I saw on the one hand,

• Media IPs I loved repeatedly get wrecked by the companies that own them for the sake of easy profit.
• Politics turning ever more into an adrenaline-injecting, thought-deadening clown show.
• Most of the food sold to us in stores is full of weird garbage and I have to wash the fruits and vegetables at home for fear it’s coated in residual poison.
• Even with working constantly, it’s extremely difficult to afford a home that is actually your own, leaving basically everyone as perpetual debt or wage slaves for a mortgage or rent. You will then also be dependent on paying utility companies for your basic needs.

I saw on the other hand,

• Random people produce amazing creative outputs all the time just because they like to, and then they share it, without being paid.
• I saw things like the Libertarian Party platform and people on r/anarchism101 making calm, thougut-out arguments. (I know the Libertarian Party is rather different than anarchism but the point is it was a radical step for me at the time and it told me that people outside the 2-party system were making an actual attempt to be thoughtful.)
• Almost everyone I’ve ever known who gardens vegetables or farms eggs produce more than they eat, and all of them gladly give surplus away to friends and acquaintances.
• I discovered nomadism, have lived in an RV for a year, experimented with solar power, and stayed at friends’ houses with well water, and discovered that what I actually need to be comfortable is far smaller, less expensive, and more achievable than the housing and rental markets would make it seem, and that there are a surprisingly large number of other people who have tried and discovered the same thing.

I could go on. All of this stuff had built up for years. The specific turning point was probably meeting an actual anarchist in person, hearing him describe direct action and mutual aid, and going, “Hey that sounds almost the same as what I’ve been thinking about for a while now.”

It’s seems like every time someone figures out the supply issue, they come along, put in a few road blocks and charge you money to get though to what you had before for free or way less.

I mean yeah, that kind of thing has been the foundation of wealth for like… thousands of years, I think.

1. Acquire thing that lots of people want.
2. Secure it from anyone being able to get any of it for themselves.
3. Require people to give you money/labor/whatever in exchange for it.
4. Set the price as high as people will tolerate.
5. Profit. So, so, so much profit.

The point is not, never has been, and never will be, giving people things they want cheaply, the point is profit. Giving people things cheaply is beneficial when it lets you undercut the competition from other people selling the same or similar things. So much the better if you give what you control to people really cheaply at the start, and then raise the costs once your new livestock customers get settled in. But point is, at the end of the day, this type of behavior is how the profit motive plays out.

Yeah sorry, I had assumed your posts were automated since they were so constant and whenever I looked at your profile it seemed like all that was there was an endless stream of article posts. After making the above comment though, I looked again and saw breaks and comments for the first time, realized my mistake, and then deleted my post.

EDIT: I think I deleted my post. It looks deleted to me, but maybe it doesn’t look deleted from other instances? I apologize again.

deleted by creator

People act similarly for stuff like Linux though. Gotta build a cool brand for the Fediverse!