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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • I your Aunt and Uncle are probably lovely people. They’re trying to survive in the same system we’re all stuck in.

    Ask yourself this, who is paying the mortgage on those properties? If the renters can afford the rent, they can afford the mortgage and then some. Your aunt and uncle, and all landlords, are collecting a premium on housing, what do they actually provide? If they’re trying to save for retirement, by renting homes, who’s actually paying for their retirement? Will those people be about to afford to retire if they’re spending so much on rent? They’ll end up with nothing when they leave. Your aunt and uncle will still have 3 to 5 extra properties.

    They own suburban townhomes, in some cases you find a renter who’d rather not own a home. In most cases, the market has progressed to a point where home ownership is impossible because people are hoarding homes and withholding access for rent.

    It’s an unethical system. Your aunt and uncle are small line landlords and a symptom of a larger problem. They’re participating in an unethical system to gain an advantage, and it’s hard to blame them for that. That doesn’t make it ethical, or good.

    Jefferson said he “participated in a broken system that he hated.” In reference to slavery. He actively tried to reform that system and was rebuffed. He’s still seen as a slave holding landed gentry today, and it remains a black spot on his (admittedly spotty) legacy. How are the people who owned 3 to 5 slaves different from those who owned 50? How are they compared to those who could afford and benefit to own slaves, and still advocated for abolition?


  • Wogi@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlForest of trees
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    1 month ago

    It was used on Reddit, but not widely. Mostly by insufferable ‘enlightened centrists’ who didn’t want to engage in good faith argument.

    It’s now a blanket term for “anyone left l politically left of me” used by insufferable liberals who don’t want to admit that trying to curry votes from Republicans lost them the election.

    For a time it was being used to describe actual Chinese and Soviet sympathisers, but given how quiet that particular group has been after the election, I suspect it was interchangable with state sponsored bot accounts.




  • You’re describing a few decades out of almost a thousand years of feudalism, in Europe specifically, and it wasn’t ever universally true.

    A lot of things contributed to that. Not the least of which is the difference between what we’d consider a day off and what they’d consider a day off. Not to mention how they paid taxes and what was actually required of the medieval peasant.

    Taxes could be paid in labor or produce. The guys doing the manual labor building a castle were likely to be paying taxes. They did that for up to a third of the year. The rest of the year was theirs to do with as they pleased, and the majority of that time would have been spent growing, gathering, hunting, or maintaining. Guild artisans had the closest thing to jobs that we’d think of them. Coopers made barrels, ropers roped. You had masons and blacksmiths and carpenters sure. Most people were growing and raising food, and maintaining their home. A day off was likely spent doing those things. They had so many partially because that time was needed intermittently.

    They worked harder than we do. Every part of their life was harder, required more energy, and took more time.

    Taking a day off to relax would have been exceedingly rare and probably maddeningly boring. Though they did party hard.



  • Yeah people just care about bread on the table and the roof over their head. Telling 150 million voting Americans to care about the world is falling on early 100 million deaf ears.

    75 million don’t care, or actively dislike anybody outside the US.

    Another 38 million only care as long as it’s convenient. And right now it’s not convenient.

    Maybe 10-15 million are anti Republican because they’re lgbtq+.

    Of the 150 million voters, 80 million are voting on a single issue. And for many of them, it’s either for or against abortion.

    We’ve been supplying the West with a military for decades. We put more in to our ministry, and by extension every NATO member country’s military than the rest of NATO combined. We don’t have social programs, no healthcare, no child care, under funded education, no paid sick leave, no parental leave. We have a big shiney military.

    People can’t afford to take a day off for the flu and they’re supposed to care about Europe?

    Big ask mate. People here care about how they’re doing today and tomorrow. Not Ukraine 6 months from now.