ghost of the valley

sticker design based on my sis telling me my favorite flower (lily of the valleys) look like ghosts

[campanula medium] canterbury bell

[lavatera trimestris] annual mallow

[tanacetum parthenium] feverfew [hieracium aurantiacum] orange hawkweed

🌙

If a country produces enough food to feed everyone within its borders but people still starve to death because they can’t afford the food, those people are dying of of capitalism.

If a country has enough farm workers and farms to produce all the food it needs to feed its people but doesn’t because those farms are being used to produce cash crops for export, the people who starve there are dying of capitalism.

If a country has the ability to replace its failing infrastructure but refuses to do so because paying for it means raising taxes on the richest 0.01% and/or messing with the profits of the energy companies, everyone who dies because of that bad infrastructure–from drinking lead-poisoned water, or being on a bridge that’s decades overdue for replacement when it collapses, or standing too close to a power converter that’s literally never had maintenance done on it when it explodes–those people died of capitalism.

If someone dies of exposure while living in a country with more empty houses than homeless people, they died of capitalism.

If someone dies of a disease we��ve known how to treat for decades or even centuries because they couldn’t afford to go to the hospital, they died of capitalism.

If a corporation builds a factory that dumps toxic waste into a nearby river and the people who drink that river water die of it, they died of capitalism.

If weapon manufacturers are able to strong-arm and/or cajole and/or bribe a certain country’s politicians into fighting endless wars on false pretexts in order to justify a bottomless military budget that can be spent on their overpriced garbage that can’t even defeat the Taliban–to the point where the issue isn’t even debated in said country’s so-called “free and fair” elections any more–everyone who died in those wars died of capitalism.

If a country is incapable of developing itself because the terms of its IMF loan dictates that it privatizes its economy, allowing foreign multinationals to come in and suck out all the resources and wealth it could have used to improve the life of its citizens, anyone in that country who could have been saved if they just lived in a more developed part of the world died of capitalism.

If a country can afford a UBI and doesn’t have one–since again, this means taxing capitalists–every single robbery, burglary, mugging, etc. that happens within its borders can be laid at the feet of capitalism. Meaning that yes, people who die because of these things gone wrong are also victims of capitalism.

If a state is wholly owned by the capitalist class, then any violence done by the state in furtherance of the goals of said capitalist class–such as police cracking down on protestors, on top of every aforementioned example–is violence done by capitalism.

no offence but i cant believe there are terfs out there who think alison bechdel is one of them…alison bechdel..who wrote and drew this comic……..

Oof I'm reblogging this for reference because my PC's screen colors suck

fucked up how colors look different depending on what screen you’re looking at them on. that should be illegal I think

Capitalists don't have a plan for the future. With coming automation and the eternal advance of production ability, as well as population increases over time, it wont be long until there just isnt enough work for everybody except through arbitrary specialization to even the absolutely most minute detail. While new sectors may be constantly opening up, they'll be filled. The race to space and colonizing our solar system will yeild more room, but it will be filled. Automation through AI has the power to consume vast amounts of human labor. And through all of this, Capitalists will have plans to create more jobs and aid those of us without, but they can't imagine a future where people aren't working for a living - meaning that there will still be a class of people unaccounted for, who can't work. Capitalist nations may have welfare policies but they wont cover everyone and there will be a point where they just don't want to anymore, assuming that they don't slide into blatant fascism and begin eradicating their unanswered questions. Capitalists just do not have solutions to the great problems of the world as the future encroaches on us other than to protect them and theirs.

Communists have a plan for all of time, until the last star dies the universe goes black: take care of everyone. If somebody fails to recieve care under communism that is a direct failure of communists and can be rectified or made right. If there isnt enough work for everybody that means we've not only acheived our goal but that we have a plan to ensure that the rest of us are taken care of. And none of this includes analysis about the state of the environment, about how we collect and use our resources, about how we respond in disaster. Capitalists only wait until the market figures something out. Communists take responsibility and do it ourselves.

happy pride to edward wong hau pepelu tivrusky iv canon nb

Beautiful.

every day. every single day i wish my taxes went to making the train and the hospital free instead of innovating new ways to kill people in other countries

I keep seeing the phrase "when the news finally reached Texas" in reference to Juneteenth. Let's be super clear. White people in Texas knew slavery was over. They just chose not to tell the Black people. Juneteenth was when the Black people finally found out. History is so whitewashed that we accept the euphemisms as gospel. It didn't take 2 1/2 years for the messenger to bring the news. The rest of the Union didn't forget to tell Texas. White Texans just got away with keeping their slavery way of life for 2 extra years and nobody said shit. Hell yes, #Juneteenth should be a federal fucking holiday, but ALSO we should be teaching #CriticalRaceTheory in our schools so we don't get watered down versions of history.

I've thought about it and I believe laws are a substitute for a healthy society.

Laws, enforced by some kind of authority, are necessary as long as we live in an unhealthy society. But we shouldn't rely on them, we should strive to heal society instead.

For example, laws against child abuse are only essential in a society in which:

punishment, even physical punishment, is culturally acceptable and even encouraged;

in which gerontocracy (the authority of the old over the young) is upheld as something natural and sacred;

and which shuns and discourages all models of child-rearing and family organization that defy the nuclear family (in which a child is raised by their parents only, and not by the community, therefore allowing parents to essentially treat their children as personal property rather than as human members of society).

If we focused on creating a healthier society, those laws against child abuse would become obsolete, as even in cases in which some form of abuse may happen, wider society would be equipped to deal with it. And the child would participate in that effort.

@ AnCaps now:

capitalism wasn't designed to create a healthy and stable society. Even if we're very generous, capitalism puts "the best at the top" (...) and creates hierarchies and inequality—in fact it relies on material inequality to function, as the Phillips Curve and the state of the world demonstrate. There is no way it's moral or rational for billionaires and homeless people to exist in the same country but they do and that's intentional.

How does that relate to the rest of the post?

Well, laws are necessary to reduce harm and injustice as long as a society is unhealthy. Capitalism creates and relies on an unhealthy society. Therefore, as long as we have capitalism, it needs to be regulated and we need laws and a state—that's for everyone's sake. If you are genuinely an anti-authoritarian, and you genuinely don't want to cause harm and injustice, you must oppose capitalism as well as laws and the state.

Otherwise what you're advocating for isn't anarchism, it is privatized authoritarianism.

This is hilarious hdkdksk

say what u want about the manscaped ads I know they are shit, all of them but the “evil, sinister, malcontent, balls” one puts me into fucking hysterics actually

Anyway I've decided that if libertarian socialism hasn't been established in my area by the time I get old I'm going to freeze my body and tell the doctors to unfreeze me when we get that nice egalitarian utopia going. I refuse to die before living in it for at least a whole week.

Rules For A Reasonable Future via WorkReform