What radicalized me:
My great-grandfather was a mechanic and hobbyist automotive inventor. His vehicles were always really neat, and he built multiple from the ground up. In 1974, he invented a way to get 70 mpg. It was a cheap fix. He did it on all his cars, and he did it for all of his friends and family, and he did it for free (they just had to pay for the parts).
Standard Oil came to the door and offered to buy his patent from him once they caught wind. He told them he didn't have a patent on it, that it was just something free and open to help out people (he was definitely a “help the most people you can” kind of person.)
They left. Later, “different” people came back, knocking in the night, when he answered the door, they barged in and and threatened him with guns to stop, or they'd shoot everyone there. Everyone in my family that was there was scared half to death. While everyone was held at gunpoint, they threatened to kill him if he did it anymore or told anyone how to do it, and told him to undo what he did to his car.
He did so the next day. Asking around, everyone he had upgraded their car, had been offered ridiculous amounts of money to buy their cars.
He was so scared, he never told us how to do the fix. I'm not a car girl, so I couldn't do it if I wanted to (I can fix a headlight or change a belt, or fix some of the electrical, but that's about it). My Dad and Grandfather were both car guys and always wanted to know how to do it. On his deathbed, he did tell us what it was – sort of. He was still afraid of them up to his dying breath, and so was cryptic. He said, “You have to add a second carb to the car. But not in the same line as the first carb, and you have to adjust the timing. It'll seem weird at first, but think about how the combustion happens, and it'll be obvious.”
Now, f–k oil conglomerates if they're going to screw my family. It took me forever to figure out what it was, especially not being a car-type person, but I AM a STEM type. Haven't tried it, but I think I have figured it out. The obvious/weird part was the air intake & timing of the spark. It's the only part of the combustion besides the fuel. Basically, after the fuels injected, instead of letting just a jet of air and a shot of gas, you push in turbulent air passed through a carb (either aerating the gas or just mixing up the air… not sure witch). It purifies the air a bit further, but also means that instead of a pocket of fresh oxygen for an explosion and a pocket of gas you've aerated the whole thing both through the combustion chamber. Then, timed to after the aerration, it ignites. It's kind of the same concept as a fuel-air bomb, but minuscule and for moving your car. The result is you don't need to push on the accelerator NEARLY as hard for any get-up-and-go, something that fit the people's stories that my great-granfather retrofitted their cars for.
Oh, and it didn't stop there. The inheritance my family should have gotten when my great-grandfater died (which I wouldn't have traded my great-grandfather for) was a fair chunk of land and multiple houses. He loved to build, and literally just built houses because he could and let friends live in them for free. When he died, some corporate lawyers swooped in, used some crazy loophole to insist that they should get the land & houses, and stole our inheritance. (They had been bugging him several times a year to buy the land from him, it intersected the border of a major city) and then proceeded to “develop” the land into overpriced rentals (and by develop, I mean trample and destroy beautifully maintained flower-lined paths and areas with beautiful scenery with chain link fences and no-trespassing signs, tear down beautifully hand-built houses to put up cheap pre-fab duplexes, and pave over anything that looked remotely pretty with bad drainage so the whole place stunk like a sewer pit.) I was too young to know the details, and I wasn't in the court room so I don't know the company name here.
My grandfather:
A local gun manufacturing plant decided it was cheaper to dump toxic manufacturing chemicals in the ground water than actually follow environmental guidelines. My grandparents used a well for their water. My grandfather slowly died over the course of two years, going from being a 50-year-old benchpresser and handyman who was the manliest man I've ever met to a skeleton surviving on donated blood, until he gave up and passed. One of his last wishes was for the family to NOT sue the gun manufacturing plant because he had friends there that had jobs, and the area was on short supply for jobs. It was Cameron Missouri. I was still in college at the time, and my parents wouldn't reveal the cause of death to me until years later. As far as I can guess, this was Ithaca Gun Company.
My father:
Disabled Veteren. His platoon was poisoned (they drank from a poisoned well). The bioweapon used specifically melted a person's internal skeleton. Most of those affected died. My dad was one of the few survivors, and after the poisoning, walking was a struggle. Casualties are, sadly, normal for war. However, I wondered what cause for which I lost my ability to enjoy time with my Dad. Why did I never get to play catch with him, or have him encourage me in lots of physical activities that kids are typical to do? My mom and dad both were track in high school (my dad, before the poisoning, was even up to olympic times for the mile run before he was poisoned), and their parents had helped them train. Why didn't I get that? So, I decided to look up the war my Dad fought in. I grew up on a military base, but I never really knew the details. All I knew was the location.
Guatemala.
I lost my ability to have a mountain of childhood memories, for the f–king Guatamala “peacekeeping” action mainly caused because the American United Fruit Company decided it didn't have enough money when the majority of the population was effectively their slaves, and then when the Guatemalan people finally threw them off, the US decided that wasn't okay and went and put in a dictator (the guy they instilled, Carlos Armas, who literally wore a Hitler 'stash) then proceeded to commit genocide and killed all opposition. The US was continuing to support literal Guatemalan Hitler because American United Fruit Company wanted them to. So I lost an entire childhood of potential memories with my father because American United Fruit Company wasn't happy it didn't have slaves, and so caused Nazi Germany in Central America, and enlisted the US military to enforce it.
So yea, f–k capitalism in the arse with a rusty spoon.