Capitalism Criminalizes Poverty

The mechanics of capitalism are designed to prevent social mobility. Keep the poor, by and large, poor. Allow for exceptions only to the point where we don’t completely destroy hope - the bait and switch only works if the bait feels like it might be attainable. Keep the American Dream alive!
Disagree? Let’s hear it.

[@stacy9538]

Caught part of this live and was very interesting. Calling from a UK perspective as thats all i got lol ..but recently ive found that we are definitely being penalised for being poor. I have a modest income and have been trying to find an apartment as my landlord sold so i gotta move...i struggled to find something ..the costs are so high and i gotta cover it all on one wage ...i managed to find something but im paying over the odds ..but it was that or be homeless ...has been so stressful..also im 41 and has never owned property because house prices are too out of my league ..its so frustrating and annoying ..but demoralizing too

[@RaptieFeathers]

I would unironically love to hear you read some of Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread. Specifically, the stuff people don't normally talk about, where he goes over human creativity, feminism, and futurism.

[@RapunzelASMR]

I need more time to listen to this fully but wanted to say you are looking great!

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Thank you Ann!

[@constellationjoker9631]

congradulations on the new sailor coming soon

[@ScarletDusk99]

I'm sorry it's off-topic, but I have to know, what kind of camera do you use? I've been a fan since your Life is Strange ASMR videos and am trying to learn from the best

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Blackmagic cameras for the most part, but honestly, I sometimes use Panasonic and sometimes canon. They all look pretty good if lit appropriately. In this case my main cam is a BMPCC4K - a 5 year old camera you can get second hand for under 1k.

[@ScarletDusk99]

@@PhoenicianSailor Oh, wow. Thank you so much. It means a lot to me

[@StarJellie]

Seeing as you talked about "global" action I would be interested in hearing your thoughts on the dynamics of organisations like charities/NGOs and the World Bank/IMF, e.g., your thoughts from a negative utilitarian perspective, ethical debates on how they can be leveraged by the global north to continue their influence + enforce liberal capitalist economies on the global south, etc.

[@cakbep]

Hell yes, comrade Sailor. I knew I loved you for more than your voice.

[@mobydick8785]

I believe a major issue in many societies is how laws are dictated by a select few, leaving the rest of us to simply accept them as the governing rules of our existence. Such systems audaciously label nature as illegitimate-how hubristic!

[@ILikedGooglePlus]

They hated Daddy because he spoke the truth

[@emmanuelsc36]

I love you

[@constellationjoker9631]

Your asmr style might work a little too well for me in this video, I don't know if it was the lighting or my brain, but for some reason you were you but in the art style of the telltale games, but even harsher lighting shades. It was super trippy and cool, I had to replay that part just to see if you put a filter on. Also I'm very much a positive person and just view work and day to day interactions as it's more important to help strengthen those I work with. I'm every conglomerates favorite employee, you don't have to put in the work to make me want to encourage others, I even gave Amazon the benefit of the doubt multiple times in my time working for them, I now look at that time as me not being just a sheep telling the rest of the heard to feed well and grow a coat so lushes to warm our "benevolent" overlords, but instead as a pig in the slaughter house that's throat has been slit and yet chooses to wiggle as hard as possible to make the blood flow out even faster and allow those eating away at my very being to gorge themselves faster. I now try and make sure to prioritize helping my coworkers have more attention from me personally if any ever want to vent their troubles and talk to them more personally and special when we engage. I worry sometimes I'm reverting to how I was with Amazon, but I also try and take responsibility and make sure I'm not trying to sell square wheels so as to get a workout while they work. it can be tricky

[@StarJellie]

Shame about those commenters being deliberately provocative and contrary. Seems they just want to get a reaction and waste your time. Probably not worth paying attention to

[@coltonruscheinsky7863]

This man has read his Ligotti for sure.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

True :)

[@warm8365]

Okay new favorite asmr video title. Excited to watch this tonight, i find that your opinions are often well researched and i appreciate you making a video about something that matters.

