In the last 5 to 10 years everything seems to suck: product’s and services quality plummeted, everything from homes to cars to food became really expensive, technology stopped to help us to be something designed to f@ck with us and our money, nobody seems to be able to hold a job anymore, everyone is broke. Life seems worse in general.
Why? Did COVID made this happen? How?
I find it crazy how basically every Marxist since, well Marx, has pretty much clairvoyance powers. It’s of course not that, it’s just that material analysis really is the best way to understand reality. But when all you have are vibes, ideology and moralism, Marxists do seem like witches.
But basically, just read and watch some Marxists my friend. Even light-Marxists like Yanis Varoufakis are good at “predicting” the future.
We have all been expecting this since the 1800s lmao.
Material analysis fails specifically because it fails to take ideology into account. People are not rational and do terrible things for idiotic reasons even when it doesn’t serve their best interests, and that’s why materialism just doesn’t work.
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Are people more greedy, more stupid, and more religious than they used to be? Why?
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My take: the result of decades of incompetent leadership, at all levels from the government to individual households, that ultimately lead to a society that mainly uses dilatory tactics instead of finding solutions to its issues.
What happens when the economy crashes? We push the goalposts back a few yards so that it’s actually better now and will become a problem later instead. Notice how the frequency of market crashes is increasing? It was every 50 years or so, then it was every 10, now we’ve had 3 in 5 years, yes I’m fucking counting COVID you had literally over 60 years to prepare for a worldwide pandemic and you sat on your asses.
What happened with education? Well let’s see. Why do we pay for education in the first place? To increase our knowledge and push the boundaries of human civilization, or to put it bluntly: we don’t wanna live in a world filled with idiots. But like why do we need education? Cuz like jobs or something…Ever wonder why you MUST have a degree for a job? That’s a legal requirement, if something is on the job posting as a requirement then it’s a fucking requirement. Suddenly everyone needs a higher education, because the job posting is a legal requirement that must be met, else ye suffer the consequences of immediate disqualification. Fortunately the law miraculously doesn’t really care which degree you have, the companies get to choose how narrow the scope is and if they don’t do that well that’s on them lol xD! So we need a degree, but let’s say we don’t wanna put in the effort to learn all that hard shit. Besides, we just need survivabile minimum wage, so let’s aim for that. It sure is convenient that all these now impacted universities made up all these new bullshit degrees so they could pretend to deal with the influx of morons that are getting intimidated and bribed into their schools via their parents. This sounds like a game to me, and I love games. Wait wait wait wait. We said that we want education because we want people to be smart, but like technically we only need education to get a job. Suddenly education is like this super fun game where you get sorted into a socio economic class in a fun and interesting way. And then people realized they could influence that as early as elementary school, and well gee fuckin golly! They get to vote and control the public education because that’s how public school works. And if we loosen up the restrictions on what our kids need to get good grades, their chances of getting into college get better. Guess what? Money also works too, if we have money we can avoid the tiring scramble of public education and just pay to win baybee!!!
Why does the everything suck? Because it’s owned and operated by investment firms and run by people who are the result of decades of systemic degradation. And who’s to blame? The worse generation in human history. The only generation in United States history to have a losing record when it comes to war lose, while simultaneously being the single generation to have started and sustain the most wars! The same fucking generation that didn’t die off at 55 because their children didn’t huff lead gasoline like they did for Christmas and actually got bothered to learn medical science - as much as I shit on the education system as a whole, there are always some tryhards that slip through. The same generation that still controls 60% of the political offices in this country, while at the same time being composed of the top 1% of mentally unstable weak and decrepit elderly part of the population. The same generation that voted to fuck over retirement pensions from the previous generation back in the 70s or whenever it was, and then now in past decades have undone all of that to secure retirement protections for them suddenly now as they reach their sunset years. The same generation that still currently in the current fucking year of two thousand twenty-four are the two frontrunners for Presidential candidacy.
And you know what the funniest thing about it is? It’s not just the United States. How’s Japan looking over across the Pacific? A problem with a top heavy elderly population? Wow who could’ve guessed. What about the boys across the pond? What does the British parliament look like? Who are still the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea? What families are still in power in the Middle East?
