But that's only really makes sense in like the simplest of cases. The government doesn't know if you had a kid this year, or maybe you bought an EV, or maybe you started renting out a room in your home.
If all you have is a single W2 income; then by all means go to your local library, grab a 1040-EZ form, fill it out, and drop it in the mail. Will probably only take you 10 minutes or less.
In all but the most niche cases, they do in fact know that you had a kid. That being said, most things they have a pretty good idea about (or could) and they could easily adopt the system that they do in a lot of other countries where the government sends to a tax form all filled out that says, “we think you owe this much.” Then you just provide the exemptions you listed.
This would save a considerable amount of time when I file my taxes by just being able to double check they got cost basis correct on stocks sold and applied appropriate credits for mortgage interest and what not.
I feel like that's a hard one. Whenever I argue against tipping with coworkers (we don't currently work in the service industry) they will mention how they are all for it and mention how during peak times they made double their usual amount. I feel like it's really been drilled in that it's good for the workers
That element of it — when the restaurant is doing well, the windfall is shared with the waitstaff — could be preserved by simply giving the staff a percentage of the price of each meal they work on. Structure it as a bonus, the way salaried professionals can receive a bonus when the company is doing well.
It may be worth noting that worker-owned restaurants, like Cheese Board Pizza here in Berkeley, typically do not solicit tips. (Well, except for the live musicians, who are not worker-owners.) If tipping was really all that great for the workers, then places where the workers literally control company policy would encourage it.
In Norway, restaurants started to implement applications or websites to order at the restaurant. Scan a QR code or download an app (yuck) to order the food and preemptively pay for it. While that might be fine, I find it really strange when I'm asked about tipping when I place my order. I have literally not seen a waiter, I have just sat down and looked through a website, and now I'm asked if I want to tip? Why? What for?
Luckily, 0% tip is very common in all services in Norway, so it's not considered rude to refrain from tipping.
Over-reliance on proprietary, closed-source products and services from megacorporations.
For instance, it's really absurd that people in many parts of the world cannot function without WhatsApp, they can't even imagine a life without it. It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can't do anything about it.
Also the people who base their entire careers on say Adobe or Microsoft products, they're literally having their lives dictated by one giant corporation, which is very depressing and dystopian.
It seems absurd that Meta literally has them by the balls, and these people can't do anything about it.
I don't get this sentiment. If anything happens to WhatsApp, they'll just switch to another IM. WhatsApp wasn't the first to come along, and won't be the last. How exactly does Meta have them by the balls?
In some of those countries, it's not really a choice. Like, WhatsApp is the only way of contacting a company's customer care (via chat bots that run on it), colleges and universities may have study groups on it and teachers may hand out notes etc in those groups, also apparently it's also the only way to contact even some government agencies.
WhatsApp can and will get away with a lot before it drives users to a mass exodus, when messaging should have just been an open protocol from the start.
I was there. It was fine. You didn't need phones to be able to function in a society. Phones were something like an optional convenience that you had only at fixed places, like your home or office. If you were out and about, you typically didn't have access to a phone, unless you were in the vicinity of a payphone, so you weren't expected to be available on phone. Whereas in the countries where Meta has monopoly over, everyone expects you to be on WhatsApp, and you don't really get a choice in the matter.
There are plenty of free and open source messaging alternatives, they just don't have the branding money to make sure a user base appears. To some degree the people using the apps are choosing the proprietary option.
We collectively need to be doing more to support and promote free open source software to avoid this issue. Secure peer to peer communication protocols should be more more ubiquitous than even http.
I can happily live with any IM software, just happens that WA got on the market earlier and everyone else uses it. Me taking a stand by only using telegram does no good if I have no one to talk to.
My wife spent no less than 5 hours on the phone with just as many groups of people to organize a blood draw that took a grand total of three actual minutes.
Edit: we have built a world where we measure success by money. This has meant we are all in pursuit of it all the time, even if we don't want to be. The rich get richer by driving us to do more with less, which marginalizes those who cannot be a productive part of that. We supress our compassion because it isn't making money. People suffer. Those of us who can contribute subject ourselves to a different kind of stress so we can enjoy a few hours of leisure here and there but we never really are free of the shackles of our employer. If you advance to a management position you are forced to evaluate and possibly fire people you could be friends with. When hiring you are evaluating how well people bend the knee. It's not a great world we've made for ourselves.
