https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
Don’t make Perfect the enemy of Progress.
I do things that make no difference globally because I don’t want to take part in the bad things.
I did not vote for the government that is ruling my country. My single vote did not make any difference, but it makes me feel better that I did not vote for this government.
I travel by train instead of a plane and I ride a bike instead of driving a car because I don’t want to be part of the club of high CO2 emission citizen.
Doing that does not matter globally, but I feel better about myself that way. I don’t tell other people what to do or to follow my example, but I think some people around me do notice and maybe it does get them thinking?
But I have no illusions, most people are busy enough and do what is most convenient every time. I am the only adult in my circle that does not own a car. But I feel powerless beyond my personal life to change anything.
I know it is not good enough, but I don’t know how to change other people.
I did try and sometimes I still do try, but to no effect besides annoying people. 🤷
Sorry, can’t hear you over your failure to solve the entire problem. /s
Well, your negative comment made me spiral and transformed me into a speed bump on the road to progress. /s
“This is not a perfect solution, and therefore it is not a solution” is called the nirvana fallacy, and is poor reasoning. Somehow people are really susceptible to it.
The argument “this solution only partially solves the problem, and further entrenches us into a system that makes the problem this solution aims to solve much, much worse in the long run, and as such the benefits do not outweight the costs” is a different argument, but it is often mistaken for the former argument because people are incapable of long term thinking.
Interesting, now I know that type of argument has a name. I think many rationalizations are a veneer for laziness. Taking the stance that doing something is useless means you don’t have to feel guilty about not doing it. Likewise, when there’s a widespread delusion that simple, ineffective actions make us heroes, people will do those actions and nothing else, because giving themselves a gold star is all they really want. It’s important not to confuse spending hours in social media circlejerks with “spreading awareness”.
Remember, that is exactly what an exploiter will say to you. They’ll always try to place the blame on the individual for the damage they’re doing collectively. Same with the BP Oil campaign when they invented the “carbon footprint of the individual” while being one of the worst polluters in the world.
If you look at real, concrete, systemic changes in the world, the times where it has happened because of “optimism” is close to zero.
Remember that the exploiters will always demand that people use the proper channels, because they own those channels, and can make sure nothing ever gets through.
There are only two ways to deal with exploiters. You can try and use your voice a few times, and if that doesn’t work, you start using your hands.
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
The difference is I can look back across the decades and see a lot of people who I have helped, and who have helped me in turn, things have been directly made better as a result (well, at least some of the time). Meanwhile, their “more realistic” approach centred on voting has seen periods of glacial progress and rapid retreat, leaving them further back than ever before in my lifetime.
Individual actions rarely cause big changes, but they help individuals all the time. Nothing wrong with that.
For the sake of clarity, I meant actions in the sense of direct action; typically some sort of anarchism flavoured so prefiguration was often at least kept in mind. Nothing has ever snowballed of course, although some actions have spawned some lovely little related communities that are thriving too (and others that since ran out of steam, true); I’ll always choose small victories over chasing the best loss as electoralism endlessly expounds. But I don’t at all disagree with the sentiment!
I have been told this my whole life, how our silly little actions didn’t mean anything because they were too small or fringe or whatever.
Same. Ive never believed it.
Be a helper.
Look man, you’re only saving 50% of the children from starvation, so obviously your idea is bad and we should continue letting 100% of the children die until someone comes up with the perfect solution.
This is a very serious take around Lemmy tho
I suggest we start calling this The Musk Argument.
As in, I won’t spend an inconsequential fraction of my money to solve world hunger – after I literally challenged you for a proposal to do so – because I don’t think you will be 100% successful.
Instead, I think I will take public actions to kill untold numbers of poor people around the world while I continue my quest to be the first smart boy with one million million dollars.
I feel like this is type of thinking is a cope for people who don’t want to actually do anything but maintain what they think is the moral high ground.
They realize that if they admit that you doing something is positive, then they’ll be forced to confront why they aren’t doing it.
This is only valid as long as your partial/incomplete solution doesn’t encourage people who would otherwise keep working on solving the whole problem to decide that since there’s a solution they can just knock off for brunch and leave you to it.
Partial solutions to a polluted creek that’s choked with litter? Yes please, then we can see what comes next
Placebo solutions that make people who’ve made no difference feel like they’ve done their part to fight fascism and can go back to brunch? Gtfo with that shit.
