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Private health insurance is the biggest fucking scam ever. The private insurance companies benefit by getting the aggregate healthiest population into their plans (working adults). The most likely to be expensive people, i.e. old people (on medicare) or poor people (on medicaid, or not even on an insurance plan) are on government, tax payer insurance plans. There is literally no reason except for corporate profiteering that Medicare should not be expanded to cover all people.
Also all those conversations, especially in the 2020 election period, were totally bullshit. You say something like M4A will cost 44 trillion dollars or whatever, which sounds like an insane amount of money. What is often left out of the discussion is that estimated cost was 1) over 10 years and 2) has to be weighed against the current costs we already pay for insurance. So the deal was very simple: the overall costs would go down because the overall spending would be less, and at the same time millions of people without coverage would be covered, and at the same time you don’t have to contemplate stupid bullshit like in network, out of network providers. Or ever again talk to your insurance about why something is or isn’t covered. Boils my blood when I think too much about this.
Not even gonna weigh in on things like how medicare can’t negotiate prescription drug prices (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/23/us/politics/medicare-drug-price-negotiations-lawsuits.html), or how dental, vision, and hearing are treated separately from general healthcare, or how med school is prohibitively expensive, or how the residents after med school are overworked because the guy who institutionalize that practice was literally a cokehead. Those are all just bonus topics. The point is we are getting fleeced.
Private anything is a scam because it doesn’t exist to resolve an issue or fulfill a need and instead pursues profit over any logic.
The only instances where privatized offerings may work IMO is if the government themselves are the competition, acting as a “control”.
Without a stable control that has the sole purpose of serving the people, fully privatized offerings will just squeeze more money out of already stretched households for profit as you’ve said… which is the case for practically everything RN
NoYeah no. Get out of US bubble.
Private and public are both viable models of operations with some applicability overlap. Private doesn’t necessarily pursue profit first, despite US literally enforcing it.
Basic needs that are either unchanging or change very slowly are the purview of public policy. Healthcare, infrastructure, etc. Privatize it and you’ll have a catastrophe.
Basic needs that benefit from variation and supply elasticity with a necessary baseline is where hybrid model works well. Public entrepreneurship provides variation, regulations or public enterprises cover baseline. Agriculture is a great example of such overlap. Private-only agriculture leads to profiteering on basic human need. Public-only agriculture leads to famines due to incompetence, malice, or lack of elasticity.
Desires that people can live without and can change on a whim is where private innovation thrives. Be it a product to sell or a charity project to pursue. Some of the results of said innovation can and will become matters of public interest. Forbid private enterprise here, and you’ll end up in a bleak reality of North Korea.
We literally had a case of “public everything” half a century ago and it didn’t fucking work. It needed serfdom and insane amounts of natural resources to prop itself up. It also left a mafia-led capitalism in its wake.
We also have a live case of blind trust in markets, as if information was immediately available everywhere. It leads to a very similar looking outcome.
Sadly one of the main exports of the US is its ideology, so many other countries want to implement the same heartless, profit-oriented privatizations of every state organism.
Welcome to the US
Private insurance (for the average person) in general is dumb. We have a collective need to insure various things against disaster, and realistically the federal government shells out huge amounts for most disasters anyways (after the so called insurance companies go bankrupt).
So why the heck are we paying a premium for all of the overhead of the insurance companies?! It’s this massive inefficient system that doesn’t work, while the “government as insurance” system works great, and doesn’t require nearly as much overhead. There’s no room for private sector insurance to inovate, because there’s nothing to inovate on; IMO, the private insurance industry contributes nothing of value to society except jobs that it pays for by forcing everyone to engage with it.
The insurance industry in general is betting you’ll be fine, and you’re betting “maybe I won’t.” It’s extra bad for medicine because they stick their head even into the small stuff, not just “I need a 10,000 unexpected hospital bill covered.”
Probably gonna anger both sides here, but I see both private insurance and single-payer healthcare as equally-evil scams. Why not focus on driving down costs of healthcare (i.e. EVERYTHING) so that you throw a couple bucks at the receptionist to cover your surgery then check to see if you have enough for a post-surgery soda?
One of the objectives of single-payer is to drive down the costs of healthcare by eliminating the overhead of an insurance bureaucracy. There are other aspects that can be considered like nationalizing hospitals to eliminate private run, for-profit hospitals. People like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCA_Healthcare are just as responsible for the high per-capita costs of healthcare we pay as are the insurance companies. And I agree with you, they shouldn’t be getting a guaranteed government handout.
Chiropractors.
Even though this is top comment, this is an underrated answer.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chiropractor-neck-adjustment-caitlin-jensen-b2363357.html
People always chime in with stories about how chiropractors helped them with XY and Z problem they were having.
And overall I don’t doubt them. There’s a lot of things that can go wrong with your spine or other joints, and I’m certain that some of them can be addressed by physically manipulating and adjusting it.
But the basic premise of chiropractic treatments is that basically all human ailments can be fixed in that way, which should sound like total bullshit to anyone with half a brain. And that’s before you get into all spiritual nonsense that pervades a lot of the field.
Now some of them understand that that’s a load of bullshit and may even be realistic about the things they can treat, but it can be pretty damn hard to sort them out from the ones who think that your pancreatic cancer is caused by ghosts in your spine and they know how to get them out or some bullshit like that.
Now if you have a good idea what your issue is and what needs to be done to fix it, take the time to carefully vet your chiropractor to make sure they’re not going to try some crazy bullshit on you, you very well may be able to get a decent treatment from them. Maybe you’ll even be able to save some money going with that.
But for most of us who aren’t doctors and so only have kind of vague ideas what exactly the issue is and that the treatments we’re doing actually make any sense, and don’t necessarily have time to do all of that research and carefully vet that the person treating them isn’t secretly a quack, you could just get the same sort of treatments from actually physical therapists, orthopedists, physiatrists, etc. with the added benefit of them actually understanding the issues and how to fix them properly.
Chiropractors are kind of like the rednecks of the medicine world. Some of them know exactly what they’re doing with that harbor freight welder, they may not do things by the book but they know for certain what works and what doesn’t and more importantly know when something is beyond what them and their buddies can accomplish on a free Saturday with a case of beer and when they need to suck it up and limp their truck to the shop and let a professional deal with it. Others know just enough to be dangerous and while they can get the job done 90% of the time or at least not make things worse, that 10% of the time something is literally going to blow up in someone’s face. And still others are just meth heads looking to make a quick buck and it’s a miracle they’re not behind bars. And when you see them hanging around the local watering hole, it may not be totally clear which is which until it’s too late.
Also homeopathy.
Some homeopaths solve problems that allopathic doctors are unable to. Still it may be a placebo thing, but it is a valid option because it can work, and it is less quacky than quacks.
“may be a placebo”
My friend, there is no “may”.
I am one of the unfortunate ones that, during a double-blind test, became addicted to placebos. My life is now a living hell. I can’t fine any good placebos anywhere. I go to the drug store and say “throw me a life saver”, they give me butterscotch.
Also, you can buy Tic Tacs from any newsagent or gas station.
Not to defend homeopathy, but a big part of why placebo works is how we percieve the medicine/treatment.
Tic tacs wouln’t work as well as fake medicine (aka homeopathy) because they don’t look as “official”.
The entire industry is built on catering to the vast swaths of women who get ignored by doctors and need somewhere to turn.
I highly suspect doctors are taught in medical school, “women are over emotional and prone to exaggeration.”
Hell, “hysteria” was considered a valid diagnosis until the 1950s.
This guy gets it. Chiropractors are a scam, but scammers are drawn to people who “fall through the cracks” because they’re treated like their problems don’t actually exist. Finally, they meet someone who takes their pain seriously. It’s too bad the person who takes it “seriously” is a fucking charlatan.
It falls harder on women, who have more instances of pain that are ignored by the medical community, partially from the history mentioned above, claiming women must be experiencing “hysteria.”
It absolutely happens because of the failings of the medical community.
I was suffering from hyperemisis last year and it took 3 doctors before I finally found one to take me seriously, which I consider it lucky it only took 3. The last doc I was practically on my hands and knees begging them to take me seriously.
In the middle of all that I also ended up with pneumonia. Normally I never get sick so I was like wtf is going on. But anyways, a doctor finally took some chest x rays and 2 weeks later they call to tell me that my X-ray was clear. I. Went. Off. I ended up having to go to the ER 2 days after the doctor visit because I could no longer breathe, it was so painful. How is it possible that my x ray was clear??? Then another week goes by and the assistant calls to tell me that I do have pneumonia and a prescription has been sent in. I just hung up and filed complaints with everyone I could. That office was a hot mess.
I am so sorry. That’s devastating. You already have to struggle to fight your illness. But to have to fight that hard AGAINST YOUR DOCTOR when your doctor is supposed to be on your team? It’s a betrayal.