For me it's that for a culture that fetishizes "freedom" we sure are fucking willing to accept a reality where we have to give it up for most of our waking life just to be able to live and provide for our families. Once you see it, you can't unsee it.
Yeah, it would be more correct to say "work for others to live" is absurd.
People always had to do some work to survive, but in a world were all the land is owned, if you are one of the majority which is born landless you generaly can't work for yourself (even to open your own business you need starting money) just enough to live by with (say, build your own house and do subsistence farming), so unless mommy and daddy have lots of dosh you're going to have to work for others within the constraints of the existing system (or become a criminal, in which case the system will punish you) and unlike when just working to provide to yourself, working in this system means competing with everybody else - and were, again, how much support mommy and daddy can give you makes a massive difference - to such a level that you have to run just to stand still.
Compared to plain old subsistence farming the whole way work is done in the current system is absurd, mainly because it has to produce way more than what is actually needed to provide for all, since a tiny slice of the population are massive money hoarders leeching out of the rest so tons of extra wealth has to be created just for them.
Whatever the optimal system is for "the greatest good for the greatest number" (which would be more than just everybody doing subsistence farming), mathematically it's clear it can't be one were some people have control over billions of times more resources than others.
So tired of being here in the states where people think you need a car, like it's required to live. It's only needed because we allow our infrastructure to be so lacking that we depend on cars. There are places both built up and as rural as the states where they don't need cars, where driving for 3 hours for a road trip is considered ludicrous.
I use a car about 4 times a month. On those 4 occasions I need that car. When buying my house I considered some extra criteria like proximity to a bus stop, train station and a good cycleable connection to daily goods stores. Even 10 years ago that caused my house being 15 to 30% more expensive as houses in different areas.
I am lucky to be able to afford such a thing but now I don't own a car for about 4 years and the cost of owning and maintaining a car seems to be far more expensive than the extra I had to invest in my house. Cars have become a lot more expensive while inflation made it easier to do the downpayments on my house.
Well good luck making them change that In the meantime, I'm using my car so it doesn't take 2 hours to walk to the grocery store and only bring back what I can carry.
If you think about it, they're absurd. To go buy some groceries, someone has to use enough power to move a ton of metal, plastic and rubber around.
People don't notice the absurdity because gas is so incredibly cheap, but gas is only so incredibly cheap because we're not paying for the long-term consequences of burning it, only the short-term costs of getting it out of the ground and refining it.
Once got in a conversation about nuclear power that hit the point of "Yes nuclear is safer and more efficient but what about the jobs of the coal employees? Do you want them all to starve?"
Took a while to digest because there's a lot of normalization surrounding it, but after a while I realized what I had been told was:
"We have to intentionally gimp our efficiency in both energy production and pollution generation in order to preserve a harder, more costly industry, because otherwise people wouldn't have a task that they need to do in order to feed themselves."
Kinda disillusioned me with the underpinnings of capitalism, just how backwards it was to have to think this way. We can't justify letting people live unless they're necessary to society in some way - which might've made solid sense in older, very very different times in human history, but now means that so much of our culture is tied up in finding more excuses to make people do work that isn't really necessary at all.
New innovations happen, and tasks are made easier, and that doesn't actually save anyone any work, because everyone still has to put in 40 hours a week. New tech lets you do it in 10 hours? Whoops, actually that means that you're out of a job, replaced with an intern or something. Making "life" easier makes individual lives harder, what the fuck? That isn't how things should be at all!
Not exactly an easy situation to crack, but to circle back to the point of the thread - I hate how normal it is to argue on the basis that we need to create jobs, everywhere, all the time. I wish we'd have a situation where people can brag for political clout about destroying jobs instead, about reducing the amount of work people need to do to live and live comfortably, instead of trying to enforce this system where efficiency means making people obsolete means making people starve.
Woa there comrade. Trying to build a world where extracting value from labor isn't they ultimate goal? You'll never be a disillusional billionaire wannabe grinding your youth and passion into the labor that powers the elite classes whims with that attitude. Don't you want to see Jeff Bezos sorta go to space? That can't happen with spreading the wealth. Stay hungry my friend.
