[Alternative systems](alternative systems) are possible. Presented with alternatives in narrative/artistic/fictional form as well as real examples and plans, people are better equipped to enact social change.

many genres eg horror and dramatic realism are very good at negative realities and possible dystopias and these are important, but movements aren’t sustained on negative momentum alone - people need something to strive for
sci-fi is the realm that best captures the contrast of dystopia and utopia, offering far-flung alternatives with radical implications
but realist alternatives are lacking. gently optimistic narratives in short supply
even attempts at ‘good news’ programming can feel saccharine
the best of this I’ve seen is in the form of the ‘case study’ of existing movements, projects and activists that are making positive changes in the here and now, or of repeatable processes by which people can accelerate the growth of more equitable systems
Political art and radical art can also be very impactful in these areas
media that is otherwise realist, negative or naive in worldview can often address some angle of real-world injustice, bringing some small slice of utopia - any depicted better world, no matter how trivial, can be impactful
- consider for example an incredibly downbeat BBC drama whose protagonist uses a wheelchair, set in an old English village full of locations that are inexplicably entirely accessible to them
- this could’ve happened due to ignorance to its unlikelihood, happenstance of location, catering to the actor’s needs, or as a deliberate cry for wheelchair accessibility
- but regardless of reason, the imagined world has been created.
- for a viewer who uses a wheelchair and laments about the accessibility of old buildings, they’ve stumbled across some hope, and for them this show can be a utopia, despite other plots and moods that are melancholy and depressing.
  - (there’s a link here to ‘impact over intention’, interestingly)
- they could go on to advocate for this very thing with the armament of the media depiction.
so, any concrete depiction of better worlds/systems/ideas in any medium can be crucial to aiming someone’s sights at it
and unfortunately the opposite can also be true with satirical dystopias backfiring
- eg Squid Game inspired several real life competitions with huge monetary prizes (without the outright massacre of the original, but still with the horrifically exploitative and dangerous nature of playing with the lives of desperate people)
progress and innovation
what we can imagine, who gets to see through their plans
sci-fi shorts as experimental exploratory alternative futures

Mentions

“The future is already here. It’s just not very evenly distributed.”– William Gibson (quoted by)
“to capture one’s imagination – […] not only inspires, but also detains attention and imagination, orchestrates it, and delimits the possibility to imagine differently.” (Smolicki, 2017)

Beyond Money

Notes

Evidence of the capitalist waste discussed here is displayed well in Bullshit Jobs
On writing off debt as solution to debt crises, pg39 “if the company fails to produce as expected […] the capitalists’ /dreams of their ostensible worth/ are indeed lost” and that worth is indeed only a dream, ‘potential worth’ means there can be no loss, there was nothing there to lose— “In a pro-worker and environmentalist framing of these losses, /the effort of workers and Earth’s materials and energy have been wasted under capitalist management/.”
capitalism needs growth, growth needs exploitation and inequality
Disney’s Pocahontas - “You think you own whatever land you land on / The earth is not a dead thing you can claim.”

Extracts

“Capitalism has no operating processes to either stabilise or reduce production: the compulsion to reproduce beyond itself is a systemic necessity. Thus, the key barrier to necessary change is that market-based economies not only will not, but actually cannot, allow production to wax and wane according to people’s and earth’s needs.” #resources #hyper-growth #sustainability #ecology
“Pro-capitalist ideologies such as neoliberalism convincingly promote growth as capitalism’s strength. In fact, […] growth is capitalism’s critical weakness; ” #neoliberalism #hyper-growth
“Rather than everyone recieving an equal amount of money, a just approach recognises multi-various contributions, diverse needs and various ways of satisfying them.” #marxism #diversity #neurodiversity hidden labour
Marx- “Even an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the earth. They are simply it’s possessors, it’s beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations.” #marxism #stewardship
Marx- “Man lives on nature - means that nature is his body, with which he must remain in continuous interchange if he is not to die. That means physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature” #marxism #interconnection
“Money grows out of, is central to, and reproduces reductive ways of thinking. Money becomes the hub, form, seed and product of capital as a system, a social system, a productive system.” Free trade, free will? - page 33 #capital #currency
“Private property is not only the result, but also the premise, of trade. ”… “Thus, the idea of private ownership is a fundamental assumption of trade, of monetary exchange.” #trade #currency
“Trade disables practices of commoning and sharing even as it is touted as enabling freedom, free movement and free activities” #trade #commoning #sharing
Money represents demand and supply, labour time and energy expended, it is all equal exchange - NO, money literally represents itself, and therefore nothing “Money offers no promise or potential as a rational form of calculating the benefits and disadvantages of producing on the basis of communal and ecological needs”plus chapter 3 alternatives, “Even if labour time involved in production or was the basis of price, and the primary influence on the value of money - or we contrived it to be so - this would not assist in either achieving ecological sustainability or a socially just system of production or distribution.” on labour value -page 37
“I hold that labour is the socio-political substance and essense of the mass of exchange value, including surplus value, within capitalism in a profoundly similar way to Marx’s philosophy, but without recourse to the notion of equal exchange. I neither think that ‘equal exchange’ is usefully retorted in Marx’s theory nor, and this is the most significant point, is equal exchange a useful concept for creating an appropriate post-capitalist society. Monetary efficiencies are not efficiencies oriented around the interests of workers or ecosystems.”
“Market rationalisation is less persuasive once we frame discourses to ask: ‘Whose efficiency?’ ‘Whose logic?’ “In this monetary world, not only is there no driver but also no driver’s seat. The closest we have to a decision maker is the abstraction of money, which usurps potential participatory democracy whereby we might collectively preside over what we produce, where and how we produce it, and for whom.’