this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2023
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So you want more people to lose full phone service?
No, we're suffering, and most people just want these "people" with billions in revenue to pay their fair share instead of having twelve full time tax representatives whose only job is to make sure the public doesn't see a dime after using public spaces and resources all year.
There are better and more effective ways to fight for justice besides just wishing that fines or that (a) do not really affect their bottom line, (b) can cause immense problems to the people who are mere customers and (c) will at most get one of their engineers fired but never point fingers to the manager who asked for the change to be expedited and pushed to production without review.
I'm going to be real with you, over the last 80 years corporations have created an environment where they can levy their large profits to manipulate the government into passing beneficial legislature. I don't trust a single corporation anymore and I'd be more than happy to see them all burn, even if it means kissing our world goodbye. Every day I drive to work to make shit money with a degree I was told to get, my boss is pulling his 3rd home while he tells me I'm not worth 60k yet. But the average pay for my skills and degree is 65k, but nobody else will hire me. I'm incrementally closer to poverty each day and its maddening. Seeing such luxury while I'm six feet below the water fucks me up. I'm not asking for luxury, I'm asking to buy a house, to afford to provide well for my family. But that is even too much. So fuck it all. If I'm not allowed in the living club because of some birth lottery, or the universe coalescing to redirect an existing stream into my account, then I am going to be angry. There is nothing special about my boss besides the fact that he put down 30k from his GI bill when it mattered. Thats not a good fucking system, its the laws of the jungle but plastered in concrete. Fuck that.
First, a bit of perspective: you were born in the richest country of the world and your salary alone is enough to put your family above the median national income. If you have a working spouse making half of that, your family would be around the 70th percentile. And again, we are talking about the richest country of the world. So, please stop complaining about losing some "birth lottery".
Second, if the system has failed you, getting angry at some of the players can feel cathartic but is nothing more than a coping mechanism. It does little to nothing to actually find for a way to fix your problems. How can one help you to find a way to direct the energy from this anger to something productive?
Your argument of "other people have it worse" is pure ignorance at best.
Also, do you think one person has the ability to move the needle even a little towards fixing the issue? Getting angry is absolutely a step towards progress. We all need to be angry. We need to be angry enough to all work together and make a difference. Not everyone can spend the time needed to even attempt make a difference as an individual, but we can help rally together by 'complaining'
This all started as a joke and you took it way too seriously and now you're telling people they can't feel bad because they aren't suffering enough compared to others? Dude, cmon.
My point is: getting angry is not enough, and a competition to see who seems the angriest or says the most disparaging thing ends up becoming performative action.
What I'd like to see is people showing real skin in the game. Telcos in the US are running a racket and abuse their de-facto monopoly? Then how about we start looking into companies that provide mesh networks like Fon?
To put in real terms: I know for a fact that I could offer you unlimited phone calls for ~$15 month and have a healthy sustainable operation, but I need at least 100 people to sign up to this just to setup the basic infra. Everyone would be able to make and receive phone and texts, but they would lose some convenient features provided by larger carriers. Are you "so angry" at the big corporations that you'd be willing to go get these 100 people, or is your anger just enough to fuel some occasional rant on an internet forum?
My man's angry because he can't afford a house because big corps run our country and you're saying he's wrong because he's not creating his own telecom?
No. I am saying that big corps run your country and you do nothing except being "angry". Try doing something about it, anything, but please stop acting like all you are able to do is cry on an online forum and misinterpret what other people say.
Bro. Someone made a joke and look where you've taken this. Chill out.
Also, congrats on being the worst type of argumentative person: you said on the previous "getting angry is the first step to get organized", I give you one example where you can get organized and your response is a complete dishonest misinterpretation bullshit about "starting your own telecom".
This "so you're saying" crap is 100% a tell for the terminally online, intellectual-yet-idiots types who can do nothing but blame their failures on something else other than themselves. It's tiring.
I'm sorry, I think about how I am lucky on a global scale, but on a local scale I was just one bad day away from being broke and I just had that day. So it sucks, I hone my skills every day, game dev every night, study IT skills for my main job, its just not fast enough to put me in a house, or feel like I'm at least treading water instead of swapping bills around every month. Thank you for the discussion and the question. But my issue with how we live is random people like my boss, who consistently tells me to end India's scam attempts, decides my salary. If he doesn't know I can't combat the entire nation of India for under 60k a year, why does he get to say how much I'm worth? The system rewards people who already have money, thats it. Everyone else can subsist off of goodwill and prayers. These systems we made are a feedback loop to return wealth to the wealthy and keep it there.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/facetious
Would get more people upset that they don't have an alternative (assuming this affects one of those cable monopoly communities)
I work for the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company, and I think I talk for everyone when I say: yes, why not