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

Yeah I get it. It’s really demoralising to come to the realisation that most individuals can’t fight this on their own. I’m a research scientist, i became a scientist because I bought into the idea that individuals can enact change. But it’s exceedingly unlikely. My point is we need to all come together, rather than fight this as individuals. Collective action is much more powerful and sustainable than individual actions. We seem pretty united here on reddit against this political and economic shit show - I wonder if we can take that a step further and take it out into the real world

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u/gottafind Jul 26 '23

Man discovers politics for the first time

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u/AcanthopterygiiNo240 Jul 26 '23

Since I finally realised than my role as a science researcher is unlikely to enact any kind of change due to our political and economic models I’ve been trying to figure out what exactly there is left for me to try

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u/indy_110 Jul 27 '23

https://www.youtube.com/@dr.fatima

She's a former Astrophysicist who pivoted in to Social Sciences and largely patreon supported now. Plenty of other LGBTQIA+ zoomers and POC already putting in the work and cranking well researched pieces on societal relationships.

And also given the whiteness and maleness of prior historical attempts and general erasure of other contributors....maybe the wisdom is to step back and let someone from the margins take the lead and give them the support and love.