Not all chiropractors are the same, but not knowing who’s who is dangerous
There are physical therapists who know the actual manipulations that work and use them as needed for treatment. It’s the best of both worlds.
I agree. Physical therapists have to get a doctorate to get licensed, so they definitely know what they’re doing.
The stock market and publicly traded companies. The idea that a business that is making consistent profits isn’t good unless those profits are increased each quarter is asinine. This system of shortsighted hyper focus on short term quarterly growth for the sake of growth is the cause of so much pain and suffering in the world. Even companies with amazing financials will work to push workers compensation down, cut corners and exploit loopholes to make sure their profits are always growing. Consistent large profits aren’t good enough.
I think a major problem with the stock market is the lack of long term planing. And we see that clearly with what’s happened to Boeing with their planes falling apart
Instapot. Instapot made too good of a product, most people buy one and its good for years. That’s good for consumers but terrible for investors. The company that bought them out and took them public saddled them with a ton of debt from other sectors and now they’re bankrupt.
Diamond Sports is suing Sinclair for doing the same, minus the “good product” part.
Sinclair bought up the Fox RSNs a few years back, renaming the company as Diamond Sports and the channels as Bally Sports. Not too long afterwards, they went bankrupt. Diamond is claiming that Sinclair has saddled them with massive debts and extraordinarily high management fees. Sinclair also kept the funds from the sponsorship agreement with Bally.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-bz-sinclair-broadcast-sued-by-diamond-sports-20230722-ndvdj6btfreovbsyo7gk7eeony-story.html
Yup. Great article about that and many other failures of capitalism here if anyone wants something to share with a fence sitter in their life.
Google stock is literally worthless and does not represent an actual stake in the company for example
Wait what?
Google’s shares are divided into two types, Class A and Class C. Class A shares, traded as GOOGL, confer one vote per share as a typical stock would. Class C shares, traded as GOOG, confers no voting privileges. This dual shares system was done to raise more money selling less useful Class C shares (intended for mutual funds and the like) while keeping control of the company in the hands of those held on to Class A shares (i.e. longtime executives).
Ah, thanks for the info. That’s actually what I suspect is happening with the new fractional shares thing, but the brokerage is the one retaining control.
It’s worse than that, because a company bylaw also gives every GOOG stock a set value of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a cent and a binding part of their issuance is the clause that they can demand to buy them back for that price at any time. Google can drop like pocket lint and instantly buy all GOOG stock back.
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They have 2 (3?) types of shares, and the one most people buy ($GOOG) is a class C share which comes with no voting rights and doesn’t give you a share of the company profits.
While class A shares ($GOOGL) come with voting rights, class B shares which are held by Google’s founders and insiders get 10x voting power and so they still hold the majority vote. Class A also does not pay dividends.
Most people who buy stock expect to hold it for some time. I don’t care if Apple has a bad quarter every now and then as long as when I do sell the stock has a greater value than when I bought it accounting for inflation. I only gain or lose money when I sell or if they issue a dividend.
Only stockbrokers and other adjacent careers are interested in the price going up over the short term. Most people aren’t selling frequently enough for quarter to quarter to matter as much
A bad quarter isn’t what this is about. It’s about the idea that constant percentage growth is good or realistic. Any stock with flat growth over a decade will not be a good long-term investment. Your comment proves the point here.
I don’t think you understand my post at all. You only gain or lose when you sell so that flat ten years won’t impact the individual until they sell
If you invest in the stock market and expect companies to be making large profits all the time then you’re going to be very disappointed. That’s not how it works. There are financial reports, market regulators, analysts. History tells us that awful companies with shady practices would always get caught in the end, no matter how big they are.
Everyone should invest, but investors should always do their research.
This is not about small-time regular Joe investors, but about large institutional ones, who do exert pressure on companies to deliver strong profits and/or growth.
Unpaid overtime.
Framing “fulfilling your contract” as “silent quitting”.
In what other context would be “delivering what’s in the contract” anything less than satisfactory?
When I buy a litre of milk and the box contains exactly a litre of milk it isn’t “silent stealing” either.
Unpaid overtime is usually illegal too. Highly depends on your position though. A lot of software engineers are marked as exempt when they shouldn’t be.
The annoying thing is, depending on your job and financial situation, it hardly matters whether it’s illegal or not. I’m not talking about my comfortable situation as a software engineer, but rather people working crap jobs and not having alternatives.
If you know, you’ll be out of work for longer if you get fired, you basically cannot report any illegal stuff your employer is doing.
I used to work for IBM’s CIC (colloquially known as the “cheap labor division”) and starting pay for a junior dev was only 30k/year. If you got assigned to a contract, you were told that you had to work 44 hours/week exempt, regardless of if you had work to do or not, and everyone knew it’s so they could charge the project more without actually paying the devs any extra. Needless to say I got out ASAP and have 0 intention of working for them again, in any capacity.
And they wondered why everyone kept jumping ship right after getting those nice required onboarding certs onto their resumes…
My personal top 3:
Technically insurance only works if everybody pays in. Wouldn’t work as a concept if every tom dick and harry could pay them $100 then a week later need $100,000. They’d basically be out of business right quick with nothing to provide for anyone. Maybe as some believe it should just be provided through taxes, but it’s certainly not a scam.
The scam part comes when you are forced to fight tooth and nail to get money from them even when you are clearly covered
This. For non trivial claims they basically won’t lift a finger until you take them to court.
This. I got a detailed bill for a minor surgery, every single value was under the value of their own detailed coverage, and they still didn’t pay back around 12% of the value and never justified what the difference was about. They did it because they know I won’t fight them on it and they do it to everyone. That objectively and legally makes their detailed coverage a scam.
deleted by creator
I’ve always said that insurance companies will spend dollars to figure out how to cheat you out of dimes.
It’s true insurance companies need to take in adequate premiums in order to have the money the money to pay claims. And when done in balance, insurance is a great thing. Not all insurance in a scam, no doubting that.
But the current state of insurance, especially health insurance in the US, shows that these companies are making massive profits. How does this happen? Literally one way: They take in more premiums than they pay out in coverage. How? By either knowingly overcharging people or skirting out of paying covered claims through other means (such as baseless rejections).
That’s the problem with the entire insurance industry and why it must be properly regulated in any industry: It is a race to the bottom. The worse the insurer treats the people that buy insurance from them, the better the company does financially (charge a lot, pay out a little). Mix in the fact that (1) you cannot shop around at the time you need a claim and (2) the contracts are so intensive only a sophisticated legal team can interpret them, and it’s a recipe for disaster.
So you’re right that all insurance isn’t necessarily a scam. But if you can’t see that the US health insurance industry raking in profits shows serious dysfunction that could be considered a scam, it’s worth taking a second look.
Nobody works for free. In order to be a large effective and not out of business business you need to have a profit to cover overhead like staff.
Profit is revenue minus expenses
Did someone say people should work for free?No where am I saying that. This is about whether the current US healthcare insurance industry is a scam or not. Scam means “a dishonest scheme” and insurance saying it’s going to provide healthcare coverage but actually just takes your money, doesn’t provide coverage, and only pays investors/executives could be considered a dishonest scheme by many.
Insurance companies have a natural tendency to become worse and worse over time. This is called the race to the bottom and is an incredibly well-known phenomena in insurance. Like monopolies, insurance is one of the rare situations where experts are in damn-near universal agreement that heavy regulation is necessary.
Right now, insurance companies are objectively very bad to the people they provide coverage for. This isn’t an opinion, this is a fact that’s easily verified and well understood. They are not being effectively regulated and as such, are racing to the bottom by providing absolutely terrible coverage while taking in massive premiums. This is not good for anyone and is not fixed by a free market in any way. You cannot effectively shop for insurance and their behavior is not rectified, unless prohibited by law (regulation).
I only posted what I did because your post read like you expected insurance to run by paying out 100% of what they get in. The thread started with general insurance but many zeroed in on health insurance. Yes there are problems, obviously, but certain things like denying claims comes about from many people trying to scam payments and the insurers tightening security too much without enough oversight.
Everybody seems to think there’s huge payments going to investors and C level executives but that comes from market confidence. So the stock price rises and those bonuses of stock options appreciate without the company paying a dime.
Hold up don’t forget that in the US, healthcare providers base their pricing on what they will receive after insurance discounts. This creates a massively overinflated market where most of the value is made up and a large portion of actual payments goes to insurance and corporations
And heavily hurts those who have none
But the problem is that medical costs are only as high as they are because of insurance. Hospitals started making up fake, artificially high prices because insurance companies wanted a discount for referring patients to their hospital.
I’ve heard many a tale of contacting the billing department and telling them you don’t have insurance and either they can get what money they actually need or none of it. They end up getting a much smaller bill.
I’m not in the US, but one of the issues I have with medical insurance is that, say you need medication, the doctor will provide you with a prescription, requiring a specific brand due to the efficacy compared to other brands. The insurance providers would reject claims for the prescribed brand, and suggest an inferior brand that doctors warned to avoid.
