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Here's what I think I've been leaving out: polite company generally steers away from excessive scrutiny of power and capital. To be charitable, most of this might be because it makes sense for each individual to focus primarily on what they can directly control: themselves
But you know that's not the whole picture. Exceptional individuals may sometimes thrive despite systemic oppression and injustice, the way some women have managed to build solid careers despite directly dealing with people like Harvey Weinstein. But that doesn't excuse injustice
It took centuries (?) of feminism and over a decade of whisper networks to address Harvey's exploitation of women. A few decades ago, most of us wouldn't even have seen it as particularly bad or wrong. There's something similar about the relationship between capital and labor
It may be decades more before we collectively begin to wake up to the fact that there's something unjust about the way Jeff Bezos is worth $100,000,000,000 while Amazon workers are collapsing and struggling at their shifts https://t.co/MfhNT8wRln
Of course this stuff goes far beyond any single company. The world is a brutal place, with sweatshops and human trafficking and literal slavery. I don't have any specific plans or proposals on how to fix it in some short timeline. But I do think it's something we should consider
We should get people thinking about how toxic capitalism is a sort of globally distributed Harvey Weinstein, groping and harassing workers every day, grabbing them by the dignity. Surely we should scrutinize the powerful more than the downtrodden?
Many people go through a phase in their teens where they sense the unfairness of the system. They make a few attempts to correct it. They fail to make a dent. And so they get disillusioned and give up, one way or another. We should collectively be more strategic about this, IMHO
A minor tragedy: you can't talk too intensely for too long about this sort of thing before you begin to get shunned and disinvited from tables, rooms and parties. Anybody who cares too much abt oppression (sexism, racism, you name it) gets labelled "troublesome", "tedious", etc
Dumbledore praised Neville for standing up to his friends. That was a pretty neat and tidy situation. Now imagine if Neville stood up to his friends, not about a single dramatic mistake, but a broader, systemic problem – and they stopped being his friends altogether. Rough stuff
And so each and every person almost inevitably has to be tarred with the burden, the cost of compromise and complicity. It's either that or become a martyr. And there's no guarantee that your martyrdom will be appreciated, or even effective! You just look like an angry madman
Nice: https://t.co/bQYLsaVpY2