Clandestine Reality

Unemployment is a direct result of the profit motive in a capitalist economy. When does unemployment happen? What does it actually mean for unemployment to exist? Unemployment does not mean that there is nothing to do! For example, there can be homelessness, there can be sick people, there can be starvation, at the same time as there is unemployment. The streets can be dirty, with lots of trash laying around, the infrastructure can be crumbling or inexistent, etc. One would think that if that as long as those issues exist, there is work to do, and therefore there should not be any unemployment. But if a poor person is starving, or homeless, or whatever, this does not lead to employment opportunities, because in a capitalist system,  the economy is run by private owners, for the profits of the private owners. The poor person has nothing. They are not an owner. So their needs do not lead to employment opportunities.  In a capitalist system, it’s almost like those people don’t ev...

I used to believe principles were absolute. I grew up (like many people) reading stories about principled and idealistic people who gave up their lives for their honor. According to these, you’re either the hero who upholds your principles, or you’re the petty villain who gave up and made compromises. After I grew up, I started to realize, life isn’t that clean cut. I realized that if a person is able to uphold a principle simply because that principle was never challenged, and they never need to make a difficult decision, that’s not being principled, that’s having privilege. And perhaps we should have a little bit of compassion for those who make the compromises. I studied art in college, went to grad school for it. When I graduated, I wanted to be a concept artist for games or movies. Of course, concept artist is the most coveted position in game production and the competition is insane. But, I have a dream. I’m going to go for it. Only losers give up. I found a non-game related desk...

Instead of having a park, where we pay a guard to evict the homeless… We allow people to set up tents. Instead of having private mobile home parks where people are basically paying rent for the right to live out of their cars, we could have public mobile home parks, a bit like current public parks, where people can just go, and use them, for free. Not evicting people when they set up a tent. That only requires land. We can build roads, we already do.  That requires land, materials, and construction work.  Building housing requires land, materials, and construction work too. We allow ourselves to build public roads, and not public housing.  But it’s more of a mental block than anything. We allow people to go and sit in a public park, for free. Just not to sleep there. If someone wants to be a farmer, to work the land, and produce stuff?  Or to set up a tiny home? We stop them, we tell them they can’t just access land like that, some private owner has to profit. For us...