Quote Originally Posted by Aramas View Post
You can't really threaten to quit unless you're one of the rare few who are indisposable. In the vast majority of situations, the corporate employer has absolute control. There is no independence when your employer can just hire another desperate human being and work them like a dog.

Politicians don't listen to anyone but lobbyists.
This kind of defeatist attitude isn't very helpful. It's the main reason major corporations and politicians are able to act with impunity in the first place. You have to unionise and fight (hard) for your rights.


If people want to spend their money on beer and weed, that's up to them. I don't think advertizing is so advanced that it can mind zap people into buying things when they have urgent health issues instead. If they do that, they probably don't care much about their health. Some people might be that susceptible to advertizing, but I don't think most are.
I'll admit that it's a bit pompous to lecture people about what to do with their money. Being somewhat sympathetic to (left wing) anarchism myself, I'm also tempted to give people the benefit of the doubt that they'll automatically do what's in their long-term collective interest. But I'm also afraid (hopefully it's an irrational fear) of what might happen if they don't. A sick and uneducated population is easier to persuade than a vibrant one; it can be persuaded to give up its rights, including the right to have UBI.

I'm afraid of a scenario where enough momentum is built for literally everything to be privatised. I don't want to live under a Libertarian system where life is dominated by corporate allegiances and market transactions, and where there is no possibility of appealing to impartial public authorities.

One thing that a Capitalist culture is good at is corroding "sacred" institutions and replacing them with consumer-driven ones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; the meritocratic thrust of Capitalism was instrumental in breaking up the dominance of the ossified hereditary aristocracy. Religion is another example of something that - once it lost hard political power - has gone from being the singular authority over social relations and the forms of spirituality to just another consumer choice in the "market" of ideas. Once again, this may or may not be a bad thing depending on your attitude towards religion. I personally draw the line at preserving the authority of citizen-oriented (not consumer-oriented) institutions.