People don’t agree with me when I tell them that landlords exploit their renters to make money.
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How landlords exploit renters
Category: Politics
Capitalism is at the root of all that divides us as a society. Capitalism depends on our being divided; division is built into capitalism. It’s what helps it survive.
Racism, for example, is abundant in capitalism. Capitalism requires labour costs to be as low as possible in order to maximize profits. That’s why slavery was a key component in capitalism getting a foothold. By spreading the myth that indigenous Africans were less valuable than white people, it was easier to treat them like animals, like property, to exploit them for their labour at very little cost.
Same goes for killing and relocating the people indigenous to the Americas. By establishing them as savage and uncivilized, it was easier to justify violence toward them as a way to gain unfettered access to the raw resources necessary to establish Western economies.
Even today, capitalism depends on the low wage labour of developing countries or undocumented workers, while at the same time convincing other workers that immigrants are stealing your jobs.
Capitalism requires the low-wage labour of incarcerated workers to keep retail prices low and profits high. Apprehending, convicting, and sentencing people of colour at higher rates than white people allows capitalism access to the low-wage labour they used to enjoy with African slaves and Chinese railway workers.
And it’s not just racism either.
Consider sexism. Capitalism requires labour. And the easiest way to get labour is through your workers having children, and those children being healthy and educated. Having a mother at home to keep them healthy and ensure they receive education while the father is at work works in capitalism’s favour more so than if both parents were working.
As well, if families are organized so that the father is the boss, children grow up being comfortable with the idea of being a subordinate, with the idea of hierarchy in the workplace.
Even homophobia is wrapped up in capitalism. It’s no coincidence that defenders of the so-called traditional family are also defenders of capitalism. Every person who isn’t in a heterosexual relationship and raising children is another person threatening the future job pools of capitalism.
If billionaires convince us that immigrants are stealing our jobs, that gay people are destroying the family, and that women are emasculating men, then they can keep stealing our wages, our resources, and our dignity.
If you’ve ever seen a news article about an Indigenous person being convicted of a crime and the judge considering a Gladue report in determining a sentence, you’ve probably seen the white backlash.
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I grew up thinking I was Indigenous
I have a few thoughts on manufactured indigeneity.
I grew up thinking I was Indigenous. Or more particularly, that I was part Indigenous. I was taught that I was Métis, and that meant part French and part Cree.
The idea that men should provide financially for the family and that women should stay home to care for the home and the family is problematic.
There are multiple reasons why it’s problematic, but one reason has been on my mind recently.
The Alberta government established a Supervised Consumption Services Review Committee to evaluate the social and economic impacts of current and proposed supervised consumption sites.
This committee is touring the province, and receiving in-person feedback from public engagement sessions. They held two in Lethbridge, and although I attended one, I didn’t speak at the mic. They offer online submissions, as well as email submissions via SCS.Review@gov.ab.ca.
Here’s the email I submitted:
I believe in open borders. And by that, I mean that people should be free to enter into any country they want. Governments seem intent on advocating for free trade, which gives inanimate objects more freedom than people have.
People who use the term “radical Islamic terrorist” use it as a way to couch their Islamophobia behind fear and terror.
Here’s the thing. People who use “radical Islamic terrorist” aren’t actually concerned with radicalism nor terrorism. They’re concerned only with Islam.
I decided to try a new feature here on my blog: my most popular social media posts. Well, here they are:
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Children aren’t too young to be gay
Back in June, our 10-year-old attended an event. It was Pride Week, so they were wearing a trans flag as a cape, had their shoes painted in the colours of the pansexual and trans flags, and had tiny pan and trans flags painted on their cheeks.
An adult at the event asked them about the flag on their back and the flags on their cheeks. When they explained pansexuality and transgender, the adult responded with something like, “Aren’t you a bit too young to decide something like that?”