This happened to my older folks, and is baffling why insurances feel the need to override a doctor’s recommendations.
They were the same drug. The generic version is made after the original patent runs out and is an exact copy.
Perhaps, but this is what was advised by the doctor, so I don’t know
Not necessarily. I’m on a daily medication that has a generic but is available in both extended release and immediate release forms. The extended release provides a more consistent dosage and has historically prevented me from getting sick. The immediate release causes inconsistent spikes and I have a history of getting sick on it. Insurance refused to pay for the extended release type for about 2 years before it made it onto their “formulary.” In the meantime I was using GoodRx and paying $100/mo instead of my paid health insurance pharmacy plan to make sure I wouldn’t get sick. The person I spoke to at the pharmacy management wing of the insurance company literally told me “you can get an app on your phone which will tell you when to take the immediate release medication.”
Luckily, we don’t have that with medical insurance in Switzerland, but car mechanics sure are that way.
Need a fix on insurance? Ooh, that’ll take us 2 weeks of full time work - minimum 5000 bucks. Call them and tell them it’s not insured? Ah, that’ll be 500 bucks.
Insurance policies are many and varied, covering different types of risk.
Many policies are potentially scammy in some circumstances.
Subscriptions.
People pay every month but most don’t use the sub to it’s full value, and forget how expensive it becomes over the years. And you don’t own anything on a subscription, you just borrow it.
Also trial periods that prolong automatically into subscriptions.
I was really surprised when I shipping forwarder I use after I upgraded from the “free” tier to the $10/month tier to save a few hundred dollars of state taxes, when I downgraded back to their “free” tier five days later once the package was out of their hands, the answer was “Your subscription will end at the end of your current paid month”
I expected worse
Yup, BandCamp all the way. Once you buy a song you own it, you can play it anywhere you darn well please. Even if BandCamp goes under, no worries, still got my music.
Same with DVDs. Yeah, I’ve definitely gotten movies I regret purchasing, but I think long-term it’s more economical.
Professors requiring their own, expensive textbook for their course.
worse than that is professors being required by the school’s contract with the textbook company to tell you to buy a book that they have no intent on using because it’s awful. that was way way more common for me.
And the versioning of those textbooks to make sure it can sell for exactly nothing.
I loved getting my math degree. Almost every professor provided us with copies of the book. One went so far as to hand out flash drives with the pdfs on them on day 1. For the few classes I did buy books for, I went online and found the international edition, which was generally around 30 bucks instead of 300.
Fuck text book publishers and fuck school bookstores.
One of my professors had a textbook that was shockingly out of date for the subject. Like we’re talking using scientific data from 1995 at the latest, and I took this class 2 years ago. He sent a bunch of emails to the textbook author and eventually he came out with a “Fourth Edition” in response that changed NOTHING. The book was exactly the same except for a different cover. It was so bad that in the syllabus our professor warned us not to buy the fourth edition for the hefty $70 upcharge because it’s the same thing as the third edition.
This! My English teacher in my first year required us to buy a specific book that she wrote from a specific book store for $250. You had to bring it and the receipt in proving you bought it and aren’t just sharing with someone else.
We then opened the table of contents to “go over” the book and never touched it again.
She then said “you should probably leave those here so you don’t forget them”. Never fucking touched it again.
At least my profs who had their own textbook sold them cheap.
The professors I have known with text books for their own courses hate this, too. They would always put it on the board for the entire course how to translate page numbers given for the current edition of the book to page numbers for older pages. One in particular was like “Take the page number. Subtract the difference between the current version and your version. That’s the page you need to start on”
In 1988 I had to buy a book for my chemistry lab that cost $80. It was 70 xeroxed pages in a 3 ring binder.
I had a hero of a physics professor who figured out that new editions of textbooks just mixed up the number of the exercises, so he advised students that they could just order previous versions of the textbooks and he’d provide the “key” for how the questions were shuffled.
Car based infrastructure
the stock market
capitalism
Unregulated capitalism imo. I don’t buy the idea I’ve seen around here that capitalism itself is the problem and switching to communism would solve all the problems. Both are systems that have merit, but when left unchecked all the power and money will go to the few, like we have now.
If by “have merit” you mean “has some positive aspects”, sure. Every system has merit. Slavery had merit (slave owners got cheap cotton). The Holocaust had merit (antisemites felt better). The issue is weighing the merit against the negatives. You can’t just say two systems have positive aspects and call it a day.
Are you a fan of democracy or authoritarianism? Capitalism is a system where productive forces are driven undemocratically, in the name of profit instead of by worker democracy. The commodification of everything exists in a world of private property:
These things being commodified and privatized are ridiculous in any democratic, non-capitalist system.
However, these ridiculous conditions are absolutely necessary in a capitalist society. Without them the system falls apart. And as society continues to progress, the situation gets more and more ridiculous.
What about when AI “takes away” jobs for 50% of Americans (as in capitalists fire humans in favor of AI)? That’ll collapse our society. Less work would be a good thing in any reasonable system, but not in capitalism. Less work is an existential threat to our society.
If we ever have an AI that is as capable as humans are intellectually, the only work left for us will be manual labor. If that happens, and robots get to the point of matching our physical abilities, we won’t be employable anymore. The two classes will no longer be owners and workers, they’ll be owners and non-owners. At that point we better have dismantled capitalism, because if we don’t then we’ll just be starving in the street, along with the millions who die every year from starvation under the boot of global capitalism.
Everying in your comment can be solved with regulation. A capitalist society can enact socialist policies to take care of the lower class or unemployed. It’s not a “pick one” situation.
You’re arguing against the unregulated capitalism we live in, but also comparing capitalism as it exists today to fuckin slavery is just a ridiculous false equivalence.
I didn’t compare capitalism to slavery. I said the word slavery. The first paragraph wasn’t demonstrating a comparison, it was demonstrating a principle (principles are universalized, comparisons aren’t). The idea that every system has positives, but those systems can still be horrifically bad.
I don’t know if it’s emotion that’s clouding your reading comprehension, I hope it is, because then you can calm down and have a reasonable conversation. If it’s not, then this conversation isn’t worth having because you won’t understand half of what I’m saying. Literally 50% of your last message was you misrepresenting what I was saying.
A capitalist society cannot enact socialist policies. It can enact “social” policies. These policies are inspired by socialism, and often advocated for by socialists, but the policies themselves are not socialist policies. Capitalism is an economic system where the means of production are privately owned, and socialism is an economic system where the means of production are socially owned. If private (not personal) property exists, it’s not socialism. It’s not necessarily capitalism (you could have other systems with private property), but in our world it always is.
Welfare capitalism, where these social policies exist, is a well established ideology that has been around for about 80 years in any serious form, and yeah welfare can be used to address some of the negative tendencies of capitalism, but it doesn’t fix them. It’s applying a band-aid fix, not addressing the problem. In the real world what this means is there’s a class of people always working to remove those regulations and welfare because their class interests are opposed to ours.
Class distinctions cannot be solved with a regulation, they have to be solved with a societal restructuring. Our legal system does not support the idea of abolishing private property and by extension classes.
Yeah bud, I’m not reading past your second paragraph. Go gaslight and be and be an asshole on Reddit.
IMO American style capitalism is completely broken, but that’s not the only way to run your economy and still call it capitalism. Particularly in the EU area companies don’t always have the upper hand. Consumers and employees have the kinds of rights Americans can only dream of.
Don’t really know much about communism, but clearly USSR didn’t survive, and that may have something to do with the system. ML-people here can probably tell me how China, Cuba and other communist countries are doing today.
Arguably, socialism is a bigger scam given its history of failure.
What do you mean?
That socialism has always failed, but because it sounds good in theory, people like to argue for its use.
A lot of people are saying Capitalism. Is it straight up capitalism that is the scam or the myth of financial mobility? (the American dream)
There’s a lot of trouble with definitions regarding capitalism. (I’d call them intentional since muddying the waters serves the people who benefit from our current system.)
Pick any person who is complaining about “capitalism” right now.
If you proposed a system where everything was structured the same as it is right now, HOWEVER instead of shareholders and owners possessing companies, every, single company was a worker cooperative (owned and controlled by its workers) then I am 95% sure the anti-capitalist you picked would
With some minor variation. (Tankies don’t think it’s possible to maintain such a system without monopolizing violence. Anarcho-communists wouldn’t be too happy about the scope and financial power of state and federal governments, and would seek to pare them down. Democratic socialists would think it was perfect. Little disagreements like that.)
But I think most other people (people who aren’t anti-capitalists) would think “that’s just a form of capitalism” if I described the above.
In fact, if I said,
Most ordinary people would consider that a form of capitalism. (Even though calling it capitalism is, technically, highly inaccurate). So it’s a difficult conversation to have. Because most “anti-capitalists” disagree with most “pro-capitalists” on the basic definition of what they are fighting or defending.
