Politicians
In a democracy that’s our fault, not theirs.
Good thing we’re not a democracy then
Driver’s in Atlanta Georgia.
The left two lanes on i85 are for faster drivers and right of way is a real thing!
Dreaming.
The expectation that people in office jobs can be productive for 8 hours per day.
As a person who works a trade this blows my fucking mind that you can get away with doing nothing.
Some days, like once every two years, you actually do it by accident; you come in, get shit done all day, and you get like a months amount of work done.
And then you get all nervous that someone might find out and set new expectations for you, so you have to kind of spread out the results of the work you did on that miracle day.
I am productive for less than an hour a day. I don’t do anything. I have nothing to do. I drive for an hour each way to sit and do absolutely nothing so I can feed and house my family.
Some days I have to convince myself not to drive my truck into something at 85 mph. No person is meant to live like this.
The alienation of labor is real. Hang in there, we’ll need you when things get better.
Can’t you do something yoh like for the rest of the time? (I don’t mean LITERALLY the other 7 hours xD) Like reading, learning to draw,
learn Thai on duolingoetc.I try. I can’t really look like I’m not working or I’ll get in trouble. Sometimes I read, but that gets boring after a while.
I relate to you. I only have about 2ish hours of actual work a day on average, and I have to drag it out all day just to look busy. I never expected that it would feel soul sucking to have so little work but still be chained to your desk. I thought I was lucky! (And I certainly am in someways)
The irony is that when I first started, I was efficient and would read when I didn’t have anything to work on. But my boss didn’t like to see me reading, so he would give me more work. The issue is that there is only so much he can do at a time, so it resulted in me finishing assignments, and him being so overloaded he wouldn’t get to them until weeks or months later. Now I just pretend to be busy, so he doesn’t feel like he needs to give me more, and I’m not having to remind him of documents in review that are weeks old.
Sorry for the rant, I am currently sitting here pretending to be busy while slowly dying inside.
I agree! I’ve spent years perfecting the art of looking busy, and that makes my free time more enjoyable. Although there still are rough days.
How do they pay you to do nothing?
It’s fairly common. We have a team of 11 people that does the work of half a person. The 8 person team I’m on now does less work than I did by myself 2 years ago on a different team between those 2 teams, there are also 4 managers
That’s a fantastic question. The company is foreign owned and it’s just a sales office. The CEO is a fantastical liar that hides things well, and firing a bunch of people would not look good for him. As long as we are making a profit, no one really analyzes how much fat could be trimmed. I don’t even care if it were me to get laid off either. Actually, please lay me off.
My last job was like that. I was needed for about an hour a week. I just sat and listened to podcasts all day every day.
My current job, I do about an hour a day, and outperform all of my colleagues. Luckily I’m at home most of the time and just lay in bed watching things all day with my cats. When I have to go into the office, it’s painful.
Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door–that way Lumberg can’t see me, heh–after that I sorta space out for an hour. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
You’ve got upper management written all over you.
I work in the development office of a tiny city that’s surrounded by a major city. It’s an enclave for the mega-wealthy. Literally every household is at least millionaires, and we have our share of billionaires.
It’s surreal doing code enforcement on people you see in international news, or getting a call about potholes from a Hollywood director. Mundane civic stuff, but with extremely weird, powerful, entitled people.
Also, the houses we review are insane. We were doing irrigation inspections the other day and a lot of the sprinkler system served arboretums (plural) inside the house.
There’s one I was reviewing that has 3 bedrooms, but 14 bathrooms. Because they have galleries, a library, wine cellar bigger than most houses, the staff kitchen, etc.
Our municipal code has separate ordinances for Guesthouses and Servant’s Quarters (not allowed to be as big if it’s servant quarters).
We have a family that bought a 10 million dollar property to tear it down and build a private soccer field for their kids to use.
We had a homeowner cut down a bunch of historic trees to make room for a new patio, resulting in a 6-figure fee for illegally removing the trees. We dropped off the citation, and they pulled out a checkbook and paid the fine in about a minute.
Rich people live in a different world, and I drive there daily.
Why do I do it? It pays half-again more than my previous city, and I occasionally get to say “no” to billionaires.
In a fair and equitable world, communities like this would not exist, because these people would not have that wealth.
All extreme wealth has been stolen from the working class. That’s the only way it can be obtained.
No disagreement here. I work there for the paycheck and make no illusions about it. Everyone on the entire staff feels the same way. We’re absolute professionals, but we hold zero personal loyalty to the city or its citizens. They may be super rich and have the power to crush any of us, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all beneath us.
