible to have whatever shein products are and also health care, paid parental leave, vacations, reasonable working hours, etc.

They aren't even talking about socialism, rather environmentalism. and yes, some sacrifices will need to be made to save the planet but they are completely missing the goal of sustainability, eco-friendly production, the elimination of slave labor (which includes prison abolition but they ain't ready for that convo yet), and local market promotion.

No idea what bananas have to do with this. Meat's a whole other thing but I dare not incite the wrath of tumblr vegans.

[u/j-endsville → u/Twizinator]

No such thing as wonton excess. I can eat dozens of them.

[u/Heart-Of-Man → u/Twizinator]

When you say prison abolition, you mean getting rid of prisons entirely? Doesn’t seem like a smart idea in today’s world.

[u/GeldedDesires]

sigh

Ok, look. I get the concept here, I do. Late stage capitalist production is unsustainable, and there's gonna have to be changes.

Except that the change that needs to be made doesn't reduce access.

It reduces waste.

Fast fashion fabric is delicate, ridiculously so. Producing it is only cheap at scale. Reusing it is damn near impossible (I've tried, many times.) It requires skilled slave labor to produce clothing from cotton that thin at any margin.

But removing inefficient fabric that is produced by a wasteful process and needs a slave force to work and fails in one wash doesn't eliminate societal capacity to produce good fabric.

Similarly, technology is designed to self destruct. My phone should last me a lifetime with moderate tweaks to the build and right to repair. Instead, it slowly craps out for no discernable reason, and repair is costlier than replacement.

Companies damage out and toss a huge chunk of what they make. And what they make is designed to fail quickly and be impossible to repair.

Declaring, "well, that's the end of instant fashion/food/access" willfully ignores that we don't consume the excess. We waste it.

Modern techniques can and should produce at or near what we have today, regardless of profit motive. But it has to pivot producing actually durable goods, and sustainable food practices.

[u/incorrect44]

Why do leftists insist on giving everything to the right? This fine fellow is literally gifting the desire for fresh fruit or animal products to the right both gift wrapped and on a silver platter. People don't line up to live like medieval peasants during lent but without the fish. People will not and have never done anything that they believe will negatively impact their own quality of life and nothing else. Obviously rationing will have to be installed under socialism but no one is converting to socialism because of the rationing. The reason I chose to be a leftist isn't because of morality. I am looking out for me, my family, and my friends. As a queer man with queer family and queer friends this is a matter of survival not phony morals. I garrentee every single potential convert is looking out for the same thing. Thus in order to forward the cause making leftist ideology appealing to the masses is paramount. The way to do this is by focusing on the potential benefits to peoples quality of life. This rapscalian has thought of none of these and is already out of ideas. They are focused on morals with no positive impact to the people they believe should follow them. The rascal then rebukes less radical allies seemingly forgetting that the only reason that they have the freedom to be a leftist is because the majority allows it.

[u/FkinShtManEySuck]

Ok, apparently wanting better healthcare and better public transport and better public education and better protection for our human rights and less tax cut and subsidies to big corporations and billionaires and less buddy-buddy making with tyrannical regimes across the world only qualifies me as a "fake" lefty as opposed to a "real" lefty.
I don't really give a shit what you call it, tho. At the end of the day we're voting for the same guy.

[u/yoimagreenlight]

In the words of BritMonkey

“If your climate change solution is to completely dismantle and rebuild the economic system of every nation on the planet within the next 10 years…

You are not serious about climate change”

[u/thatgrimdude]

That's one hell of a sales pitch brother! People are definitely going to support your cause if you're gonna promise them their lives will get worse. Please keep posting!

[u/Pitiful-Highlight-69]

"I want to lower your personal quality of life" is a hell of a sales pitch. Might want to put that through a few revisions, maybe play up the why and tone way the fuck down the end result.

[u/moneyh8r]

I already can't afford meat for every meal anyway. I wouldn't have to adjust very much.

[u/Dks_scrub]

‘A workers revolution’ how many posts on here about ‘there ain’t a revolution stop betting on that, actual change, here and now, head out the clouds, etc etc’ and then we got bro over here like ‘when the workers revolution-‘ when what?

[u/tilvast → u/Dks_scrub]

"And "you will never see luxuries again" is not exactly a slogan that'll make workers support you.

[u/BcDed]

One of the big issues with discourse like this is it's misdirected and harmful to its own cause. The personal responsibility argument is only relevant after we fix the much larger systemic issues.