I’m actually convinced that a lot of “pro-capitalists” are more eager to defend the free market system than they are to defend transferable, stock-marketable, individual ownership of the means of production. I think they would compromise on the latter if they could safeguard the former.
That’s almost anarcho-syndicalism, which I am a proponent of some of the ideas of, but it leaves capital and government generally intact. That’s probably the easiest way we could transition away from capitalism as we know it and not collapse the system entirely. It sounds almost feasible.
Oh yeah, certainly. And one of the first steps in that direction – the corporate death sentence – is just common sense.
(The corporate death sentence is basically “any company that does more damage than it can reasonably repair gets converted into a co-op controlled by its workers / victims. The investors’ shares get dissolved.”)
I don’t think anyone would have a reasonable objection to allowing the voters of East Palestine, Ohio and the workers for Norfolk Southern to elect all of the company’s board members from here on out. And I don’t think anyone would weep for Norfolk Southern’s shareholders if their shares got dissolved.
First Past the Post voting at elections.
Approval Voting and multi-winner districts let’s gooooooo!
Welcome to Canada.
I’m still salty about that broken Liberal promise to reform our elections. None of the parties care about it and it seems no one wants to try to change it.
Would’ve thought the NDP would have held onto that like a dog with a bone.
A great alternative is majority judgment!
What country? In my country everyone knows that’s a scam.
UK
We had a referendum and people voted to keep the scam.
Only because AV was even worse.
It wasn’t a PR system, it was just FPTP with a hat on.
USA
Was coming here specifically to say credit scores. Oh what’s that you paid off your student loans? Here have a big credit hit as a treat. Oh you’re using your credit? Here have a credit hit even tho you’ve never missed a payment. How dare you use the credit you have??
Why would paying off your student loans give you a credit hit?
Edit: lol who is downvoting this I legitimately didn’t know the answer
Credit scores are in part based on the oldest line of available credit, which for most people are their student loans. Pay those off, your oldest line of credit becomes something more recent, and your score goes down as a result
Length of credit and credit utilization, you get points* for the length that each account has been open, so when you pay off your loan the account is closed and no longer counts. Also as you get to the end of the repayment it shows as a $30k account that you owe les than $10k on, you get points for using less than half or less than a third of the credit available to you.
*You don’t actually get points, that would be too easy to understand, you get factors that affect a complex equation in your favor.
It decreases your overall available credit
Loans are different from lines of credit… loans don’t have an “available credit” associated with them. The reason your score might go down when you pay off student loan is because you’re reducing the number of open accounts you have, and also possibly reducing the diversity of accounts (lines of credit vs. installment loans).
Disclaimer: I’m not saying this is a good system, just explaining how it works.
I assume this is US only thing? I don’t work and I have a credit card. Using it makes my credit score go up.
In Germany taking out a small loan even tho you don’t need it can help massively boost your credit score.
That only works because here no credit history is worse than a bad credit history.
It’s more the case that if you use more than 20% it is seen as negative. 0-10% is excellent, 10-20% is good, and it gets worse from there. Every year I request a credit increase despite my spending staying the same simply because it makes my utilization go down. But it’s dumb. I don’t need the extra credit. I’ll never use it. But have to have it to max my score.
Even better if you use Experian: give us access to all your spending data or else you’ll never see a score increase again (source: been dealing with this for three years while Equifax continues to go up. I feel like they’re doing something illegal, but they probably already were and nobody cares.)
How are sports a scam?
Sports are a scam because it distracts people from discussing politics yet voting and democracy is a scam? Not a very compelling argument.
They’re basically responsible for 90% of males simply refusing to discuss important issues in politics. They’re a distraction and are subject to massive corruption. Did you know that the MLB is actually a state-sanctioned monopoly?
Au contrarie; sports are a fantastic way to get socioeconomic issues (like labor rights) front and center on the minds of people who wouldn’t necessarily be thinking of them the same way. And they create opportunities for people to educate themselves in other areas as well. Not every sports fan is the willfully ignorant meathead you describe, nor do willfully ignorant meatheads exist because of sports.
MLB is not only a state sponsored monopoly, but like every other American sports league a blatant cartel which is constantly squabbling with its own employees over revenue shares (at the expense of the on-field product) and lying about how much money they actually make. Same thing as most other business owners, but people are a lot more willing to listen to the perspective of, say, Shoehi Ohtani than a random McDonald’s employee. I can tell you that I am personally much more clued in on these sorts of societal problems as a result of sportswriters discussing labor issues, on top of being far more statistically savvy and generally more sceptical of oversimplified narratives than I would be if I had never gained an interest in baseball. Nor would I have anywhere near my current understanding of global politics without global football (soccer) creating both a mechanism and incentive for learning about them.
But that’s not even the point: sports are not a “scam”. Sports exist first and foremost because for many people, watching elite athletes play a game is fun. That is the intrinsic value of professional sports, and nothing about that is inherently scammy. Full stop.
Well said. You articulated what I was thinking much better than I did.
I upvoted you even though I disagree. Well said!
Sports is a very broad term. I am aware of MLBs antitrust exemption. However, that is a unique situation that does not apply across all sports. That’s why we have seperte leagues like the NFL and XFL. My kids playing little leugue are not affected by this at all.
As for the 90% of males comment, this is rediculous. It is very possible to both follow and discuss politics while also have other interests. It’s not an either or situation. There is nothing wrong with having distractions you enjoy.
I agree that pro sports are subject to massive corruption. But that doesn’t make them a scam.
In the US, discussion of politics is a complete faux pas because of sports.
Gonna need you to cite some sources on that one.
I agree with everything but voting. Not because we ever have great options, but because sometimes there are terrifyingly bad ones, and while option A might not be at all good, option B is so much worse.
That’s why it’s called “the lesser of two evils.”
The problem is that they aren’t two evils, they’re two parts of the same evil machine whose functions are mutually dependent and mutally reinforcing
“The United States is also a one-party state, but in typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” -Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania
You don’t seem to know what “lesser of two evils” means.
It doesn’t mean “that guy’s bad, so the less evil guy is good, actually, and totally deserves our support!”
It means “no matter which one of these assholes wins, I’m fucked, but if I’m lucky the one guy will use lube.”
I can’t do a damn thing about the two party system. That ship sailed before I was born, and nothing I do as an individual can change it. In fact, I can’t see a solution short of possibly violent revolution. If that happens before I’m to old and feeble to help, great. Other wise, I’m fucked no matter who I pick, so I’m sure as shit going to pick the one who just wants to fuck me and not fuck me plus kill my trans neighbor.
I’m sick and tired of being called stupid, gullible, or uninformed just because I can actually see how completely fucked we are. Your shit is great for people who still have hope. My shit is just trying to survive without the Gestapo coming for my neighbors.
So come get me for the revolution. In the meantime, stop calling me stupid for being depressed and practical.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to copy and paste this in reply to some other lemming that thinks I’m a gullible moron instead.
Yes, they do, they were trying to explain to you that it’s a scam and only serves to move the nation to the right. Everybody understands “lesser of two evils” we’re all browbeaten with it our entire lives.
Edit: Sorry, wrong starting sentence. I meant to say:
Clearly not browbeaten enough.
Lesser of two evils means we’re fucked either way, but one way slightly less. It means there are not good choices, just less bad ones. If you sat through the Trump presidency and still think there’s no difference, then I don’t know what the fuck to tell you. If you can’t look at how fucked trans people are in Florida and other red states right now and still say there’s no difference, then go fuck yourself.
They’re both shit, but one of wants to fucking murder my friends. There’s a fucking difference. And if I sound mad, it’s because people saying shit like this vote dumbass third parties that can’t possibly win, or sit out an election because of protests. People are fucking dead because of this dumbass “there’s no difference” bullshit.
You wanna tear down the system and stat over? Fine, great, get going. I’ll even help if it looks like you might have a prayer. But right now, there is no hope. There’s just mitigation of harm. Your idealism gets people killed.
It’s amazing that despite knowing everybody, everywhere, already knows what “lesser of two evils” means, you still resort to just belaboring the point pedantically to repeat what everybody already knows. I’m sure you think you’re very clever, but your tactics suggest you find basic knowledge to be esoteric and worth repeating over and over.
I tend to repeat myself whenit appears that my audience isn’t listening. You’re the third person who seemed to think that “lesser of two evils” meant “if one guy’s bad, the other guys good.” People in this thread keep acting like I’m happy with the Democratic party or something.
So, since it seemed like you didn’t understand what I’d said, I repeated myself. I’m pedantic for the same reason: you’re either ignoring what I’m saying or don’t understand it. Either way, I apparently have to spell it out.
Nice use of the word “esoteric”. Did you find that in the word a day calendar this morning? It doesn’t really apply here, though, because nothing I’ve said is esoteric. It’s not arcane, obscure, or in any way difficult to understand. And I don’t think it is.
