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What gets me is when right-wingers act like choosing your insurance company makes you a freer person.
No it doesn't. Most of the time, you just get what your employer gives you. Even if I could choose, I'd rather not have to make any choice, and just be able to go see a fucking doctor and go get a fucking prescription. Unnecessary bullshit getting between people and actual necessities isn't freedom.
trade offer
I receive: your actual life freedom
You receive: ice cream
My wife would choose ice cream every time.
You don't even get the ice cream. You just get the opportunity to pick which ice cream you're buying.
This reminded me of of a documentary I watched about when east and west Germany merged and a lady from the east German side was bitching about how there were more than 2 flavors of yogurt (plain and strawberry) now.
The worst part is most of not all of the 27 varieties of ice cream have gotten objectively worse. They offer less of a worse product for more money than they did 20 years ago. So we don't really even have that anymore.
This doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism, nor with propaganda. This is the difference between "Freedom to" and "Freedom from" and which is valued more. Capitalism works under both systems.
"Freedom from" is a more European model, where the state is more likely to provide a good social safety net, regulate against potential harms, and more tightly curb free speech in the interest of protecting others from having to hear hateful things, or gun rights in the interest of protecting people from potential violence. "Freedom to" is a more American model where you have fewer restrictions but far fewer protections. You're essentially on your own if someone who hates you wants to get a gun, but you're just as allowed to get one to defend yourself. You can say whatever you want, but have to deal with well-meaning bleeding hearts defending nazis and their right to spout hate (or you did, anyway - this is changing somewhat). There are pros and cons to both systems of value, but we should probably recognize them for what they are rather than tilting at windmills.
It's true!
Americans have more freedom to go bankrupt, get sued, get imprisoned, get shot, get robbed, get fired, get exploited and to die.
I get that you're being flippant, but they also have more freedom to make way more money, say what they want even if they're assholes, protect themselves when they live out in the country, do what they want with their land, start a business with less regulation, etc. You could also just as easily say Europeans are free to have more than half their income seized to pay for other people's benefits, free to be thrown in jail for saying something mean about someone, etc.
I might agree with your specific points, but I think it's important to emphasize to anyone who blindly reads your post and is like "Yeah!!! America sux!" that there are unquestionably costs and benefits to both systems, and just because you value one more than the other doesn't make the other one wrong, it makes it different. If you think one is "right" and one is "wrong", I can guarantee you haven't fully examined the pros and cons. (As an aside, there are also tons of issues in America and Europe that make them good or bad places to live that are unrelated to this philosophical problem of what constitutes freedom.)
But there will always be people who value more freedom (freedom to) over more protection (freedom from) and vice versa. At one extreme, you have anarchy and the Purge everyday, at the other: living in a prison. Finding the right balance between safety and freedom is an ancient problem, and recognizing that the OP clearly thinks only their definition is the "right" one on a multivariate scale with many different equilibriums is the epitome of "Wake up sheeple" and assuming anyone who has different values than you is a rube.
In any event, attributing any of it to capitalism is just wrong.
I am 31 flavors and then some. - Ani Difranco
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
But but but Rocky Road!
goddamn communists tryna take ma moosetracks
The Conquest of Ice Cream
Here is a good explanation of how they got from "freedom" to that. An important aspect of freedom is self ownership (if someone else owns you, you are not free), and:
If you use your body to pick fruit, that fruit becomes yours, even though you didn’t make it. If you use your body to land on Tristan de Cunha and plant a flag there and maybe pick some coconuts, that makes Tristan de Cunha and everything on your property and that of your heirs forever, even though you definitely didn’t make the island. And if someone else lands on Tristan de Cunha the day after you, you by right control every facet of their life on the island and they have to do whatever you say or else leave.
Ice cream? It's Frozen Dairy Treat now, and they're pairing down the flavors.
Hear me out … what if creating and providing 27 flavors of ice cream to people IS some one’s free creative potential. And they were able to keep doing it full time after monetizing it.
The real joke is that when people create these businesses by doing something they like, all of a sudden there’s no time to do the fun stuff because 90% of the time is now dedicated to business work.
Never ruin a good hobby by turning it into a business. I do think that's what the original post is getting at. Sure there may be a few passionate people (with ownership stakes) driving the creation of new flavors, but most people involved in actually providing the ice cream are just alienated teens with carpal tunnel.
Even in the ideal case... what kind of freedom is the freedom to be controlled by your desire to eat ice cream?
I'm not saying this is the case but I am curious.
I have an image in my head of children of very wealthy families having the means to pursue their own creative potential, and just not.