[@toniwilson6210]

I appreciate your take. If you cover this again I’ll watch. I’m not a tankie but I do think we need some bigger changes.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Agreed.

[@jessicagraves2295]

Starting the vid off with a very Canadian greeting!

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Never pass up an opportunity to give a shout-out to our North American neighbors :)

[@catharinaeisenhuber267]

I have been buried in my dictionary since the morning and I m close to giving up. I don’t understand this, I m too stupid for the English language

[@RaithwynASMR]

Beyond upset that I missed this one! I would have loved to bring up The New Jim Crowe during discussion, changed my perspective on this country a lot.

[@pyrefly7575]

THE PEOPLE ARE WAKING UP

[@warm8365]

Also curious if you're part of any type of groups such as plp or the cpa. ALSO if you have any resources you'd recommend to read up on I'd love to hear them. (Haven't finished the video yet so ignore if you addressed this before)

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Nope, I have not been party affiliated in many years. Was part of a syndicalist commune back in the 90s. I do still act globally via contributions.

[@joewilson3575]

Always wondered about your politics since you did a video on gun control a few years back. Very interesting that our views on capitalism line up so much but that I espouse communism and you dont. It infuritates me when people say "You didn't work hard enough ect" my parents worked hard, my dad started a business, what do we have to show for it? Thousands in debt and a mortgage they might live to see payed off. And now I have entered the workforce and work hard, and what does my country give me? Houses costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, or no fault evictions in houses costing a thousand or more a month in rent, a faulting NHS which is being sold off. Low wages if I work and blacklists if I try and increase that through my own means, if the company can even see through til next year because the market can just crash, or materials can shoot through the roof in price for almost any reason. Cost of living skyrocketing, why? Because the robber baron businessmen can litterally just put the price up on things everyone needs to survive just because "The shareholders arent happy". If I'm not happy I can't even publicly protest or I might get arrested, I mean I wouldn't really ever go to a protest cause I don't think it does anything and I want to enjoy my time off but still. I had a lovely time on benefits a while ago, £255 a month to live on. Yup that's all it costs apparently. I mean you said all this better than I can but it just doesn't butter my parsnips is all. Still got hope, revolutionary hope at that.

[@josiahdublin7816]

Based!

[@flfb]

YEAH BAYBEEEEEE PREACH

[@flfb]

I'm not sure you could properly understand exactly how tailored to me this was

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@flfbI’m glad even though I do not understand :)

[@tankwfw]

In the US (and West in general), its far more rare to find people under 40 who call themselves capitalists. 30 years of a very left leaning academia and no USSR boogeyman have led to multiple generations now who grow up believing socialism and communism are actually noble economic and administrative philosophies, despite a century of evidence to the contrary

[@marsviolets4651]

Lol. Academia. What about the rest? Yeah, what does academia have to do with this tbh. You've been proven capitalism only works through manipulation and lies and cognitive dissonance, and yet you choose to stay blind and blame communism with the failures of capitalism and the harm it does to all other systems. I mean, when you brainwash people into thinking only your own system works and block every other thing's growth, people be brainwashed. No shit

[@PhoenicianSailor]

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck I don’t care what it calls itself.

[@tompkins03]

Sorry to say that I'm really struggling to make it through this video. Looked you up as used to listen to your ASMR but haven't listened to anything you've produced in quite a while. Only 21 minutes in so far but all you've done is demean and dismissively condescend to your ideological opponents, straw-maning their perspectives. Ironic that your comment guidelines begin with an instruction to attack the argument, not the person. May be useful to reflect on whether "controversial extremist views that are not yet verboten" may describe the title and contents of this video. Will try to listen to whatever more I can bear as interested in the topic but very disappointed thus far

[@tompkins03]

"Unless you consider everyone in the world to be your neighbour, you're being... passively racist". Done. Can't listen to any more. It's ridiculous rhetoric like that which makes difficult conversations impossible.

