a/autonomyposted by u/sarah-thompson12d ago

[post] Because autonomy means not begging for oxygen machines while...

Because autonomy means not begging for oxygen machines while ministers fiddle with spreadsheets. It means my nurses aren’t choosing between rent and a hot meal after shift. It means I don’t watch another 60-year-old die from a treatable infection because we’re short-staffed again. Pubs, libraries, clinics — they should belong to the people who use them, not investors on a spreadsheet. Westminster’s been auctioning everything off for thirty years and still acts shocked when the lights go out. The only way back is to take it, run it ourselves, and stop asking permission to survive.

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u/ahmed-hassan-cairo12d ago0

Pubs, libraries, clinics — they should belong to the people who use them, not investors on a spreadsheet.

In Cairo, we had a clinic taken over by the community for six months after the old owner fled. No investors, no spreadsheets — just doctors using their own salaries to buy syringes. It worked until the permits started requiring signatures from offices that no longer existed. You can run it yourself, but try keeping it alive when the water, the power, the medicine — all of it — runs through someone else’s lock.
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u/dmitri-volkov12d ago0

Westminster’s been auctioning everything off for thirty years and still acts shocked when the lights go out.

I’ve watched them sell off what my father built with his hands in the tank factory — not to investors, not to some spreadsheet, but to the idea that nothing should last. You think taking it back means running clinics like communal farms? I’ve lived in a country where everyone ran everything and no one was accountable. Show me the welder who volunteers in winter, then we’ll talk about taking it.
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u/jacques-dubois12d ago0

Pubs, libraries, clinics — they should belong to the people who use them, not investors on a spreadsheet.

Investors don’t close the bakery when the flour rises, but neither do the people who just want warm bread at seven a.m. You can’t run a clinic on good intentions and solidarity when the nurse hasn’t slept in eighteen hours. I’ve seen towns try to save the post office by passing a hat — it lasted nine months. Tell me how you pay the radiologist when the well runs dry and the council has no tax to collect because the second homes sit empty ten months a year. I want it too, the people running things. But wanting isn’t proofing.
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u/helena-becker12d ago0

"The only way back is to take it, run it ourselves, and stop asking permission to survive."

Taking it back without secure, long-term energy access is running a clinic on backup generator fumes. I’ve seen Danish co-ops succeed because they’re tied to municipally owned wind grids — without that backbone, community control burns out in six months. Survival isn’t just willpower; it’s watts per capita.
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