Our ancestors have failed us. They have failed their brothers and sisters. They have failed our entire goddamned species. I am embarrassed and ashamed for all intelligent beings anywhere and everywhere in any reality where intelligence is possible that we are capable of such idiocy.
I take great solace in the fact that they will not be around long enough to etch their final memory into the stones of history. And we will.
Despite all of that it feels to me less like things are getting worse and more like a loud death rattle from a bloated creature - the final shout before the eternal void. I see the same feelings as mine in both my cohorts and in the future generations. I have hopes for the future and strongly believe that the world is just now entering the upswing. It’s painful and awkward right now while the old skin sheds, but I am confident we will emerge from our chrysalis transformed into something greater. Maybe that guy who brought up the 12 year delay on the Mayan calendar shit earlier in this thread was on to something; the timing is just too coincidental.
Since start of 2020 the world gone down the drain. The prices went wild but quality is not.
Hmm, let’s think about what global events happened in the last five years…
It’s the fucking pandemic! Yes, still!
Because corporate greed and the economic elite around the world hoarding more resources than ever before.
And we let them.
That is such a lazy argument. More people then ever before are out of poverty in the history of mankind. Doesn’t mean there are not problems. In regards to COVID, we took millions of people out of the workforce while printing money and still paying many of them? Of course that will result in massive reduction of inventory levels that we will feel for a decade. That results in inflation as what do people expect when less items available to the same amount of people that want them.
Regards to qualities etc. That varies. We have more access to products then at anytime in history as well. And many of these products have come down significantly in price. But that also means quality products and their prices get compared to shit products at lower prices. What do you think people buy? Secondary, people do far less informal work and that effects your perception of income. Our parents and grandparents maintained their own cars and houses for example and grew far more food. Now every hires that out and buys all their groceries at a store. That leaves you with far less money.
Then there is one industry that has made gains but their costs has gone up ten fold. That is healthcare. You have access to some of the best medical procedures then at anytime in history. But some of those costs can be North of a million dollars. Our parents and grandparents simply did not access that and in some cases died. I am happy I have now options but this is coming at a huge cost of which much of it has to be paid for upfront before you retire.
You could kill off every billionaire tomorrow but that won’t result in much more houses being built or available. Wealth inequality is an issue but if more cogs are not manufactured, our standard of living will not change much.
People in cities have not sustained on growing their own foods for hundreds of years. Refined crops and goods have been machined into the cities ever since the industrial revolution and before that it was farmers that brought their goods to be sold at the markets. The greatest achievement of humanity over other species on the planet is our ability to delegate and cooperate. You grow food, I make tools. Together we thrive.
Yep, you have a rampant problem with housing and healthcare over there in America-land, I agree. But why is that? Because of massive hoarding of resources. Human essentials and needs are commoditized like a “smart” investment for the ruthless opportunists. Hell, your entire societal system is built around it, and it’s spilling into the rest of the world. It’s a dog eat dog economy that is hailed like an ideology by useful idiots bought by the elites by the trickling of pocket change. Then the ideology has been turned into a culture of over consumption, again hailed by other useful idiots to convince the regular people that it will give them purpose, fill the hole, numb the pain of the aimless grind for nothing meaningful ever. And who does all of this benefit? Where do all this wealth and all these resources end up that could transform the entire planet for something that benefits all mankind? To the owners of the owners of the owners, and the money that doesn’t crawl it’s way up is a good investment to keep the system intact.
But no, let’s concentrate on the tools we use and not what they do. Let’s focus on the monetary system. Let’s get stuck in inflation and regression and unfortunate loopholes “but-what-can-you-do” and tax havens and desired unemployment rates and spoiling of food while people are starving - for the economy. Everything can be explained with the economy, and if you disagree you’re clearly uninformed or ignorant don’t have enough the smarts.
People have done the double think and now the economy is no longer the tool, is no longer a representation, but it is the real thing. And more so the current economic system is forever and eternal and unchangeable like the word of God.
It’s funny and sad that people actually believe this is all there is.
We don’t just let them, we cheer them on. Look at the celebrity worship culture we humans have. If you took away the person and left only their actions, most of us would happily throw the rich into a woodchipper. But they use their money to convince us that they’re special and deserve praise, and most of us go along with it because we’re sheep.
