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Can confirm. I’m on disability and cannot afford food and medication and bills at the same time. My Internet will be cut later this month because I did the crime of paying for my medication so I didn’t want to kill myself. I am starving but at least I didn’t feel like my soul was being drained.
It’s just depressing that if I want to feel slightly okay I have to not eat for days so I can justify getting my medication. Or dumpster diving to supplement food, which I’m gonna be doing in a couple hours.
Life is suffering and I’m tired of it.
If you’re in the US, the Affordable Connectivity Program is available to low income families and it covers $30 a month off your existing internet bill.
PCsForPeople (not sure if I can provide links on Lemmy) offers a free mobile hotspot plan with unlimited data that you can use as home internet, if you qualify for the ACP.
Just an FYI, since there are programs that help, but not everyone is aware of them.
Alas I am not American, but I appreciate it.
It’s not a bug that capitalism is based on greed, it’s a feature. It works (relatively speaking) because it leverages humanity’s shittyness.
Communism has failed to operate without corruption or authoritarianism, because it depends on people actually giving a shit about each other long term.
Has capitalism operated without corruption or authoritarianism?
has any economic system ever operated without corruption?
that’s a fair question. it seems like corruption is universal to all systems of organization and therefore not a good measure of the validity of any given system
Im14andthisisdeep
Capitalism is on of the worst thing happening to humanity. :( It promotes greed and punishes people who aren’t greedy. It makes more problem than it answering problems.
During the pandemic I watched grocery stores buy poison to dump on their trash, which they paid armed people to guard. They then paid other people to haul it away. All this to prevent poor people from taking it away for free.
Anyone care to argue against generic opinions generated by bots? If so, you are in the right place.
This is part of the reason that the governments pay farmers to grow various crops etc.
we need food it needs to be as cheap as possible
we need food it needs to be as cheap as possible
I agree that we need food. Why do you say it needs to be as cheap as possible? The cheaper it is the less value people will give it and the more food will go to waste.
It needs to be cheap so poor people don’t die of starvation.
I don’t understand how some people don’t get this. I think they don’t see the poor as humans.
The problem is not the food price. The problem is the unfair distribution of wealth. The solution is to ensure every person can afford a decent standard of living.
Making food cheaper just shifts the problem: More food imported (=>traffic, noise, co2), less incentive to produce food (=>scarcity), worse conditions for workers and livestock (=>unequality, animal abuse), higher reliance on preservatives, pest control and drugged livestock (=>potential negative side effects), more food waste (=>inefficiency).
Then make it free
Do you also have a reply that describes your reasoning and addesses any of the counterarguments made?
It costs money to produce food.
The more people you want to feed, the more money it costs.
Food production is not free. Food distribution is not free.
If you have an alternative to capitalism, I’m open, but you can’t just stamp your feet and go “but it should be free!” It’s not, someone has to pay for the seed, irrigation, fertilization, equipment fuel and labor involved in production and distribution.
p.s. Is it just me or is it the same people wanting $20+ hour minimum wage who also think food should be free?
It costs money to produce food.
The more people you want to feed, the more money it costs.
Food production is not free. Food distribution is not free.
Then it should be a task of the State, as “feeding people” is, quite obviously, a task Too Big to Fail. And, as such, the State can (and should) just automatically print the money needed to reward the work done. Feeding the hungry should not depend on a “budget”. A budget is basically putting a price on human lives.
Great, you just caused hyperinflation for everything else and destroyed the economy.
https://www.netsuite.com/portal/resource/articles/business-strategy/hyperinflation.shtml
Of course, but maybe destroying the modern economy is a good thing. Things like serving essential needs causing hyperinflation showcases that modern economy is purposefully built to make people lose. No matter what you try to do to help society, something (or rather, someone) counterplays you.
IMO the real solution is that things that are essential, like food and health, should not depend on money exchange to be provided, period. Sure, producers of food and providers of health should be paid for their work, but that payment should not have a codependence with the fact that the hungry or unhealthy person get the attention they need.
that things that are essential, like food and health, should not depend on money exchange to be provided, period.
The problem with that is the people providing the food and health services still need to survive.
Doctors need to pay their rent. Farmers need to buy feed, seed, and fertilizer. Everyone pays for water.
So once you go down the road of making it impossible to charge for services that need to bring in money to literally keep the lights on, you collapse the economy, and no, that’s NOT a good thing. That road leads to chaos and death.
I’m not saying doctors et all should not be paid for their work. I’m saying it should not depend on a money transaction on the afflicted citizen. I think it’s perfectly feasible to, for example, have the State pay for things that are essential, it’s kind of the entire role of the State after all. Or even better, give doctors and providers of those services the same treatment as in not collecting from them for stuff.
Also, if there’s such things as “companies Too Big To Fail should be handed over to the State”, then that also applies to Tasks Too Big To Fail. Like, you know, keeping your citizens alive. I insist: the core task of the State is to keep the Country alive.
If that collapses the economy, IMO that’s an indicative that the economy model is not good, or perhaps even unethical.
“Our labor has conquered scarcity”… Bro they’ve conquered scarcity now? I didn’t even know! If someone has conquered the universal reality of scarcity they can ask whatever they want as minimum wage. 🤣
Dangit bobbi
under communism, food is only produced because the central planning committee set a quota for it. unfortunately, distribution requires resources the central planning committee did not account for and the foodstuffs rot in the fields.
Under socialism food isn’t produce.
In your fantasy maybe
Name just one socialist country that have produce any :)