I just think you’re either being intentionally obtuse to rile me up, or you really don’t get what I’m saying.
It’s all good, though, dude. I’m tired. I’m just so fucking tired. I’ve been watching this shit unfold for close to five decades, sometimes while getting shot at, and I’m tired.
I’m mad, but I fucking give up. My position - despair - isn’t worth fighting for and I don’t know why I briefly thought it was. I fucking surrender.
Let me know how that revolution you guys are never going to have goes.
The irony here is you’re the one who seems to not be reading or comprehending us. Nobody’s saying you think one guy’s good, we’re saying voting for a marginally slower fascist is a stupid thing to give a shit about because it doesn’t even produce results.
What you are saying is said by millions of people, you’re neither clever nor cutting new ground here. We all understand it, and we think it’s wrong. You might be exposing your intellectual shortcomings here that you can’t figure that out.
Now I’m really starting to think you’re a dumb guy deeply invested in pretending to be smart. Esoteric isn’t an unusual, special word - read a fuckin book.
I disagree with you. Fundamentally. Grapple with the disagreement instead of trying to fake being high-minded or just repeating shit children understand.
Nobody’s going to update a reactionary who can’t even allow themselves to directly consider arguments against their atrophied, ignorant worldview.
Look, I’m really tired here. And I’m formally apologizing. I have so radically failed at making my point that you think I’m a reactionary. I’m not. I’m utterly convinced that the whole world is completely fucked, and the absolute best we can do is try to tread water as long as we can before drowning. Reacting? To what? To what end? The system’s irrevocably broken, I can’t do anything about it, so what’s the point?
And I’m not particularly smart. I mean, I know some stuff, and I’ve been through a lot. But smart? Meh. When I was in the Army, I drove a tank for a living. Does that sound like the career choice of a smart man?
I’m just so fucking tired. Please tell me how anything you’re doing will help. No sarcasm, I want to know. How do you move forward?
I’ll quit shouting. I just don’t have the spoons.
You are an absolute fool
If you actually want to learn, re read the comments trying to explain it to you, and resist the urge to retort with a programmed response or thought terminating cliche
Lmaoooooooo
So you are just okay with these incredibly low standards. Sorry, but I’m not and we could be doing things differently instead of this “lesser of two evils” garbage.
Who says I’m okay with it?
I hate it.
I just can’t see any way to fix it.
There are definitely ways to fix it but you keep posting about how you don’t agree with it, and you think you should just settle for the lesser of two evils… if you’re so against it, why even vote?
why tell others to vote? Fear mongering that the guy you’re afraid of is gonna win if you don’t vote cause uh oh then only evil people are left voting??
the more we don’t participate in this bullshit, the quicker we can get rid of it. Unfortunately, people like you just settle for what you have. Instead of pushing for something better. By just settling for this shit, you hold everyone else back from real change.
Then tell me how we fix it. Tell me what I can do.
In order to change the system, we have to change the ideology that it’s necessary to be better than other people. Ture equality would only come from that.
I… don’t get you. I feel really dumb, but you’re going to have to explain it to me a bit more.
I get that no one is better than anyone on a basic human rights level. That makes intuitive sense to me. And I’m all for a cultural paradigm shift. I’m also 100% in favor of a massive overhaul of the entire government, up to and including a complete re-write of the Constitution and the bill of rights (I feel like we, as a nation, can do better than a founding document that defines some humans as being worth only 3/5ths of others, for instance).
But how?
Nah, based off your other comments and what you know about the constitution and bill of rights, I don’t think you come off dumb.
To be fair, this is pretty high concept stuff because while its something that could be done in theory, putting it into practice takes a lot of work.
The only way I have seen ideologies change over time is by basically social engineering them out. In order to do that, you need a lot of people on your side who are also willing to push that agenda. So we would need a lot of people doing things like making memes, having discussions like this, essentially popularizing the idea that we don’t need to feel better than others in the sense of, what class do they belong to.
This does already exist but not in a strong way like the other side is, the one that holds all the power. People in charge or in places of authority, billionaire types, etc. they all have the upper hand.
This brings me back to why I don’t vote and why I don’t participate in certain things that people try to scare me into doing basically.
By not participating, I’m removing myself from this sided argument - after all, there are no options for me to vote for, I don’t see any politicians ever wanting to actually change things, they only want to change things within how the system works already. I’m refusing to take part in something I never agreed to and have no real say in.
people have even told me, there isn’t a real option to opt out of voting - and that by not voting, I’m actually still voting but now all the votes unaccounted for get factored into the other side winning. That’s fear mongering.
If I’m not voting, then I’m just straight up not voting. It shouldn’t be able to work the way people are describing it because then its like not voting isn’t a possibility that exists in reality. Yet I’m here in reality, not voting.
This is all unfortunately a mind over matter issue where people who have the upper hand, refuse to let anyone else think that otherwise cause then they wouldn’t have the upper hand to control people’s lives.
But to actually pull that off, you would need to just be better at convincing people. I only have the energy to try sometimes. Most people want to pushback on this ideology because the current one fits them better. And they don’t give a shit about other people because again, they probably see themselves as better than who ever else there is out there.
Okay, I think I understand now.
What you’re talking about sounds wonderful. It sounds hopeful, like things could actually change. It’s not all that crazy to think it could work. It’s not really all that different from what the Founders were setting out to do, but with an extra two and a half centuries of cultural advancement and the knowledge that all people really are created equal - not just white dudes who own property lol.
So yeah. I get what you’re saying. And I can totally respect it. And anyone saying you not voting helps the opposition is kinda missing the point of opting out. Kinda like I was missing the point until someone (you) finally took the time to explain it properly, and I took the time to listen.
So thank you.
No problem! I see this discussion a lot online and have had it in person with people I cared about at the time, only to learn that they thought my ideas were too radical and now they won’t talk to me.
So its pretty refreshing to have someone understand it too!
Under the policies of the greater evil, billions will die due to climate change because corporate profits are more important than human lives to them. Under the policies of the lesser evil, billions will die due to climate change because corporate profits are more important than human lives to them.
It makes no difference, both parties should be opposed and true change can only come through revolution and the abolition of the capitalist class.
Under the policies of the lesser evil, billions will die as you say.
Under the policies and rhetoric of the greater evil, a woman just got brutally murdered in California for the crime of hanging a fucking flag outside her shop.
My point, as I have been trying in vain to make this whole time (but apparently don’t have the writing ability to convey) is that if you’re fucked no matter what you do, then do the thing that hurts your friends less.
If you have some other course of action that can lead to actual change, then tell me. If you have some other course of action that will help my trans friends today, then tell me. Because billions dying over the next century doesn’t mean much to people who get shot, stabbed, or beaten to death today.
I want to believe there’s a better way, though, so explain it to me.
The action that leads to security and a better life for yourself and those around you is to organize your community along whatever lines are possible. Unionize with your coworkers, form a tenant’s union with your neighbors, physically get out in the street and provide security for LGBT+ events and spaces. Build up parallel structures so that when the government fails, you and those you care about will still have access to food and water, a place to live, and security. Join a political organization that’s active and actually does things in your area (one of the communist parties, DSA, or even just Food not Bombs) and do all you can to prepare for a revolution that might never come.
I’ll close this by saying that I’ve been harsh on voting and the electoral system in general during this conversation, and probably too hostile in tone towards you. I apologize for that, because it’s sometimes hard to tell when someone is actually acting in good faith, this being the internet and all. Voting isn’t something I think is particularly useful, but if you vote for the democrats because they’re less openly fascistic, that’s up to you. The key is to not let your political activity start and end at voting, because direct action in the real world is by far the best way to achieve positive change. I wish you and yours the best in surviving the collapsing fascist hellhole we find ourselves in.
spoilered giant emoji
I agree with everything but the “it makes no difference” part. Thinking it makes no difference is a privilege a whole shit ton of people can’t afford.
They’re both horrible. Capitalism sucks. But to say there’s no difference? That’s just delusional. You’re missing the trees for the forest.
Until that “true change” you’re talking about happens, I’m not willing to sit by and let women, immigrants, minorities, and LGBTQIA+ people get fucked over even worse than I am. And fuck you if you are.
Roe V Wade was repealed under Biden. The concentration camps at the border are still open. In response to the mass murder of black people by cops, Biden gave more money to the cops. The extermination of trans people is continuing apace at the state level and the dems are doing nothing to stop it. This is all to say nothing about foreign policy, where the US is still complicit with killing thousands if not millions since 2020 through sanctions and facilitating genocide in Yemen. Or lifting all COVID restrictions despite the massive danger still posed.
There is a rhetorical difference between the two parties, but there isn’t much evidence of a material difference.
Okay.
What word did I say that made you think I’m happy with the Democrats? That I actually support them rather than hate them just marginally less than the fascists in the other party?