Pioneer woman.
She’s got a huge ranch a huge house a specialty made kitchen just for her show… works super hard to look blue collar.
It’s all crafted to separate you from your money…
While I agree her image is at the very least somewhat exaggerated, her net worth probably puts her somewhere in the top 10%. She’s not exactly the powerful elite.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drummond_family_(Oklahoma)
She’s married into one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma.
Completely excluding the tens of millions she herself is worth from her business.
Rae Drummond has a reported net worth of approx $65m as of last year.
The top 1% of United States net worth starts at $12m. She is just inside the top 0.1% of us net worth which starts at $62m.
Hell, her last name alone gives it away.
The Drummond family is one of the wealthiest families in Oklahoma, owning hundreds of thousands of acres of land.
Wealthy enough they have their own Wikipedia page.
I found out recently that the land that her ranch sits on is at least adjacent to, if not directly involved in the events shown in Killers of the Flower Moon.
World is as good as never before. It’s safer, more comfy and stuff. Problem is that rich people want more money, and since they have outsourced and made everything automatic, they’re now saving on materials and quality on top of making it more expensive or giving you less. Moreover, we’re dependent on them due to our own laziness. We‘ll either see them die until 2030 or little businesses and the decentralization take over their place.
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Even without the Internet, being told by older generations how much they were able to achieve with higher income to cost ratio of everything from homes to education is a very loud narrative.
TBF they also had lead in their paint and fuel so it wasn’t exactly rosy.
Reminder that lead was banned from gasoline at the pump in 1996. It’s why I think so many of us have adhd and all kinds of other neurological disorders nowadays. Boomers had like a 90% excessive exposure rate.
Yep. And bad news just sells better.
And when the news is “meh” and can’t easily be sold, just slap a clickbait headline on top and watch as people pour depressionporn into the comment section of Lemmy, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, etc.
My mental state with news greatly improved simply by putting more effort into understanding the news, not just reading the first article.
Everyone shouldn’t stop at the headline and recognize every news source has an incentive for why they publish news. Don’t stop at the first article or perspective that’s found.
I would love to know what time period everyone thinks was this era of perfection because the other decades sucked for a lot of different reasons.
Unregulated capitalism…
This is the natural result of that.
COVID factored in because the handful of corporations that own a shit ton of companies figured out 8% inflation could be used as justification to double/triple prices, and if they all did it, consumers had no options.
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
But when both political parties are “pro business” and take donations from those huge corporations…
Then corporations get away with lots they shouldn’t
In regulated capitalism, the government would step in to prevent this type of price fixing.
like this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/23/us/yale-columbia-price-fixing-settlement.html
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/19/rice-university-price-fixing-lawsuit/
Company makes a billion dollars and then it’s fined 200 million, ten years later because a private citizen sues them…
Is this government regulation?
You’re a meme. And by that I mean, you’re a joke.
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
Yes, but a HUNDRED TIMES MORE! AND WITH ACTUAL PENALTIES INDEMNITY ETC
I looked at some of those, and it’s private citizens suing corporations…
Even the rent one with the DOJ, it’s just them becoming involved in private lawsuits…
That’s not the same as the government regulating capitalism.
And while that one is sort of related to the topic, not really. It’s because the price fixing is automated by a computer program a bunch of landlords used.
In the future if you only give one link and some kind of explanation other than “like this?” The person you replied to can probably do a better job of helping you understand.
I looked at some of those, and it’s private citizens suing corporations…
That’s not the same as the government regulating capitalism.This is like saying that Texas doesn’t regulate abortion because it’s just private citizens filing lawsuits. That is bullshit.
Without the regulations, there would be no legal basis for filing a lawsuit.
Not trying to pick a fight, but having regulations is not the same thing as regulating. At least not in the context of this thread.
I will try to not fight with you.
What distinction do you make between regulating and having regulations?
But the government doesn’t regulate capitalism, they are owned by the capitalists. So many laws exist because corporations paid for them to, moreso in recent years but it was still bad 50+ years ago, just look at how successful the tobacco industry is.
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is). The problem is that even when this “works”, i.e., the court punishes the company, they get a fine. So it becomes a financial decision: if we can get away with this, does that outweigh the risk that we might not? Sometimes it ends up profiting the company regardless.
