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When I pushed him on this being potentially damaging for his own financial well being and our future, he went on a long tangent that involved something about fiat currency and postwar soviet personal savings policy(?).
Lmao what a king
Oh you know, "The War", the nondescript one that all veterans seem to have been part of.
if this guy were real he'd be a fucking chad.
also, calling it a "irresponsible way to handle money" is kind of bullshit. surely, if you're certain that your friends are legit, this a way more responsible thing to do than keeping your money to yourself; you're looking after the people you love incase they run into trouble by making sure they have resources, and you're collectively able to do things that you maybe couldn't do individually, like paying for medical stuff and cars or whatever in one go, and thus not going into debt.
its fucked up and makes me so wildly uncomfortable that the only people that its kind of "acceptable" to care about in this society is your immediate family - like, no one would think it was weird to share an account with your partner or kids, but god forbid you genuinely love people that you aren't related to and/or fucking.
I'd be concerned that one of the friends or their spouses could run off with everyone's money and leave the friends with no recourse.
A system where all funds taken out are technically promissory notes, with the mutual understanding that they're to be extended if they couldn't pay it back would be a little less vulnerable.
Even among immediate family, shared bank accounts represent a vulnerability.
Yeah, the system as is is probably dangerous because you have no solution to some asshole taking advantage. But the idea is fucking cool af, and you can totally design a new system around culpability.
Exactly! Only in a world where everyone has a safe, caring, sensible, middle-class family does sharing with your family make more sense than sharing with your friends, the people whom you love voluntarily rather than just through proximity and societal expectation. The exact situation you mentioned happened to my parents, a cousin stayed at a grandparent's house and trashed it, an aunt put my grandma down as a guarantee on an apartment then ghosted months of rent. This shit happens to people constantly because families that are struggling, aren't close, are seperated, or involve people affected by mental illnesses or drug use (by which I mean the majority of families) just cannot operate like an upper-middle class nuclear family living in a sitcom mcmansion, but still that is what our society expects you to be and it causes fucking misery.
tldr: fuck the alienation of capitalism and the fact that it leaves with as little connection to others and/or our community as feasibly possible. :angery:
One of the funnier things about college/YA life is how much people I know will nickel and dime each other about shared expenses. I knew people who were the closest of friends who would demand a venmo over 4$ worth of coffee instead of you know, just paying for the whole ticket and the other person gets next. Or the time I ordered like 3 pizzas for a social function last minute and multiple people asked me how much they owed me for a slice like jesus christ just enjoy the pizza
one of the even funnier things about college life is the obvious wealth disparity between kids with cash and kids on a tight budget, like one person can casually order the 3 pizzas for a party and routinely go out for coffee like a boss and the other person is eating one meal a day out of a can, worrying about a few bucks like a grubby urchin.
Ah yes the bougie decadences of Dunkin and Papa Johns, things clearly not occasionally enjoyed by broke college students
A reckoning is coming for the bourgeois that enjoy Papa Johns
Honestly I think that makes it weirder. Like I knew I and one other dude had way more money then any of our friends so we just kinda traded of between the two of us.
Really cause I had to hide milk because people would steal it all like I would buy milk to make cereal, go to a lecture and when I got back it would all be gone like a hoard of locusts had come through
It's funny because you had enough money in your bank account at all for 3 pizzas
One of the funnier things about college/YA life is how much people I know will nickel and dime each other about shared expenses. I knew people who were the closest of friends who would demand a venmo over 4$ worth of coffee instead of you know, just paying for the whole ticket and the other person gets next. Or the time I ordered like 3 pizzas for a social function last minute and multiple people asked me how much they owed me for a slice like jesus christ just enjoy the pizza
I too must've been raised weird because this is an annoying thing I've encountered as well. I'm willing to pay for pizza for DnD night rather than sit down and start dividing the cost of it between everyone; for one thing I don't want someone at the table to stop themselves from taking another slice because they feel they're going over their payment. I'm not strictly against dividing the cost up between everyone, but I am if it means people will get upset about going over your 'investment'. Heck, I'll order several and that way we don't have to pick a pizza type we'd all be fine with, instead we can get multiple flavors.
Speaking as someone who until recently was permenantly skint and has now got to 'not quite skint' there's a reason for this.
