The global economy is the reason I can’t take civilization seriously, or even be on its side.
All I can do is appreciate the morbid gallows humor of it.
Billions of people self-flagellating on the false promises of a few thousand capitalist sociopath families. We were conquered by the modern contemporaries of the traveling snake oil salesmen of old. They’ve got most of the peasants so fucking snowed they don’t even have to run away to the next county after they poison you anymore 🤣
Carceral housing law arose from a transformation in federal law enforcement, in which the U.S. government encouraged the merging of policing and welfare, and policing became driven primarily by profit
This is real. It’s also one reason why laws against gay sex were on the books in many states until finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. Sometimes police would use the laws directly, but more commonly since gay sex was considered a criminal activity, landlords would use it as an excuse to deny lgbt people housing or evict them.
Sociologist Matthew Desmond has an amazing book called Evicted that talks about criminal act evictions and profiles people who have been the target of them. The book follows very low income renters in Milwaukee through years of their struggles to find and keep housing. It also follows individual landlords from the same neighborhoods. It’s technically an academic subject and is impeccably researched (the notes section in the back could be its own book) but it reads like a novel. It won a Pulitzer iirc.
He also just published Poverty, By America last year. I’ve only just started it, but it’s just as readable. He explains overly-complicated regulations and social services red tape in a way that’s concise and easy to understand, and he illustrates their consequences through his interviews with real people. His books should be required reading for every American.
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