It’s all fucked. And the Supreme Court was stacked by the last administration, so you’re arguing against yourself buddy.
I never said you were. I was addressing the claim that they’re a lesser evil, which I’m not convinced by.
Agreed!
Largely irrelevant. Biden could stack the court, or just tell them to fuck off since they have no real power, or codified Roe into law when the dems controlled congress. There are excuses for why they couldn’t do any of those things, sure (not least of which that Biden opposes abortion rights himself because he’s a fucking monster). But all of them show that they’re fundamentally unserious in fighting back against the fascists. I’m not going to vote for von Hindenburg 2.
lol which is why voting isn’t going to save your ass.
Did you vote for Biden? So you voted and still got roe v wade overturned. You voted and Biden has continued the staggering majority of Trump’s inhumane border policies. You voted, and we’re one well-timed court case away from the SC overturning gay marriage. Congratulations, the better guy won and all the same shit happened.
Roe v Wade got overturned by a Supreme Court that was stacked by the Republicans during the previous administration you absolute waste. You’re literally arguing against your own point.
And again: what fucking part of any fucking word I’ve typed makes you think I’m happy with the Biden administration.
Oh, wait! You’re not actually reading anything I’m saying! You’re just shifting goalposts and regurgitating talking points! Holy fuck, it’s like talking to a communist version of my mother.
Don’t talk to me unless you actually know something. Take your useless idealism elsewhere.
And what is your vote doing to stop that? Anything at all?
I’m reading what you’re saying, it’s just so dumb and trite it might as well be embroidered on a tea cozy
The fact that I feel the same way about you probably indicates that this is a pointless waste of time on all sides.
In the Biden election? Nothing. Roe was done for as soon as Trump won. It was on life support, but people refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils pulled the plug.
I’m tired dude. I’m just so fucking tired.
Do what you want. You’re not gonna accomplish any more than I am so I’m not sure why I cared enough to get worked up. We’re all fucked no matter what. Do your little protest vote or whatever the fuck. I’m sure it’s gonna do so fucking much.
Why did Trump win? Did it have anything to do with the Clinton campaign choosing a pied pipe strategy where they boosted everything Trump did in the primary and ignored all the less fascist candidates? Do you suppose that continuing to use that tactic is good? The Democrats continue to use their donations to amplify the furthest right candidates in races, and they do not have anywhere near a 100% success rate in defeating those fascists they intentionally amplify. To make the point, money given to the DNC is, in some small proportion, money given to the RNC because the DNC would prefer to amplify worst case scenarios to improve their chances instead of offering GOOD CANDIDATES to entice voters. Supporting that is supporting the rightward slide of everything.
That’s one way to see it - the same way the DNC paid pundits and managers see it, since it validates them. Another way to see it is, the Democrats steadfastly refuse to offer a better alternative.
You know that voting for Biden resulted in a worse world, and here you are sneering at anyone who thinks that was a waste.
edit: let’s address Obama, too - he had a fucking SC appointment, and instead of doing anything serious to seat a good candidate, he fucking punted on the assumption - the incredibly stupid assumption - that Clinton would win. Obama is why Roe is gone. So your vote for Obama was also a vote for letting Republicans pick a SC candidate. Can’t you connect the dots? It doesn’t matter how hard you vote for Democrats. They will always let the Republicans win, because they’re both paid by the same masters.
one more edit: the distinction is you keep repeating shit everybody knows, whereas I (and other leftists) are trying to explain you to a new concept. It’s clear you’re not listening, but I’ll keep trying until you give up.
I keep repeating shit because you keep not hearing me. You still think I’m trying to defend the Democratic party. You still think I find the Biden administration defendable. If you understand “lesser of two evils” so well, why do you think I’m trying to defend a party I keep calling evil?
So I’ll tell you what, I’ll deal with the “new concept” part of what you said when you explain that to me. Once I understand why you think I’m defending a position that I haven’t once defended, I might be able to move on.
You, a smart guy: you should vote for Biden because lesser evil
Me, a complete idiot: no, you should not
You, a very smart guy: NUH UH I NEVER SAID YOU SHOULD, I DON’T HAVE TO DEFEND THE PERSON I SAID YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR
I didn’t say Biden. I never said Biden. I never brought up his name. I at no point defended the actions of his administration or his party.
All I said is that the other guy is worse, which means you vote to try to have it not be the worse one. That’s explicitly not a defense of any party. It’s an attack on them both. I’d repeat my initial phrase, but apparently even though everyone seems to think it means I’m defending someone, trying to drive it home has gotten me labeled a congenital idiot.
And you’ve been misrepresenting me and jumping up and down on me ever since.
And nobody has presented me with a better option. They just keep calling me names, saying I’m repeating myself, and saying “they’re all the same” and “Biden bad!”
So please, for the next election, give me an action I can take that has some sort or hope of getting us all out of this collective shit show.
This is at best, an outright lie. You want people to vote for the “lesser evil”, that is an endorsement of Biden and any other Democrat.
No, this is also a lie. You are a liar.
The better option is organize, instead of voting for the party you endorse but curiously refuse to defend. * or challenge
Organize, outside of the party that apparently you refuse to defend but think we should all vote for and get snotty and sneer about being questioned.
It’s very eye opening that “lesser evil” proponents are so cagey about the candidates they’re explicitly telling us to vote for. Genuinely curious what irrational mental space you’re in that you think you can browbeat people to vote for democrats but allow yourself to get offended when people say democrats suck ass and shouldn’t be voted for. Pick a side, you fucking weenie.
I want to be very clear: I used to be a reliable blue voter, for maybe fifteen years. That is behind me. Voting for shitbags who will never care about the poorest people in America is wasted effort, I will not bother myself to drive fifteen minutes to the rural voting station to endorse assholes whose only responsibility is to their big money capitalist donors.
Have you seen Sophie’s Choice? If not, this won’t make much sense, but When Sophie chose Eva over Jan, was she endorsing Jan’s death?
Because I don’t think she was, but by the reasoning you’re using on me here, you would have to think Sophie endorsed Jan’s murder. As far as I can follow your logic, Sophie was not only in favor of Jan’s death, she supported it fully, and could find no fault in it.
We were going to have Trump or we were going to have Biden. No third choice I made - or anyone else at the time made - could do anything to change that. So, even though I didn’t like the creepy, handsy, corporatist faux-progressive ancient douche, and didn’t care all that much for his former boss, or his party, I chose him. Because the other guy had shown himself to be worse. All the same bullshit, plus rabble-rousing hate speech, direct attacks on my LGBTQIA friends, and more. He was empirically worse.
If you can, somehow, read that as an endorsement, then I’m relatively certain we’re not speaking the same language, and this has all been a huge waste of our time.
And fuck off with calling me a liar. I haven’t. If my language skills have failed me, and I haven’t managed to get my meaning across, fine. If I’m wrong, fine. But I didn’t set out to deceive anyone, nor have I intentionally or knowingly made a false statement.
Edit: grammar
Sophies choice is a binary. Voting isn’t. You have to make a case for the vote you want people to make. This is extremely simple shit.
Also, you are a liar.
Sorry. In what way have I knowingly told a falsehood? I’m lost, because I may be kind of an idiot, but I was present for this whole conversation, and I’m pretty sure I at no point tried to deceive you or anyone else.
Seriously? I already directly addressed this in a reply to you.
You are trying to play a game where you admonish people to vote for Biden but get to dodge the argument about whether he’s worth voting for. You endorse Biden but will not tackle his inadequacies because they’re inconvenient, so you act snide about it instead of addressing them. This is lying, but it’s understandable - his actions and the actions he has failed to follow through on are indefensible.
Anyway, I’m 40 and have voted most of my life until recently. I didn’t vote in the 2020 election and I won’t be voting in any other elections because I’m done voting for Democrats pretending to give a shit about anyone other than themselves.
It isn’t an endorsement. How is calling something “evil” an endorsement? If I said “I hate beer cheese and pimento cheese, but if I have to eat one, I’ll take beer cheese” an endorsement of beer cheese? As far as I can see, I just said I hated them both.
No, I’m not, and the fact that you think I am completely baffles me. All I said was *the other guy is worse." That’s the position I took. That does not require providing evidence of Biden’s virtues, because that position has nothing to do with his virtues.
How am I explaining this wrong? How am I fucking up my point this badly? Am I writing in English?
Again, no. Calling someone slightly less horrible than former president Cheeto isn’t an endorsement in the same way coming out of a movie theater and saying “well, at least it wasn’t Bloodfeast 2” isn’t a positive review.
Because my statement has nothing whatsoever to do with his inadequacies. I’m not being snide, I’m just fucking confused as to why you think I like the guy.
Rattle off all the shit you want about how horrible he his. I DO NOT CARE. HE’S NOT AS BAD AS THE OTHER GUY.