And, oddly enough, that attitude is why we’re good at our jobs. Rich assholes loving together are gonna have disputes, and having a city staff that looks down on them instead of being subservient like their household staff means we’re uniquely qualified to make them be better neighbors to each other.
Just this week, I got into an enforcement discussion with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. It takes a special kind of officious prick to disarm entitled assholes and their lawyers with the power of bureaucracy.
For about 50 hours a week, I am that prick.
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One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea.
There’s a couple of points I would make in response to that.
First, a problematic aspect of the internet is that your existence is defined by the last thing you posted. Which is to say, if someone says that a story about North Korea is fake, then to a reader they are a “North Korea defender,” regardless of whether they hold more critical beliefs about it that they didn’t happen to voice in that particular comment. And there have been plenty of sensationalist, fake news stories about North Korea, as well as about other countries the US doesn’t like.
Second, most Hexbears are Marxist-Leninists, and an important thing to understand about that ideology is that it isn’t about one specific set of policies that are universally applicable. When an ML defends a country, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that country should be held up as a model for other countries to emulate.
So if they’re not a model to emulate, then why defend them? First off, because the only means we in the West have of influencing their policies is through our government using military force, clandestine operations, or crippling economic sanctions. Second, because even if a socialist government is a failure, the extent to which it failed is important, because it will be held up as a criticism of socialism in general. Many Western leftists believe in simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and AES (actually existing socialist) states, and will be some of their harshest critics to that end. But others, myself included, would argue that that’s the wrong approach, because it allows false and exaggerated claims to go unchallenged, which will then still be used to criticize the left no matter how much one tries to distance themselves from it. Like, people will call Obama and Harris communists, so it doesn’t seem to matter how much distance there is.
Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is a good starting point for understanding the perspective.
“the US doesn’t like”
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
Anyobe not knowing North Korea is the worst dictatorship on planet earth should get their brain tested.
I mean this is what OP talks about (or so I feel), people so out of touch you can’t even have a normal discussion with them.
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
I’m a capitalist. The person you are responding to sounded very reasonable.
“the US doesn’t like”
That’s very true. The us does not like north Korea. That isn’t saying north Korea is good. It’s just saying there are motives at play to make north Korea look as bad as possible.
If I said Jeffrey Epstein was a cannibal, you can say “no he wasn’t” without thinking he was a good person.
Not really important, but a capitalist is someone who has a significant amount of capital.
Someone who supports the existence of capitalism is called a liberal.
What on earth do you think you saying you are a capitalist does?
There are smart communists, and as you so succinctly prove, capitalists that are less so.
Pointing out I can disagree with someone’s ideas and still recognize when they are being very reasonable.
capitalists that are less so.
Ah the ol’ “you’re stupid” rebuttal. Works every time. Automatic win in every debate lol
I’m slowly learning to stop arguing with people whose first instinct is to throw out an insult
Yesh, look at OBJECTION s response, and call that smart if you like lol. There are people who are smart, and others who, well, aren’t.
Others
Ftfy
I’m a capitalist.
Do you work for a living? If so, then you aren’t part of the capitalist class.
Yes someone explain my poor phrasing. They even mentioned the word I mentioned but I forget.
I’m not the capitalist version of a tanky.
I believe the concept of capitalism could work, and I believe it would work better than socialism. Another common ground I have with socialist is that I understand the examples of my preferred… Arrangement of society have been corrupted and not run under the ideas they claim.
That’s what I mean by common ground and that’s where I sympathize. I wouldn’t want someone pointing at trump and saying “that’s capitalism!” And I would never point at Kim jun un and say “that’s socialism”
I also understand the “ideal, pure, perfect implementation” of either idea probably isn’t possible.
I lean more to capitalism.
That’s what I meant when I said “I’m a capitalist” I misspoke.
Funny side note I think the problem with both systems is lazy people not doing what they should.
I won’t go over the example for how lazy people could effect socialism because I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times before.
I skip straight to capitalism.
People don’t vote with their dollar like they should. Everyone hates Walmart, they still shop at Walmart. Everyone hates child slavery, they still buy chocolate. Women want real pockets in their clothing, they still buy clothing that does not have pockets.
I’m lazy too in that way. I don’t shop at Walmart, and I don’t really like chocolate… But I hate how shitty airlines are… When I fly tho, I buy the cheapest ticket on the cheapest airline. Every single time.
That’s the problem with capitalism. I’m lazy, we’re all lazy.
It’s not laziness.