Hint: if the “problem” is a societal one, nothing you see or hear suggested by anyone who has advertisers is going to actually solve anything, and is likely to work against anyone trying an actual solution.
And here we are. The exact sentiment described by OP.
You are the one describing the solution as “placebo”. I think the effort I implement is a positive step. I believe strongly that you are one of two types of people: Anti-solution and an agitator trying to divide and dishearten; or… maybe… you’re invested in the positive outcome and you will continue the greater work while I try to ensure you still can.
If you were only doing it because it was 100% bad, then you’re just as much of an idiot as those ‘why wouldn’t you rape without sky-daddy watching you’ christians. You can still work to solve it when it’s only 90% as bad as it was, since it will still be 100% bad.
Hint: Telling people to either be fully dedicated to solving the big issues or give up and ‘go to brunch’ is reductive and not encouraging the way you want it to be.
No.
The “solution” they’re clearly trying to defend without naming it to make it obvious is “voting for liberal politicians”. That absolutely 100% is a placebo, and every time the liberal shitbag wins, all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved
Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.
all their Blue No Matter Who voters (or whatever the equivalent is in other countries) go back to brunch and pretend all the problems have been solved
From the other poster: Using a paper straw does reduce plastic usage. So will using reusable grocery bags. A person can quite easily do both. Deriding the paper straw as a useless step just seems unhelpful to me. When the plastic bags and straws are reduced, we can attack other angles too. As an anecdote, I rarely even get offered a choice of straw nowadays - it’s either not present or paper. that’s a minor win, but a win nonetheless. Some people worked hard to make that happen and this talk of placebo is derisive of that work.
This is you presuming to know the motivations of all other people and deciding for them when they stop working on new things. Just because I want people to be involved in their political processes doesn’t mean I stop at the voting booth, or can’t also be doing service in my community. I don’t love the catchphrase ‘Blue no matter Who’ - but I recognize that not voting blue is always going to be detrimental to the cause until enough people are involved in local level organizations to change the candidates from the ground up. Until we get there, I recommend we vote blue.
Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy. Wanna fight fascism and oligarchs? Encourage people to participate instead of telling them it doesn’t matter or there can only be revolution instead of incremental progress.
Hint: “go back to brunch” is a derisive way to mock liberals, and wasn’t intended to be encouraging at all to anyone.
That’s my whole point. Don’t discourage.
More encouragement of participation is better. Tell me that’s wrong.
Plastic pollution in the ocean is not from consumer waste, it’s from industrial fishing. Plastic straws LITERALLY DO NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUE. It’s a fantastic example of this.
Discouraging civic engagement only benefits the wealthy.
Look at the people telling you to engage in these ways.
This is the epitome of the issue I’m talking about – you people seem to presume the engagement ends at the simple step. For some, it will, but those people weren’t likely to engage larger in the first place and reducing the consumer waste doesn’t hurt.
For others, it will make them aware of the larger call to action, to get them to join advocacy groups that punish industrial and systemic issues.
I can’t stop fascism or climate change or pollution on my own. I need MORE people engaged and telling people we need all or nothing solutions can only lower the number of people willing to take action. Individual, even trivial steps matter.
Look at the people telling you to give up.
No one is saying to give up. The fact that you hear “stop wasting your energy trying to solve things in ways that are controlled by the people profiting from the problem” and interpret that as “give up” tells us all exactly how engaged you are with anything that actually might make a difference.
Your lack of reading comprehension tells me exactly how much you think.
My point being: ‘give up’ is what some people, who would otherwise be our allies, are hearing. Stop telling *them* to give up.
You won’t make more anti-capitalists by squashing the people who see the problems and want to solve them just not in your way. That only accelerates us towards the fascism you claim to be against.
“I use a paper straw, so I dont have to reduce my plastic usage”
I think this is an example of what this commentor was pointing out.
Perfect is the enemy of good (or good enough).
Or slightly less terrible
I was once explaining the upsides of UBI and someone replied “no, this would fix too many issues with capitalism, this would delay the revolution!” Like… Dude.
I always think of this post whenever I hear someone dead-set on nothing less than massive, systemic change.
True that. Do I agree modern society has gone crazy in many fundamental ways? Hell yeah. Will I reject an opportunity to do something small that will affect only a handful of lives for just a few days based solely on that? Nope
I’ve reached a point where I think if both the left and right tell you are wrong, you might just as well have arrived at the correct idea (usually, not always).