That’s not me being snide or sarcastic. That’s me shouting the same fucking thing I’ve been saying for days now. I’m not endorsing him, I’m anti-endorsing Trump. I didn’t vote for Biden, I voted against Trump.
Congrats. I’ve shifted from “confused and exasperated” to “fucking pissed off.” If that was your goal this whole time, well trolled.
It is not. It is, at worst, being disingenuous. I’m not splitting hairs here. Lying is making false statements with the intent to deceive. Even if I was avoiding your question instead of trying my goddamndest to answer it, it would still not be lying.
Fuck, it wouldn’t even be dishonest, just shitty rhetorical practice and an asshole move.
Jesus fucking Christ fine! If that’s what your conscience demands, then fucking do that! Just get off my dick, and learn what the words “liar” and “endorse” mean.
Fuck’s sake.
Because you don’t have to choose either. I’m not reading further, you’re just too silly and this is too fucking simple to let some chud drag me into it. You’re wrong, sucks, go vote for the lesser fascist and imagine you’re fighting the power or whatever. Buh byeeee
Okay. Don’t read any further. Go ahead and walk away. It’s not like you were paying attention to anything I said anyway.
You’re wrong. I’m not lying. I’m not even being disingenuous. But, hey, fuck you decided I was, and u guess that’s fucking it.
Jesus. No matter what side of the argument, it’s assholes like you ruining the world for the rest of us. Have a nice life.
Eta: sorry, I meant to say have a nice life, you fucking coward.
Lmao I can’t wait until you and your comrades try to start the revolution, shit is going to be hilarious 🤣
Also why tf does everyone on hexbear put their pronouns in their username on a site that emphasizes anonymous interactions. No one cares about what you like to be called.
Mask off, transphobe
I disagree. You seem to be susceptible to identity politics even though it is quite clear that this “lesser of two evils” is actually hoodwinking you into agreeing with corporatism in the name of empty, symbolic inclusivity that intentionally stops short at extending that woke inclusivity to the poor.
You don’t seem to know what “lesser of two evils” means.
It doesn’t mean “that guy’s bad, so the less evil guy is good, actually, and totally deserves our support!”
It means “no matter which one of these assholes wins, I’m fucked, but if I’m lucky the one guy will use lube.”
I can’t do a damn thing about the two party system. That ship sailed before I was born, and nothing I do as an individual can change it. In fact, I can’t see a solution short of possibly violent revolution. If that happens before I’m to old and feeble to help, great. Other wise, I’m fucked no matter who I pick, so I’m sure as shit going to pick the one who just wants to fuck me and not fuck me plus kill my trans neighbor.
I’m sick and tired of being called stupid, gullible, or uninformed just because I can actually see how completely fucked we are. Your shit is great for people who still have hope. My shit is just trying to survive without the Gestapo coming for my neighbors.
So come get me for the revolution. In the meantime, stop calling me stupid for being depressed and practical.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to copy and paste this in reply to some other lemming that thinks I’m a gullible moron instead.
this is some scary logic if you think about it. Imagine you are a person, who doesn’t want to get fucked. Two guys are about to fuck you, even though you don’t want it, and you get the option to choose which guys fucks you even though you don’t want to get fucked?
oh but the one guy is gonna use lube. To fuck you. The person who doesn’t want to be fucked.
that’s insane.
establishment, sheepdog neoliberals are out in force on here.
Ugh. I’m not pro establishment. People who are pro establishment think it works. People who are pro establishment have hope
Where the fuck did you get that out of what I wrote? Do I sound hopeful? Or like I think the system in any way works?
Or is that just your canned response when someone disagrees with you and you can’t think of a decent comeback?
Is that what you kids call a “cope”? It sounds like a “cope”. My generation just calls it “What the fuck are you even talking about?”
I just continue to legitimize the establishment in word and deed.
How. How am I doing that? I’m too tires to fight you, I’m just looking for information at this point.
Any legitimate vote is defacto consent for the system. The biggest stand you can take in a voting booth is spoiling your ballot with obscenities. It is abundantly clear that “harm minimization” doesnt work. Voting for a lesser of 2 evils is still voting for evil.
So your answer is essentially don’t vote, or be really rude with your ballot in protest.
Okay. I can do that.
How does that help? What does it accomplish?
The people counting the votes see the dissent. Low voter turn out delegitimizes the system. If only 30% of people voted it is easy to say the system is corrupt and that outside pressure is justified. If 30% of ballots are being thrown out it calls into question the entire system.
If “bad country” reported that 30% of their ballots were discounted the USA would slap sanctions on them and start banging war drums.
Assuming they’re not machine counted, fine. What does that accomplish?
Okay. So say the system is “delegtimized” this way. What now? That doesn’t change anything as far as I can see. The asshats in power will just… keep being in power, because no matter how morally, ethically, or even rationally unjustifiable, the corrupt system is, it’s legal.
I’m/not saying you’re wrong. I don’t think you are. I just don’t see what it accomplishes.
In the long run, it means revolution I guess. But in the meantime, how do we stop old ladies from getting murdered over pride flags (to use a recent example)? Cristofascists and those that profit from them winning elections legitimizes their hate. It empowers the twatknuckles that support them. Even dumb crap like calling COVID the “Chinese Virus” spurs on hate crime.
How do we deal with that?
Has voting stopped this?
Organize with other people who want a new system. Convince other people that nothing is going to get better by voting. Make connections with others groups who are doing the same. Build/join a network so that you/they know when critical mass is reached. While you wait for revolution, do what you can in your local community to make people’s lives better. This will also help pull people to the cause.
Also be ready to be a partisan because fascism rides electoralism to power so things are likely to get worse before they get better.
By arguing for the lesser of evils, you are arguing for the legitimacy of the establishment.
No. I’m not. That’s like saying that acknowledging the existence of the Chicago Bears means I’m a football fan.
I’m arguing that the establishment exists and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m arguing for despair.
All I have left is harm reduction. Which is also 100% hopeless, but it keeps me from jumping off a building because no matter how ineffective it is, it’s fucking something.
If you have a better idea, please. I’m all ears.
The two Party system will only go of you get rid of the “winner takes all” system.
The way we got to that situation you describe is through 3 generations of “the lesser evil” over and over and over
Turns out that made everything get more evil, who’d have thought!
If we want better options we can vote for third party candidates. I have no faith in the system, and a third party candidate will almost never win. But if enough people vote for them it gets them more recognition, which could eventually shift the narrative. Gary Johnson got over 3% of the vote in 2016, and Ross Perot got as high as 19% in the 90s.
Okay. But if the people you vote for can only muster 3% of the vote, how does that help?
I get it in local elections, up to and including State legislature, gubernatorial races, and maybe Congress if they can get a good campaign going. That all makes sense because even if they don’t win they get enough attention to attract local media and push discussion among others.
But Senators? The President? Ross Perot was an extreme outlier. The last time a 3rd party presidential candidate got more than 50 electoral votes was 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Progressive. In the last century, the highest total electoral votes for a 3rd part went to George Wallace in 1968 running as an American Independent. He got 46 out of 538. Rounding up, that’s 9%.
Now, without looking him up, tell me one issue George Wallace ran on in 1968.
So I’m asking: how does it help. If it helps, I’ll try. But from where I’m sitting, it’s all hopeless. I don’t want to feel this way. So please, for the love of sanity, convince me.
I feel this way too. But if we as individuals recognize that the system is going to screw us no matter who is elected, then if we vote it might as well be out of principle. Have you ever shared a fact or opinion or taught someone something, and later noticed that it changed their behavior in some small way? Someone on the internet might see Perot’s (or more relevant, Gary Johnson’s since it happened only a few years ago) vote count on Wikipedia and it could lead them down a rabbit hole that ultimately gets them motivated to take initiative in the local community. So yeah, I feel you, at the federal level it’s hopeless. I think the real change will happen within families, friends, and local communities.
I’ll guess ending the Vietnam war…
Based on the year, that was a good guess. But nope. It was pro segregation.
Which brings me back to my point. If:
what’s my choice from a moral standpoint? You mentioned Gary Johnson. You couldn’t have paid me to vote for him. The Green Party is closer to my value set, but their idiot said anti-vaxxers might have a point (among other takes, not least of which was a seemingly complete misunderstanding of how economics work), so that would have been a no-go too.
And nobody was talking about ending the punative justice system, federal bans on cash bail, demilitarization of the police and radical law enforcement reform, legal protection for LGBTQIA+, ending first past the poll elections, massive education reform, or (outside of the Green party) anywhere near the investment we need in green tech and fighting global climate change.
So I voted for the one that a.) had a chance of winning, b.) wasn’t specifically speaking out against most of that stuff and was at least paying lip service to some, and c.) wasn’t a cretinous rapist; she was just married to one.
That was voting my conscience. The cretinous rapist won, but that’s not on me.
So when you say to vote on principal, okay. I’ll do that. I will do my best to vote for people I agree with or, at least, against people who spout shit that makes me want to vomit.
