Sometimes, We Have to Pay for What We Want
There's a "Budget Day Boycott" - but no one offering to make themselves available to provide essentials free of charge to those who experience an immediate need on Wednesday 28th October - an urgent, but not ambulance-worthy, hospital trip they need to put petrol in their car for. Food intended for Wednesday's dinner that's gone off, and nothing else in, because payday isn't until Friday. A sick child who needs medication that their parent thought they had in the medicine cabinet, only to find it has run out. A pair of shoes found to have an unrepairable split, and a job interview in the morning.
Many people are vehemently "Anti-AI" - but they won't even write down a friend's email, so that they can both leave Meta platforms, which are steamrollering ahead with the most unethical form of Gen-AI use possible. They won't reach out to "unknowns" to ask for art work, writing, videography, coaching, that they will pay market rates for. (Or, in many cases, pay for at all.)
Black British people demand reparations, while disabled people, trans people, and the unemployed are still expected to disappear from public life, whilst also providing unpaid labour to conferences about them, to people who "want to educate themselves", to corporations who won't employ them, but feel it is "important for people working here to understand their unconscious biases, and how those impact real people", to publications who want their words, but not their financial wellbeing.
The "hard Left" are loud in their insistence that it is "morally bankrupt" for people to work in the armed forces, in "carceral institutions", for any of Nestle or Coca-Cola's brands, in finance...but they're not setting up viable businesses which will pay conscientious objectors a genuinely decent wage, with a realistic likelihood of multi-year job security.
Many people are vehemently "Anti-AI" - but they won't even write down a friend's email, so that they can both leave Meta platforms, which are steamrollering ahead with the most unethical form of Gen-AI use possible. They won't reach out to "unknowns" to ask for art work, writing, videography, coaching, that they will pay market rates for. (Or, in many cases, pay for at all.)
Black British people demand reparations, while disabled people, trans people, and the unemployed are still expected to disappear from public life, whilst also providing unpaid labour to conferences about them, to people who "want to educate themselves", to corporations who won't employ them, but feel it is "important for people working here to understand their unconscious biases, and how those impact real people", to publications who want their words, but not their financial wellbeing.
The "hard Left" are loud in their insistence that it is "morally bankrupt" for people to work in the armed forces, in "carceral institutions", for any of Nestle or Coca-Cola's brands, in finance...but they're not setting up viable businesses which will pay conscientious objectors a genuinely decent wage, with a realistic likelihood of multi-year job security.
Everyone should be vegan, but no one is providing mutual aid funds to enable people with severe allergies to soya (a feature of almost all "plant based meat"), or with genuinely high protein needs and restricted incomes, to get a nutritionally complete vegan diet. There are no mutual aid funds to support livestock farmers, abattoir workers, butchers, leatherworkers, etc who leave their professions from conscience.
The Left - both politically and socially - have a damaging tendency to be very much more in favour of hand outs over hand ups; they like to retain a lifelong hold over others, the knife-twist of emotional blackmail over how much they've done for those others, how grateful those others should be. They prefer a claim on other human beings, rather than reformative change.
A more subtle form of this can be seen in the near-constant whining about "how hard" dealing with emails is, with figures on the Left being the most likely to mewl and meme about how "having to deal with emails is basically a form of abuse!" - ignoring that sending an email is often the most acceptable option for people who have been told they "mustn't bother other people", that other people's time is "much more valuable" than theirs, that it's "rude to ask people for things!" to make the first step towards asking for support, pitching a new business, asking if a business they'd like to work for has any open vacancies.
Phone calls are far more intrusive; people usually have their phones with them all the time, and even if they don't answer a ringing phone while they're in a meeting, having lunch, or doing deep work, it still impacts on their focus. Emails can be left until someone is ready to read them. Out of office responses can be set if you're genuinely having a day, either because of work demands or mental health, when emails sincerely feel too much, or if you're actually not going to be at your desk for a period of time. Emails can be automatically filtered, template responses can be set, it is relatively easy to automate responding to emails in a variety of ways. You can't really automate the answering of a phone call in the same way.
And all of that is before we even get to the reality that not everyone is able to speak. Not everyone is able to hear well enough to carry on a phone call. Some people have very valid reasons for not wanting their accent to be known immediately. People whose voices mean they are likely to be misgendered - whether they are cis or trans - may feel vastly more comfortable communicating in writing.
The accommodation I find hardest to get people to agree to is also the one which has no cost attached to it: I have mild hearing loss, and Auditory Processing Disorder. I therefore ask people to communicate by email or text for preference, and, if they need a phone call, or feel more comfortable communicating by phone, to arrange a specific time for that call with me in advance, so I can make sure that I am in a space with no background noise, and that I actually have my phone in front of me, at an angle I can see the screen (as I often don't hear it ring, even if the volume is turned up.) I can virtually guarantee at this point that I'll get a dramatic overreaction to the idea that "just picking up the phone" is not ideal as a first option, followed by a monologue on how much the other person hates email, and how much easier a "quick phone call" would be... errr...not for me, it wouldn't be, and I'm the person you claim you want to communicate with.