Haha I kind of see both your points, it kind of does the liberal thing of extending the umbrella of protection from exploitation while pushing exploitation farther to the sidelines. The worst case outcome is that you now have more defenders of the status quo, because they’ve got it good. Meanwhile the entire economy is still based on war and exploitation, especially of poor workers in other countries.
But then maybe if us workers here had some more breathing room (perhaps not the best choice of words…) we might also have more capacity for solidarity with those exploited workers. Who knows, but it would remedy a lot of immediate problems here anyway.
And all the trials have been very positive, so I’m inclined to give it a shot yeah.
‘Let them get a taste of how terrible those guys are, and then they’ll vote us in and our system will rise!’ is what the Weimar Republic said about the Nazis.
Never, ever assume making things worse will end up causing a few tiny problems and then everything gets better. Humans are, by and large, shockingly tolerant of rather terrible things. If you let things get worse, they will get very, very worse, and a lot of innocent people will die.
And fascism ended up killing fewer people than the British Empire, USA, or French Empire and it wasn’t tried again for 80 years.
As you say, people are shockingly tolerant of terrible things. Especially when there is a socially constructed boundary between them and the victims (race, nationality, etc.). If you count nonwhite noncitizens as full people, fascism was less deadly than liberal capitalism.
Do we care half as much about the death of a dozen people at a wedding in Pakistan as we care about Alex Pritti? Do we care half as much about the colonization of north America as about the Lebensraum doctrine? Do we care half as much as about the British colonization of India as about the holocaust and WW2?
Fascism is capitalist abusers coming home. it is horrible, as capitalism always was.
I would prefer capitalism to fall without a fascist period - not the least out of self-preservation as a white citizen of a first world country - but at this point every decade that capitalism survives is another billion dead from climate change.
If we stave off fascism by embracing liberal capitalism, all our children and grandchildren will die violently. It can not be enough.
Right but you see the analogy of like union negotiations, like when management makes a sweet deal for a certain class of worker like full-timers, or people over a certain “grade”, then leaves everyone else out to dry.
I’ve seen it happen first hand. Things get better for us inside the new circle of privilege, but it’s only because most of us voted for self interest.
I don’t want to be like letting the 💯 be the enemy of the 👌🏻, but I also think we should talk about how we plan on keeping from being the 1% to someone else.
Does that make sense? I’m not against UBI, but it can’t be the end of the discussion.
Perfection being the enemy of good (enough).
It’s a demoralization propaganda tactic to effectively blunt any issue. People have internalized the idea that they can do nothing on an individual level. Like habits that form out of persistent actions, people have been demoralized into giving up completely. It’s some sort of ego trap. Where the presumption is that an individual is supposed Superman saving the world, but of course they aren’t. Nobody is. So why bother at all. That’s not the point. It’s about the the population as a whole determining the norm. Everyone is convinced it’s pointless and hopeless. That sets the tone. The issue is dead in the water. Any issue can be killed this way. It’s extremely effective. People fall for it every time.
That’s where climate change is right now. That’s where wealth inequality is right now. People have listened to social media. They’ve internalized the quote repetitions. The demoralization mantras they saw on social media.
Your adversaries can handle words on social media. It’s meaningless to them. It has no effect on their daily lifestyle or their bank accounts. Throwing words into the cloud. Somebody else’s computer. Those servers are owned by your very adversaries. You’re throwing your comments into a meaningless suggestion box. In all likelihood the quote repetitions were seeded by them.
Everyone is convinced that “the rich” consist of a few billionaires named Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg. This blinds people from seeing local issues. Like crony politicians or localized inequality issues. Ones where they actually have more of a voice. One where they can actually effect change.
There’s no more blatant manifestation than when reddit (happens on lemmy too) bleeds their hearts over those posts about some rich asshole. Those carbon copy posts about how hard it is to be making techbro level money while “struggling” to live in the most wealthy cities in the world. Who gives a shit. Why does everyone have sympathy for those rich people at all. Everyone crazy? These people are part of the problem. They are the rich too. They are the source of issues that affect you locally. The guillotines are for them as much as Musk, Bezos or Zuckerberg. They’re out of touch rich people who have dragged you all into their reality where they’re victims too. How convenient for them to have a few billionaire scapegoats that are untouchable. Whereas the average working class person can actually effect change on a local level.