That's fun to say but not really a reflection of reality, factories full of machine operators don't exist like they used to - my parents talk about what would be like when the local factory day ended and everyone would flood the streets, fill the bars and everyone would be in their overalls... They actually still make the same product in a slightly different location, only about fifty people work there but they produce far more units.
It's the same in every industry, and all the extra profits are going into the pockets of the owners who live increasingly luxurious lifestyles. If the huge efficiency gains we've seen in recent decades were used to benefit society then we'd be living far better lives, but they're being used to buy absurdly over priced art to hang in super yachts and show off to their rich buddies.
To some degree literally all of it. My monkey brain was designed to handle at most 150 people, wandering around all day searching for food, unprocessed food, using my body, having a close community I trust, relationship with nature, extreme knowledge of a small amount of things, and an uninterrupted sleep cycle powered by the son.
In a way it designed itself over time. I am a collection of accidentally acquired traits that happened to survive more often in the world that used to be. Mercifully it appears that I am somewhat adept at living in this world, but damn does it feel like I am a fish out of water being in this world.
we anthropomorphise and infantilise our pets, yet boast about the animals we eat who've had legit insanity level cruel lives thanks to our systems.
[ not saying fussing over your pets is bad, i love it too, just the contrast is whiplash++ ]
lack of body autonomy
hint: most lqbqtia rights, reproductive rights, medical/medication rights, are all the SAME RIGHT:
yourbody, yourchoice.
it is constantly under attack, and diffused into separate arguments when its the oneright effecting all these issues.
newsflash: when it comes to my body, your unwelcome opinion, religious or otherwise, ain't worth the air its vibrating through.
slippery slope gatekeeping laws
making harmless x illegal because a subset of x might lead to harmful y.
if y is bad, then enforce your ban on y, and fuckoff trying to use it as an excuse to control x₀, x₁, x₂ etc.
"Your body, your choice" has a limit once a super dangerous pathogen shows up and people start refusing the best tool we have to stop it for increasingly batshit reasons.
If you choose not to vaccinate, you're directly putting everyone else you interact with at risk. So there's a limit
Eh, "your body, your choice" still holds. The rest of us just also get to use our bodily autonomy to say "fine, but stay away from society". Go live in the wilderness and avoid the 5Gs or whatever as you die of a stubbed toe because of your choices.
when anything is that important, the medicine must be opensourced 1.
if so, and it's handled correctly, you can still have body autonomy in those situations due to the resulting freedoms - much akin in nature to the software foss freedoms we all cherish. and in that sense, would not be a limit of “Your body, your choice". while still maintaining, if not increasing, the public protection to such threats.
it was really refreshing to see some discussion in public health policy from some very smart and relevant people for opensourcing those medications. unsurprisingly it was swiftly shot down, but it was nice to at least see it taking place - which is a small positive change.
1 naturally we decouple authentication and traceability from commercial interests. and ofc it does not mean noone gets paid
It should still be a personal choice. Someone else isn't really putting you at any more risk if you've been vaccinated as it doesn't stop you carrying a virus just aliveates the symptoms. It just means they're more likely to be laid up for a week where as you shrug it off.
There is no limit. Even in those cases they could be treated without vaccination. And the unvaccinated could be banned from spaces where they would be a danger. I mean come on, you're not even liberal? This is a super basic liberal principle baked into our society snd you just... disagree with it.
Interestingly about 100 years ago it used to be the reverse. Pink was seen as a masculine colour while blue was considered feminine. Goes to show how arbitrary a lot of the gender norm rules are.
Not very long till a nerd shows up. My favorite is that FDR wore gender neutral clothes, including dresses, and did not get his hair cut till he was 7. A bizarrely more progressive past activity.
My 5 year old son LOVES pink and purple. Anytime he can find anything on those colors he's all in. He picked out a pink crayon box and purple lunch box for Kindergarten here soon and my mom (who was taking him shopping) called me to make sure I was OK with him picking those.
"Yes mom, I don't care if he picks out things in his favorite colors." 🙄
The current work week, there is no need for it to be that long with the advances in technology. Capitalism, its a pyramid scheme that is unsustainable.