Most people are too resource poor, too time poor, and too exhausted from being violently forced to be profitable to someone else, to have the headspace to do what you suggest.
You can indeed spend every waking moment optimizing your life, but then you would be just one person among tens of thousands who could be successful doing that. 99.999% of people would utterly burn out trying to achieve the same. They don’t have the underlying intergenerational wealth that would give them the ability to do so, or don’t have the free time to do so, or have too high of a cognitive load just putting one foot in front of the other to do so. Vanishingly few people are “just too lazy” to do so, and of those who are, they are the ones who can monetarily afford to be lazy.
It’s why poverty is fiendishly expensive, and why it is almost impossible to escape poverty
I’m new to this platform and can’t tell if I already replied to this or not.
I totally understand and agree with your point. In case I already replied to this I’ll just give my short answer.
If I could snap my finger and magically make a perfect capitalist system (or socialist for that matter) no corruption or greed. Starting absolutely fresh and right with the perfect principles in place for the system… And also all of us people started fresh, well rested, well fed, thinking clearly…
I think people would still buy the cheapest chocolate and ignore the slaves, they’d still shop at Walmart, and I’d still book the cheap airline ticket and complain I have no leg room, and a handful of super rich elites would quickly regain literally all the power.
You absolutely nailed it on the head with everything thing you said, that’s exactly why I don’t call out system true capitalism. I also agree the lives we are forced to live prevent us from having time to sort this stuff out.
I just don’t think we’d be less lazy (myself included) even if we did have the time and energy. I feel the same problem in both systems.
1)good idea
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revaluation
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get lazy
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back to essentially where we started.
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This is what I’m talking about. The US not liking North Korea is an objective fact. But because people on the internet treat whatever you last posted as your entire identity and belief system, then you assume that’s the full extent of my position on North Korea. You expect me to do the typical signals to disavow and denounce the country as part of the strategy of the Western left distancing itself from AES states. But I’m not interested in signalling anything, for the reasons I explained. The strategy of allowing and repeating all sorts of sensationalist nonsense for fear that pushing back against it will tie you to the state in question just doesn’t work.
Is North Korea really “the worst dictatorship on planet Earth?” Are they worse than, for example, Saudi Arabia? Are they so much obviously worse that anyone who thinks Saudi Arabia is worse “should get their brain tested?”
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
Ok, maybe you’re right. Perhaps it’s important to mention the horrible things the US and North Korea have done to each other. Like when the US invaded and killed 15% of their entire population (primarily civilians), carpet bombed the country, and deployed all sorts of chemical weapons, or when North Korea, er, sorry, what did North Korea do to America that’s “a million times worse than rape?” Gonna have to refresh my memory on that one chief.
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
You’re linking North Korea to the conversation about communism, when that alone is a fatal error: NK is equally as much communistic as they are democratic. As in, not in the least.
There has never been any kind of a long-term (5+ years) communist country on the planet. Prior power structures have always stepped in to decapitate communism in favour of a violently autocratic dictatorship much like a monarchy. What remained of communism was only ever kept as a thin veneer of legitimacy, much like a rotting Edgar suit.
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Look they first thing I’m confused about is why you started your comment with a sympathetic viewpoint to North Korea, like I would’nt open my essay about how nuclear energy is good with Chernobyl wasnt that bad. Your basically delegitimising everying else after that
That’s a perfect demonstration of my point. The only thing I said about North Korea is that there are fake stories about it, which is true. I have no interest in saying or tolerating false claims just to make my position seem more appealing, or to avoid being accused of something. If speaking truth delegitimizes me somehow, if it makes people think I’m a bad person or something, then so be it, it doesn’t change what’s true.
And then I disagree with the false and exaggerated claims unchallenged part. What exactly do you mean. This seems like a catch all to dismiss anything that you disagree with.
I linked a video to give an example of what I was talking about. I recommend watching it, it’s a little long but it’s informative while being entertaining and well-produced (it has 3.6 million views with good reason). The video describes a story that was very widespread in the media with lots of mainstream sources talking about it, which claimed that everyone in North Korea had to get the same haircut as Kim Jong Un. That story was completely and totally false, it was a wholesale fabrication. The two guys in the video travel to North Korea and get a perfectly normal haircut to disprove it. It also mentions several other stories that turned out to be fake news.
You’re jumping to conclusions when you say that I “use it as a catch-all to dismiss anything I disagree with.” I’m not going to dismiss claims that are actually backed by evidence, but I am going to investigate whether there is actually evidence backing up a given claim.
More importantly, because the only state you’ve mentioned is North Korea I’m now prompted to assume the AES’s you’re talking about is north Korea.
