CrypticCatfist
Picard's Little Teacup 
pretty much all my politics stem from "if you will die without it, it should be free and easy to get" and you'll be astounded how "radical" that makes you in the face of today's society
Bluedotmo@picardsteacup this is pretty much where I am. The things that don't fit there still leave a lot of space for people to make a lot of money.
pancakes🔜Bed@picardsteacup Living isn't a right under capitalism its a privilege
gavinisdie 
@squeakypancakes @picardsteacup living is a Product
@gavinisdie @picardsteacup Living as a service
Sally Strange@squeakypancakes @picardsteacup I was thinking of something similar: Living as a Subscription
Stephanie 🎀@squeakypancakes @picardsteacup Anyone who likes capitalism is likely someone who was selected by it to live. It certainly has not selected me for survival.
@picardsteacup it's seems that if you get diabetes in the US, it's literally the picture of the guy shrugging with the text "Guess I'll die"
🐚 Undo Influence 🐚I've said before that the last 30 years didn't radicalize me much. It's just that everyone else I know went blissfully along with Neoliberalism. So just by digging my heels in to stay in place and yelling, "NO!" I managed to look like a radical in comparison. :/
zbrown@xenophora @picardsteacup I'm basically the most centrist radical socialist you ever did see, it's just Tories went to crazyville and Labour drifted after them
Great that we have all these slo-mo atrocities to bond over. :/
I'll make snacks.
@xenophora @picardsteacup Better be quick, looks like we are accelerating…
Who needs human rights anyway?
I hocked mine to pay the water bill. :P
Packy Anderson@xenophora @picardsteacup Same. My politics are still 1960s centrist with a souçon of civil rights liberal. But with today's Overton Window, I'm now a radical commie libtard who hates my country and wants to betray every principle it was founded on.
Catbus@picardsteacup wild what happens when a society bases its entire philosophy on the profit motive
64 Islands Aroha Cooperative@picardsteacup @jpp "The poor must be punished for being poor, otherwise what would make them want to make us rich?!?"
Callie Laren@picardsteacup Exactly, why do I spend more on insulin every month than I do on things I actually enjoy?
Mojosue@picardsteacup
Can I eat drink breathe it
Can I eat drink breathe it
Sad Tomato@picardsteacup I want you to run the world for saying this.
Gunnar Grímsson@picardsteacup Yup. Agreed.
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE@picardsteacup Sounds nice, but as I'm sure you are aware this very rapidly gets very complicated. Eg (1) some children will die without a change to road safety, but banning ordinary people from driving cars around isn't practical politics, or (2) what happens when the "it" that I need to keep me alive costs society so much that providing "it" means that three other people will have to die because they'll have to go without other "it"s?
And even the "obviously" "easy" stuff we have trouble with - we don't seem to be able to provide clean drinking water world wide, and we can't even provide insulin (one of the cheapest and most effective life saving medical interventions) in the world's richest country.
@TimWardCam i would argue that every example you just posited could be solved by nationalizing the industry required to provide them and having our taxes pay for it. Which was the point of the original post. I struggle to think of an example where my survival would come at the detriment of others in a socialized society.
@picardsteacup The obvious example is where the total wealth of society is insufficient to provide every technically possible high tech medical intervention to everybody on the planet.
@TimWardCam ah good point. We shouldn't even bother trying then
dawnfry@picardsteacup @TimWardCam
Supporting work-from-home is just one large way we can make a dent in road safety. It’s not a single answer problem, like most. But there are ways we can take steps to solve many problems at once if our gov puts people above shareholder profits.
Medication is overpriced because it is privatized and unregulated. Infrastructure because Rs defund public works to “prove” gov doesn’t work.
The Manchurian Idiot
Lucien 
All it would take is people focusing on people, not profits.
Ex. During the height of COVID lockdowns in the US, corporations experienced an excess production of food. And you know what they did with that extra food? Literally threw it in a hole to rot. Because that was more "cost effective" and "better for business" than getting it to people who needed it.
Wayne Werner@picardsteacup it's wild that the bar is so low it's below ground. Like, we haven't even made it to making period products free, which they should be. And contraceptives.
I'm a radical, and proud of my positions, but depressed that's not just as common as breathing.
Never@picardsteacup its crazy that taking care of peoples basic needs so they can live a dignified life is seen as more extreme than "everyone for themselves and make sure to kick people when they are down"
redheadedfemmeLove your username.
Sapphic Hazard@picardsteacup I really wish more people thought this way.
If you can be charged money for the pleasure of living, you by definition lack a right to life. Simple as that.
sparseMatrix ✅✅✅ 📻"If you will die without it, it should be free and easy to get"
This is beautiful.
It is The Way,
When We Vote We Win@picardsteacup for me it’s: essential services need to be managed collectively. Of course there is plenty to debate on what is ‘essential’, ‘managed’ and ‘collectively’.
Bellison22
gregsdennis@picardsteacup does it work the other way? Does "you're not gonna die without it" imply it should be a commodity?