I am noticeably more efficient on 4 day weeks, it just doesn't feel like a grind as much as the 5 day week. 5 day weeks I'll get bored, stare at the clock, and just want to be over. 4 day weeks I actually feel rejuvenated after the weekend and I'm ready to come back. We really need to rethink that
Even worse, watering lawns. Not only in many places there is water restriction during the summer season and people watering their lawn do-it illegally, but the only consequences is that you have to mow-it more often. If you want to have green-grass, go to Britain or Netherlands where it's always raining and stop living around the Mediterranean
Can confirm. Endless rain this summer in the UK. No grass watering required (not that it is ever required...). Didn't stop my neighbour watering on the few sunny weeks we've had...
A lot of communities are seeing people install fake grass. Also, rock gardens or gravel lawns are an option. If you want green and natural, clover is a good ground cover that doesn't grow too tall.
Copyright by and large needs to be abolished. Patents in software are nonsensical, and elsewhere they should be drastically scaled back. Trademark is alright, with a few adjustments needed.
But all of the above is hiding behind a concept of "property" that just does not apply to intangible things, and we need to stop using that term to describe them.
I'm amenable to the idea of getting first dibs on an idea you came up with (software, hardware, fiction...), but it's been clearly abused to an insane degree by corporations who want to make a quick buck.
Yes, there are some theories why copyrights or trademarks might be good ideas.
Trademarks, for example, allow a company with a good reputation to avoid having their reputation be tarnished by someone imitating them but using lower quality goods. That seems reasonable. But, they're often abused so that a company can use their trademark to avoid having someone criticize them.
Copyright is the ridiculous one. Ok, maybe there's some bargain to be struck here. Maybe it actually does incentivize someone to create a work of art if they know they can control it for a short time. And, maybe the public benefits from that because that thing gets made, and (just as importantly) becomes part of the public domain in a reasonable time.
But, copyrights lasting a century? That's absurd. That slows down progress because it locks things out of the public domain until a point where they're no longer relevant. It disincentivize someone from creating something new, when they know they can milk the old one for decades instead.
Importantly though, none of these things is necessary for progress. The sistine chapel was painted without the benefit of copyright. AFAIK, there was no patent for the printing press. And the first things printed on it weren't protected by copyright.
Positive attitude towards billionaire philanthropists. First, they made a fortune on the result of labor alienated from workers, then they threw a pitch and became good guys
That few countries take a person's wealth and income into account when fining them for breaking laws. I see examples like these and wish this were the norm everywhere.
From what I recall, the places that do this usually do it in the form of days of income. I'm not sure how they determine that if someone's money comes from investments, etc.
True. So I wonder how is it that some European countries that do this got around that obstacle. I guess that's what happens when you have an equitable society in place?
My current favorite is the federal reserve making policy to intentionally weaken the labor market. I am currently paying the fuckwads scheming to keep labor weak, docile, and dependent. What a blast.
Raising interest rates to fight inflation works by reducing demand. Jobs get lost so people have less money. So they spend less, so prices drop to be more competitive.
Only poorer people obviously. Rich people are less affected, but still pay more in interest. The increased number of unemployed people means competition for jobs is higher so workers are cheaper to pay, increasing profits again.
High inflation is bad for everyone, but particularly so for the poorer, too. However, measures to fight it should be spread across society. Instead blunt tools like interest rate rises disproportionately affect the poor. They should be combined with higher taxes on business and high earners and high net worth individuals. Worldwide we only really do the first. I wonder who decides?
Mainly just my absolute shock at the openness of saying "We really need to see a weaker labor market." Seriously??? That is where we are at now. The complete and transparent assault on the worker by people I personally fund. Outrageous! At least lie to me about your motives like I might have a modicum of power over you. Now you just tell me to eat shit and die right to my face.
This is the thread that made me make an account and what a pain it was to find without having saved it anywhere. I've been holding out for someone to say it, but havwn't seen it specifically.
Single use plastics. I still remember the weird feeling of doom when learning the world population and making the quick relation to disposable plastics, constantly being told "but it's only a little bit." A little bit for several thousand years, per billions, is too many bits.
