Find Impoverished People Who Care & Share
While social media has reach, it can lack legitimacy, and rarely leads to serious discussion. We can learn from the civil rights movement in the USA, where many of the 150,000 black-owned businesses (1969) were also social meeting places – “grocery stores, hair salons, small variety stores selling everything from hardware to food, gasoline stations, and funeral homes”.
Such businesses can still be venues for political discussion, even if not overly political, in any community that shares inequality as a culture, or by where they live.
These are perfect places to test/prove new forms of economics – for example restaurants where you pay what you can, rather than having set prices. It is a powerful experience that is ripe for anecdotal sharing, and more.
Likewise, students are generally keen on learning and sharing new ideas, and promoting ways of defeating inequality in business adjacent to learning establishments – like cafes and bookstores – could work well.
This also suggests the possibility for people of means to operate such businesses in a not-for-profit way, combined with passive sharing of political messages. In Australia we have some vegetarian restaurants run by the Hare Khrishnas. The food is cheap and healthy, and there is a table with some of their literature on it. Otherwise, it is like eating in any other buffet restaurant. Known as the cheapest place to get a meal, it is frequented by students.
Social media has its uses, but person-to-person In Real Life is best. That’s why jets still have business class seating.
