It's Important To Me That People Know The Original "he Would Not Fucking Say That" Was In Response To

people seem to have trouble understanding why i’m an anti-capitalist, so i’m going to try and put it into simple, real-life terms.

i work at a restaurant. i make $12 an hour, plus tips. minimum wage where i live is relatively high for my country - the national minimum wage is $7.25/hr, and has not been raised since 2009. before taxes, working full time, my yearly income is about $22,000 a year. ($25,000 if you count tips)

at my job, we sell various dishes, with an average price of about $10-$15. we get printouts every week detailing how much money we made that week; in one week, our restaurant makes about $30,000. (one of our other locations actually makes this much on a daily basis!)

i’m not going to go into details, but after the costs of production (payroll for employees, rent for the building, maintenance, and wholesale food purchasing) are accounted for, the restaurant makes an estimated profit of $20,000 per week.

this profit goes directly to the owner, who does not work at this location. the owner of my restaurant has actually been on vacation for a few months, but still profits from the restaurant, because they own it. i have met the owner exactly twice in my year of working here.

to put this into perspective, the owner of this restaurant earns in 2 days what they pay me in one year. and that’s just from this single location - the owner has several other restaurants, all of which make more money than the one i work at. this ends up resulting in the owner having an estimated net worth of tens of millions of dollars, even after accounting for the payroll for every single worker in their employ.

now, i have to ask you: does the owner of my restaurant deserve this income? did they earn it? did their labor result in this value being created?

the naive answer would be “yes”; the owner purchased the location and arranged for the raw ingredients to be delivered, did they not?

the actual answer is “no”. the owner may have used their initial capital to start the location, but the profit is a result of my labor, and the labor of my co-workers.

the owner purchases rice at a very low bulk price of about 25 cents a pound. i cook the rice, and within a few minutes, that pound of rice is suddenly worth about $30. the owner did not create this value, i did. the owner simply provided the initial capital investment required to start the process.

what needs to be understood here is that capitalists do not create value. they use the labor of their employees to create value, and then take the excess profit and keep it.

what needs to be understood is that capitalists accrue income by already HAVING money. the owner of my restaurant was only able to get this far because they started off, from the very beginning, with enough money to purchase a building, purchase food in bulk, and hire hundreds of employees.

that is to say: the rich get richer, and they do so by exploiting the labor of the poor.

the owner of my restaurant could afford to triple the income of every single person in their employee if they felt like it, but this would mean that they were generating less profit for themselves, so they do not.

the owner of my restaurant pays me the current minimum wage of my area, because to them, i am not a person. i am an investment. i am an asset. i am a means to create more money. 

when you are paid minimum wage, the message your boss is sending you is this: “legally, if i could pay you less, i would.”

every capitalist on the planet exploits their workers for their own gain. every capitalist, even the small business owners, forces people to stay in poverty so that the capitalist can profit.

on endlings, and despair

Hey, y'all. It's...been a rough couple of weeks. So, I thought--better to light a single candle, right?

If you're familiar with wildlife conservation success stories, then you're likely also familiar with their exact polar opposite. The Northern White Rhino. Conservation's poster child for despair. Our greatest and most high-profile utter failure. We slaughtered them for wealth and status, and applied the brakes too slow. Changed course too late.

We poured everything we had into trying to save them, and we failed.

We lost them. They died. The last surviving male was named Sudan. He died in 2018, elderly and sick. His genetic material is preserved, along with frozen semen from other long-dead males, but only as an exercise in futility. Only two females survive--a mother and daughter, Najin and Fatu.

Both of them are infertile. They still live; but the Northern White Rhinoceros is extinct. Gone forever.

In 2023, an experimental procedure was attempted, a hail-mary desperation play to extract healthy eggs from the surviving females.

It worked.

The extracted eggs were flown to a genetics lab, and artificially fertilized using the sperm of lost Northern males. The frozen semen that we kept, all this time, even after we knew that the only living females were incapable of becoming pregnant.

It worked.

Thirty northern white rhino embryos were created and cryogenically preserved, but with no ability to do anything with them, it was a thin hope at best. In 2024, for the first time, an extremely experimental IVF treatment was attempted on a SOUTHERN white rhino--a related subspecies.

It worked.

The embryo transplanted as part of the experiment had no northern blood--but the pregnancy took. The surgery was safe for the mother. The fetus was healthy. The procedure is viable. Surrogate Southern candidates have already been identified to carry the Northern embryos. Rhinoceros pregnancies are sixteen months long, and the implantation hasn't happened yet. It will take time, before we know. Despair is fast and loud. Hope is slower, softer. Stronger, in the end.

The first round may not take. We'll learn from it. It's what we do. We'll try again. Do better, the next time. Fail again, maybe. Learn more. Try harder.

This will not save the species. Not overnight. The numbers will be very low, with no genetic diversity to speak of. It's a holding action, nothing more.

Nothing less.

One generation won't save a species. But even a single calf will buy us time. Not quite gone, not yet. One more generation. One more endling. One more chance. And if we seize it, we might just get another after that. We're getting damn good at gene editing. At stem-cell research. In the length of a single rhino lifetime, we'll get even better.

For decades, we have been in a holding action with no hope in sight. Researchers, geneticists, environmentalists, wildlife rehabbers. Dedicated and heroic Kenyan rangers have kept the last surviving NWRs under 24/7 armed guard, line-of-sight, eyes-on, never resting, never relaxing their guard. Knowing, all the while, that their vigilance was for nothing. Would save nothing. This is a dead species--an elderly male, two females so closely related that their offspring couldn't interbreed even if they could produce any--and they can't.

Northern white rhino conservation was the most devastatingly hopeless cause in the world.

Two years from now, that dead species may welcome a whole new generation.

It's a holding action, just a holding action, but not "just". There is a monument, at the Ol Pejeta Conservancy, where the last white rhinos have lived and will die. It was created at the point where we knew--not believed, knew--that the species was past all hope. It memorializes, by name there were so few, the last of the northern white rhinos. Most of the markers have brief descriptions--where the endling rhino lived, how it was rescued, how it died.

One marker bears only these words: SUDAN | Last male Northern White Rhino.

If even a single surrogate someday bears a son, we have erased the writing on that plaque forever.

All we can manage is a holding action? Then we hold. We hold hard and fast and long, use our fingernails if we have to. But hold. Even and perhaps especially when we are past all hope.

We never know what miracle we might be buying time for.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Past Tense, Pt. 1"

the emotion i just experienced is kind of indescribable

spike watches a movie

My hometown wikipedia page does not have a notable people section, it has a SEPARATE PAGE of notable people. But theyre pretty big i would say unquestionably famous

casual survey: reblog if you want to kiss a girl right now

“kill them with kindness” WRONG. GET RECLAIMED BY THE EARTH🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🍄🌿🌳🍀🍀🌱🌺🌷🌹🍄🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌿🪻🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🎍🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🍀🪻🌾🌿🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🍄🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🪻🍀🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🪻🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🌱🌺🌿🍀🍄🍀🍂🍃🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🍄🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🍃🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🪻🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🌱🍄🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍄🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌲🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🍀🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🎍🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🪻🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🍄🌳🍀🌱🌺🌷🌹🌲☘️🍃🌼🌳🌱🍀🌿🌷🌹🌳🌲🌿🍀🌺🌿🌲🌿☘️🌱🌸🌼🌲☘️🌻🌿🌳🍀🌱🌻🌳🍄🌳🌿🌱🍄🌺🌸🌹🌳🌻🌲🌿🪻

Why do you persist?