box kite and flip switch

Perhaps it is the media at the moment that is having many ads from local charity organizations for food drives as we are in Christmas season, or all of the reports of homelessness that are pervading many Canadian and American cities.

I am getting the sense that there are many things considerably wrong with the structural way that our western society operates. 

• The number of homeless people has grown significantly in the last year as home and rent prices have skyrocketed. Should not being housed become a fundamental right?
• As mentioned in the opening, food has become more expensive putting more pressure on food banks. Why should food banks even exist? Ought sustenance not be fully provided as a basic right?
• Health care systems world wide are running short of nurses and doctors, rural areas are particularly hard hit. A new poorly reviewed Alberta health system change and a less clear Quebec health system change are imminent; will either of them make it better for the people in those provinces to get the health care they need?
• How the climate crisis is exacerbating all sorts of problems for the most marginal globally, and so many people across Canada with the wild fires that affected almost every part this past year
• More locally as evidenced by my recent blog posts; I have become frustrated by the Quebec government's antithesis towards finding new, imaginative and progressive methods of funding and expanding public transit province wide and most specifically in my city
• A colleague of mine at church works at Walmart as a greeter and I chatted with him today about his job and he mentioned that he has caught 3000$ worth of shop lifting in the last two weeks, mostly of really poor people trying to get something they need for their family, like baby formula
• There is a worldwide epidemic of loneliness that once used to be strictly an elderly problem, is now becoming a considerable problem with gen-z who through their childhood and teenage years had mobile devices and now as they graduate out of education find themselves friendless
• Of course there is war with Russia's illegal invasion into Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas war instigated by Hamas' Oct 7 attack; the former causing a worldwide impact given Ukraine's world breadbasket 
• COP28 and ADNOC's president being one and the same; so many fossil fuel interest lobbyists trying to continue the omittance of the term 'fossil fuel' to appear anywhere in a final COP document

One of the yTube channels I follow is called 'Second Thought' where the creator speaks often about socialism; not the kind that people in South America would protest heavily against, but about the more practical theoretical kind to replace Capitalism where instead of having capitalists with few owners focus production solely on profit, a socialist democracy would have the people be owners and decisions made democratically where profit may not be the primary goal, but rather, the health or job satisfaction of the employees.

There seems to be so little I can do to effect any change that is structural in nature. I can make donations to local associations that help with the homeless and destitute in terms of providing paths to housing and warm meals. I can write to my local, provincial and federal members of government to let them know my dissatisfaction with the the structure of the running of our society.