The best way I've found of making people realise how much waste they generate is to ask them to imagine having to bury it in their back yard. Every week.
That's pretty much what we do: bury it somewhere else.
will it now? until we actually see one, we'll never know. we don't live in a free market, and never have. they rig the shit out of it with eg. drm and region locks, and then gaslight us that its free & balanced. lol.
eg.2 "democracy is the best we have"
same as above, when i see a true democracy i'll let you know.
caveat: unsure of your exact country's situation, but when was the last time you consistently voted on what youwanttohappen, rather than who will fail to implement their election promises (with 0.0% accountability btw).
also, friendly reminder: mostly the "who", you can vote for was already chosen in a private vote by the political parties, before they even pretended to care about our opinion. lol.
strawman public discourse
arguing in the media over the wrong points in an issue to keep public discourse on a 'lively' treadmill
eg.1
Q: Is climate change human caused?
A: Doesn't change the issue: stop poisoning the water, air and soil - we need them to live. duh.
eg.2
Q: Is being lgbqta a choice?
A: Doesn't change the issue: if its not a choice they can't control it, leave these people alone. if it is a choice, its a free country, leave these people alone.
edit: if you disagree with any of the above, please expand, i'm open to a new perspective.
The basic unit of production, where capital meets labour to produce goods and services, is the capitalist firm. And every profit-maximising firm is owned by a private capital.
Capitalists extract profits from firms. They can spend only a fraction of their profits on luxury consumption. Because if the rich spent all their profit on luxuries their capital will rapidly diminish and expire, compared to competing capitals who invest their profit in further profitable activities. Profit income must be reinvested in order to make more profit. This is the prime directive for anyone who possesses a capital sum of money.
Owners of capital — that is capitalists — can’t put all their eggs in one basket. That’s too risky because firms can go under, or assets that store value might depreciate. So capitalists spread their risk by owning a portfolio of investments with different risk profiles.
A typical portfolio will consist of cash held in different sovereign currencies, government, municipal and corporate bonds, shares in different companies, from risky start-ups to blue chips, and all kinds of income-producing assets, such as land and housing. Basically anything that might yield a higher than average return.
Each individual capital must aim to maximise the return over its portfolio. If it fails it will diminish in size relative to other capitals, and eventually cease being a capital at all.
And it’s right here that we again find the causal structure of a feedback control system. An individual capital — when we consider it as a social practice mediated by a privately owned large sum of money — also has its own goal state, sensory inputs, decision making, and ability to act upon the world in which it is embedded.
Let’s take each of these in turn. (i) The goal of an individual capital is to maximise the average return from every dollar (or pound) invested. (ii) The “sensory inputs” are the different profit-rates earned across the portfolio. (iii) The capitalist, or the financial experts they employ, compare the different profit-rates, and (iv) the feedback loop is closed by actions that withdraw capital from poorly performing investments, and inject capital into high performing investments.
This control loop manifests as an insatiable and ceaseless search for high returns.
Capital doesn’t care how its money is actually used in production. It entirely abstracts from all concrete activities. The only thing it can sense, compare and use is abstract value.
So the commanding heights of the global economy consists of an enormous ensemble of individual capitals, each manically scrambling for profit, reacting to the signals of differential returns received from its tendrils that extend to every productive activity under its rule, continually injecting and withdrawing capital to and from different industrial sectors and geographical regions. The entirety of the world’s material resources, including the working time of billions of people, are repeatedly marshalled and re-marshalled away from low and towards high-profit activities. In the space of months, entire industrial sectors may be raised up, relocated, or thrown down.
Capitalists are possessed, mere machine components of capital.
What about the individual people who participate in this social practice? Surely their individual consciousness, their ideas, and their behaviour matter, and make a difference?
To a certain extent they do of course. But individuals come and go, but capitals live much longer than any individual human. The people controlled by the capital — that is the workers that supply labour to firms, and capitalists that exploit them and extract profits — are mere replaceable components in the control loop, mechanically performing prescribed functional roles.
For example, Marx writes in Capital, that:
“to classical economy, the proletarian is but a machine for the production of surplus-value; on the other hand, the capitalist is in its eyes only a machine for the conversion of this surplus-value into additional capital.”
