comment: >
  
  I completely agree, but at the same time, it's almost impossible to stop the tide of progress. I bet you there were Mayans thousands of years ago that petitioned against deforestation, and yet they eventually grew so big so fast that they deforested thier entire land mass, causing the collapse of thier society alongside mass poverty, famine, ect. This all happened about a millennia before the Spaniards came. 
  I want to believe that humans are capable of change en masse, and I think we actually are.. it's just the timeline isn't decades, it's century's or even millennia.   At this point I think we just have to hold out for nuclear fusion, once we have unlimited energy, we should theoretically have the ability to generate enough resources for all. Or perhaps we actually can slowly shift the cultural zeitgeist to a more sustainable one, but I'm not holding my breath. Maybe the only thing that we'll actually learn from is another societal collapse, either way, things are getting bad and something absolutely has to give. Thanks for sharing your perspective as well :).
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  In my city the police budget takes up 28 percent of it's budget. We also have one of the highest crime rates in our country. The police budget used to take up 17% in the early 2000's, and has been steadily rising since then... Along with the crime rates. They bought a robot dog from Boston dynamics, they're constantly upgrading thier equipment, increasing salaries, ect. It's clear that whatever the police are doing is not working. Polititions are scared to run on the platform of police budget cuts, the police always put up a massive stink and nothing ever happens. 
  Now for the nuance. Our government is handling crime reactively instead of proactively. They don't follow up on almost anything unless a crime has been committed, which leads to dangerous scenarios. They constantly arrest the same people for public drunkenness and petty crime. We have a very high crime rate, yet the overwhelming majority of cops I see are traffic cops, which isn't even an effective way of controlling traffic. 
  We have a large homeless population in a country where winters get to -40° C. We have an even larger poor population, our public education system isn't the best, and we have very limited resources to help people integrate back into society. Cost of living is rising, and people aren't able to feed thier families, of course a certain percentage of people will turn to crime. People need to survive, and if they aren't given the necessary resources, they're going to have to find them some other way. The way we do things just doesn't make sense. We keep feeding the criminal population by defending public services, then raise the police budget to put more of them in jail. It's ridiculously backwards. 
  Statements like "defund the police" and "eat the rich* are absolutely necessary. People see the ultimacy of backwards, ineffective policies but can't realistically do anything, but they can at least raise public awareness. The more people that believe an ideal means the more people who will vote for someone who supports that ideal come election time. Not everyone wants to invest into politics, a lot are happy to just exist and not worry about them. Phrases like these grab attention and prompt an individual to ask questions, which could eventually lead to positive change. 
  No one saying "defund the police" seriously thinks we should cut out police from society, we just want people to have the necessary resources for survival so they don't have to turn to crime. Eating the rich seams like a great place to get some of those resources.
  I'm from Canada, but currently living in Thailand. There's almost no police here, but there's also almost no crime. Things don't often get stolen, people don't often get murdered. Walking down a back alley in the capital, Bangkok, will get you an interesting conversation, and not mugged. There's almost no homelessness, although there is poverty. It's clear to me that whatever we're doing in North America is not working, we desperately need change. >
  
  Damn.  Thanks for this.  Really integrates a lot of what I’ve been pondering lately.
  I keep coming back to economic Growthism (growth purely for the sake of growth) as the primary culprit.  It sounds simplistic at first, but it is the prime driver of inequality.  The rise of capitalism was founded on colonialism…which was essentially a way to extract and exploit with no strings attached.  It’s ugly.  
  And now, here we are looking at pretty dramatic global inequality. The places that are supposed to be thriving (because GDP as an ideology says a growing economy makes for happy people) are actually pretty miserable (statistically declining since the 50s).  And the rest…well they just get more of the same.  Rich countries exploiting them in the name of growth.  And they’re feeling the brunt of climate-related changes.
  Infinite growth is impossible.  We’re seeing now that it puts tremendous pressure on systems.  Eventually, something has to give.  There’s no debate anymore…infinite growth is synonymous with collapse.  Ecologic collapse (obvious).  Social collapse (shifts to privatization, massive disruptions to food systems, mental health problems, crime, etc etc etc).  It’s all related.  And while the transition is likely to be a mess…growth has to stop.  It had to stop decades ago.  
  None of it is surprising.
  degrowth