Transcript

A tweet saying “bruh the economy isn’t even real, we literally fucking made it up, just let people have food wtf”

  • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 days ago

    A LOT of people in this thread seem to completely miss the fact that something is a social construct is can still definitely be real.

    Monday is a social construct, but I’m still expected to go to work.

    • untorquer@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      And work weeks used to be 80+ hours, but we changed that. Hell we could change Monday if we had the political willpower.

      Hunger is real in the sense that the human body becomes nutritionally deficient regardless of our will whereas the validity of modern food scarcity is a sociopolitical consensus.

      e.g. One can swim in the ocean but cannot reason with it.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        1 day ago

        Work weeks used to be 80+ hours, and “we” changed that, but it wasn’t by requesting or voting or something. It was via violent riots involving police beatings and explosives being thrown. And it took decades.

        Changing things that the rich prefer to remain unchanged can be done, but it isn’t easy or fast.

        • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Surely they will come to their morals and give up a small portion of the money they won’t ever get to spend fully for betterment of humanity.

      • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        Of course we can change Monday. It’s a social construct. We made it. We can unmake it. We can make it into something else. That’s the point. It’s also real.

        Just like a house is real after we’re done building it.

        We’ve built a machine that produces famine. It does not have to exist. But it does. The machine is real. If we want to get rid of it we have to actually tear it down. Again, like a house.

        The operative word in social construct is not social. It’s construct.

        • Norah (pup/it/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 days ago

          I think you’re really getting hung up on the fact that many people consider abstract concepts to not be “real”. Monday is not an inherent and tangible thing, it’s not possible to sense it in any way. You can’t go outside, look at the sky and go “yep, it’s Monday”. That might not be how you choose to define the term “real”, but plenty of people do define it that way.

        • untorquer@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Then you’re angry about people using hyperbole to make a point about the evils of the powerful.

          That’s a bit pedantic.

          Real in this sense is just being poignant about how the powerful rely on false appeals to the authority of things like the economy to evade responsibility and culpability.

          • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 days ago

            I am strict about meaning BECAUSE it’s important to face the reality of our oppression. I’m baffled I need to explain this to fucking anarchists.

            • untorquer@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              But saying the money/scarcity/economy is made up is pointing directly at the reality of our oppression. It’s pointing out that people are being oppressed because it’s profitable, or there’s political will to cause suffering, that it’s an active choice.

              Yes, concepts exist and they’re real in the sense that there’s neurochemical pathways in brains, ink on paper, electrons flowing, and an impact on how goods are distributed. No one is arguing the concepts don’t exist.

              I think you’re misunderstanding the context/nuance, or implication here.

    • Norah (pup/it/she)@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 days ago

      Yes, but hopefully you can see that if there was a rule that said you aren’t allowed to eat on Mondays, how people might start to question the legitimacy of the concept of a Monday.

      • vzqq@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 days ago

        What are you talking about? There are many such rules, but somehow blaming Monday seems like REALLY missing the point.

    • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 days ago

      Cool. What’s the point of monday? Is it the only way to do that? What are the costs of monday? Versus these other options? Are they worth it? How much trouble would be caused by replacing monday with somethiny better, or deemphasizing monday?

      How many dead children is monday worth? How many lives ground into grey dust, how much human potential for beauty and art is monday worth? How much labor wasted on keeping track of ‘deserves’ and resources wasted on enforcement is monday worth?

      What is the worst and slowest way you’ve watched someone die, when a society that organized itself more sensibly might have saved them?