I’ve been leaning more left for a while in terms of distain for specific aspects of the capitalist system but, honestly, it was coming to the wider Lemmyverse that made me feel like there was something I could do about it. Interactions with socialists on here, seeing the memes, and actually yellow Parenti (suggested by a Hexbear), made me realize that I didn’t have to just lament into the void but that there was a lot of people who felt this way and had practical ideas for praxis. Hexbear has been great in helping me find resources (podcasts, free access to theory) and perspective from outside my personal bubble to help push me further into taking action.
If you want one thing though - student loans made me realize the banks were taking advantage of both parents’ hopes for their children and said children by promising that once they got a good job from the good degree they borrowed money for, they could just pay off the loans no problem. After 7 years, my 30k in loans was 60k that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not pay down, and I realized that it was rigged. (Luckily, the government came through and I got it forgiven with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but not without an epic battle with several different loan servicers.) It opened my eyes to how much power financial institutions have and how they only screw the low income people with that power. That’s when I started questioning a system that bailed those banks out, and the dominos started falling from there.
I’ve been leaning more left for a while in terms of distain for specific aspects of the capitalist system but, honestly, it was coming to the wider Lemmyverse that made me feel like there was something I could do about it. Interactions with socialists on here, seeing the memes, and actually yellow Parenti (suggested by a Hexbear), made me realize that I didn’t have to just lament into the void but that there was a lot of people who felt this way and had practical ideas for praxis. Hexbear has been great in helping me find resources (podcasts, free access to theory) and perspective from outside my personal bubble to help push me further into taking action.
If you want one thing though - student loans made me realize the banks were taking advantage of both parents’ hopes for their children and said children by promising that once they got a good job from the good degree they borrowed money for, they could just pay off the loans no problem. After 7 years, my 30k in loans was 60k that, no matter how hard I tried, I could not pay down, and I realized that it was rigged. (Luckily, the government came through and I got it forgiven with the Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but not without an epic battle with several different loan servicers.) It opened my eyes to how much power financial institutions have and how they only screw the low income people with that power. That’s when I started questioning a system that bailed those banks out, and the dominos started falling from there.