That’s a silly assumption, as there’d be no need for a term like that if it only applied to one country. AES states also include for example Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, and the USSR (prior to it’s collapse).
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Because they either live in their own dream world, or they are pushing the idea that communism is good, which is hard if you use and listen to facts.
Start off with an enormous lie, everything after that might feel not that un-true.
People use all sorts of metrics to determine whether or not a state is socialist or not, so it’s hard to find neutral terminology everyone can agree with. North Korea calls itself socialist and has a centrally-planned economy, and has been historically aligned with other countries that also call themselves socialist (such as the USSR and PRC), so it seems reasonable enough to me to call them socialist. Should I call them capitalist instead? Seems a little odd, especially since I live in the US which has a much larger proportion of the economy in the private sector.
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The means of production are mixed between public/state ownership, collective ownership, and private ownership, actually.
I take it that your metric for whether or not a state is socialist is something like, “Worker ownership of the means of production.” But that metric has a lot of ambiguities that make it difficult to apply practically in an objective way. Which workers own which means of production, and in what form? Suppose we have a system where everything is state-owned and the state determines who can use what when based on a truly democratic process - but then, an organization of trained professionals in a given field go on strike to demand things be done the way they want. If all the workers should own all the means of production, then the strikers are out of line, but if the workers in a particular field should own the means of production in that field, then the state is out of line.
And should the economy be transformed, fully and immediately, to that ideal? Historically, both the USSR and PRC attempted widespread collectivization of farms, like with the Great Leap Forward, which was an abject failure. That’s not to say that farming collectives cannot be successful, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect immediate and total transformation to that model or else a state isn’t socialist.
North Korea calls itself socialist
They also call themselves democratic.
Are they? Would you call their system democratic? No?
Why one and not the other?
For one thing, virtually every country on earth claims to be democratic, whereas only some claim to be socialist. There are many countries that claim the label of democratic that don’t consider the DPRK to be a democracy, but the countries that claim the label of socialist, such as Cuba, generally recognize the DPRK as socialist. If would be strange to refer to a group of countries as socialist and then exclude a country that those countries recognize as being socialist.
It’s worth noting that one of the main reasons the DPRK is not considered democratic is not because of the way the government and elections are structured, but because it doesn’t allow its elections to be monitored by international observers.
“This”, honestly.
Phantom hatred. Imagine for a moment, someone is calm, consistent, and composed one moment. You then walk into the room and it’s as if a curse causes the otherwise stoic individual to be overcome by a visible dislike for you. You examine yourself and can’t pinpoint whatever about you could cause this, but it happens wherever you go. In short, something unknown and unexplainable about you causes people to act out of their principles in the worst way, like reverse charisma applied to mass hysteria. If a schoolteacher is lenient enough to only give detentions for big misdeeds, by this phenomenon, your luck finds yourself with a suspension. If you know an officer who is lenient enough to give only community service for things as major as vandalism, by this luck, imagine them giving you a few weeks in jail and all it can be chalked up to is this metaphorical voice that directs people into hating you. And yet not a single person lets their rationale be spoken aloud.
Could be:
-the victim of racism
-a terminal narcissist
-very neurodivergent and not picking up social cues obvious to most
-sociopathically omitting context like “btw I was caught with albums of pictures of neighborhood kids”
-having been falsely accused of the previous one, but then failing to recognize that as an explanationThe third one (and for most people it’s probably it, in fact you could technically make the second one a subcategory of the third one, as narcissism is a condition of the mind, and no, professional analysis dismisses the idea I am a narcissist despite the fact many people seem born ready to leap to that conclusion based on the idea the room seems not to be read alongside some elements of pride I carry) brings up something that even as a technical neurotypical (depends on the definition) I don’t get. If a social rule is so important, why does society keep it “unspoken”? I can’t imagine God for example being like “well, these rules are important, but instead of giving you these rules on Mt. Sinai, I’m just going to have faith in you on this one” (going back to the narcissism part, I’d argue that to me, leaving it “to the norms” comes off as more what I would expect from a “narcissistic” individual, I guess Socrates isn’t welcome in our society). Of course, the other things are not out of the question, and there’s a bit of nuance omitted (it’s where my experiences diverge from my BF’s, in fact I phrased it with my BF in mind), but nothing deceptive,
Aka, “My experience as a non-Mormon in Utah.”
Or being a certain sect of it like I can be seen as.
That we are emotional animals that sometimes have logical thoughts. But we live in a society (at least in the west) where we have to pretend that we are logical animals that sometimes have emotions.
