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.
I know, I'm from those countries. Like I said, we used other IM apps before WhatsApp came along, and if something changes we can use a new app. WhatsApp currently leads the market due to the network effect, but it doesn't have us 'by the balls'.
(Though the most likely successor would be WeChat, which is arguably much much worse in many ways)
Do you require WhatsApp to contact certain government agencies? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to customer support? Do you require WhatsApp to get access to lecture notes? No? Then you're not from one of those countries.
Which means you can't really switch to other apps then, which means Meta has you by the balls.
I suppose that depends on your definition of by the balls. Like I said, it's not difficult for everybody to switch if they piss everyone off. On average people here have 2-3 IMs installed.
That's the thing though, they have been pissing everyone off for over a decade now, going back to the days when Facebook introduced the algorithmic feed/timeline thing, and then with the promoted posts, and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the data harvesting and ads and blatant privacy violations. They're one of the scummiest organisations out there and yet you all keep using it's products and happily whoring yourselves out to Meta. Sure you can switch in theory, so what are y'all waiting for? There's plenty of reasons to switch, plenty of decent alternatives too. The truth is, you can't really switch. You don't have a choice.
If you think you've got a choice, I dare you to uninstall WhatsApp for a month or two, and see if you're able to get by without any issues. Then you'll know why I said they they have you by the balls - basically, you're a hostage, a slave. You really have no choice, no freedom, even if you've got other apps installed. You may convince your friends and family to switch, but do you really think the thousands of companies, government agencies etc will just switch for no good reason? Will they make new chat bots for the alternative apps? Will they develop new SoPs/documentation for their internal staff, spend time and money on marketing and advertising the new way of contacting them? Waiting for Meta to do something major to piss everyone off may never happen - Meta isn't that foolish, and as people get more and more used to Meta's products and their way of doing things, they get more and more entwined into the ecosystem and they'll find it even more harder to leave. If everyone's going to wait for everyone else to switch, then no one will switch.
Talk to some older folks about what it was like when there was only one phone company and the alternative was snail mail.
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.
This is an issue with the bourgeois character of American society and government. Monopolies are not a problem if workers control them.
And if they're managed well on top of being worker controlled, but that's usually been a mixed bag historically
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.
How taxes are dealt with in North America. Just send me how much I owe. Don't have me go through a service to figure it out
Likewise, the IRS already knows everything about me. If I qualify for, say, food stamps, just have the IRS send me the food stamps. Don't make me jump through hoops when I'm already destitute, come on.
This would make tens of thousands of jobs redundant and make many social programs much more efficient.
And save trillions of dollars, especially if we extended this to Medicare for all
But using resources efficiently isn’t the goal, suffering is!
If Democrats actually wanted to win every election from now until forever, this would do it for them. Imagine worrying how you're going to feed your kids and then the mail arrives "BTW you've qualified for food stamps for the last 18 months, here they are" instant loyal voter.
But they won't
Materially improving people's lives is authoritarianism sweaty it needs to be balanced against legalizing violence against marginalized people
Americans generally being unaware of how far their country has fallen behind the rest of the world in virtually every respect (except sucking). Despite increasingly obvious problems that intensify every day, large numbers of Americans believe that American “democracy” is the end of history and as good as it gets. If you criticize their country, they will blame the other major political party (even if both major parties have indistinguishable far-right policy outcomes since they are both owned entirely by the bourgeoisie) or say that other countries also have problems, ignorant of the fact that those problems are either less severe or caused by the USA. Either that, or Americans will assume that you are a paid shill or insane, since no one on Earth could possibly have a legitimate reason to despise America. American ignorance is profound and purposeful even among highly educated Americans. Americans believe the shittiness and backwardness of their country, the half lives even the happiest and most successful among them live, to be humanity’s permanent and ideal state.
