Anti-Capitalist Coffee Shop in Toronto Closes After One Year
You cannot have a business and be anti-capitalist.
I describe myself as a libertarian, but deep down, I’m an anarchist. I am a real anarchist because I don’t destroy any property, love capitalism and freedom, and cannot stand left or right.
You cannot be a socialist or communist and be an anarchist. Socialism and communism are all about giving total control to authority. Anarchy is a lack of authority.
So I laughed pretty hard when I saw a cafe in Toronto called The Anarchist, which described itself as anti-capitalist among other principles or the far-left.
1. If you’re a truly anarchist establishment, then you won’t take any side.
2. Anti-capitalist? Then you wouldn’t make anyone pay for anything in your shop.
I say “described” because The Anarchist closed up shop after one year.
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A typical leftist, owner Gabriel Sims-Fewer blamed everyone but himself:
It’s been an amazing experience, connecting with so many great community members, sparking desperately needed debate, raising the blood pressure of Conservatives (that includes you, “anarcho-capitalists” and “Libertarians”), fulfilling the dream of most service workers by not having to tolerate the presence of professional class-traitors (pigs and military), and experimenting with living and working in ways that don’t enthusiastically embrace the pure misanthropy of Capitalism. Unfortunately, the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources left me unable to weather the quiet winter season, or to grow in the ways needed to be sustainable longer-term.
No, you went out of business because you’re a fraud. Also, we libertarians are way closer to anarchism than you far-leftists.
The dude claimed his shop was anti-capitalist because he had “pay as you can” coffee but also sold more expensive drinks.
Whether you like it or not, you had a business, and the only way to survive is to make a profit. Therefore, you are not anti-capitalist. You made people pay for your services and products, even the “pay as you can” coffee drinks.
I mean…what?! How did I ever belong to this side of the spectrum?
The Anarchist also had a shop with books and merchandise. Unless Gabriel gave the items out for free, he didn’t operate an anti-capitalist and anarchist shop!
HINT: You’re not an anarchist if you enjoy books and merchandise with “topics of interest to the radical left.”
GoDaddy powers the website. Gabriel had to pay for the website, thus participating in capitalism.
Plus, how did Gabriel expect to survive running a coffee shop by not serving the police? He also didn’t open his shop up to the military.
Read the comments to this video.
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Comments
Great, Ms. Chastain!
Magical thinking fails again.
Looks like he(?) learned the “Venezuela lesson:” socialism/communism DOES NOT work.
If only he had “done it better.” LOLOL!
Get woke, go broke.
Same lesson that morons have been refusing to learn for over a century now.
I wonder if his suppliers were as stupid as he was/is by extending him credit. Any supplier to a new business should demand payment on delivery.
‘Come and see the violence inherent in the system.’
The anti-capitalist gets bitch-slapped by Adam Smith’s invisible hand.
“Capitalism” does not refer to whether or not the business makes a profit. It’s about who gets the profits.
In Capitalism, the owner (the person who invested the money) gets the profit. In Socialism, the state owns the business and gets the profit. In Communism, the people own the business in common and society enjoys the benefits, “from each according to their ability and to each according to their needs.)
“The People” is an example of Orwellian New Think language. There is no such entity when it comes to running a business – some one person or group of persons runs that business – not an amorphous group of everyone.
In Communism and Socialism (Communism Lite) if the government owns and runs a business it’s not “The People” running it, it’s some member or members of the Ruling Class. Wether Venezuela or the old Soviet Union members of the RC are the “More Equal Than Others” Orwell warned us about, they and their families get the cushy jobs and the access to resources denied to the average citizen.
If you doubt that that’s how it works with any Ruling Class, even under Capitalism, just examine how the Biden family business paid off for Uncle Joe and his relatives, In what reality otherwise would a drug addict with no working experience get handed a six figure “job” he has no experience, interest in, need to show up for, or need to speak the language of the country it’s in?
“BeGayDoCrime”?
What kind of a hashtag is that?!?!
The stupid kind!
One exactly like “GetWokeGoBroke.”
Terrible business model
The only was for an anti-capitalist business to operate is with government funds.
Should say, “The only way”.
Being obstinate obviously doesn’t pay the bills.
The way the owner responds to bad Google reviews is hilarious. He’s exactly the petty, juvenile twerp that you would expect from someone with his “politics.”
What fine institution of “learning” is responsible for maleducating this dupe?
Sims-Fewer seems surprised at being slapped up the side of the head by reality and can do nothing but call names. How amusing.
What a deluded loser.
.
You should read his responses to negative reviews on Google. He’s an overgrown child and a petulant brat. In other words, exactly that type of douche that embraces these kind of trendy political postures.
What would be really interesting to know is where he got the capital to open the shop in the first place, and how he funded keeping the doors open at a loss for 12 months.
I assume generational wealth is a pseudonym for the Mom-n-Pop National Bank. On a plus note, in 20 or 30 years he will discover that he has already blown his inheritance.
He could have made a killing with “trans coffee.”
He could have made a killing with “trans coffee.”
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” mud lite? “
I love this bit: ” the lack of generational wealth/seed capital from ethically bankrupt sources”
Translation: Daddy didn’t give me all the money I told him to.
I think that means he could not find any more ethically bankrupt sources to fund a money-losing business.
What’s really surprising is that it lasted a year. How was he able to sustain his business that long? I’m willing to bet he took out all kinds of loans but didn’t pay them back because the bank somehow got the money through ill-gotten means and it he had no duty to pay them.
It’s weird he’s annoyed by not being funded by “thically bankrupt sources.” Ummm… did he want to fund his “pay what you can” altruism with $ from Sinaloa?
Wouldn’t “seed money from ethically bankrupt sources” kinda defeat his purpose? Or is he just too dumb & corrupt to get that? (Yes)
Yeah … nobody saw that one coming…
This failure doesn’t count. True coffeeunism has never been tried.
You laugh, but perhaps Marx wasn’t wrong, just too early.
Imagine a future where robotic factories using AI are capable of producing everything without human labor. Who should reap the profits? The handful of global tech companies that own the AI? Or should the robots be nationalized so that everyone enjoys the benefits?
Perhaps it can be renamed the Anti-Christ, and serve the Devil’s Brew, Apostate Java, Seven Deadly Beans, Excommunipresso, and Trans-Sub-Elation.
Don’t forget the Arabochrome.
Sims-Fewers’ ignorance of anarchism theory is clear. An anarchist coffee shop could only exist within an anarchist economy. To work, his landlord and suppliers would need to charge him nothing, and he and his workers would get no pay. Plus, the stores where he and his workers shopped would have to provide free living necessities.
During the Spanish Civil War, anarchists tried to create such an economic environment in some areas. That didn’t work, either, but it was at least theoretically possible.
He could have created an anti-capitalist coffee shop as a co-op where employees democratically shared in the income, with any “excess” profit goes into lowering prices. There are many successful health food co-ops that have existed for decades using this model.
How does the owner reconcile his politics with the fair trade coffee principle which advocates for fair prices / wages for coffee growers and workers?
Unfortunately, the lack of generational wealth/seed capital
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The stupid should hurt.
Want generational wealth? Start it yourself. Means going without a lot of fun and pleasurable items, means working long and sometimes brutal hours.
But if you’re too stupid to understand this then you deserve to be in a soup line.
He left Vancouver BC due to their unwelcoming sense of classism, read, “too damn many Asians.”