I would always pay my share and I would never accept a round of drinks except when it was blatantly clear it wasn't expected I'd get one in because when I went out I had a strict amount to spend.
I didn't want to be seen as scrounging or mooching off my richer friends who really had very little understanding of what it's like to be skint. If someone offers to pay for pizza one week, great - but that means at some point in the near future I have got to find 40 quid or whatever. Even if I am not paying for the previous few weeks, if I'm really skint I just can't put that money aside because saving that kind of money when you are skint just isn't possible.
Also if everyone pays their share, I can get cheaper options, plain pizza or a pint of something cheap. That means I can spend less and still enjoy a night out.
If you've got a group of people with significantly different incomes, everyone paying their own way just works better.
I knew people who were the closest of friends who would demand a venmo over 4$ worth of coffee instead of you know, just paying for the whole ticket and the other person gets next.
It's easier when you're flush than when you're strapped. Sometimes you're literally in a situation where you can't afford to pay $12 for all three coffees and you need that money for lunch. When my account is in the quadruple digits, yeah, fuck sure. Money isn't real. But when my bank just slapped me with an overdraft fee last week, I'm incredibly sensitive about this kind of thing.
If you ask for it, you pay for it. If not then it's a gift.
That's the system I used with my flatmate.
If I owed money for utilities then I'd usually pay it off by buying food if I went out and he didn't want to go. Worked out all pretty good.
So the "tragedy of the commons" is being greedy with shared shit? Then it's not a refutation of communism or whatever, it's an example of what individualistic mindset does to a mf and the whole community
Also common land existed for hundreds of years without the tragedy of the commons ever happening, It's a thought experiment that disagrees with what happened when it was tried
Crazy right, luckily despite that neoliberalism is correct as it doesn't have scary words
It's real under capitalism. climate change is a pretty big tragedy of the commons
Also common land existed for hundreds of years without the tragedy of the commons ever happening
I mean, I don't doubt people did periodically engage in short-sighted or destructive endeavors on common land. And if I weren't a lazy hog, I might look a few instances up. Certainly, with the advent of industrialism, the problem of public waste rapidly metastasized and created the need for public environmental regulations and bureaucracies.
Common land doesn't solve the problem of some asshole upriver pissing downstream. At the same time, it doesn't create the problem. Negative externalities are a consequence of unchecked corrupt human behavior, not the land-ownership model.
As I recall there were strong rules about what people were allowed to do on common land under penalty of violence and social shame
Then it’s not a refutation of communism or whatever
:astronaut-2: :astronaut-1:
One shortly before university I was at a restaurant with a friend of mine and me, being a bit more into collectivist / anarchist thought were doing what I tended to do then and in other settings. Pay as much as you think is sensible and you can afford (this means if it is a cheap place and you can afford it give the workers more money, in a more expensive place your friends might subsidise you). The idea is that everyone who pays pitches in some amount and in the end the important part is that the tips are enough.
However he was so angry about that way (me sharing more than would be the exact half split of the meal) that he - who had about 1.5 times my income - took money out so that the server would get what was common and the meal was only payed just.
With another group of friends that way worked out fine (it does depend on everyone in principle being able to cover themselves though and not for the sake of it consume resources of others). There we also regularly would just throw money into the pot and give the servers a good tip and distribute the excess money back to the ones who currently wouldn't have at much. The principle of first throwing in stuff into the pot (even if it was symbolically and you would get the money back) was important though and with each time we reaffirmed some solidarity agreement.
However he was so angry about that way (me sharing more than would be the exact half split of the meal) that he - who had about 1.5 times my income - took money out so that the server would get what was common and the meal was only payed just.
That's some real psycho shit. My dad did the same thing when my siblings left a big tip for a waitress he was mean to. They deliberately left the tip after he'd left the table. Son of a bitch came back in, took the money, they came back out, and gave it back to them while they were in the car. Just straight up stole the waitress's money.
All because he didn't think she deserved more.
Tipping wait staff for their primary income is bullshit anyway. Fuck this stupid ass antiquated system just so boomers can walk around feeling like little queens and kings being serviced by the peasants. They should just make a normal fucking wage and not have to act all fake and shit to get a batter tip so maybe they dont have to eat ramen every night of the week.