JW prince of CPH@picardsteacup To some people, "you will die without it" is the perfect idea of a business model, and it never fails to make me sick...
Sunyshore (ナギサシティ) 🌐🇹🇼🏳️⚧️@picardsteacup I sympathize with this, but there are two issues:
1) The government can't afford everything that ought to be free under this model. To pay for everyone to get "free" housing, for example, they'd have to raise taxes on the middle class, and everyone's taxes (on average) would go up by the cost of the housing. Better to expand Section 8 vouchers so more people can afford housing through the housing market.
🧵 1/3
@picardsteacup
2) The government guaranteeing that it will pay for something that is supply-constrained often leads to a price spiral - as with housing, education, healthcare, and childcare. Better to undo the regulations that are artificially constraining the supply and then see if people still cannot afford the good without subsidies. Or loosen the regulations and expand subsidies simultaneously, if policymakers prefer that.
🧵 2/3
Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance - Niskanen Center
The regulatory roots of cost disease explain why fiscal conservatives are poorly served by strategies focused on austerity and direct budget controls.
@picardsteacup
And no, there aren't enough rich people to shoulder the entire burden. At some point, you *have to* raise taxes on the middle class. Nordic countries do this - the government levies high taxes on most people and provides a lot of social services. And that's okay. But fundamentally, citizens still pay for their "free" stuff.
🧵 3/3
Justin Wilkins@sunysh0re @picardsteacup I don’t see an issue with raising taxes in order to make sure essentials like education, healthcare and housing are available to everyone at zero or very low cost. There is no societal downside.
@sunysh0re @picardsteacup Tax the hell out of the rich and scale back on warfare. 🎀
Charles J Gervasi ⚡🛡️🥥@picardsteacup It seems to border radical because it's close to saying if someone might die, it gives someone else the right to enslave people, to make people produce the needed goods or services. I get value from living in a world without poverty, but I don't want to work the problem at gunpoint.
@cgervasi @picardsteacup
We're already at "work or die" because the necessities of life cost money. That's not far off slavery at all in my book. Especially when so many people do not get to choose who they work for, what they do, or for how long.
We're already at "work or die" because the necessities of life cost money. That's not far off slavery at all in my book. Especially when so many people do not get to choose who they work for, what they do, or for how long.
@rioichi4 @picardsteacup Human labor supporting life is a fact of life, although less and less so as tools take on tasks formerly done by humans.
@cgervasi @picardsteacup We as a society have to grow our own food, yes. But it shouldn't only be available to those deemed profitable under capitalism. We absolutely have the power to take care of everyone, and I just think we should.
@rioichi4 @picardsteacup I don't understand what "deemed profitable under capitalism" means, but I agree we absolutely have the power to take of everyone, and we should do it.
@cgervasi please explain how that approaches any form of enslavement
@picardsteacup In a free society, people produce goods and services for their own benefit. If you say someone must produce things out of obligation, rather than by choice in exchange for something they want, it starts to take on a trait of slavery. OTOH, if we don't know use force to collect taxes to provide non-excludable goods/services, people will freeload. Some people will pay for fighting poverty and providing security and others will freeload. There's no easy answer.
@picardsteacup I read a few excerpts in college. I would probably understand better now. I would do better with an interpretation that contextualizes it for the modern reader.
@cgervasi This is the one I read! The original was way too dense, but this one is a good breakdown, with pictures
@picardsteacup My library doesn't have it the original or that popularization of Das Kapital, so I requested the Communist Manifesto.
Manuel@picardsteacup @isotopp absolutely correct! I would even go further and widen the scope to „everything that an individual has no option not to buy“. Because e.g. a smartphone with internet access is pretty much a must, otherwise you loose access to connections to people/family/work, loose access to learning resources which would mean you would not be able to participate fully in society like everyone else.
@manu @picardsteacup @isotopp
Withpout the internet you have the library for info, and writing letters as well as in person visits to keep in touch with others.
Instant access has been an option for 30 years. The others have been an option for thousands abd here we are living as a result.
@jimy6 @picardsteacup @isotopp sure but culture has changed in those 30 years and if you want to have equal opportunities in life, access to certain technologies doesn’t seem optional anymore
Siggi Bjarnason 🤠@picardsteacup yep totally connect with this. Those of us that don't want to see people die for lack of basic necessities are such extreme radical leftist. To suggest that food and housing should be human rights instead of privilege for the rich is not as crazy of an idea as the conservatives make it out to be.
#compassion #humanity
#compassion #humanity
Dr Kim Foale@picardsteacup i feel the same with saying "you should be allowed to do what you want with your body and get supported to do that"
Phil Thane ✅@picardsteacup I hadn't thought of it in those terms but you've summed it up nicely. #Housing, #food, #health & #SocialCare
Tim Y.C 🌐🌍@picardsteacup "die" is a very low barometer. Id argue we should have free education all the way to an associates degree. People wont die without it, but its necessary for growing a knowledge based economy
Nothings Monstered@picardsteacup "Your money or your life" is not a legitimate business transaction.