Related to this is that prosecutors have total discretion in the realm of plea deals. If you do a crime here, it becomes a negotiation with the prosecutor. What can you offer them to get off the hook? Sometimes it makes sense to do a crime, because the advantages you gain become leverage to negotiate your way out of punishment.
Related to this is that prosecutors have total discretion in the realm of plea deals. If you do a crime here, it becomes a negotiation with the prosecutor.
I agree with you. The justice system should not be “let’s make a deal.”
The US has this bizarre setup where we “regulate” companies through the courts rather than directly through government agencies (this is not always the case, but it often is).
I’m afraid that I don’t understand what sort of alternative system you have in mind.
Basically do what Europe does. Government regulators actively monitor companies and stop them from misbehaving, rather than waiting for them to misbehave and then sue them. If they don’t follow regulations they get disbanded. It’s not perfect but it’s better than what we have here.
I believe that already happens here in certain fields like nuclear energy and slaughterhouses
You see, it all started in May, 2016 with this Gorilla being killed. That’s when this timeline split off…
RIP. We didn’t know what we had until it was gone.
That kid’s gotta be around 11 or 12 now. Wonder how he’s doing.
Harambe died May 28th. Cubs won the World Series November 2nd. Trump became president-elect on November 8th. That’s when we should have recognized the timeline problem.
I’m guessing with that level of parenting, the kid is still a little shit.
I’m coming across this post after reading an article about how Netflix is bathing in money and now making their options worse for customers, how the most wheel of a Boeing 757 fell off, and a how a country has been so free of criticism for decades that they’re able to commit genocide for over 3 months.
I’m having a hard time seeing hope in our future. Every company operates solely to extract as much profit as humanly possible (and not as Artificialally Intelligently as possible) without considering for a single moment how a decision they make may effect their relationship with customers or the quality of their product. I know companies are in it to make money, but they used to at least correct decisions in the face of public outcry. (Hell Microsoft did an about face on Xbox One features in 2013 after public outcry)
But things seem different now. Since the pandemic and the overall regard for human life went up, companies almost feel vindictive and emboldened to do even more to fuck customers over. Its almost like they’re holding a grudge over consumers for considering anything in life over their spending habits from March 2020 - September 2021. After all, the biggest push to “return to normal” was to get the economy back on track. I’ll never forget some asshole on a fox news segment saying “We gotta return to normal people. Yes some people will die, but grandma would sacrifice herself for the economy.” That’s when I lost all hope of things getting better.
We’ve had the chance many times to change the way we act as a species and potentially make the world better, but somehow we always fail to do so. We’re just fucked.
Late stage capitalism. The ownership class has accelerated the widening gap ever more during the pandemic, out of simple greed. Control and wealth distribution systems, even governments are increasingly beholden to their wishes, and do nothing to help aside from lip service. The ecosystem dies of the same disease, endless greed and growth. Number go up is all that matters.
Have you read Cory Doctorow’s book on enshitification? I think he focuses more on the Internet but might help answer your question.
Enshittification is just a good concept because it’s everywhere! It’s basically how business operates on internet platforms. First the good times: you provide value to customers and sellers alike. Then the shitty times for sellers: the business begins to charge sellers where they weren’t being charged before and things that were free or easy to access before. Then the shitty times for everybody: customers begin to be extracted for their value as formerly free or easy to access stuff gets paywalled. The Bu
Planned obsolescence is enshittification of manufactured goods and services. Make a name with a strong product that meets customers needs, then focus on profit maximization, intentionally sabotaging the product so that customers are required to come back to you to buy it again.
De-regulation, in many cases, is the enshittification of so many things. The government limits potentially nasty things whole industries can do and then de-regulation comes in and upends all of that. Suddenly, trains are spilling toxic chemicals all over Ohio because of a rolled back law on safety.
It’s everywhere and it’s all about value extraction.
Late stage capitalism is your answer, my friend.
Capitalist governments are pro-finance, not pro-people. Totalitarian gvmts (China etc) are pro-system, not pro-people. They’re just different ways of maintaining classes of people who control the power/finances.
