I’ve been saying this for years: especially in tech and tech-adjacent fields, a LOT of diversity initiatives are about finding a cheaper professional labour force domestically rather than outsourcing abroad. (And soon, many of these tech jobs are going to be outsourced anyways.)

I often think about how Montréal’s Mile End has gentrified like WOAH thanks to tech and games, and most of these companies/studios are eventually going to abandon Montréal once the subsidies run out/it becomes cheaper to implant themselves or outsource to elsewhere.

I mean, maybe the Québec government subsidies won’t run out. But eventually these studios and tech companies ARE going to close. I’m also thinking many of these companies are going to start trying to stop having employees and rely only on part and full-time contractors +

+ and it will inevitably rub Québec labour laws wrong.

Or maybe Québec and Montréal will get rid of their laws, and change even further to accommodate these cultural and technological industry staples.

In any case, the future is grim.

Our only options are to get rid of capitalism, save the fucking environment, guillotine the 100 richest men on earth, and start over with a new economic, legal, and even national systems.

Yeah, that’s going to be easy.

This thread is brought to you by some graffiti in the hella gentrified Plateau that read “soutenons les écoles publiques” and “NON À LA GENTRIFICATION” & I just… feel… sad.

At least we know what the solution is.

Now it’s just the how, that kills and harms the least amount of people globally, that preoccupies me personally.

My grandfather came to Montréal at the age of 17 in the 40s to be a factory worker, and I spent my childhood with him in the Mild End, Little Italy, Rosemont, and he would point out all the buildings and factories he worked in throughout his life.

He used to tell me that back before all the clothing was made in China and Asia, many, many cheap, mass-produced textiles throughout North America were made in Montréal.

And then, it started to change as technology changed, and the textile industry needed a cheaper workforce.

Whenever I wander around the Mile End, I often remember my grandfather’s stories, and look at the start-up offices that are in the factories where he once worked, and I know that the clock is ticking.

Tech and tech-adjacent jobs are eventually going to leave too.

There is nothing honourable about working. There is nothing honourable about being exploited by your manager and boss to create profit for your employer’s employer’s employer. We can’t structure our society like this. Capitalism is hurting too many people, and the planet.

And yet with so many people, we can’t even have this conversation because they simply refuse to entertain even a hypothetical world that doesn’t work the way this one does.

“That’s not how the real world works” demonstrates an extraordinary lack of imagination. We have to start living in the world we NEED today. Which means everything has to change, especially how we act, behave, and what our expectations are.