We often say that a capitalist possesses capital. But it is more accurate to say that capital possesses them. Capitalists are the human face of an inhuman intelligence with its own logic and its own goals.
“In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality” (Communist Manifesto).
Bigger capitals enjoy the advantage of larger portfolios, which spreads risk. In consequence, capital tends to concentrate in a few hands. So we find a large number of small capitals, and a very small number of astronomically large capitals, which earn profits that dwarf the GDP of many nation states. The scale and power of some capitals is truly titanic.
And these titans are so much in control, that they are out of control. Again, a quote from the Communist Manifesto:
“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”
Every day millions of workers, around the globe, have no choice but to sacrifice their time, and their vitality, to produce new profit for the autonomous controllers. No matter how hard, long or efficiently we work, the imperative to work remains.
Why? Because every labour-saving technical innovation takes the form of profit, which is then captured by individual capitals, and immediately re-injected into the material world to animate new activities for further profit. This is why, despite huge advances in automation, the working day remains as long as ever.
Take another example: the logic of capital demands maximum profit extraction from firms, and that means minimising wages. Those possessed by capital live an exalted existence. But the world’s dispossessed must feed, clothe and maintain a home with an average income of about 7 pounds a day.
Another example: it’s better to be exploited than not exploited. We are subject to the whims of the business cycle and periodic crises of accumulation. Recessions regularly throw large numbers of people out of work, through no fault of their own. Suddenly bills can’t be paid. Families are thrown onto the street, as happened in the US during the 2008 mortgage crisis, and is happening again now.
Why? Because individual capitals are almost blind. They see only differential returns across their portfolios. And returns may be good even if unemployment is high, or human misery spills onto the streets. Capital does not care.
Another example: capital deals in abstract value, and things that are not owned, which aren’t bought and sold, therefore have no value to it at all. So the material wealth of nature — the land, the oceans, and the atmosphere — is relentlessly plundered without any regard for the consequences.
Capital destroys us, and the environment. The endless production and profit-making cannot stop, because each individual capital must compete to survive. Marx summarised the prime directive of capital as:
“Accumulate, accumulate! … reconvert the greatest possible portion of surplus-value … into capital! Accumulation for accumulation’s sake, production for production’s sake: by this formula classical economy expressed the historical mission of the bourgeoisie”.
So all the autonomous control loops have the single-minded goal of extracting profit from the world’s activities. If an activity fails to satisfy this goal, then the controller withdraws its capital, and the activity stops.
So at the apex of the economy we have a competing collection of identical controllers — with an atavistic, low level of demonic intelligence — which inject and withdraw a social substance that appears to possess the magical power of animation, of bringing things alive, of creation; but also appears to possess the power of annihilation, of suffocation, of bringing things to an end, of destruction.
We are definitely not in control. And something else definitely is in control.
So what are we really talking about now?
We’re saying that a new kind of supra-individual control system emerged, quite spontaneously, from our own social intercourse, and then — in a very real sense — has taken on a life of its own, turned around, and started controlling us.
Capital in a scientific, not a metaphorical sense, is a control system. And it is capital, as a control system, that ultimately creates and maintains the abstraction we call exchange-value. Capital is the abstractor.
Very simply: how can it be fair that someone who contributes nothing to the process profits from my labour?
I am the skilled craftsperson who produces furniture. And yet someone takes from me the profit of my work. Beyond the cost of materials, workshop, arranging buyers etc.
After all those costs are accounted for there is still someone else who captures most of the profit instead of me. How is that not absurd?
The fact that we live in a land of plenty but people die due to malnutrition or lack of access to healthcare because it's not profitable is pretty damning.
Capitalism is like a rabid dog. It has its uses, but you don't just let it roam freely, you keep it on a tight leash.
if someone makes a one word comment, they're unlikely to want to write you a research paper justifying it. but i'll give it a li'l go.
the whole core concept of capitalism is that some few people 'own' the ovens, and they get to tell other people to bake cookies, and even though these cookie-bakers bake all of the cookies, the oven-owners get to keep most of them, and the cookie bakers only get a small portion. also there aren't any ovens that aren't 'owned' by an oven-owner, so if you wanna eat cookies, you have to give most of the cookies you bake to an oven-owner. and this model is extended to everything.
i don't know that this allegory will mean anything to you, and maybe you think of something different when you hear 'capitalism' (maybe you think of 'markets', or 'money', or, i don't know, just seeing benefits from ones own hard work or something), but this is basically the usual meaning of capitalism, and probably what most people who oppose it, myself included, are talking about. there are a lot of other criticisms, of course, but that core scammy unfairness of it, i think, is most absurd.
