once a strange white woman came up to me in a starbucks and put her hand on my shoulder said “im voting for kamala harris”

Lmfao. You’re doing God’s work, these people should be terrorized

This is liberal of me but degrowth is just not possible politically. It’s like how a general strike sign or Twitter post doesn’t do anything, because a general strike needs unions to help strikers stay fed and housed, but 100x worse. If you tell people that they can’t have a hot shower every day, because the energy required to heat the water of every person on earth would cook the earth too much, they will not give up hot showers. You cannot implement degrowth without coercion from a socialist state which, at best, gets legitimacy from most people saying “well I hate doing this, but the only way for the planet to survive is if we all sacrifice together”. Under capitalism it’s a nonstarter of course, people won’t even wear masks during a pandemic let alone make sacrifices. But there is not going to be a socialist state with this kind of power in the US for decades, if ever.

You can probably get some half-assed solution where people accept things that nudge them in the direction of less consumption. Bikeable cities. Showers that turn off every few seconds, like the ones at campgrounds, to encourage you to use less hot water. But actual degrowth is so far from possible right now, in the complete absence of any ecosocialist power, that asking for it seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.

It’s kind of like veganism. Some people are tenderhearted idealists like me, but if you look at a group of individuals they’re not going to give up eating flesh for anything immaterial. Can we get state pushed/mandated veganism? Well, not without a state. And we can’t rally around the final goal because by definition it’s not popular yet (otherwise we wouldn’t need a state to do it), so must start with other vegan goals. Curb the worst excesses of the climate criminals, build up a movement. Slow down growth. Then we can try to implement degrowth.

I can’t rip on them too much because they’re out there doing shit and I’m in bed on my phone. But this is why I don’t like degrowth. Conceptually it’s ok.

P.S. also it is basically full communism, in terms of how vigorously capital will oppose it. GDP is basically 1:1 with energy consumption

no I want to be babied

Aldi has them and nobody cares. In fact Aldi cashiers are legendarily fast. Probably some control freak shit from the C suite.

mods can we PLEASE get a lemmy emoji

I don’t think you should be able to drive a motorcycle without a license (which should require taking a course and exam). They hit 140+mph and cannot brake as quickly as cars. Without knowing how to ride and to follow rules of the road, they are a life-threatening danger to other people.

So if bicycle = moped and moped = motorcycle, ebikes are capable of highway speeds. Do you think they should require driver’s licenses?

what would you say the difference is between a moped and a motorcycle?

I’m pretty sure this person has not in fact seen people selling milk they get from EBT. Unless you get industrial amounts of milk from EBT, how would you even go about selling whatever amount you get?

I once encountered a gentleman who offered to buy my groceries with his EBT card in exchange for a smaller amount of cash. I declined since it didn’t seem worth the hassle. It probably does happen but not in the “reselling groceries” way and not at scale.

Actual communists

holding office or gaining seats

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_revolution

furries are fine, zoo isn’t. Needs to be a guy in a pig fursuit pooping on his own balls

Omg somebody sent a transphobic response and I missed it? I’m a true ally now somebody come give me my cookie and Lenin medal

Lol I got to the forced labor part and immediately looked up to see what instance you were from. I love federation

Dealerships and used car salesmen are the scum of the earth. Buying private party is an annoying amount of legwork but you save a few grand by doing so and it’s not so bad if you have “car friends” to help you through the process. I’m a big fan of the $5k 10-year-old “normal car” with 100k miles or so.

1. different if you own the fridge, vs vandalizing a library that someone else installed and maintains. It would be dumb but you could run your own Christian Little Free Library without fucking up other people’s efforts

2. Yesterday I saw my local Love Fridge has recently put up rules for what you can donate, forbidding raw meat. I once talked to a vegan homeless woman using the fridge who said she had a hard time getting food. The limiting factor for these things is often fridge space, and I think rules like that are helpful to make the fridges accessible to everyone. Sometimes you have to remove, e.g., the one hundred quarts of strawberries that someone has donated to make room for more widely useful food*. In the same way, if the fridge had a “no peanut/dairy/sesame/etc” poster I would expect such things to be removed as part of the regular cleaning of the fridge. (As a practical matter, my guess is the new Love Fridge rules were motivated by people putting raw meat in there and leaking on the other stuff.)

   *Because the fridges are often overflow from local food distribution charities. Problem always seems to be uneven distribution. If you want a pallet of this one week, a pallet of that the next week, you can get it for free and give it to the needy. But who wants to live off pre-sliced fruit one week and marinara sauce the next week? If you want a consistent amount of good food for people to eat a balanced diet off of, you have to buy it at the grocery store or have a huge intake network to spread out all the weird donations.