Canada is right behind the USA in this respect. Our politicians are transparently corrupt, our health care is only good when compared to the US and we have an assbackwards vocal right who would vote Trump if only they were given the chance.
Not disagreeing with you but do just want to note that as an American, when I travel into Canada, the instant I cross the border, it’s like a weight being lifted from my shoulders. Everything about it just seems less frantic and insane. Canada is also an imperialist settler-colonial dictatorship (a few mining companies in a trench coat), but one which does indeed do a better job of providing for its people.
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.
Yup in the same boat, and I'm baffled that you get a downvote for this very mild opinion lol, shows the weird car focused culture we have, that someone telling us how they like living without a car is worth downvoting.
I choose my home on walkability and ease of access. I'm "lucky" that in the states I have a coffee shop and a few restaurants that I can walk to, and a bus stop a block away. We aren't at the "No cars" yet unfortunately, I'm in Seattle and while it's easy to go a lot of places without a car, unfortunately the surrounding area is very car centric. But, we are moving towards being a one car household
It's not even a mild opinion, it's a reality that more and more of my friends are living in. I'm in my mid 40's so it's not that it has anything to do with strong opinions, it just makes sense. 9 years ago we bought an electrified cargo bike. That was the first step in realizing we don't really need a car. I just added it all up and it made sense.
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.
No one is saying you can't if you don't have access, we're saying it's ridiculous that we don't have actual decent transit infrastructure. You should use your car if it's the only option, but it's ridiculous that it is the only option.
If anybody has trouble seeing the absurdity of cars in cities, imagine a hockey game, except each player has a Zamboni instead of skates.
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most successful proletarian revolution resulting in almost perfect redistribution of land.
Fun fact, the benefits persist to this day. Nearly 90% of people in China own their home http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2012-05/15/content_15295765.htm
Those were not vacation days, just days where they could till their own fields instead of their lord's. For most people life then was full of backbreaking labour, illiteracy, disease and the constant looming threat of starvation. There is no need to romanticise feudalism.
I'm actually seriously considering selling and going back to renting to get my flexibility back. I really despise being tied down to physical location, and the constant threat of having to move for a different job makes it even worse.
Probably won't sell in the current market, but when it makes a bit more sense.
People who worry about “flexibility” are aliens to me
How are you in a material spot to just bounce around because you want to?
This person admitted they won't actually carry through with it, they just want to sound like a wealthy person.
They clearly are wealthy enough that their brain is half rotted, causing them to say things like “I’ve seen many people living in poverty because they refuse to move”
Absurd
Moving across state lines is simple. Just reserve a U-haul box truck and off you go!
Literally, when I told them they were detached from reality they responded “what? No I’m not, it’s not expensive I just rent a truck and move!”
I got a new job after the pandemic and got 3k in relocation compensation, and that didn't even cover the most bare bones of a move. It's sucked and I'll probably never put myself through it again.
It's not that I necessarily want to. Jobs just usually end one way or the other after a while. In my experience, renting really opens up the job market. Move wherever the new job is. That's a lot harder when you own.
I just can't imagine leaving my community so easily for a job I guess, but I imagine plenty of folks must do it all the time.
congrats on having a community.
i hate it here get me out
Find a big queer city >:) even if you aren't queer there'll be plenty of fine folks and communists abound
Yeah, I guess everyone has different priorities. I just refuse to let myself or my family live in a crappy situation because I want to stay in a specific location. I often see people living in poverty because they refuse to leave a place to take a job elsewhere. Doesn't make sense to me, but everyone has their own life.
People don’t live in poverty “because they refuse to move”
They live in poverty because they are stuck there, and moving to somewhere else is incredibly expensive and difficult
Your worldview is utterly detached from the reality of the common person
Not sure how that's "detached from reality."
I've moved a ton. It has never cost me anything other than the cost of renting a moving truck and sore legs for a few days. Certainly beats living in a place with no job or some random low-paying job.