But that’s what I was already doing.
Edit: changed out a word for clarity and to reduce repetition.
If you feel like you vote consistent with your principles that’s respectable. Since we can’t do anything about the shitshow that is the federal government, other than voting I try not to stress out or think about it otherwise. It’s a waste of the energy that we can direct to our local communities, which we can do something to improve.
The libertarian party aligns closer to my values, but if the Green party candidate was the only other option I would pick them without hesitation. Regardless of what any politician says, they are self serving and will change their stance when it benefits them. If the green candidate sounded like an idiot with bad policies it wouldn’t give her less credibility from the other idiots who wouldn’t follow through on their policies anyway. So at least supporting third party candidates changes it from impossible for them to win to incredibly incredibly unlikely, but possible to influence others to open their mind to the idea of something other than the official media narrative.
Somewhat unrelated: what are your issues with libertarian policy? Their general sentiment is consistent with many of the issues you listed. Regarding the green party, I am strongly pro conservation and against rampant consumerism and corporate greed, but I’m not confident that the government will solve the problems without making things worse and wasting tons of money in the process.
I don’t think it’s at all unrelated.
It is. That’s why I used to be a (literally) card carrying member. But at the end of the day, the party has too many places where we differ (gun control, health care, and education are three places where I just can’t support the party’s platform anymore, for instance). Also, it’s got way too many creepy members calling for the abolishment of age of consent laws. I know it’s just a vocal few, but it skeeves me.
I’m not confident either, but the free market hasn’t done a great job, and other countries have had a great deal of success with regulation. Heck, we’ve had success with regulation.
I agree their current incarnation is, but you don’t mean to say that sports are inherently anti-intellectual do you?
How do you get college without tuition, affordable housing, or not-for-profit healthcare without taxes?
The real scam is the widespread aversion to taxation.
ACTUALLY, the real scam (that I was alluding to there) is the use of tax funds for the fucking military industrial complex and Isreal by officials who were “elected” by a sham democracy.
It is a sham. I agree with you, we shouldn’t be the world’s army. Israel, Ukraine. Way too much money and military weaponry given away.
It’s weird that you badly contradict yourself between these two comments.
Go ahead and explain the contradiction.
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Car dealerships. They are awful on purpose. In many places car manufacturers are not legally allowed to sell their cars directly to customers, in order to create what is essentially legally mandated car dealerships, which all suck.
My younger coworker was just super stoaked that he only paid $3000 over MSRP for his new car. They gave him a year of oil changes and undercoat for free though!
Yeesh.
Man, I am so tired of feeling broke all the time… But I’d still rather get a used car than do that.
My mom bought out her lease because it was less than half the cost of buying that same car used. Pre-Covid you would never buy out your lease.
Cars in general are a scam
I want to hear the excuse they made for this
Back when many of these laws were created, car manufacturers were way worse than franchise dealerships for the consumer.
Everything I’ve read said it had very little to do with concern for the consumer. As I understand it, car dealerships lobbied for these laws because, according to them, the manufacturers were being anti-competative and squeezing car dealers out of business. So the laws were passed to protect “small” dealers from big car manufacturers, not to protect the consumers.
But now they use that ubiquity to get higher prices through shady tactics. It needs changed again, this time in favor of the consumer.
I forgot, nothing is ever done for the consumer.
Because monopoly is the way to solve things :)
A lot of these laws were created very recently. It was a response to Tesla’s business model. That was the main argument used this time as well, and it’s not wrong.
It is entirely about taxes. By making the sale in your state/town the government gets a cut. If it was manufacturer direct Michigan would have no income tax and have jetpacks for everyone.
Disagree. The States will find a way to tax the sale based on destination. The states can move to a different registration/property tax model to recapture the sales tax. See also online shopping sales tax changes.
It’s entirely about lobbying by autodealer trade groups.
to protect JOBS probably
Car dealership owners are a pretty big lobby, at least 20% of them are making 1.5m/y and tend to be very involved in local politics.
https://eml.berkeley.edu/~yagan/Capitalists.pdf
Dealerships provide local points of contact from which the government can collect taxes and ensure local regulations are being met. They suck but they exist for a reason.
There are ways to do that that don’t include a middleman that tries to legally swindle customers
They aren’t trying to swindle anyone. You can literally ask the salesperson to explain the math to you. I have sold cars before and I promise you we aren’t getting trained to screw you that is done by the customer of their own volition. For the dealership it was always best to get you into the cheapest car that you could afford as that made for the most likely deal. People who get screwed either are not paying attention to the math which I would explain if asked.
Dealerships used to be able to screw you over easily but that was before the internet gave customers the ability to know everything about a car. That forced a lot of changes.
Tipping in restaurants…pay the workers.
This one, every time. Imagine buying a product or service for an agreed price, and then being guilt-tripped into having to pay 20%, or more, on top because the owners don’t pay their staff enough salary to survive on. It should be fucking illegal. Pay your staff a proper salary and charge your clients the price you published on your menu/price-list etc. Running a business isn’t a god-given right, and if you can’t do it without screwing your employees over, then you’re not capable of running a business period. You should bugger off and let someone who is capable, and who isn’t an empathy vacuum have a go.
Yep, tipping is fundamentally unethical.
It’s functionally a way to communicate happiness with the service.
The restaurants I am a regular at know if I don’t leave a fat tip I wasn’t happy with how they performed. Waiting 20+ minutes just to pay is unacceptable to give a recent example. They were understaffed and some old dude In the attached hotel insisted on print out copies of his reservation details that he then argued about. I could have paid, cash or card, and been out in under a minute while this dude was reading his papers but instead I just sat there for almost half an hour after finishing my meal.
Should they still get paid unlike in the American system? Yes. But I’m fine with tipping as a general concept. In Germany we call it Trinkgeld and it’s usually 10%, and not exactly a thing you are expected to do every time you eat out, but I usually do 20%+ if I was satisfied.
Wedding rings/diamonds in general.
The tradition isn’t as old as people think and was literally started by a jewelry company to sell more jewelry. Specifically diamonds, which are not as rare as commonly believed and if not for the false scarcity and misinformation, would be dirt cheap.
Diamonds were fairly rare when we used to mine them in Asia and America. And it’s a nice shiny stone which is also very durable.
Then, we found out Africa is actually full of diamonds and DeBeers said “we can’t have that!” and started buying all the African diamonds to keep them away to artificially inflate the price and scarcity.
Then we found out we can make them in labs better than the mined ones and DeBeers sai “that’s not a natural diamond, you don’t want that!” and so on.
The whole marketing about “A diamond is forever!” is to make you think you’ll never want to sell your diamon ring, so you don’t find out your precious gift paid $2,000 is actually wortth $50.
An EA spokeperson would say “it’s all about the experience”.
“Don’t you want to give your significant other a feeling of pride and accomplishment?” - DeBeers.
😂
It’s crazy that even when people are told about this, they usually still defend it. I don’t get why the heck any normal person would like the idea of spending a few months salary on a ring. It’s such a terrible way to start a new marriage, especially with wages being what they are these days.
We can literally make perfect diamonds in a lab, there is literally no reason we are still mining them
It gets worse than that.
Back before lab-made perfect diamonds were a thing, the DeBeers cartel marketed that they had the highest quality diamonds out there, with the fewest imperfections.
Now they market that the imperfections are what gives it character, and you should avoid the actual perfect diamonds and instead get their (blood) diamonds.
Yep!
Industrial applications, but you dont need good ones for that.
An older tradition is to use the birthstone of the person you’re proposing too which is really endearing in my opinion.
That’s grim, never knew about this x.x
Got anything where can I read more on the history?
I bought my now ex an engagement ring for $1800 and 9 years later it was worth 65 from a pawn shop. I just kept it and I’ll melt it down some day.
Dollar stores. A lot of the time they are profiting by selling you a smaller quantity at a slightly lower price. They target low income communities.
Well nowadays that’s every store. Shrinkflation dude
At this rate, toothpaste will soon be sold in tiny single-use tubes.
Soon? How about now:
https://a.co/d/ef52eEd
Just on a slightly grander scale. I feel like it’s malicious in a different way. Instead of tricking the unaware consumer into thinking they are getting the same product they are getting people to buy what they can now whether it’s due to distance or price
Exactly. It’s the opposite of the Costco model.
Absolutely targeted towards people who can’t afford regular sized/priced items, let alone bulk-for-discount.
I mean yeah, obviously they’re profitable. It’s the convenience though. Sometimes they have good deals if you don’t want to buy a giant pack of something.
Or can’t afford a giant pack, so you get poorer value. Being poor is expensive
I mean yeah. There are some decent deals sometimes though. The dollar store near me sells name brand dishsoaps and cleaning solutions in normal sized bottles. You just need to be smart about what you get.
Well they are good for things like cups and all , at least in india !