this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2023
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Antiwork
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Nah. People get really pissed when they're REALLY hungry.
We're kept at a perfect balance, we can't afford top shelf stuff, but most people have enough to get by.
Sure, it feels like everyone is a medium-sized misadventure away from financial collapse, but still, we get by. We have Internet, shows to stream, cheap shitty fast food next door.
No one can be bothered to go outside to chop heads demanding to redistribute wealth.
Especially considering that half the population has been talked into believing that by pulling your boot straps you can get as rich as Elon Musk, and Trump is literally Jesus.
There's no revolution incoming, just occasional angry tweets.
Revolutions are most closely correlated with food insecurity, yes.
But in today's JIT economy, and the vulnerability of our supply chains, it's not hard to imagine a set of circumstances where suddenly a huge swath of the population suddenly not knowing where their next three meals are coming from.
Good point. COVID exposed the weakness of the JIT model, and then we all went "huh, that's a funny noise for an engine to make" and kept using JIT.
What does JIT really mean though in the context of consumer goods? There's plenty of stores stocked full of stuff that will be on the shelves until the food expires. Sure some stuff like TP got wiped out but nobody was buying the random brand of wild rice I like. Does that mean we should have more regional stores of specific items that move quickly instead of trucking it all from Bentonville?
Climate change will push things at some point
Probably in our life time too
80% of Americans deal with precarity. Food precarity, rent precarity, job precarity, family precarity, health precarity.
So a lot of us are feeling the discontent.
But we lefties arent used to planning violent protest (say sabotage and mischief. We'd rather not actually kill anyone.)
One possibility is the right-wing doing some sparking. A group of militant extremist reactionaries might load up and massacre a venue to get the civil war started.
Or the government could pass some laws resulting in mass incarcerations of non-violent offenders (say abortion seekers or LGBT+). Once that starts turning into capital punishment of young women protests might turn into arson of police and state facilities. We saw a bit of this with Iran with the Mahsa Amini protests or in 2020 US with the George Floyd protests.