He left out the important bit that anyone from communist countries knows about. Not only will your neighbors shun you and deny you aid out of fear of association, they and even your relatives will rat you out or even make up lies about you just for a little bit of extra handout from big brother and a tiny bit of temporary breathing room from the boot on their own necks. View quoted note →

I remember the alarming thing I would hear from people several times a day when I was doing outdoor art festivals. “I love your art and would love to buy it but we have all our money spent on our house right now.” This started happening about a year and a half before the Great Recession became too obvious for anyone to ignore anymore. People with real wealth tend not to fetishize the showy trappings- those things just naturally become part of their lives and they don’t think much on it. It took me far too long to decide not to date a guy who worshipped his run down older model (insert name of any expensive car here). It wasn’t me being shallow, I just finally figured out that his priorities were skewed to value it and other materialistic stuff he could not afford- over a real human being. Folks like that will throw you under the bus without blinking if it means getting more shiny stuff. Now I realize I’d rather live in a van down by the river (yay fish!) than spend one night in any of the fussy new overpriced, poorly built “people farms” or “human rabbit hutches” being built so fast around here. #priorities #exitthesystem View quoted note →