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by trashtester 1016 days ago
> It's common to project resentment towards individuals onto someone who expresses dissatisfaction with systemic issues.

Perhaps, but it's also quite common for people who are really doing quite well to pretend to argue on behalf of actually marginalized groups when struggling for power with their opponents.

The way to tell the difference between those who genuinely want to help marginalized groups and those who just use them as pawns in a power struggle, is that they spend a similar amount of effort to help those groups with problems that do NOT in any way involve taking away power from their political opponents.

1 comments

There's no struggle for power between an overworked corporate bee, and a billionaire. The latter is hundreds of thousands of times more powerful than the former.

You're right though, a lot of the time folks with office jobs don't really care about the marginalized (and who could blame them with their entire energy drained by their jobs). Your heuristic to tell the difference is... dubious.

> There's no struggle for power between an overworked corporate bee, and a billionaire.

Oh, but there is! Why do you think the "bees" try to create unions, and the billionaires try to prevent it? If the bees get their union, that means they can wrestle some amount of power away from the owner.

> and who could blame them with their entire energy drained by their jobs

Some people and some companies and in some countries, it's normal for the company to be able to drain most of the energy from the workers. In other places, there is much more work/life balance.

By heuristic, like the comment that I responded to directly above was not limited to only employer/employee relationships, but rather so called "systemic issues".

It also happens in both directions. For instance, when conservatives argue against a minimum wage, they tend to argue that a minimum wage can lead to increased unemployment. Do you think most conservatives REALLY carethat much about that part, or do they just want to avoid the minimum wage regulations?