One could argue that we are predisposed to being 'happy' when we're challenged, and if we have those means provided to us our mental wellbeing will suffer.
Or maybe I've just misunderstood.
For sure challenges are a good thing, but freedom is to choose your own challenges and not be forced to do something you do not want to do to survive.
I see a similar argument from conservative relatives sometimes too. That work is like forced purpose for the nations layabouts. I don't know how common that is - some people will just do nothing I guess, but I think most people have some kind of hobby or interest they'd pursue if they had the time/means. Maybe I'm biased. Most of the folks in my family make and fix things. When they retire, they step up how much they fix/make. I've heard a couple of them say they don't know how they got anything done when they were working all day. Years ago now, when my job had no work for me for a few weeks, I stepped up my oil painting to around eight hours a day. Even now, whenever I get downtime I try to put it to use (my post history is full of those projects). Retired folks are often much more involved in local government, charities, and nonprofits, not because older people are inherently better but because they have the time, and they don't have to focus just on doing profitable things anymore.
I think I might agree a bit on where our individual purpose comes from? And this is wild speculation on my part, just something I've noticed as I try to understand what motivates people who seem to work much differently than I do. It feels like the default around here is to aspire to owning stuff, boats and cars and luxury toys. It seems like the folks who put their ambitions towards charities, helping kids, conserving land, etc, often had something in their life that snagged them and made them care about stuff outside that default. Like, someone makes a ton of money playing sports but uses it to fund youth programs - that person got caught by something outside that default, they found a purpose. Their teammate who just buys a mansion, maybe they never did. I don't know if that makes sense.
I hear you, and thanks for the well thought out articulated response!
Personally, I don't have any hobbies that are easy to do day to day. Apart from maybe playing computer games but I really don't consider this good for my wellbeing like other hobbies are.
My less day to day hobbies are sports that I need to take a trip to be able to do, I'm not so sure how an expensive trip would fit in to a world where I don't work to earn the money to go on that trip.
The work fills the time between trips, and also pays for the trips. This makes it hard to untangle those in my head.
That's really interesting to me - Can I ask if you enjoy the work? Or if it gives you a sense of purpose or a sense of being part of something bigger?
Personally, I work at a job I don't really enjoy but which I'm good at, and which gives me enough time to work on the stuff I care about (from creative projects to fixing furniture and computers to give away). My hobbies are cheap but I'm saving to try and conserve land, and I suppose even if most of my money wasn't earmarked for that, I'd still work the job because we need health insurance and money to survive emergencies (although I think I'd do more donations per year rather than saving it for one big project).
I derive most of my sense of purpose from the projects, from helping out in my community, and from the conservation stuff. If the need for work vanished somehow, I'd still work on all that other stuff, I think I'd either focus on it more or I'd take on additional volunteer tasks.
As for enjoying the work. I enjoy the challenge of it and get a good buzz when I feel I've done something well.
I don't however feel like the things I do contribute positively to my community.
Where I live, I have conflicting feelings about the community stuff. It seems there are very few others who wish to help their community, which in turn makes me less motivated to do so. I've been in the position where some help, or even basic empathy, from those around me would have been greatly appreciated, but it was just not there.
Purpose wise, I get most of this from providing good experiences for my family, but some months just making sure the house is warm and there's food on the table is all I can manage. (I don't want that to sound like I'm asking for pity/charity there. It's just the reality of the current economic trend.)
If the need for work vanished, I like to think I'd pick up other hobbies but I only have my teenage self to compare against in terms of existing without a job - and that guy wasn't exactly making the best decisions for his mental wellbeing and hobbies.
Do you think there are enough people with a passion for undesirable things like picking up garbage or building roads to support society without some form of external motivation?
I'm not against currency existing, or people getting paid for their labor. I am against things like medical care being locked away behind a paywall, and the threat of things like homelessness, deprivation of medical care, crushing debt, starvation/freezing, being used to crudgel people into working those unpleasant jobs (often more than one, often with no benefits).
I think in a better society people will still want more than basic survival, and if society needs someone to do unpleasant tasks, it'll still need to make doing those tasks worthwhile.
And to tie it back to the comment I was replying to, I'm skeptical that those unpleasant jobs are enriching the lives of the people doing them, or providing challenges that make them happy when they wouldn't have otherwise been.
There will always be challenges, even if your needs are taken care of. It is then up to you to overcome your own limits and grow, and figure out what you want to do with your life.
If all of my needs were met with no question? I would absolutely be volunteering at food kitchens and maker labs, because that's fun and fulfilling.