Lol that you think your experience is the norm while claiming that others are simply fools for choosing not to move
The news flash here brain genius, is that YOU can do that, almost everyone else cannot
All right. Fair enough. I don't think that I took everyone else for a fool, but I never saw it as a very expensive or hard thing to move. Not in my experience. But others could have a different experience. Thanks for the heads-up.
Yeah I mean, I came from a very poor region and it was hard to move for me, but it was made easier because my family was beginning to cut me off for being queer anyway and I had the privilege of WFH too. I know lots of people who'd move out of their region if not for their family supporting them in some way they can't get elsewhere (or they don't think so, atleast).
I'm the same as you, but I recognise that I had the privilege of being born in the capital of a very centralised country so there's little reason for me to move to better my lot. If I'd grown up in a deprived former mining town up north I'd probably have been long gone as soon as I could.
As someone who had to move 5 times I four years due to landlords and am now in my seventh glorious year in my own flat, that sounds mental.
What would you do if you lost your job and couldn't find anything in your current location?
In the current high-interest market I'd probably rent out the property and rent something else wherever the job is located. But then you have to be willing to be a landlord. Some people aren't.
As I said to someone else Futher down, I recognise that I'm privileged to have been born and live near the capital of a very centralised country so I never really need to worry about moving for work as I'm already where the highest wages are. I just got so miserable as a renter moving so much and never feeling like I had an actual home I couldn't go back to it now I'm settled.
Got it. That's just not the situation of most people. They have to move for a job or live in a terrible situation. I'd move in an instant rather than live in crap.
Lawns, specifically, the western preoccupation with having little plots of land that should not have viable ecosystems or edible food grown on them, just rectangles of chemical-soaked and constantly-mowed fuzzy green conformity.
It was to show off wealth wayyyyyyy back in the day. It was a message that said "I have land and I don't need to farm it! I have peasants do that elsewhere."
It was stupid then and it's stupid now, but HOAs enforce it for the Almighty Real Estate Value™®©
Ironically, it's now a "sign of wealth" to live AWAY from the suburbs and their stupid lawns.
Of course, you'll never hear people say we shouldn't demolish more nature for suburbs because "suburbs are for poor people" anytime soon.
Minigolf and driving ranges can stay. Death to golf courses.
Only a bit of change to the rules and you got golf with a proper challenge. "Caddie, bring me chainsaw #3."
Have to find some other use for your golf bats. I have one behind the front door for home defence.
Throwing away food to maintain profits while people starve, but since I'm not the first to think this I'll let my man Steinbeck explain it:
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
I worked at a bakery in a large chain grocery store and when throwing out the baked goods that weren't bought each week I was told I either throw it away or buy one. I was not allowed to eat what was going to be thrown away anyway unless I gave them money... Ffs.
I ate some anyway. Fuck that lol
when I worked in a kitchen as a chef they wouldnt let us take home the soon to expire steaks and insist we bin them instead so we dont 'normalize stealing'
I just wrapped them up tight in a seperate bin bag, took the trash out myself, hid the bag in a corner and went and got it when my shift ended lmao
A government could be good. In theory:
- one year terms for elected individuals in public offices
- no second term
- getting elected is a random draw (akin to jury duty) based on the individuals' capabilities
- authority limited in scope within city states
I'm sure there's other ideas regarding this.
getting elected is a random draw (akin to jury duty) based on the individuals' capabilities
Who asseses people's capabilities in this system? As they are likely the most powerful people.
This was the case before countries existed. The territories used to be limited to how far the human cattle could walk, be productive and walk back home in day.
Freedom is only possible where the possibility of encountering other humans is negligible.
Whenever humans aglomerate, non productive humans require handouts to live. If they do not receive then they die. If they don't want to die, they will steal. If the other humans resist, there will be a struggle and whoever wins becomes the state.
I think keeping population below 1 per square kilometer and spread out is the best solution to the state predation problem.