People have given up on climate change because they’re convinced the one or two people must stop flying private jets then the problem will be solved. It’s quote repetitions. Fed to them from social media. “If those jerks can fly private jets, then why can’t I consume as much as I want myself. I’ll use all the plastic bags and straws that I want.” It’s not about the bags or the straws. It’s about the collective demoralization. The propaganda is so effective.
Yeah I’ve had this kind of discussions with right wing folk. We were discussing socialist policies, which I was in favor of and they were against. They were pointing out there were people abusing current socialist policies and getting a free handout, so all of those policies should be cut to prevent the freeloaders from freeloading. I argued that any kind of policy, no matter what the policy is, is going to be abused by a small fraction of the population. It’s not possible to create something without loopholes and people exploiting them. We should try to prevent it in the design, but in the end we should accept that’s going to happen and instead focus on if the policy is also actually helping the people it was designed for.
Nothing is perfect, problems won’t be fully solved and / or new problems will be created. That isn’t failure, it’s life.
Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.
Often there’s a break even point at greater than zero auditing where the audits start costing more than the amount of fraud, but it’s surprisingly common that zero or very nearly zero auditing is actually the most efficient setup, because regular people just don’t commit fraud all that often. When dealing with corporations, on the other hand…
…add a few more special investigators for high tax evasion crimes to the IRS (or whatever your gov org is called) and you’ll reap more for the state than you’ll ever could with welfare fraud.
The head of the German tax union (DSTG) with 75000 members who advise German IRS employees, intervene for tax equality, fight tax evasion into tax havens and offshore companies says the yearly sum of high tax evasion fraud amounts to 200 billion, while welfare fraud amounts to 275 million. He advised the new government under the ex-Blackrock chancellor Merz at the start of their legislation to make this his priority.
What did the government do of course (in corporation with the so called workers party SPD) recently in a whimsy attempt to bring down state debt? Create a barrage of reforms all targeting the poor, especially those receiving welfare, but also working families, the health system and workers rights. Then he openly states at podium discussions the German workers are to lazy compared to Chinese workers. He actively pushed the far right AfD to record election results and his own parties to record negative results.
The corrupt finance minister Katharina Reiche (greedy POS ex fossil fuel manager) of the same party is actively working to eradicate the last chances of the country to get a foothold in green tech like wind power generation, heatpumps and green hydrogen for steel production (like she did 2012 in another gov for the solar industry) and pro fossil fuel industries.
This all lead to record level negative popularity for the conservative party, record level rates German Angst regarding economic downfall of citizens in recent public polls and record level popularity of the right wing AfD (whose level of economic profession and that of those electing them shows in a proposal to tax all income classes the same with a flat tax of 25%).
The only ray of hope is the left party who recently won the Berlin elections whose first priority there is to transfer flats in the hands of greedy flat corporations, working only for the share holder value, to state property.
The easiest way to avoid freeloaders and abusers is to make services available to anyone who wants them. Then the only abuse is trying to count one person as multiple people to get an unfair amount of benefits which isn’t even possible for things like universal healthcare.
current capitalist approaches are being exploited RIGHT NOW to consolidate wealth and power (see: kushner buying the lakers, ellison buying warner bros and thats just los angeles alone). i’d much rather have a handful of everyman freeloaders than concentrated greed.
But the rich abusing policies so they get pure bail out socialism is fine. Just dont want a poor brown person to have it heavens no.
I see way too much of this on the internet, here on Lemmy included. Thanks for posting this. I have this thought a lot but haven’t see this good of a way to put it before.
Its state sponsored propaganda using companies as proxies to bypass those pesky human rights laws and is vastly on the Republican side but you do have aipac dems and similar issues in other first world countries.
The rise of right wing extremist politicians and the world also going to shit is no coincidence.
They’ll also tell you things such as “don’t trust the government” while also being the party in control. It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
I love the ‘no true scot’ part here.
Nice argument
Actually it’s a logical fallacy. As in your previous comment makes no sense at all so it doesn’t need to be argued against. Just dismissed as the drivel that it is.
So you’re a maga/republican cultist? Or just support them? Seems like you’re just deflecting from the original point I was making since you have no argument with substance🤷♂️
Cool emoji use
Hiding behind vague hypotheticals because you voted for a union busting genocider with a staff full of Epstein patrons
