prole @ prole @sh.itjust.works

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2,966

Joined

2 yr. ago

I don't think I could stomach being friends with fascists (even the ones who might not be aware that they're fascists).

Hurr durr they get off two months, they're fine

You'll take your check for $3.27 from the class action lawsuit that settled 4 years ago, and you'll be happy

Do it

LO-fuckin-L at using Gulf of Tonkin, a well known false flag operation meant solely to draw the US into a protracted conflict we had no business being in. 🤡

Here? On Lemmy? Where did you get banned for saying that?

I'm just annoyed that people think rent seeking is some newly discovered concept. I'm not sure if there's a name for the very specific type we're referring to and I'm not sure there needs to be.

I think we'd be much better off if people actually understand the underpinning concept rather than having a thin and shallow understanding of just one single way it manifests.

I'll let the opening paragraph of the "rent seeking" wiki page to show why:

Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth. Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, stifled competition, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, risk of growing corruption and cronyism, decreased public trust in institutions and potential national decline.

Successful capture of regulatory agencies (if any) to gain a coercive monopoly can result in advantages for rent-seekers in a market while imposing disadvantages on their uncorrupt competitors. This is one of many possible forms of rent-seeking behavior.

(Emphasis mine)

On the wiki itself, each one of those items in the list I bolded has an entire wiki page about it and I'm pretty certain what is called "enshittification" fits into at least one of them.

I just wish people would care about the actual thing that's going on and not just one aspect of one type of the thing.

Edit: for any downvoters, look at my response to the reply below for clarification. Yes I'm glad that a small group of terminally online nerds in the tech industry have finally discovered one aspect (and consequence) of rent seeking. That's not really my issue.

I've had my disc PS5 for two years now, and the only thing I've put in it was Top Gun on 4K disc

You are really missing out then, because if you know where to look (like psprices.com) you will often find sales on only physical copies at Amazon, Best Buy or GameStop.

I'm talking like significant sales. Like AAA games less than a year old (that still costs $60 on PSN) for $15.99 kind of sales.

I cannot tell you how many PS4 and PS5 games I've gotten, and which, for 40%+ off. Too many to count. I've saved hundreds if not over a thousand dollars doing this.

I guess I've just been spoiled on Criterion Collection as that's the only Blu-ray media I buy these days, because there's nothing before the menu besides maybe a splash screen with the Criterion logo.

If you keep an eye on prices on Amazon, these versions are not as pricey as they used to be.

Yep. I've recently been collecting Criterion Collection blu-rays (and 4k BR in the case of Citizen Kane. Which was incredible btw. First time seeing it too) for some of my favorite films plus classics I haven't seen yet. If you keep an eye out for sales you can get some really great stuff for under $20. Sometimes under $15.

The picture quality is second to none, the bonus features are always amazing and actually worth checking out, and I own them outright forever.

Edit: oh, you meant like actual old school regular DVDs... Fuck that

Not really the same ballpark. VHS was wildly successful for over a quarter century... Maybe younger people don't realize how ubiquitous they were.

Laserdiscs were always super rare (at least in my working/middle class area)

I think they're using "best practices" as the industry term used by corporations

Gotta use "medium mode," and then allow scripts individually until the site isn't broken.

More people should be aware of this hidden setting in uBlock Origin.

I also use the element picker to straight up remove those fake "sign up to read the rest" "pop-ups" that grey the page out and stop you from scrolling. Can usually get past some of the lazier pay walls that way.

You know that it's not a new concept, right? Just a new word for a specific type of rent seeking that has plagued capitalism forever.

It's nice to see people learning economics from YA fiction authors, but read some books man

It was also, literally, built by the mob

Interesting, thanks for the info.

it is not really a grand strategy game with a whole extremely complex simulation engine undergirding it, the way Paradox games are.

This might actually be a plus for me, for as much as I want to love those games, I always ultimately get bogged down in that shit.

I haven't played in a while, but I have over 100 hours in EU4, with at least a half a dozen of the dlc, and I can say that I still don't truly know how to play those games "properly." The level of detail is simultaneously insane and dumb (sometimes their approximations of real life things are understandably absurd). I love the idea of them though.

I just got a new PC with a little more juice, and picked up Victoria 3 and have been debating if I should start watching tutorial videos or not...

Completely and wildly different genre, but I've been very intrigued so far with Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic as a city builder with a pretty impressive amount of detail. It's unique among the genre as the main goal isn't financial, but more focused on the well-being of your citizens. Lots of public housing, public transport, walking paths... There are two currencies, and if you choose to deal with the West you have to use a separate currency.

I feel like if I'm going to put the time into a complex "simulation" game at this point, it might be that one.

let's pretend statistics don't exist because the reality of their implications makes me uncomfortable.

You're so bad at this. Just say it with your full chest, my dude. We all know it already, and I'm sure the people in your real life know it.

Racists are always the biggest fucking pussies about honestly expressing their own world view and ideology.

So humans often study patterns in human behavior in order to gain insight into things like group dynamics, sometimes even as a profession. Crazy right?

And others try to use that data to try and correct historical injustices and atrocities we've made against marginalized people. That, I know for sure, is crazy to you.

I'm sure you think this is all just "virtue signalling," which says a lot about you.