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InitialsDiceBearhttps://github.com/dicebear/dicebearhttps://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/„Initials” (https://github.com/dicebear/dicebear) by „DiceBear”, licensed under „CC0 1.0” (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)BE
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2 yr. ago

  • Imagine the arrogance to think you know better than someone you've never met, who lives their own lives second by second and knows the details of their needs and wants intimately, what's best for them better than they do. Maybe you should be their dictator.

  • As someone who's done it I'll tell you it's worth it. Sure, you get some real bumpkins out there. They can be rough but they're mostly friendly. Some of them are stupid, but that's anywhere. They're usually simpler for sure, and the pace is slower, and the rules are more lax, and that can be hard getting used to, but once you're used to it, no traffic and your amazon packages are still on your doorstep waiting for you.

    Just avoid tweaker towns, which is harder than it sounds.

  • The internet is fine.

    Listen. The era of algorithms and automated aggregators and what not feeding you endless interesting content is over. Before that we read blogs, we shared them on Usenet and IRC, we had webrings. We engaged in communities and the content we were exposed to was human curated. That is coming back. If we can quit it with the hackernews bot spam on Lemmy, it can be one of those places. You need to find niche forums that interest you that are invite only and start talking to people. The future of the internet is human.

  • One of the big problems with communism is that economic prosperity is framed fundamentally as a zero sum game. When that's a foundational axiom of the system you build you wind up not building systems of growth, only of redistribution. It has rippling effects throughout the culture and the philosophy of a nation that attempts it.

  • While I'd say altruism is not a virtue the way it is defined in our culture, I will say that who we are is about 50% nature and 50% nurture, and inside we are very different beings for one reason or other. A born sociopath is only human the same as you in visible form, the being is nothing like you. A person who was badly abused and tattoos his face and perpetuates abuse on those around him is completely different from you both. A monk in a monestsry and an Instagram influencer are completely different beings inside, besides some basic neurology that makes them both human. If you could see the being inside every human they'd look as different as Pokémon. That's my philosophical insight.

  • I'm with you on most of that. But I think the problem is more fundamental: the money devalues at a rate of 2-5% a year.

    Think about it. Why wouldn't the wealthy just hoard money? Because you can't just hoard money. It devalues. You have to monetize other assets. So they buy real estate, with money they made from you when prices go up but your wages haven't gone up yet. They benefit from the cantillion effect and in the process siphon wealth from the bottom. and as they accumulate non-money assets, that effect compounds because the prices go up some more. The wealth gap, all of this, it stems directly from our inflationary monetary system. Their trick is that they get to fuck with the money.

  • Well that doesn't add up. Hoarding wealth would imply saving dollars in the bank. But that doesn't actually store the wealth, they'd have to buy things that don't devalue, or in other words, invest. Investing is paying people to do things that will be profitable to you, or in other words, use it. Obviously thats not what's going on, or you wouldn't have an unusually high a concentration of wealth. There's got to be more to the story than this.

    What's the non simple answer?

  • If you think this has to do with party you're delusional.

    They're all doing it. Yes, even your favorite one. Every time they do this budget shutdown thing, what do you think they're doing? Trying to get smaller government? Trying to reduce greenhouse gasses? No. They're holding each other's money makers over each other's heads to get more of what they want.

    Every time the president signs a 100k page omnibus bill into law, what do you think all those pages have in them? The omnibus bill is a free for all, where everyone crams some special interest of theirs in, complete with kickbacks, and holds the possibility of a government shutdown over everyone's heads. Every single congressperson works for at least one special interest group. Some of those special interest groups are foreign nations. All of them, every single one, is selling the US down the river to line their own pockets. They'd sell you into slavery for a buck. They take their peanuts, live a decadent life, make their kids rich and hollow out this country for a living. Every single fucking one of them.