‘People!’ cried Swift. ‘We’re talking about she who divides the night from the day, Our Lady of 4 a.m., Greydawn herself, being paid for with the lifeblood of mortals! I think we’re a bit past a supply of toothpaste and reasonable working hours!’
‘Yeah, but you didn’t graduate into a recession,’ grumbled Sharon. She raised her voice. ‘Hands up everyone here who wants infinite power.’
One hand was cautiously raised from the far end of the room, before someone swatted it back down.
‘And hands up eveyone here who wants an annual income of around £35,000 after tax and a reasonably sized one-bedroom flat within Zones 1 or 2 and easy walking distance of an Underground station?’ Nearly every hand shot up, including one or two which bore talons. Sharon turned to Swift, grinning with satisfaction. ‘This,’ she explained, ‘is why I’m a shaman, with people skills and that, and you’re just some git in a tatty coat.’

Stray Souls by Kate Griffin (via bobynofthebooks)

robotlyra:

Don’t confuse my hatred of the hyperwealthy for jealousy over what they have. I don’t want a six figure sports car, or a 40 room mansion, or a gold leaf truffle wagyu steak dinner. I want redistribution of wealth that allows for infrastructural support of all citizens’ basic survival needs.

angryfishtrap:

saga-carolin:

sleyby:

pervocracy:

You can ruin almost any social system with enough bad faith.

It takes very little cleverness to go to a toilet with a sign reading “please do not flush paper towels,” flush gravel until it breaks, and then declare victory.

But victory over what?  You haven’t debunked the warning sign or the plumbing system; you’ve just abused them.  You have not made a persuasive case that the warning sign should read “please do not flush paper towels or gravel,” because obviously your wise ass is just waiting to see that sign so you have an excuse to flush a third inappropriate thing.  You also haven’t made a persuasive case that the toilets should be continuously guarded and all visitors frisked for non-flushable objects, because the vast majority of people aren’t as big of a jerk as you.

“This system can be broken by someone who exploits its rules in the most malicious possible way” is true of many otherwise fine systems, and unless the system is safety-critical or there’s a very large group of people motivated to break it, it’s not really an important point to make.

There is nothing original, helpful, or insightful about pointing out that one person with a firehose could ruin a whole sand-sculpture competition.  Yeah, it’s true, that is a risk we are taking.  Please don’t show up with a firehose just to prove your point.

This is how I feel about people who create fake donation posts, and take actual money from real people, to “teach them a lesson” about being too kind. It’s obvious that they don’t care about people getting tricked out of their money, because if they did, they wouldn’t be so eager to do it to people themselves. What they object to is kindness, and they’ll do anything they can to destroy it where they find it.

I’ve seen several posts about health insurance, welfare, paid maternity leave + + (that have all turned out to be written by americans, just saying) that go on about how if we help a bunch of people, SOME are going to take advantage of the system and that’s unacceptable. And.. what IS that? Why is it that helping 1000 people among whom 5 maybe don’t need that help, is seen as worse than helping no one? Why is it so terrible a risk that kindness may fall upon the occasional individual who doesn’t deserve it as much? If ONE of your guests turned out to have already eaten, would you cancel dinner? No!

There are ALWAYS gonna be a small amount of people who take advantage of kindness, but it seems to me only a very fucked up society would consider that a solid reason to not be kind.

The last comment is a variation on the poisoned skittles argument. The implication, of course, is that any risk is too high, and therefore the whole bowl should be avoided — whether this be immigrants, refugees, or some other implied-untrustworthy (potentially poisonous) class. 

“If I gave you a bowl of Skittles and three of them were poison would you still eat them?”

“Are the other Skittles human lives?”

“What?”

“Like, is there a good chance, a really good chance, I would be saving someone from a war zone and probably their life if I ate a Skittle?”

“Well sure. But the point …”

“I would eat the Skittles.”

“Ok, well, the point is …”

“I would GORGE myself on Skittles. I would eat every single Skittle I could find. I would STUFF myself with Skittles. And when I found the poison Skittle and died, I would make sure to leave behind a legacy of children and of friends who also ate skittle after Skittle until there were no Skittles to be eaten. And each person who found the poison Skittle we would weep for. We would weep for their loss, for their sacrifice, and for the fact that they did not let themselves succumb to fear but made the world a better place by eating Skittles.

Because your REAL question, the one you hid behind an inaccurate, insensitive, dehumanizing racist little candy metaphor, is: IS MY LIFE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF MEN, WOMEN, AND TERRIFIED CHILDREN?”

— Eli Bosnick

Eat the skittles.