Tobacco smoking, at least cigarettes, is quickly becoming de-normalized in some countries. In New Zealand they did a ban with current smokers grandfathered in essentially. In the US, there is more and more hostility to smoking.
People will cough and act dramatic when you smoke outside, you can't smoke inside of anywhere but bars anymore (and only some bars at that). Smoking is seen as low brow - typically mostly done by the lower rungs of society.
Zizek talks about this a bit and claims it's ideology. You are compelled to enjoy and be a hedonist - but never too much.
Personally, I quit smoking a long time ago but I think alcohol is much worse but doesn't get nearly the same treatment.
People can get sick from secondhand smoke. Yes, it's true that alcoholics can affect people around them, it's not as obvious as blowing smelly smoke in someone's face.
Im just happy some peoples dirty butts hasn't made direct contact with the seat im sitting in. Thats a good reason we have to wear clothes imho. Cleanliness and respect for sharing the world with others makes it okay to have rules about attire in public spaces.
But the whole showing skin being so goddamn taboo for real people, while at the same time near nudity and sexuality on publicly visible advertising boards is completely ok, thats a double standard I can't understand.
And the modern fear of showing non-sexual nudity to kids. Its very noticeable how bad an effect it have had on our society by now: Kids are hesitant to change and shower after gym. People don't undress and do a proper shower before entering public swimming pools.
The nudity taboo is a problem of sexist sexualisation and sexualised violence, among others.
Imagine being able to walk to the cafe with your friends in scorching heat without having to bother with constricting, sweaty and heavy clothing without being sexualised or ridiculed or attacked (things that also happen when clothed, btw).
My problem with smoking is 1. it's addictive so most people doing it don't even want to so banning it will only stop addiction and 2. second hand smoke
Yeah but my wife thinks it's mandatory to say, every single time, even if she is in the middle of saying something. And she thinks those rules should apply to everyone.
I like to make up words that sound German like "Gëschnörgenhünd" when people sneeze. If I get called on it by someone that speaks German, I just claim it's Old High German
Speed traps in the US. I had to explain to my son that the reason why we have to drive 45 mph for half a mile on an interstate is because there is a convenient side street in the middle of that stretch of road where the police can wait.
I actually appreciate cops keeping people to the speed limit. It is much safer for everyone.
Edit: While I appreciate cops doing this, I actually think it shouldn't be their job. We have meter readers handing out parking tickets. I think non LEO civil servants could issue citations for speeding too. That would free up cops to be arseholes somewhere else.
Sure, if the town didn't suddenly drop the speed limit for half a mile right as it goes around a curve that gives the cops a place to hide and give out $20 tickets with $200 court costs that people pay online. I don't know for a fact, but I'd bet money that the court costs go to the town (and from there to the police department), while the fine itself goes to the feds. An abrupt 45 mph zone on an interstate doesn't protect anyone, it lines the pockets of the police department that has jurisdiction. It's fucking predatory.
Offices of all types (medical, billing, tech support, etc.) only doing business on a callback basis. Customers and clients are expected to be continuously available to receive a call at the office's convenience.
We have all become unwilling, unpaid, on-call employees of most every company we deal with.
Here’s a toxic and highly volatile liquid. Rather than transferring it in specialized canisters with safety seals, we just let you dump it out of a hose. There is absolutely no safety training on how to handle it, and all you need is some cash to obtain a lot of it. It’s something of a right of passage for children to dispense it for their parents.
And despite the fact that the vehicles that use it spend 90% of their time parked in one place, you can’t have it delivered to that place like you can with other utilities like water, electricity, and natural gas. You have to go to special stores and comparison shop.
And even the stores you buy it from have it delivered by truck. They don’t even get it piped in.
