Thread by @gravislizard

ok here's the other part of that auction story

as a claimed socialist i'm not sure how to handle Getting Great Bargains

basically, I bid on a bunch of these liquidation auction lots, lost most of them, but won a couple that absolutely tripled or quadrupled what I threw at this

in a nutshell, I spent $275 and probably walked away with anywhere from $2k to $5k "worth" of stuff.

it's a huge win for me, and I want to talk about the stuff I got, but I feel like a huge dick bragging about this victory because of all the people who would love to get this kind of ROI if only they could risk the expenditure.

i gambled three hundred american dollars because I could afford to lose every penny. it would have hurt, but i would not have gone hungry or had my cellphone shut off or been hit with Late Fees

i made all these justifications to myself, not the least of which was "I'm bidding on 'everything on this rack', but it comes with the rack, and that alone is worth $200 so" but i wouldn't have spent $200 on a rack under normal circumstances

I'm not rich but I'm able to take chances with my money and not get hurt that bad if I'm wrong, and so many people can't do that. And then if I do get some cool shit, and I don't need it, then what? Do I sell it? Am I just one of those ebay pricks at that point?

Can I in good faith put something in a box and ship it away from a city full of people who want it and can't afford what I just got paid for it, and the only thing I did to 'earn' that money was risk my own?

i could get on craig list and put up all the stuff from this lot that i don't want and give it away for the adjusted price i spent for it plus expenses, so like $50 a piece instead of the $500 each i might get online

but then i get into questions like - if i sell this stuff on ebay i can comfortably afford to buy myself a much nicer camera for making my own stuff. what do i do? enable myself or enable others poorer than me?

i don't make Tech Money. I make $45k/yr which is no Google Programmer Salary. but i know leftists who do make tech money, and i wonder how they handle the guilt

how do you figure out the morals on money? when I was 23 making just above minimum wage, flat broke and living with four other people to make rent, I felt like I knew where I stood in society.

i didn't feel guilty about not giving money to the homeless because I never had any cash in my bank account. i didn't feel guilty about not helping out others in need because i was in need too

i haven't missed rent (I don't HAVE rent, to tell the truth) or had my internet shut off or anything like that in years. I'm still dependent on working a job I hate and I have very little upwards mobility and blah blah, I could go on with the list of reasons I'm Still Fucked

ever since i got an office job and a paid off house to live in i've felt like I got accepted into the ivory tower and am obligated to help others who haven't. but then when i'm in circumstances to do that it gets real hard to actually do it.

and i know that, philosophically, the big picture is that nobody should be struggling and that's the real answer, that the guilt is imposed by capitalism itself and wouldn't exist if there weren't artificial class lines imposed on us

society should have provided my poor photographer friends with big fuckoff lenses and the free time to go use them, and it doesn't, and i can't singlehandedly repair that situation. and most of the time that's okay

but once in a while i come into something nice and think, fuck, how do i keep this? how can i feel okay with that?