I call it The Treadmill. If you’re white, able-bodied, educated, motivated to play the game, etc. you can keep from falling off with what feels more or less like an easy walk. Until they speed it up. Or you get sick. Or stop playing the game.
All that old growth wood furniture… It always makes me so sad knowing that it’s essentially a semi non-renewable resource
But it can be restored, reused, repurposed or made into something entirely different. Start woodworking and make the world a little bit better.
Food insecurity isn’t always about lack of food, more like lack of logistics.
I live in a very, very rural part of the country. Land is CHEAP; you can buy 100+ acres of forest for under $2000/acre. There are a lot of vacant houses. Why? Because no one wants to live here. (Obviously not no one, since I chose to move here, but still.) There aren’t jobs locally; part of the price I pay for living where I want to live is spending 3+ hours in a car commuting each day. The vacant houses are vacant because the people that lived there either died, or moved because they couldn’t get work. They’re not vacant because some venture capital real estate company is buying up rural homes just to hold on to them as they rot away.
The issue isn’t vacant housing; the issue is where the housing is, and whether it’s actually habitable or not.
Can you live on that land without having to pay taxes or anything?
Because in my country, any cheap land in a place with no employment isn’t viable due to needing employment to maintain ‘ownership’ of the land through fees to the state.
Also even if the issue is location, there is huge amounts of abandoned empty housing in cities with jobs. Squatters are constantly trying to live in such places and getting chased out by cops.
You have found the rub, there is always taxes. The issue is you need internet or local jobs and guess what outside of starmlink there was nothing in the places you can afford. The extra fun part is there are people who move to low COL areas after selling their property when retiring just to make it work. This is a reason that these locations sometimes have a lot of elderly people. Now the real fucked up part is that even this strange retirement tactic does not work if you never are able to buy a place.
It’s fueled by greed and the desire to control others.
I hate it here. We have answers to all of life’s problems, and yet we humans continue to choose the hard way.
Because the rich will lose profits, greed is the corruption we deal with. Enough is never enough.
It’s infuriating because we out number them to such a scale that it’s not funny, but so many of us are trapped into the system that they would never dare do anything about it.
how much food gets thrown away just because it isn’t picturesque?
I’ve tried growing tomatoes, and bub let me tell you, they look nothing like the pristine samples you find in grocery stores
https://www.misfitsmarket.com/
Buy food that was rejected because of its appearance. It’s super cheap, it slows food waste, and it helps out a small company.
We should be intercepting the landfill
dumpster diving is a thing. food not bombs.
Yeah I was thinking more along the lines of repurposing, repairing, and medical piracy. Like people take batteries out of vapes to make power walls and all the aspirin can be converted into other drugs
What’s also weird is that if you want to get rid of perfectly good things nobody wants it or anyplace that might be able to use it makes it prohibitively difficult to get it to them. Got a functional fridge? Sure, you haul it out of your house, rent a truck, take it to the receiver - oh, and it can’t be more than 10 years old.
I find these posts that complain about waste kinda performative. While they’re not wrong, they ignore the logistical issues, both deliberate and indirect, of getting those things to the people that actually need them.
FWIW I’ve found that putting a “curb alert” for free good items with pictures and a location works pretty well. Some industrious person will usually pick something decent up 75% of the time.
These thimble deep hot takes are annoying.
Is there waste in the system… Yeah. It’s also worth noting there has never been a zero waste supply chain or distribution system under any economic system or government.
Centrallia PA had a lot of vacant houses for years. 500+ over about 4 decades. Nobody seemed to want them on account of the giant underground coal fire randomly collapsing the terrain and spewing toxic gasses. What a waste of good housing am I right?
Or check out some of the offerings around Amboy CA. You can get a vacant house and 5 acres in twenty nine palms for 18 grand.
https://www.trulia.com/home/78701-ramona-dr-twentynine-palms-ca-92277-299170461
These reactionary takes are annoying.
We can do better and make new systems that have less waste and benefit more people equally.
Great. So do it. Don’t talk about it be about it.