Meanwhile, the last time I worked in an office, I not only made a point of remembering who preferred a phone call over email, or a desk visit over a phone call, what time senior leaders were least busy, but also who needed specific fonts used on emails, to accommodate dyslexia, and whose ADHD benefitted from a reminder at the end of the day before a close-of-play deadline, because they performed best with a tight deadline, as well as the working patterns of multiple colleagues, as it was a flexible-hybrid workplace.
No one there remembered anything about the accommodations I required for my sight loss and hearing loss. My line manager couldn't even be bothered to make a note of my working pattern, and routinely scheduled me for meetings that "had to be accommodated!" outside of my working hours, because he was working those hours, but "didn't have capacity to attend these meetings." (I found that emailing whoever else was in the meeting, and asking if it would be easier for them to discuss over email, rather than "committing time from the working day to a meeting, and then still having to follow up by email", tended to result in very enthusiastic "Yes! If we can scrap that meeting - this is basically the update (whatever the update was), I don't really think it needs a conversation?" responses...more proof of the power for good that is email!)
It is not viable to demand that everyone change to accommodate our ethics without accepting responsibility for covering the financial losses they may occur in doing so.
It is not acceptable to refuse to communicate with people in a way which is comfortable and accessible for them because you've decided to infantilise yourself, and present something that's mildly irritating, at best, as the worst thing to ever happen to you, and proof that your life is worse than anything a medieval peasant ever had to cope with.
It is deeply unethical to demand boycotts without supporting the least well off to also participate, without incurring harm or distress. (Someone living in one room can't stockpile. Someone on a low income often doesn't have any money in the 2-3 days before payday.)
Ethics cost money. And the Left's greatest problem is that they don't like paying individual people in meaningful ways.
A more subtle form of this can be seen in the near-constant whining about "how hard" dealing with emails is, with figures on the Left being the most likely to mewl and meme about how "having to deal with emails is basically a form of abuse!" - ignoring that sending an email is often the most acceptable option for people who have been told they "mustn't bother other people", that other people's time is "much more valuable" than theirs, that it's "rude to ask people for things!" to make the first step towards asking for support, pitching a new business, asking if a business they'd like to work for has any open vacancies.
Phone calls are far more intrusive; people usually have their phones with them all the time, and even if they don't answer a ringing phone while they're in a meeting, having lunch, or doing deep work, it still impacts on their focus. Emails can be left until someone is ready to read them. Out of office responses can be set if you're genuinely having a day, either because of work demands or mental health, when emails sincerely feel too much, or if you're actually not going to be at your desk for a period of time. Emails can be automatically filtered, template responses can be set, it is relatively easy to automate responding to emails in a variety of ways. You can't really automate the answering of a phone call in the same way.
And all of that is before we even get to the reality that not everyone is able to speak. Not everyone is able to hear well enough to carry on a phone call. Some people have very valid reasons for not wanting their accent to be known immediately. People whose voices mean they are likely to be misgendered - whether they are cis or trans - may feel vastly more comfortable communicating in writing.
The accommodation I find hardest to get people to agree to is also the one which has no cost attached to it: I have mild hearing loss, and Auditory Processing Disorder. I therefore ask people to communicate by email or text for preference, and, if they need a phone call, or feel more comfortable communicating by phone, to arrange a specific time for that call with me in advance, so I can make sure that I am in a space with no background noise, and that I actually have my phone in front of me, at an angle I can see the screen (as I often don't hear it ring, even if the volume is turned up.) I can virtually guarantee at this point that I'll get a dramatic overreaction to the idea that "just picking up the phone" is not ideal as a first option, followed by a monologue on how much the other person hates email, and how much easier a "quick phone call" would be... errr...not for me, it wouldn't be, and I'm the person you claim you want to communicate with.
Meanwhile, the last time I worked in an office, I not only made a point of remembering who preferred a phone call over email, or a desk visit over a phone call, what time senior leaders were least busy, but also who needed specific fonts used on emails, to accommodate dyslexia, and whose ADHD benefitted from a reminder at the end of the day before a close-of-play deadline, because they performed best with a tight deadline, as well as the working patterns of multiple colleagues, as it was a flexible-hybrid workplace.
No one there remembered anything about the accommodations I required for my sight loss and hearing loss. My line manager couldn't even be bothered to make a note of my working pattern, and routinely scheduled me for meetings that "had to be accommodated!" outside of my working hours, because he was working those hours, but "didn't have capacity to attend these meetings." (I found that emailing whoever else was in the meeting, and asking if it would be easier for them to discuss over email, rather than "committing time from the working day to a meeting, and then still having to follow up by email", tended to result in very enthusiastic "Yes! If we can scrap that meeting - this is basically the update (whatever the update was), I don't really think it needs a conversation?" responses...more proof of the power for good that is email!)
It is not viable to demand that everyone change to accommodate our ethics without accepting responsibility for covering the financial losses they may occur in doing so.
It is not acceptable to refuse to communicate with people in a way which is comfortable and accessible for them because you've decided to infantilise yourself, and present something that's mildly irritating, at best, as the worst thing to ever happen to you, and proof that your life is worse than anything a medieval peasant ever had to cope with.
It is deeply unethical to demand boycotts without supporting the least well off to also participate, without incurring harm or distress. (Someone living in one room can't stockpile. Someone on a low income often doesn't have any money in the 2-3 days before payday.)
Ethics cost money. And the Left's greatest problem is that they don't like paying individual people in meaningful ways.
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