That's probably the most polite disagreement I've ever had, I think I'll save this comment !
Whenever humans aglomerate, non productive humans require handouts to live. If they do not receive then they die. If they don’t want to die, they will steal.
Yeah, we know, politicians.
You got it, the mediators between us and them. See Europe and their history with romas people, for what it looks like when this peace breaks down.
Hahaha i read the 102 current comments and basically 90% of those that name the absurdity is just "capitalism" or its consequences.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don't think about the root causes of these problems. So there's a lot of focus on the symptoms without thinking about the underlying dynamics of capitalism that cause these issues.
Everything.
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We are run by an oligarchy of nihilists that gladly want to make humanity go extinct to buy yachts they can already afford.
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I am constantly told I need to lower my expectations for everything day by day, and then told I am entitled for simply wishing for the life a white boomer had in the 60s. If that makes me entitled, what does that make the white boomer that DID get to experience all that? No, I'll never own a house, now even renting is out of reach. Looks like porky's all set with his workforce and the only jobs left pay 14 an hour tops.
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Just how fucking boring this world is. Look around you, there is so much to see and do and you will never experience any of it because you were not born a multimillionaire. You will never experience the beauty of Sierra Nevada, you will never get to enjoy Niagara Falls, even if you are lucky enough to have stable employment. Americans proudly call vacation a thing of the past, and the few times people do go on vacation, it's practically suicide for their career.
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Bigotry is somehow being paraded as this noble thing, actually and that actually being tolerant is supposedly this sign I'm some big dumb-dumb.
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If blue cities are so bad, why are property values there so high? Shouldn't red areas have higher property values since most people are fascists and want to live in a place where minorities are more optimally oppressed?
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If this country hates me so much, why isn't it easier for me to simply move to another one? Even
would be leagues better than this shithole. -
Some of the worst atrocities being justified because it is for "the economy". Ol' Vivek argued that climate change isn't real because if it was, the consequences of doing something about it would hurt "the economy", as if consumerism is a human right that transcends clean air and water. Hence my first point about us being run by nihilists. If they sincerely believed in God, they wouldn't be doing this, or be claiming "it's okay, I'll be dead before anything bad happens! YOLO!" They only believe in their God whenever they need a justification to do whatever they want. Ironically, God seems to tempt more people into sin than Satan and Lilith combined
I'm curious why you believe one needs to be a multimillionaire to enjoy Niagara Falls?
Most Americans have less than $1000 in savings. Unless you live day trip distance from something most people won't ever see it.
Cost of flight and hotel, or cost of gas and wear to your vehicle if you drive, time needed to take off work if needing a half day's drive to reach. Time+Money=freedom which is something American's that live below six figures incomes just don't fuckin' have.
If blue cities are so bad, why are property values there so high?
Regulations stifling the building of new accommodating housing. Large cities in some red states have massive apartment complexes. Up to you to decide if you like that living arrangement but it lowers prices.
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Having opinions about other peoples gender, sexual orientation, private matters. Also legislating about that.
hell yes. no government has any right to dictate our genders or who we love.
I can kind of see an argument that you exchange your attention for services online, but ads forced on you IRL should be illegal. If ads are a form of payment, then unsolicited ads are theft.
The fact that unsolicited ads predate television and radio is why I despise marketing so much I won't even shill my own art projects without shame. I don't care anymore what service I'm taking from you, if it's worth anything I will subscribe and if its not I will use FOSS because I will look for you, not the other way around.
And if the only option is a service funded through ads, don't be surprised when I dump your abusive asses the moment a replacement comes around, like I did when I moved from Google Earth Pro to uMap, or Reddit to Lemmy.
If ads are a form of payment, then unsolicited ads are theft
brilliantly put, love it!!
Seriously.
Marketing is nothing more than convincing people to buy stuff they do not need.
It is the reason we live in a consumer culture that is fucking up the planet with useless trash.
