Aja Barber
speaker
52 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 30 Apr
Aja Barber’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
And he basically was encouraging people to put their money into the economy. And I pushed back very hard against that online. It was like, Rishi Sunak is married to a billionaire. He could put his money in the economy. You keep your money in your pocket.
Our economy cannot be structured in a way where we have to buy cheap garbage in order for us to survive economically. in a way that thrives. I think that's the crux of the problem is that our economy has to be structured differently because buying all of this stuff isn't making us happier. It's not making our planet better. It's not providing really good jobs for people.
So for me, I just look at the whole system and go, if this system requires me over-consuming garbage to run, perhaps it's a bad system and we shouldn't be propping it up.
Well, here's the thing. I think where we feverishly disagree is on this notion of the American dream. One person's American dream tends to be another person's American nightmare. What sort of dream is there for a country that is built on the exploitation of the indigenous people that live there and the exploitation of imported people through chattel slavery? When we look at
the modern fashion industry, when we look at the Industrial Revolution, we need to recognize what is behind all of that is slavery and colonialism and exploitation of labor and goods and resources. And so... I just don't know if I would ever agree with the Republican Party on this notion of the existence of such a dream.
But I do agree that access to cheap goods isn't something that we should really honestly prize above all. The problem I see is we have eroding social safety nets in our society. And so because of that, that lack of actual systems that work for people, people are leaning into consumerism. I see this all the time in my generation, right?
Can't buy a house, don't have healthcare, but you know what you can get? You can get a cheap summer dress and that'll be the bandaid that you'll put over the scrape on your arm that's annoying you that you're not gonna go to a doctor to check out because you don't have health insurance. I remember telling someone when I was living in the U.S.
that you shouldn't get mad at immigrants that you think are taking your job. That's not who's taking your job. The corporations that are shipping jobs overseas that used to be union U.S. jobs and exploiting other people with that system, that's who you should be mad at. So yeah, I do think that there's some space for a people to maybe see eye to eye on this one.
But ultimately, we have to want better for everyone else. And in that, we'll want better for ourselves.
If you are a person like me who has a closet full of clothes and you like your clothes, they're good clothes, wear your clothes. Learn how to repair your clothes. If you have a cabinet full of beauty products, maybe it's time to actually just start using what's in your cabinet before you buy more. And there's another part to this. When it is time to buy again...
Because you know that you have more than enough, it's time to actually start researching the corporations that you spend your money with and asking some hard questions like, does this corporation actually pay the people who make the products fair wages?
And if you can't really figure out what's going on behind the literal seams of a company, then maybe it means that you don't spend your money there. It's time for us to open our eyes and stop engaging in a system that just requires us to shut up and buy. It's time for us to do more than be consumers.
Showing 41–52 of 52 · page 3 of 3
← Previous