[@KSiquot]

Thank you for this video. This was brave! 👏👏 People who have never been poor cannot relate. Unfortunately...

[@PhoenicianSailor]

I’d hope it wouldn’t take being trapped in poverty to empathize properly. I do think we deal with a vocal minority when it comes to the feigned moral outrage. I hope.

[@KSiquot]

I agree with you. Empathy shouldn't require suffering first hand, but I've seen that the higher the priviledge, the harder it is for some people to understand this notion @@PhoenicianSailor

[@coltonruscheinsky7863]

"Utopias aren't real bro" I guess we should keep coddling billionaires and making things worse for the lower classes then. "The wind just came out of my sails" Your Phoenician Sails!

[@BradsPitts.]

Sailor - ignore the trolls and don’t dox yourself!

[@WaffleCopter1011]

Oh no... anyways

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Oh yes… anyways

[@MrJasonworkman]

Lost all credibility when said prioritize the group over the individual. He just wants to take things from others.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

What topsy-turvy bs world is it where concern for others is somehow branded as selfish? And do you really thing I just want to take things from others? Or are you saying that to rationalize your own egocentric worldview?

[@penultimateh766]

I have yet to understand why, having spent decades building up a modest nest egg, I should just give it to you people.

[@flfb]

The answer is that you won't have anything taken. We don't want your nest egg. We want Amazon's. Your nest egg will never be billions, and nobody is interested in redistributing your savings.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Yeah, who is asking for this?

[@penultimateh766]

@@flfb Since much of my nest egg, along with millions of other people, is in the SP500, a some of which is Amazon, YOU are asking for it. And if you just want to "stick it to billionaires", you have no concept of how few their are, and how tiny a billion is compared to the US GDP. You will get to me eventually, just like Lenin did with the Kulaks. Took him about three years.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@penultimateh766 I have no idea how few billionaires there are. And no concept of the US GDP. Okay.

[@penultimateh766]

@@PhoenicianSailor So break down the math for us then. How long could the US government run on the liquidated wealth of every billionaire in the country?

[@kgdhh]

Socialism, on the other hand, enforces poverty! Very equal.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Yes, be reductionist, that's always helpful.

[@kgdhh]

@@PhoenicianSailor Socialism is an exercise in riding reductionist platitudes all the way to war crimes, genocide, poverty, and famine. Of course, reductionist snark is good when you do it and bad when enemies do it. Boo hoo. Go move to China, Cuba, Vietnam or Laos if you think it's a better society to live in.

[@kgdhh]

@@PhoenicianSailor I mean let's be honest here. If you were interested in being "helpful" you wouldn't be supporting an ideology that has led to greater human suffering and misery than any previous ideology in history. What you're really interested in is pushing a totalitarian worldview on everyone, because of your own envy toward others. You believe that you deserve what other people have. You can come up with all the meaningless buzzwords and academic newspeak you want; you're a useful idiot for future party apparatchiks.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@kgdhh you have me mistaken for someone who only espouses things that will directly benefit them (probably projection.) I want more money taken from me, not less. You're also employing a false dichotomy here, which I'm not going to bother to detail or rebut, as you are well aware you're doing it.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

"let's be honest here" indeed.

[@FatherManus]

You said so many things that were either misleading or straight up wrong that I would have to write a 50 page essay to combat them all. You should focus on one or two main points next time.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Might be a good exercise for you to help realize how uninformed your opinions on this subject actually are.

[@Metxblue]

I agree, but at least his voice was still soothing 😅😅 I could hear TPS speaking non-sense for hours

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@Metxblue If you lack empathy for humanity, I'd rather you find someone else to listen to.

[@FatherManus]

@@PhoenicianSailor Not agreeing with your nonsense views ≠ Lacking empathy for humanity. I know you desperately want to have the moral high ground by absorbing and regurgitating every leftist talking point you can find but it doesn't work that way.

