Better worlds do not appear on their own. People make them possible.
Because today is Juneteenth, I keep coming back to a basic point: freedom is not self-executing.
That does not apply only to law, history, or politics. It also applies to the systems people live inside every day. If freedom is delayed, narrowed, undermined, or made dependent on systems fully controlled by others, then it is never as secure as it should be.
That is part of why I do the work that I do. On one side, it helps explain why digital systems keep getting worse even when people know better. The other side points in a different direction: not a perfect world, but one where people choose to build something better. And after they decide that, then they keep choosing it.
Put differently, one helps explain why people get stuck. The other helps me think about what it might take, including collective action, to avoid staying stuck.
So, today’s post is about exactly that.
A bad system does not fix itself just because people dislike it
That is one of the clearest lessons I took from Cory Doctorow’s book Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.
Platforms do not decay by accident. They get worse through structure. First, they are good to/for users. Then they become more useful to business customers. Then, once everyone is locked in, the platform starts squeezing all sides. That only works because the system has already made itself hard to leave.
The part that stood out to me most was not just the decline itself. It was the explanation for why people remain trapped inside it.
Network effects matter. Switching costs matter. But the collective action problem may be the most important part. It is one thing to decide you want to leave a platform. It is another thing entirely to convince everyone else in your group, network, coalition, support system, client base, or organizing circle to leave at the same time and go somewhere else together.
That is not just an internet problem. That is a power problem, and one reason ethics has to move from abstraction to practice.
And it is one reason ethical action, by itself, is not enough.
A lot of people know something is wrong. They feel the decay and can see the dependency. We know when a system is extractive, manipulative, or degrading. It is when we do not have the words, but something is wrong because a red flag went off in our minds. But knowing that is not the same thing as being able to move. Especially when the system has become the place where your people, your work, your audience, or your community still are.
That is where passive freedom starts to break down
If freedom depends on systems that you cannot leave, modify, and/or meaningfully challenge, then it is not freedom you are looking at. It is permission and capitulation disguised as participation.
That is also one reason why I don’t believe that “just making better choices” is a sufficient answer. Of course, better choices do matter. But without coordination, collective action, alternatives, and the kind of infrastructure people can actually move through, what are we doing?
A better world does not come from good intentions alone
That is where N.K. Jemisin’s The Ones Who Stay and Fight gave me a different perspective.
The stark contrast between Omelas (More specifically, Ursula LeGuin’s The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas) and Um-Helat (from N.K. Jemisin’s The Ones Who Stay and Fight) helped me connect (some of) the dots. For example, Omelas is passive, static, and comfortable for some because someone else is made to carry the cost for the society. Um-Helat, by contrast, is active, ordered, and dynamic. It is not built on denial like Omelas, but through people who understand that a better society requires choices, boundaries, work, and participation.
That distinction matters.
Too often, people talk about better futures as if they are either naive fantasies or moral decorations. Something nice to imagine, but not something to organize around. But that is not what I took from Jemisin at all.
What I took from it is that better conditions have to be made real.
They don’t need to be perfect at first, because that is impossible. Plus, changes cannot happen all at once, either, but we need to be intentional about actively pursuing a better world and simultaneously not be scared to build it. We shouldn’t be scared, because we have rights. But to keep them, we must exercise them.
Dreaming is work
This is also where a quote from Toni Morrison resonates from a speech she made at a 1988 Sarah Lawrence Commencement that I just learned about, which brings this full circle:
“Dreaming is not irresponsible; it is first-order, human business. It’s not entertainment… It’s work.”
The audio version of the speech is archived at Sarah Lawrence College; no video exists. To supplement, here is a post from the Plymouth Congregational Church titled To Dream of Better Things by Dr. DeWayne L. Davis that mentions part of the quote for additional context.
A better world needs structure, not just hope
Thankfully, we are slowly but surely starting to see how this type of “dreaming” can help steer things in a better direction when we put our collective action to use and exercise our rights. Whether it is drivers building a cooperative alternative to Uber or ranchers working together to regain more control over processing and distribution when concentrated firms fail them. Here is the More Perfect Union video about that titled We Went to Nebraska. What We Found Could Unrig the Economy.
Possible does not mean easy
I think that matters to say out loud.
A better world being possible does not mean people automatically want one badly enough to build it. It does not mean power gives up its grip. It does not mean old habits disappear. And it definitely does not mean that all systems will bend toward justice on their own.
It means the opposite, actually. We must interrupt what we are not happy with and put in the work to build alternatives. We also have to defend one another and refuse to normalize the lie that cruelty, dependency, and stagnation are just “how things work.” Otherwise, harm becomes routine inside a system.
That is why the contrast between Omelas and Um-Helat stayed with me. One represents a society that accepts the terms it inherited. The other represents a society that acts.
That is the part I keep coming back to on Juneteenth
Juneteenth is not just about delayed news arriving in Texas. It is a reminder that when freedom is withheld, it is STILL withheld. That is the same even when someone else keeps insisting, repeatedly, that the change has already happened, because “it’s on paper!” despite the fact that a majority of those impacted do not see or experience a true difference, because they don’t see a change. They see the same patterns. And so do others, but we will never know whether someone else is experiencing that unless we talk about it.
That is why I do not want to use the day as a metaphor. The history is too real for that.
But I do think it sharpens the point.
Freedom is not meaningful just because it is declared. It has to become material and become lived, and what gets enforced matters once a right exists on paper. It also has to show up in whether people can move, connect, participate, organize, and act with dignity.
And when freedom is denied, delayed, narrowed, or made conditional, people still have to do the work of making it real.
That applies in law. It applies in movements. In governance. And yes, even online, too. It is all connected.
Because if a platform can hold people hostage through dependency (or make them feel stuck even when they/we know it is harming them), then the work is not just to criticize the system. Instead, we must do the hard work to build the conditions that empower people.
What do we do with that?
For me, this is where the answer becomes more practical.
If ethical action alone is not enough, then what matters is organized, collective action.
That can look like coalition-building, legal reform, or interoperability. At the same time, it can look like community governance, better infrastructure, better tools, better communication, and systems that do not force people to choose between access and dignity.
The kicker is that it usually looks much smaller than people expect, because true change is incremental, slow, tedious, and iterative.
So what does that look like?
It is helping people understand their rights. It could also look like making a system more usable while intentionally avoiding exploitation, including its environmental impact. If you have ever improved how decisions are tracked so accountability does not disappear, it can look like that, too. If you have ever built a bridge to create a clearer path so people can actually participate, instead of just being told they are included, that is also what it looks like.
That is not glamorous work. But it is part of how a better world becomes more than a talking point.
At the end of the day
What stayed with me from last week is that there is no passive route to something better.
Not online, politically, nor socially.
If a system is degrading, people MUST organize against the degradation. If a platform traps people through dependency, they need structures that help them move. And if a better world is possible, it will not become real because people vaguely prefer it over the status quo.
We need to start talking about it to stop building more disconnections.
It will only become real because people decide, through collective action, to build it, defend it, and keep building it anyway.
That is part of why Juneteenth still matters.
Freedom is not passive.
It has to be made real.