this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Talking to someone who justifies this kinda shit is always a trip. They'll say that people who aren't earning a living wage just need to work harder and pick up a marketable skill to improve their situation. But you can simultaneously get them to agree that many of these low wage "unskilled" jobs need to exist for society to continue functioning, so which fucking is it?
The answer is that the capitalist parasites and their horde of boot lickers believe it's totally acceptable for there to exist an underclass of human beings born to work until their bodies give out for the enrichment of their superior employer.
Honestly man, I'm getting real sick and tired of pretending to be above violent retribution when it comes to these people. My blood fucking boils each and every time I need to look my boss in the eye and pretend to smile as they say farcical shit like "we're all a family here" or "let us know if there's anything you need" while paying me exactly the minimum wage and hiring the exact number of employees it takes for them to avoid giving any of us enough hours to qualify for benefits.
Anyway, Stalin had the right idea with gulags, and we should bring those back. Thanks for coming to my TED talk
This is where the idea of "personal responsibility" is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.
The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don't do that it's really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn't translate into actual opportunity for most people but that's fine, as there's enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.
This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.