But that’s not what this meme is about. Spouting context free statistics to pretend there’s an evil conspiracy is just tin foil hat shit that serves no one.
I’d love it if I could always find someone who wants to finish the last half of my fried rice before it dries out in the fridge, but a food bank won’t take half eaten food. The distribution system exists, the soon to be wasted food has a willing donor. But there are practical limitations that generate millions of pounds of wasted food that have no basis in greed or Ill will.
This is a moral superiority circle jerk. “Look at us. We get it. Waste bad. Efficiency good. Helping others good.” Groundbreaking shit. It’s a shame no one’s thought of this before.
Which people do you want to put in what a vacant home? Who gets to decide? How do we relocate them? Do they have a say in this? What do they do once they’re there? What do we do if they won’t relocate? Show me a reasonable policy document you want passed that addresses any of this shit… I’ll personally write my congressman and senator about it. I’ll donate time and money to the cause.
It’s wild to see the assumption that just because somebody makes a meme about a topic means that they don’t actively participate in trying to better our system. Namely because so much of the waste we’re talking about isn’t your half eaten fried rice, and the example you provided about housing is but one example of vacant homes. There are so many vacant homes on the market that are perfectly suitable to live in, but we live in an economic system where housing is denied unless you can pay for it. Which means so many of us are at the whims of the real estate market and the people who profit off trying to make their property as valuable as possible. That’s the thing, it’s not necessarily about intentional ill will, but the side effects of things that seem like perfectly reasonable justifiable decisions. Throwing away food because it’s cheaper to do so, leaving suitable houses empty for decades because it’s cheaper to do so, manufacturing millions of dollars of cheap electronics that are going to go to waste because getting people to buy the new thing is profitable. I think it would be totally possible for us to build manufactured housing at scale, using our tax dollars, and when a person wants to live independently they can apply and receive a home at no cost to them. It would be totally possible for us to manufacture devices that are intended to be maintained and used long term, generating less waste. But when everything is built around making money, this all goes out the window.
It’s wild to see the assumption that just because somebody makes a meme about a topic means that they don’t actively participate in trying to better our system.
If half the people wasting time on memes dedicated that to helping others, there’d be a demonstrable difference.
This is just an excuse to be anonymously judgmental while ignoring your own lack of effort.
There are so many vacant homes on the market that are perfectly suitable to live in
Can you provide a few examples?
I think that you overestimate what even large amounts of people working together can accomplish vs the lobbying power of companies like Blackrock. Our state is corrupt and calling your representatives can only do so much. Memes are a way of sharing ideas, and in any political movement, sharing ideas is critical. You may consider it a waste of time, and assume that OP and myself do nothing but virtue signal. Ultimately those assumptions are just that, and the only anonymous judgement has been on your end. I’m not making assumptions about you, or about what you do, support, believe, etc. I pointed out your assumptions, and you’re calling that judgement. As far as vacant homes, there’s plenty of data out there if you’re willing to do a single internet search. https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf
There isn’t an evil conspiracy, there is capitalism.
Yes. And socialism. And communism. And feudalism.
Instead of doing the captain obvious bit, point me towards the -ism that fixes inefficiency, food spoilage, lopsided real estate demand, while respecting basic human rights and public safety. Cuz I’m in.
Hold the memes and show me the solution.
Anarchism.
If you don’t want to learn about it from memes, go do some hard reading. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
Isn’t anarchism just “only local government”? Not sure how that helps anything.
Anarchism is many local groups, co-operating with each other as a larger whole. It’s basically the Fediverse concept.
Anarchism
“I’m twelve and this is deep” kind of take.
“I’m a dumbarse and don’t know what anarchism is” kind of take.
See how easy it would have been to start there?
There are vacant homes so if there was anarchy… People would identify and relocate to those vacant homes… By some means.
Or “if it wasn’t for this damned government, I wouldn’t be throwing away carrot skins and old leftovers, I’d be making vegetable stock and unregulated penicillin with them”.
