It mildly terrifies me that a lot of things we think are natural are just things that were invented by American advertising agencies in the 40s and 50s

The nuclear family, diamond engagement rings, owning a motor car, etc are all works of fiction that we have subsumed into being part of our culture, instead of it being astroturfed by a bunch of skilled marketers

Even the idea of a woman being a homemaker while her husband goes out to work is, in itself, a fiction. That never happened. Women have been working for hundreds of years, but only in dirty jobs. The only women who could be homemakers were those whose husbands were wealthy and worked in the service economy… And therefore able to purchase microwaves and washing machines!

@yassie_j My wife's a home maker right now. I will tell her she's fiction.

Okay, I told her she's fiction; this was her reply:

"That's erasure of me and my choices as a woman; who would say that?"

Which I think is hilarious.

@havoc I am trying so desperately to find out who asked

@yassie_j I mean you stated it:
"Even the idea of a woman being a homemaker while her husband goes out to work is, in itself, a fiction. "

So I wanted to tell my wife she was fictional because I thought it would be a gas. Her response was... cutting, to put it mildly.

@havoc you missed the point spectacularly, go read Yas's post a couple more times my guy

@cobweb Oh no, I get it, I just think a lot of that shit rocks.

The nuclear family where you can all afford to live on one salary? That kicks ass. The car? Freedom to go anywhere? That's an easy sell, it wasn't dastardly marketers.

And the whole point about home making wasn't very solid at all - lots of people choose it because it's fucking great.

@havoc that's the myth though, lots of people didn't choose it because they could not. The 50s and 60s homemaker is literally a media concoction.

@cobweb @havoc thank you, this is exactly what my post is about

Some people seem to believe that “well, I didn’t experience it, so it must not be true!!”

@yassie_j @cobweb If it's a choice and people who are not rich are doing it...

What's stopping anyone else?

@havoc @yassie_j @cobweb can someone working a minimum wage job do it?

@Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j @cobweb

That's the thing I think would save Capitalism, actually. Every full-time job should be able to function as the head of a traditional household.

I think the animosity and political division we have today is because workers do not have a large enough slice of the pie.

Minimum wage workers are the lowest paid 1% of workers. I guess it only works for the 99% of the rest of workers.

@havoc @Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j why does capitalism need saving? Every full time job could be able to support a family of any type, not just nuclear family, if we would just leave it behind

@cobweb @Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j
Something like 55% of Americans own their homes. It seems to be working for quite a number of people?

I'd rather get that percentage even higher, but... is the system all bad as is? It seems to be working for a lot of people.

@havoc @cobweb @yassie_j the actual figure is 65%. However this is not a useful statistic as it lumps people who own outright in with people who are paying down hundreds of thousands of debt.

That is ignoring the fact that home ownership is not a good heuristic for quality of life. How many of those "owners" are one car accident away from losing everything?
@Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j @cobweb @havoc And since when is "65% of people might have autonomy to do what they want in their own home" a convincing argument for capitalism..?
@girlmaya @Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j @cobweb There's a convincing number of people who are making the system work for them; I haven't seen an alternate system that would cover as many bases with as much freedom and as many people having nice lives.
@havoc @Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j @cobweb Have you considered not letting such a system restrict you at all? Have you considered real life?
@girlmaya @Len0w0ThinkBad @yassie_j @cobweb real life is constrained by the need to gather resources and allocate time, which is all these systems really are?
@havoc That's obviously not what "all these systems really are"

@girlmaya I suppose we should include "defense".

There will never be a self-organizing anarchistic state because it could never maintain a standing army of sufficient size. It's also why self-organizing principles fail beyond a certain size (what works for a commune, doesn't work for a polis, state, or country).

Or are we saying these things take on a kind of emergent life of their own, beyond the wishes and needs of their populace? Interesting either way, lemme know.