Oh, and even when used correctly, it'll kill you if you use it in an enclosed space.
And despite the fact that the vehicles that use it spend 90% of their time parked in one place, you can’t have it delivered to that place like you can with other utilities like water, electricity, and natural gas.
Thank god for that. Can you imagine how much polluted land and groundwater we'd have if we piped it around and it leaked like our water pipes do?
Oh for sure. This is something of a practiced rant I perform to promote electric vehicles. Petrol drivers are always asking about how long it takes to charge a vehicle at a charging station not realizing that their vehicle can charge while it sits dormant at home.
“How long does it take to charge your car?”
“I dunno, how long does it take to charge your phone?”
We're in a drought where I am and I still see boomer dudes going out and watering their lawns. So many more eco alternatives but they just think someone will judge them. No dude, we're judging you on the massive waste of water
Aren't there even to this day completely pacifist tribes in South America and I wanna say island tribes somewhere out in or around New Zealand or New Guinea?
No idea but wasn't exactly thinking of tribes as society. More the overall whole of humanity. I wonder if we'll ever achieve a world without hate (excluding exstinction).
The requirement for people to post their lives online, in the early days if the Internet the general rule was you don't post personal information online, now it's gone the complete opposite direction, I've met multiple people who write you of as "strange" just because they can't poke through your Facebook/Instagram/snapchat/twitter.
I don't keep social media accounts because it doesn't intrest me, and have been told multiple times that people don't trust me because I don't air out everything I think on an online platform.
In America, gaslighting by corporations and conservatives attempts to convince us that for profit healthcare is normal and fine. It’s ok for billionaires and huge corporations to get tax breaks and pay less or zero taxes because they “create jobs.” Businesses have the right to control elections with massive donations because…that’s free speech. Most rich people got that way by working hard…and anyone can do it. Immigrants are responsible for poor job markets and other economic woes.
Support for communism. People somehow manage to wildly exaggerate both the evils of capitalism and the benefits of communism, even though we have plenty of contemporary and historical examples to refer to.
No, we have historical examples of various X forms of Socialism that were supposed to be the intermediate state between capitalism and communism. All of the turned out to be authoritarian nightmares, but none of them actually made it to the communism stage of development.
Essentially truly supporting communism is merely saying we could be living in a post-scarcity state. The oligarchs ain't gonna let that happen though and their captive governments aren't about to let that happen though.
I propose that human greed leads to the corruption of both capitalist and communist systems in actual practice. The difference is that in capitalism, greed is publically encouraged and publically rewarded, while in communism, greed is publically discouraged and privately rewarded. Inequality is present in both practices ostensibly (with few historical exceptions). Whatever economic systems are implemented by humanity, some people are winners and some are losers.
The question of what system is best cannot be settled by only historical anecdotes. Historical record is too biased towards its own context, though we can look at patterns that have emerged through recorded history to try and achieve a more objective understanding; we have to examine a system as it exists right now. We must accept that no system will be exempt from human greed and focus our efforts on policies that fight against it wherever possible. This is not an enlightened centrist position; this is the position of someone who wants to maximize the number of societal winner and minimize the number of losers.
We agree about greed being unavoidable. The difference between the two systems is how you go about satisfying your desire to get ahead - under capitalism you acquire mainly through trade, providing goods and services to others (and sometimes through theft), while under communism your ability to engage in trade is severely restricted, leaving only the other options.
I am personally not for Communism still for Socialism that follows ideals of communism but solves Problems of it but its still gonna be way better than Capitalism
Governments fear mongering people into doing what they say. Shutting down people's lives from fear of death from Covid, a government sanctioned and authorized "pandemic". Now, it's normal for governments to dictate people's lives. Lame.
It is shortsighted and naive to think that following one avenue of progress is bad because we lag behind in other things. The amount of life saving and improving technologies that space travel has had a hand in might surprise you.
Must have been even more infuriating back when people could no longer do their hobbies because fast-moving, noisy, deadly pieces of metal got priority everywhere, owned by almost everyone, and roads and parkings carving up cities.
Why did we ever allow it to go this far? We should have made laws forbidding most cars inside cities. We could have focused more on public transport and kept streets walkable.