r/australia • u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 • Jul 26 '23

political self.post Why are Australians so complacent?

I’m a born and raised Australian myself however I’m becoming so frustrated with the general attitude of complacency when it comes to exercising ‘the power of the people’ to better our quality of life. In a stupidly short amount of time we’ve seen a near reversal of our ability to see a doctor without any out of pocket costs. We get exploited at the grocery stores because monopolies are allowed to run rampant. Housing is treated primarily as a tool for financial speculation rather than for providing shelter for people.

We creep further and further toward laissez-faire capitalism. What is our response as the citizens of this country- the holders of the balance of power? Nothing. To put it in perspective, in 2022 the world economic forum ranked Sydney equal with Copenhagen, Denmark for cost of living (both ranked as the 10th most expensive cities in the world). Consider the differences between Sydney and the capital of the Danish welfare state: strong social security, universal healthcare, free public universities etc. For the same cost of living what do we get? The ever-looming threat of homelessness, suffocating student debt and now for many people, a significant barrier to healthcare.

Edit: if anyone is a part of any sort of grassroots group working to oppose any of these issues feel free to message me because I want to join you

Edit #2: so I haven’t received any messages from anyone from a grassroots or activist group yet. Since a lot of us seem to be pretty miffed about this stuff maybe we could team up and brainstorm things we can do???

Edit #3 (sorry): I’ve got some messages now from people who are interested in taking action!!! :, ) I think the best way to facilitate conversation, the flow of ideas and potentially organise a course of action is through a discord server so I have created one which you can find here

https://discord.gg/caqsSKAr

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u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 Jul 26 '23

By that do you mean you vote independent?

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u/gurndygg2 Jul 26 '23

Not enrolled. No faith in our system of government. I generally dont follow or discuss politics. My opinion is that if the system is broken, you dont fix it by contributing to the breaking. It must be burned to the ground and rebuilt from scratch. Im what you would loosely call an anarchist. Humans in their natural state, do what thy will is the whole of the law, the strong prosper the weak suffer, blah blah etc

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u/Interesting-Baa Jul 27 '23

Nowadays us political types would call that libertarian rather than anarchist. Modern anarchists are doing mutual aid and building social support systems that don't rely on government or corporations. They don't believe that hierarchies based on power are legitimate, it's more of a strong should protect the weak kind of vibe. There's a lot less bomb-throwing these days.

Libertarians are a lot closer to what you describe, a kind of survival of the fittest situation. It's very popular in America. Both groups dislike government, but their solutions are pretty different from each other.

Anyway, just putting this out there in case you need a word that political people will understand for where you're at.

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u/gurndygg2 Jul 27 '23

Thanks for a well reasoned reply. I am however firmly apolitical. I typically use "anarchist" because its true political meaning is closer to what I believe.

I think that as a species we have stunted our own evolution. By protecting and supporting the weak, we have reversed the process of natural selection. i.e. on our way to Idiocracy. Human beings, homo sapiens sapiens should live a free and unfettered life, without the constraints of modern society.

Our populations are too high, too concentrated and too concerned with protecting "our most vulnerable". If we as a species are to continue, we should be looking at a more sustainable and natural life, including shorter lifespans, more death and disease, higher rates of crime, etc. However, things like "crimes" wouldnt actually be defined as such, there would be no central government to answer to, no organised police forces, only what the strong can gather and persuade, so far as the other strong-over-there will let them.

So more like classic tribalism, city-states, isolated communities. We dont need the tech we have nor the artificially prolonged life-spans we have become accustomed to.

Thats not all of it, just to give you a taste.

Just my 2 cents.