Anthony Bourdain wrote a book celebrating and documenting workers in kitchens. How hard they have to work for so little, how the standards are poor and safety is lacking and so on. At the end he was just like, "welp, that's kitchen work!"
I dont know what it is but some libs get stuck at being able to go to the root cause of the systemic issues plaguing life. Presumably, theres a fear that revolution and upending the system will lead to a loss for themselves - and it will, perhaps, but they have the rest of the world to gain. Your friend may not be ready for socialist theory lit, but "Reform or Revolution" is a great classic. Maybe you could get him and you to study it together.
Adam Curtis talked about this a bit, do you really want an upheaval? Or do you want things to change just a little bit? You get to keep all or most of your privileges and acquired wealth, but black people aren't treated poorly and gays can marry and the immigrants get to come in. The revolutionary future is exciting and wild but also uncertain. Libs dont have that pure blackpill-esque hatred of the bougies and the elite, nor the bad material circumstances that leave capitalism as an empty promise, theyre comfortable enough and frightened of losing what little they have.
cushvlog where matt talks about The Social Dilemma
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEpxpWHz0gs&t=3m58s
dunno man part of it is explaining how crony capitalism ect aren’t simply the excesses of a fine system but are inherent to our mode of production
Imo I had success with pointing to inevitability of crony capitalism and how regulatory solutions fail because of the profit motives/lobbying etc
One of the things that really got me thinking about how liberal solutions are inadequate was a public finance course at uni that laid out all the ways regulations fail, get captured, and increase barriers to entry for new firms; how large firms have a concentrated interest in not accounting for their externalities while everyone affected by them has a very small interest with significant opportunity costs to trying to correct them; and other honestly difficult problems for the efficient functioning of a market and society. I'd really recommend looking into some of that stuff because it engages with the sort of evidence and numbers based evaluations of policy that libs love while making it pretty clear that there are fundamental problems with how we try to address them.
Watch out though, just going down the regulatory capture route could led to a lib becoming a libertarian (or as I call it a TBI).
Absolutely. That's why I think explaining how distributing externality costs across a large number of people affects the incentive structure is so important to do at the same time.
Truth, in any setting either with or without a legal structure in place large corporate interests would always have an interest in creating stopping blocks to capital accumulation for others and that there is no gary stu-esque Howard Roark (who is a hyper capitalist superman yet also charitable? fuck Rand is such a shit writer...) that could ever overcome such realities. Only via organized suppression and dismantling of these systems that allow such wealth accumulation can this perpetual game of capital/power dominance be stopped.
he imagines himself to be the true adult in the room when we talk and will inundate me with centrist cliches
Just spam a clip of the movie They Live where the protagonist beats the hell out of his smart friend to make him see reality, Zizek on pure ideology etc
Maybe a better understanding of Marxism would help them. Maybe they have fears about communism from what they're taught in school. Hear them out and try to correct misunderstandings and admit errors
The recent behind the bastards episodes on Zuckerberg go more into the specifics you want. Have your friend check them out.
Maybe you can find something in here (good article)
Or here; https://hexbear.net/post/34375
This actually might be exactly what you’re looking for: https://content.blubrry.com/jacobin/VastMajority_MattChristman.mp3
Matt Christman on his usual Cush vlog shit pairs well with these hosts, who do a great job of addressing the problems you’re having with it.
Have him read douglass rushkoff's books, who a lot of these ideas were taken from. He has a good interview with connor habib if you're interested
