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this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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People grew food for eachother before capitalism. A book that opened my eyes to the various systems that people organized themselves under before capitalism monopolized world is The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow.
Add: “The Way We Never Were” by Stephanie Coontz.
While she deals more specifically with society in the US she also covers things like how people didn’t really have or use money in society. Money was what rich people used, the rest of everyone traded and bartered work and goods for what they needed.
People where mostly growing food for themselves and their family, not for each other. This changed when the first basic forms of capitalism where invented, things like markets, guilds, and skyrocketed with industrialization.
No other system that we tried ever worked as good and produced so much peace and prosperity like capitalism. Is it perfect? Fuck no! Nothing that involves humans could ever be. But it is the best we have from a bunch of broken and fucked up systems.
People had markets and commerce for thousands of years before capitalism.
Markets are a proto-form of capitalism. Producing something for the whole purpose to make a profit at a market is the core of capitalism.
Could you, though? Do you realize the level of knowledge, work, and risk that entailed?
Unless you've actually done it and survived without external inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, emergency food, tools.... what do you know about growing your own food?
You're living in a fantasy world.
Yes I do realize what's involved. Why would you assume everyone is as ineffective as you are? Why do you think only billionaires can solve problems when EVERY BIT OF EVIDENCE shows the exact fucking opposite?
that’s rage bait.
I'm just saying there are more ways to form a society than exclusively through the complete control and exploitation of people and the environment like we've been doing for the last 100 years.
Just because capitalism is the only way you know to live , doesn't mean it's the only way to live.
Can you describe one that is better?
Whenever we tried something else in the last 150 years it created a living hell for nearly everyone who was lucky enough to survive. And what we had before that was not paradise either, far away from it.
The problem is not capitalism but unchecked, uncontrolled capitalism.
Name one socialist or communist society that wasn't embargoed, subverted, and eventually coup'ed by the US in order to "prove" those systems don't work?
Your question is exactly the same as two of my friends holding you down while I piss in your face while asking why you like piss in your face.
Yeah I forgot that the US forced China into the culture revolution or Russland into performing Stalinist cleansings or into War communism with its huge famine.