[@sleepisthecousinofdeath7395]

Equity in practice: “According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score, on average, 140 points higher on the SAT (out of 1600) than whites to have the same chance of admission to private colleges. They must score 450 points higher on the SAT than African-Americans. This is the “Asian Tax” that some refer to and, while this research’s direct quantification of bias might be interesting, the fact that Asians have to do better academically than others to get admitted into selective US colleges shouldn’t come as a big surprise to anyone somewhat familiar with college admissions.” These types of people look at the rates of races to be effected by a thing and determine they must artificially deflate or inflate the racial numbers because everything from food to education to weather to breathing air is racist to them, they search far and wide for racism. for example they will look at college stats and go “blacks get into colleges less, so we must make it harder for others in the name of equity” or “we have a lot of white Disney princesses, let’s turn the white ones into a minority” or “we don’t have enough minority and female pilots, let’s fire or not hire old white men” or “there’s not enough minorities in your neighborhood, but if you go into a minority neighborhood, that’s gentrification” or my favorite “we don’t have enough minority females driving submersibles let’s not hire old white men” then it sunk and caused a massive news cycle, also can’t forget “black people are fat on a higher percentage so exercise, doctors and food is racist” This is what this crazy nice voiced whispering person is advocating for. Equity. A fancy word for discrimination and racism, but the white savior version. He believes in Ibram X Kennedi “how to be anti racist” book where “the only way to fix past discrimination is future discrimination” by knocking off Asians and whites to synthetically bring in minorities, you can see this practice done in Hollywood as well. This goes into ESG ratings and forced diversity quotas in corporate jobs to be approved for loans. By discriminating against whites and Asians these white saviors feel virtuous for saving black people in their eyes. Self guilt. Racial cultural Marxism. Socialists always have this slick way of advocating for their cause, they say “socialism is when you work as a group instead of individually” but what it really means is “we work as a group by giving our rights to the government”. It’s not a group, it’s a government, the goal is to work as a big happy government but they say it’s a group. that’s why it never works. In socialism there is no individual, just one big happy government and youre the arm where you own nothing and you’ll be happy. At least we own something in capitalism.

[@PyrosGuide]

You are such a disappointment. Please consider silence next time you lie on the internet ❤️

[@FatherManus]

@@PyrosGuide Facts are still facts whether they make you feel bad or not. Try thinking with logic and not your emotions and the truth won’t trigger you so much.

[@TrophicFault]

Capitalism has some of the most egregious wealth disparities in existence. You also own just about nothing. Most people don't own any land or their own home. Capitalism is failing you and everyone around you and you are foolish enough to enjoy it.

[@VColossalV]

....does he actually advocate for that though? Where did he specifically advocate for discrimination against Asians or whites by artificially holding them back? Did he ever at any point advocate for full blown socialism? One can be in favour of mixed economies. Nuance is key here. You take the extremes and assume they must apply to everyone who leans left, that's not the case. Any more than I should apply the extremes on the opposite side to you, unless of course you have something to say about that?

[@VColossalV]

​​@@FatherManustrigger the libs am I right?! What is this 2015? Real Ben Shapiro energy going on over here

[@GiantRogueWave]

This is kind of an absurd title. Capitalism is an economic system that consists of 3 core pillars. 1. That people be allowed to own private property and use it as they see fit to extend their wealth. 2. That people are given the freedom to engage in exchanges of goods or finance in exchange for a service or for other goods. 3. That there is an imbedded assumption that people will be working on trying to fulfill their own needs. Only the government or state is in a position to criminalize anything and the government exists outside of capitalism as a general structure. Capitalists will always try to work with the state to curry favors though and politicians will always be willing to accept cash in exchange for voting a certain way and pedaling their influence. The solution here isn’t to demonize capitalism, it’s to limit the size and scope of the state’s ability to exercise power. A limited state will break or at least significantly mitigate the cycle of corporatism that we’re currently experiencing. The worst possible solution is to give the state even more power as that will only make the situation worse, but that’s exactly what the socialists and communists out there want to do.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

