I completely disagree. Doing what you must to survive is not against any of the socialist principles that I follow. In a similar way, as a vegan, I don't think it is against the principles of veganism to kill and eat a wild animal (or a fellow human) if you are in a situation where that is literally the only way to survive. Every person, and every thing on this planet, has the fundamental right to fight for their own existence even at the detriment of others, and to me that principle outweighs all else. It is in the absence of necessity that other principles, such as those that say murder is wrong and that it is wrong to benefit from the work of others, come into play.

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Doing what you must to survive is not against any leftist principle, but trying to maximize your personal profits from someone else's work is, that's my whole fucking thesis

[–] booty@hexbear.net 4 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

But maximizing your personal profits is doing what you must to survive, and even then it might not be enough. No matter how efficiently you optimize your investments, at least on my income or equivalent, or (as horrific as it is to imagine) less income than me, one bad ambulance ride can put you into crippling debt from which you will never recover. Under capitalism, you're never secure unless you're literally a capitalist. A worker like me cannot amass enough of a safety net to be 99% safe such that further optimization of income ceases to be justifiable as necessity and becomes unnecessary seeking of profit.

[–] mayo_cider@hexbear.net 1 points 3 months ago

I'm not going to stop you if you want to profit from the work of others, I'm too busy stealing from my employer

But it doesn't change the theory, maximizing your personal profits without working for it is antithetical to socialism