There’s always been an uber-rich elite, all the way from the first tribal chieftain or Pharaoh or whatever until now and there’s always been a huge underclass of the rest of us. The first law of any hierarchy is to protect the people at the top.
What we see today (in Westernised countries) is the natural, logical progression of economics driven democracy. Economic theorists say wealthy people create wealth by purposefully distributing it via jobs etc but in reality they do everything possible to minimise the loss of what they see as their money by abusing labour laws, privatising everything, trying to kill unions, creating convoluted laws to protect their fortunes, avoiding taxes and hiking prices up to the point most of us are just about surviving with enough carrot to ignore or pretend we don’t see the stick.
And we’re willing participants in that system. We know this is happening but we’re dazzled by lotteries holding out the chance to join the rich, promises of work making us rich and a media which lionises the elite as some kind of fabulous aspirational status to the point we have people on social media faking a rich lifestyle for internet points.
The uber rich believe they’re better than us and our acquiescence with this system really means we agree with them.
I agree broadly with much of your assessment of history and many of the problems that bely current western society. The rich might be exploiting capitalism to their benefit but a capitalist system with proper regulation will always be better (in terms of Quality of life and freedom) for larger groups of people Than a planned economy.
Possibly but I can’t think of a time that’s been attempted, let alone successfully implemented. Capitalism always (it seems to me) ends up morphing into a system to protect wealth and the wealthy. They would never, ever allow ‘proper regulation’ (by which I assume you mean regulation to protect workers as much as the rich) to happen.
Capitalism isn’t a national thing - its global - there’s always going to be places where what one country forbids another country allows. All a rich person or company has to do is transfer their base of operations there to circumnavigate most laws and pay lip service to the laws of the countries they operate in. Look at Amazon or Starbucks.
Planned economies were the means to the end not the end. Basing it around authoritarian, suppressive, dictatorial government is what made it the end. That said, apart from freedom of speech issues. Capitalism struggles in most aspects to truly be better, even at its best. Because capitalism ends up authoritarian and suppressive as well. Those with all the wealthy and resources don’t tolerate those who are against their theft.
We should be moving past both.
Okay, but what does a system look like that moves past both? How do you ensure people get resources if you don’t want capitalism or a planned economy?
By implementing the thing Marxist-leninists were loathe to implement despite giving a lot of lip service. Actual communism. Not the Engles lenin variety. But the kind Marx spoke on. The thing to remember is that the Soviet Communist party was as communist as the national socialist party of Germany was socialist. Which is to say neither of them were.
This of course all starts with actual large scale engagement. We absolutely need to change the voting system etc as a start. For all the flaws and problems of the founding fathers, the fact that they saw us needing to largely rewrite the Constitution every few decades, let alone every few hundred years was not one of their flaws.
Then we need to uncap the House of Representatives. That’s a century overdue. Followed by abolishing the electoral college. Then reforming the house, Senate, judiciary and even the concept of the presidency. Basically take as many steps as necessary to make things as democratic/granular as possible. Dilute power.
One of the other important things we could do is abolishing the concept of private property. Private property is little more than theft. Allowing the wealthy to horde resources to the detriment of everyone else. If you own a home, you should be living in it. It shouldn’t be some sort of an investment that you never spend time in. Used for speculation on markets etc. Replace private property with something much more sane like the more limited concept of personal property. As in property, a person would actually use themselves. Tying legal fines and fees to a person’s income and wealth along with impartial enforcement is another good start.
Your suggestion would only usher in a different kind of tyranny.
Really? What kind of tyranny would increasing democracy while reducing concentration of power cause? Lol I’d really like to know.
There’s a reason the people who wrote the Constitution decided upon federalism as our form of government. It protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. This concept is especially important as the urban majority seeks to assert its ignorant tyranny on the rural minority these days.
The United States isn’t a single government like most non-federal nations. There is plenty of democracy in our local and state governments, and we have our bicameral Congress which accounts for both the equality of the states, no matter their populations, as well as the inequality of the states, taking into account their populations. Remove that equality and you will be unable to get enough states to ratify your new constitution.
It’d need some pretty strong regulation, but it could work out very well
Because anyone who was old enough to remember how bad the great depression and world wars were are all dead and the people in power fell like they have something to prove.
I mean why should it be just their parents and grandparents that made the history books?