That's just like, your opinion, man

[@GiantRogueWave]

@@PhoenicianSailor Is it? It makes sense to me that if the government criminalizes being poor or being homeless, that’s a problem with an evil tyrannical state, not an economic system. The Soviet Union criminalized being homeless too and threw their homeless population into prison and they weren’t capitalist. Giving an evil state even more power seems unwise, at least to me.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@GiantRogueWave yes, it seems unwise to you. That makes it your opinion.

[@GiantRogueWave]

@@PhoenicianSailor Do you disagree?

[@TechnoBro999]

Capitalism is the best system. Where has socialism or communism ever worked anywhere ever?

[@PhoenicianSailor]

Capitalism hasn't been around that long, bruh

[@TrophicFault]

Anywhere that attempts socialism you can count on the USA to destabilize them. Also capitalism is demonstrably failing worldwide.

[@CristinaJeanDonato]

@@PhoenicianSailor ancient rome was actually capitalist. Imo communism isnt going to work either. It really is unfortunate how other people take advantage of there. Either way capitalism or socialism there would be a few group of people in power. The difference is you have more leg room in a Capitalist economy in Communism you wouldn't even be able to complain. The communist government will totally control your life look at China and North Korea

[@PhoenicianSailor]

@@CristinaJeanDonato Rome was capitalist for less than 2 centuries, and not the same brand of capitalism. I mention that either way power consolidates, and did not espouse communism in practice. Maybe listen to what I said before jumping in?

[@TrophicFault]

​@CristinaJeanDonato Communism is based on everyone having equal access to resources. This is very clearly not the case in China or north Korea. They are state sponsored capitalists.

[@Memoquin]

Capitalism isn’t perfect, but it’s the best of the bad systems we have. It isn’t designed to keep people poor, but constantly aim higher as though they are always poor.

[@PhoenicianSailor]

That is an idealistic interpretation of capitalism of no more worth than my "in a communist utopia we'd all be happy". In practice capitalism actively does all it can to stifle class mobility without shattering its illusion of doing the opposite.

[@Memoquin]

@@PhoenicianSailor It’s not idealistic at all. It is flawed as I’ve said. But it’s not the worst. Socialism stifles creativity, progress and removes any reason to achieve, with communism being the ultimate version of this. It’s a wonderful theory but it can’t exist beyond that because everything needs a hierarchal structure, meaning such a system cannot exist. I feel like you’re actually looking to be an anarchist, which doesn’t subscribe to anything and just seeks to eliminate all forms of structure.

[@CharlieTheSupersaurus]

@@Memoquin The "best" system is ravaging our planet, mate. Climate change, extreme poverty while obscene wealth exists, a widening gap in that, world hunger, pollution, mass extinction, the ludicrous idea that we can have endless growth on a planet of finite resources at the expense of our own survival and the fact that we're hobbling like a zombie to our own extinction if we keep it up. That's what capitalism is doing, it is exploiting us and our planet. This structure is delivering us nothing but our death, except you think it's a shiny parcel nicely wrapped with a bow. The greedy at the top are happy to exchange more than 8 billion human lives and the future over bits of metal and paper when you really boil it down to what it really is. How is that not the worst?

[@TrophicFault]

​@@Memoquin Upwards class mobility is a lie that the rich feed you. Society does not require stratification and would be far better off without it.

[@unbuiltnuke]

​@@Memoquin​ Under capitalism, Earth is on a path to either near or total biosphere collapse as we speak, so I hardly think that it qualifies as "the best of the worst". What's most funny to me though, is that ultimately the two systems have far more in common with each other than the ideologues like to think. Something that Sailor points out in the first 5 minutes of the video.