I like a lot of the communities on that instance, but every once in a while I just get hit with a random wave of toxicity by them for no reason. For example, there was a post asking which communities from Reddit do you wish existed on Lemmy, and I answered honestly saying more car related communities as they are one of my hobbies, and I got severely downvoted and got replied to with “there is a FuckCars community” There are other times in the past where something similar happened in a lemmy.ml community, where I said something that was 100% non-offensive, non-argumentative, and non-political but got mass down voted for no reason. I have not had this problem anywhere else however. Does anyone else have a similar experience or no?
I don’t disagree that systemic factors play a huge role, but individual actions can definitely contribute a lot as well. A family member of mine grew up dirt poor in a developing country but worked their ass off to save money to move to the US, worked their ass off more and is now in the top of their field, owns a house, multiple cars, paid for their kids college, etc. Luck almost certainly played a part (and choosing the right field to go into) and it’s obviously the case that a lot of people who work hard all their life are never able to get out of poverty, but individual actions can definitely contribute to moving up the socioeconomic ladder. It certainly shouldn’t be the only factor, though, as conservatives and the rich want it to be.
Of course you are right and they can contribute a lot in an individual person’s life. But when you look at the statistics, there are numbers on economic freedom of moving into an upper class of where you start with.
And some countries are good in that regard. Some countries are very very bad in that regard.