Reforms are quite easy to roll back.

Yeah, sure, which is why you don’t put most of your energy into reforms. But if it’s as simple as voting for a progressive vs. not voting, that’s a low effort thing you can do with a reasonable expectation of slightly improving the world.

Cool emoji use

Remember, that is exactly what an exploiter will say to you. They'll always try to place the blame on the individual for the damage they're doing collectively. Same with the BP Oil campaign when they invented the "carbon footprint of the individual" while being one of the worst polluters in the world.

If you look at real, concrete, systemic changes in the world, the times where it has happened because of "optimism" is close to zero.

Remember that the exploiters will always demand that people use the proper channels, because they own those channels, and can make sure nothing ever gets through.

There are only two ways to deal with exploiters. You can try and use your voice a few times, and if that doesn't work, you start using your hands.

I do things that make no difference globally because I don't want to take part in the bad things.

I did not vote for the government that is ruling my country. My single vote did not make any difference, but it makes me feel better that I did not vote for this government.

I travel by train instead of a plane and I ride a bike instead of driving a car because I don't want to be part of the club of high CO2 emission citizen.

Doing that does not matter globally, but I feel better about myself that way. I don't tell other people what to do or to follow my example, but I think some people around me do notice and maybe it does get them thinking?

But I have no illusions, most people are busy enough and do what is most convenient every time. I am the only adult in my circle that does not own a car. But I feel powerless beyond my personal life to change anything.

I know it is not good enough, but I don't know how to change other people.

I did try and sometimes I still do try, but to no effect besides annoying people. 🤷

Don't make Perfect the enemy of Progress.

You have to take into context the type of change that's being discussed. Destroying things takes less time than building things.

Interesting, now I know that type of argument has a name. I think many rationalizations are a veneer for laziness. Taking the stance that doing something is useless means you don't have to feel guilty about not doing it. Likewise, when there's a widespread delusion that simple, ineffective actions make us heroes, people will do those actions and nothing else, because giving themselves a gold star is all they really want. It's important not to confuse spending hours in social media circlejerks with "spreading awareness".

Individual actions rarely cause big changes, but they help individuals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.

Hiding behind vague hypotheticals because you voted for a union busting genocider with a staff full of Epstein patrons

Plastic pollution in the ocean is not from consumer waste, it's from industrial fishing. Plastic straws LITERALLY DO NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUE. It's a fantastic example of this.

Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy.

Look at the people telling you to engage in these ways.

Sorry, can’t hear you over your failure to solve the entire problem. /s

Well, your negative comment made me spiral and transformed me into a speed bump on the road to progress. /s

For the sake of clarity, I meant actions in the sense of direct action; typically some sort of anarchism flavoured so prefiguration was often at least kept in mind. Nothing has ever snowballed of course, although some actions have spawned some lovely little related communities that are thriving too (and others that since ran out of steam, true); I'll always choose small victories over chasing the best loss as electoralism endlessly expounds. But I don't at all disagree with the sentiment!

...add a few more special investigators for high tax evasion crimes to the IRS (or whatever your gov org is called) and you'll reap more for the state than you'll ever could with welfare fraud.

The head of the German tax union (DSTG) with 75000 members who advise German IRS employees, intervene for tax equality, fight tax evasion into tax havens and offshore companies says the yearly sum of high tax evasion fraud amounts to 200 billion, while welfare fraud amounts to 275 million. He advised the new government under the ex-Blackrock chancellor Merz at the start of their legislation to make this his priority.

What did the government do of course (in corporation with the so called workers party SPD) recently in a whimsy attempt to bring down state debt? Create a barrage of reforms all targeting the poor, especially those receiving welfare, but also working families, the health system and workers rights. Then he openly states at podium discussions the German workers are to lazy compared to Chinese workers. He actively pushed the far right AfD to record election results and his own parties to record negative results.

The corrupt finance minister Katharina Reiche (greedy POS ex fossil fuel manager) of the same party is actively working to eradicate the last chances of the country to get a foothold in green tech like wind power generation, heatpumps and green hydrogen for steel production (like she did 2012 in another gov for the solar industry) and pro fossil fuel industries.

This all lead to record level negative popularity for the conservative party, record level rates German Angst regarding economic downfall of citizens in recent public polls and record level popularity of the right wing AfD (whose level of economic profession and that of those electing them shows in a proposal to tax all income classes the same with a flat tax of 25%).

The only ray of hope is the left party who recently won the Berlin elections whose first priority there is to transfer flats in the hands of greedy flat corporations, working only for the share holder value, to state property.

Agreed but if they say the same things about bringing back the systems that Trump has abolished, I would be more suspicious of them trying to benefit from those changes while pretending that their interests are aligned with their constituents. We have seen how fast progressive democrats can move when they want, like Mamdani. So that makes me believe that in many cases previous "change takes time" were delaying strategies.

This is the epitome of the issue I'm talking about -- you people seem to presume the engagement ends at the simple step. For some, it will, but those people weren't likely to engage larger in the first place and reducing the consumer waste doesn't hurt.

For others, it will make them aware of the larger call to action, to get them to join advocacy groups that punish industrial and systemic issues.

I can't stop fascism or climate change or pollution on my own. I need MORE people engaged and telling people we need all or nothing solutions can only lower the number of people willing to take action. Individual, even trivial steps matter.

Look at the people telling you to give up.

Certainly that's a factor and it's good to scrutinize.

No one is saying to give up. The fact that you hear "stop wasting your energy trying to solve things in ways that are controlled by the people profiting from the problem" and interpret that as "give up" tells us all exactly how engaged you are with anything that actually might make a difference.

Your lack of reading comprehension tells me exactly how much you think.

My point being: 'give up' is what some people, who would otherwise be our allies, are hearing. Stop telling *them* to give up.

You won't make more anti-capitalists by squashing the people who see the problems and want to solve them just not in your way. That only accelerates us towards the fascism you claim to be against.

Your lack of reading comprehension

Can you reddit fucks please learn to say "That's not what I meant"

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.

My point being: 'give up' is what some people, who would otherwise be our allies, are hearing. Stop telling *them* to give up.

The actual point being that nobody who hears "give up" when they're told to stop wasting energy on the "solutions" provided by the people who don't want the problem solved will ever be an ally until they first stop giving oxygen to the non-solutions. Until then they are an adversary, not an ally.

I also kind of hate the rhetoric that a single vote doesn't count. One of the local primaries this year came down to a difference of four votes.

Same. When I was at a point where I was skipping a meal a day to save for rent, it was the boots problem. If I could get the nicer, more durable thing, it was always worth it in the long run but not usually affordable up front. But sometimes there are easy wins. I found my first and only cast iron skillet I've had in the last 15 years covered in grease & surface level rust next to a dumpster on the way home. Some oven cleaner and flaxseed oil and it has been good to me ever since.

It started then by saying no to eating out bc it's unaffordable, now it's saying no to eating out at a lot of places bc they have awful food, service, and management treats their workers like crap. Starbucks wasn't worth it to me for a long time before the anti union stuff, now I have two reasons (actually more) never to go there again.

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.