Stupid doctors. Starting in the medical field, I had this notion that a doctor is this kind of universally intelligent, best-of-humanity kind of person.
Some of them are.
But some of them are absolute dumbasses who happen to have a photographic memory that carried them through med school… Like, full blown trumpanzee, falls for conspiracy theory bullshit, superstitious nutjob, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed idiot.
It shouldn’t be possible. No one who makes it through med school should be mentally capable of instantly plummeting to the rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study (which fortunately most of those types deliver at least passable quality of care).
I’m not sure if there’s any field where everyone is qualified. It seems there is no perfect method for objective qualification, without letting idiots slip through the cracks.
One of the better methods is to have a supervisor watch them in practice, but how do you qualify a supervisor? The whole cycle repeats again
There are some really stupid doctors, scientists, electricians, architects and welders, all of which are occupations where incompetence can have dire consequences.
There are recent cases of flawed scientific papers, used as guidance for procedures (ex: surgery), and causing potentially thousands of deaths.
https://youtu.be/HTlKGKaOQPY?si=2oXTn6UdR0Fuxtgj
Cases like this is what feeds anti science movements and conspiracies. In many circumstances “science” shouldn’t be trusted when there is no line between flawed science and good science.
rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study
That’d be too many people around me, from the qualified kind. I’m not a doctor though.
Sorry, it’s impossible. It’s normal for people to be what you described. Just human.
I mean, if you actually manage to create a working procedure for such selection, half the people in the profession will have Aspergers, always red eyes and sleep at work, and the other half will be NT, but some bloody geniuses whose abilities would rather be used in something like fundamental science.
I know a few people closely that I’d consider a genius. I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered. He changed fundamentals of microbiology. One high school dropout, one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered.
That’d be one more than I know, if we don’t count relatives.
One high school dropout,
My tribe.
one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
That actually sounds nice.
I do the same with lawyers. Some of the Trump lawyers have been so bad that I question the Bar exam’s ability to weed out the worst.
step foot
Bone apple tea!
Wooaah I had to google this one, it’s a bone apple tea I’ve definitely used!
It’s not that doctors are stupid. Quite the opposite; I strongly suspect that, by any seemingly-objective measure of intelligence, doctors are going to average significantly higher than the general population. (…And veterinary doctors even more so.) Having cognitive biases, believing in conspiracies, etc., isn’t a symptom of stupidity; it’s a side effect of being human and having emotions. You’ll find that very highly intelligent people end up being more effective at rationalizing dumbass, batshit crazy beliefs; the number of engineers, computer scientists, attorneys, etc. that are, for instance, Mormon is astounding.
People being terrified of cities and public transit.
I’m terrified of public transit only because of my social/generalized anxiety disorder, otherwise I’d love to use buses and trains. I wish we had more passenger trains in the US.
I don’t know where you live, but in PDX it’s a hit or miss. If you go during rush hours on a work day in the suburbs, then you are mostly fine. Otherwise… You have high chances of being harassed by homeless people, spat on, threatened, leered at, smelling something awful. So yeah, not divorced of reality.
You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality
How does this knowledge help me take the train safely?
I live near Chicago, and the worst I’ve experienced is someone yelling or playing loud music. I’m not saying bad stuff never happens, but it’s much safer than driving (admittedly a very low bar).
Live in a city in the south where driving is required. Went to Chicago last year and decided to stick to public transit when we saw how much it cost to park. It was amazing. Sure some people were loud or smoking in the trains, but I could def live like that. Idk what everyone is complaining about with the 15 minute thing
I’m from the South and I always hated having to drive. I think it’s also nicer/safer to drive in a place with public transit than without, because some bad drivers know they’re bad drivers and will take another option if it’s available, plus it just means fewer cars on the road. No public transit just sucks for everyone.
Yeah I lived in Boston and never had problem with public transit, same in Europe. I guess left cost IS different and not in a good way.
News
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Older generations
And younger ones too!
Customers. Seriously, how absolutely incapable are some people. I wish I could force some of them to write down all the questions they have, make them watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then only bother me if they still need help. Jesus Christ it’s a hardware store not kindergarten where I’ll take you by the hand and tell you not to eat the crayons.
Bars with parking lots.
Gas stations that sell booze
Drive throughs at liquor stores
Designated drivers are a thing. And I haven’t had more than one drink at a bar since I lived in Europe in 1989 where they actually had public transportation. For many years I’d just drink at home or at a friend’s house if my wife was driving. I recently quit drinking though.