More like if it wasn’t for this system, we wouldn’t be wasting 300,000 potatoes to make packets of chips that went into the bin when they didn’t sell compared to the more advertised brand.
More like if it wasn’t for this system, my toaster wouldn’t conveniently break 2 weeks out of warranty, and I would have a right to repair it myself.
More like if it wasn’t for this system this empty house with squatters wouldn’t be evicted and left empty again.
Read a book
So that’s a “no” on having any answers. We’re just going to do “capitalism bad. And no one starved outside of capitalism”. It’s okay.
The funny part is I’m not taking a pro capitalism stance. I’m not fighting you on this. I’ll accept your premise. Let’s hear the solution. You can solve the world’s problems no sense keeping it to yourself.
“Nobody has answers” is fucking lauguable, your voluntary ignorance is rhetorically worthless and shameful
Then where are the answers?
They’re right here, try reading some of them
Look if you got a dozen awesome solutions to food waste throw that up instead of a low effort meme. I’m very open to detailed answers.
So far I’ve got a reading list about anarchy. And another person told me consumer choice and marketing lead to waste, but was a little light on how getting rid of consumer choice and marketing would effect production and/or solve the efficiency issue. But I did ask for clarification.
I’m here. I’m trying. I want to solve these problems as bad as everybody who seems to have the answers.
Sounds like you’ve got plenty of homework already, get busy
Capitalism working as designed
The liars who pushed “there isn’t enough for everyone” aren’t pushing it much anymore. They’ve moved on to saying “not everyone deserves basic human needs”—which is what they really thought all along.
If you cannot pay for it, you don’t deserve it. The basic tenet of capitalism.
are you posting that though in a quote fashion or somewhat sarcastic or do you actually believe it?
Yes.
It’s sarcasm
Name a place you can exist in the capitalist Dreamland of the USA without paying money to do so?
Name a place anywhere you can live without paying money to do so?
Legally? What’s your level of civilization requirements?
In your eyes, is the USA the only capitalist country in the world, or just the only one you hate?
Because ……
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/capitalist-countries
There is room in my heart for lots of hate my friend.
The Library!
You can’t live there.
Brought to you by evil socialist policies, why should I have to pay my taxes for your kids to read books. /S
i dont think i can. whats your point?
Ecofascism is really about the fascism part at the end of the day.
What? I haven’t seen any ecofascists. The fascists are yet to give a fuck about ecology and climate. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism
Eco-fascists have been around for yonks. 90% of the time you hear people utter shit like ‘there’s too many people, we need a plague to cure the planet’ that’s an ecofash.
More like: There’s too many brown people, we need a plague to cure the planet.
Funny how they’re never willing to sacrifice themselves/their family/friends/community though. It’s always others who must die in order to
make lebensraumsave the planet.
The abundence argument seems written by people who do not produce anything.
I don’t think abundence arguments help the left. I raise fruit. I lose fruit to animals and weather. There is variability in the amount of fruit I produce. I often produce more than I can consume, but the logistics of getting the fruit to someone else doesn’t work out and the fruit rots. Some years I lose my fruit blossoms to frost.
I have family that work potatoes for a commercial operation. There were a bunch of potatoes that were too big to sell commercially. The operation left the potatoes to rot in the field. My relative bagged potatoes and brought them to family in the old gift economy fashion.
What is the abundence economy argument really about? Are you going to buy bird pecked fruit or C’thulu looking potatoes? Country folk trim off the bad spots. City folk often haven’t gotten their hands dirty.
I’m all for anarchy and communism. That means doing some real work and not just reaping the surpluses of capitalism. Chop some wood, it’ll do you good and be a good neighbor.
Yeah, you want waste in the food system.
If you don’t have waste in a good year, you’ll have famine in a bad year.
Abundance is just centrist rebranding of trickledown.
I have read some more comments. Looks like food pantries are mentioned which is further down the supply chain. Yes, canning and nitrogen warehouses exists. That is more infrastructure. I would assume all land and infrastructure is ideally community owned and operated.
Because the two thousand child raping and killing men who rule over us have deemed it so