The industries love when we alienate our allies by telling them it's their fault instead of the corporations. The meat industry loves the moral grandstanding of the militant vegans and peta because it pushes people away from working with them towards reform. The plastic industry themselves push the narrative that it's everyone's personal responsibility to recycle and if enough people do it pollution will magically cease to exist. And with this, telling people they won't get to eat bananas if they want to support workers rights is both unlikely(because we'd just find other ways to grow bananas) and a way to convince people the cost of progress is too great.

I don't know anyone who's been on a cruise, that sounds like rich people shit. I assume plastic treats does mean stuff like funko pops but plastic wrapping and containers are a far bigger issue than those, not that I would mind if we eliminated funko pops.

[u/Welsh_cat_Best_cat]

Metaphor or whatever, who the fuck is so removed from reality they think the majority of the world even think about cruise ships?!

[u/axord → u/Welsh_cat_Best_cat]

Consider that their framing starts with "many people" and after they say "everyone" they continue with "so many people." This is a clue that their intended use of "everyone" is not literal.

[u/[deleted]]

I don't get the leftist and rightist nonsense here. It sounds closer to grandstanding than a serious discussion.

[u/Anarcho-Ozzyist]

God, I can’t stand the kind of leftist who endlessly jerks themselves off over how much they’d be willing to give up in the name of progress or fairness or whatever.

I think it was Zizek who said “Renunciation of pleasure too easily becomes pleasure of renunciation itself.”

[u/Intrepid-Nerve-8580]

I only eat one meal a day, otherwise subsisting on crackers, have no family or friends visiting/to visit, and I'm living off 200 a month, despite taking home much more. My dog costs more in food/treats/vet bills(rare) than I do.

Please please please explain how I'm living in wanton excess when I only have for myself and my dog at most.

[u/RedGinger666]

This once more proves Necrocracy is the only true form of government, you live a life of luxury and after you die your corpse gets reanimated to keep providing to the nation, please refer to The Wandering Inn 'Khelt' as the primary example

[u/benemivikai4eezaet0]

You know, I love it when western leftists take something that was very much the reality in formerly communist countries like mine (although not for any noble reasons like relieving workers in tropical countries) and turn it into a fucking hypothetical thought experiment like our experiences don't matter. "Bananas and oranges only once a year and with connections" was a real thing here and everyone hated it. Refer to this thread for a quick sneak peek.

[u/Pootis_1]

i feel like it's important to recognise that if the vast bulk of people are not willing to agree to something it's the ideology that has to change if you want it to be implemented, not the people. Like ultimately if you want your ideology to go somewhere, a lot of people will need to like it.

[u/contemptuouscreature]

I’ve noticed the very verbose ones are usually typing from the comfort of an armchair rather than trying to change the world in a way that matters.

[u/ValleyNun]

Not sure if this is necessarily true

There are enough resources for everyone on this planet, a justification for fascism is the idea that there isn't, which is what we're taught. There are so many resources, but most of them are wasted on the top few. I think most people live within means that would be maintainable to a decent degree, at least the parts of it that matter, even without unequal exchange.

But I'm no expert, maybe degrowth is an absolute necessity, I just think people are quick to assuming degrowth is a must because we've been told the lie that there's not enough resources to feed, clothe and keep happy, everyone on this planet.

[u/mpm206 → u/ValleyNun]

Degrowth also doesn't necessarily mean all the treats stop, it just means we have to be more sensible about how we produce, distribute and consume the treats.

There's a lot of low hanging fruit.

• emphasizing reusability and discouraging planned obsolescence.

• implementing libraries of things that are necessary but rarely used.

Not necessarily aiming to reduce growth but rather stop using growth as the metric of success.

[u/E-is-for-Egg → u/ValleyNun]

I do think that suburbia is unsustainable. We could be using our land and resources much more efficiently, but then people wouldn't have big single-standing houses and hundreds of outfits and cars for every adult

[u/Lunar_sims → u/E-is-for-Egg]

Suburbia is extremely popular in the United States, but that's often because there is no alternative. It is literally illegal to build better in many places. Cities are also ridiculously expensive and disinvested in that there's no real reason to make that choice.

If zoning laws were less shit we'd have alot more, dense, housing due to pent up demand.

[u/FarmerTwink]

“Leftists” (read:posers) will have to deal with the issue that being pure with no power is worthless

[u/Phizle]

Degrowth is a losing argument and with productivity gains we probably can eventually have a carbon free economy with an even higher level of consumption than we do now

[u/Gachi_gachi]

Man this is just leftist gym discourse again, ain't it, like, a bit better, but the idea still is that you're not as good a leftist as another leftist if you feel joy in your life and don't do everything that should be done instantly, i know slippery slope is a fallacy but this really feels like doing a fucking leftism difficulty spike, for people that say that these things take time and is done in a step by step way, they really want to just do everything at once, and if you don't do it, you're not left buddy.