OpenStars

But I did not say that I knew them! :-P

However, at a guess, she has trouble letting go of her "baby boy". That type of marriage would be quite difficult, for the new wife & especially the husband caught in the middle.

You bring up some points I did not say... but to confirm, yes totally agree with. Capitalism isn't the only evil, and may in fact be the least evil of them all, yet it does have a tendency towards slavery, doesn't it? :-( Ofc, so too does socialism, in part b/c just as pure capitalism has never once been tried in the world (afaik?), neither has communism. Everything is just a blend - I mean no judgement there, just that it is what it is.

Yet looking back, democracy+capitalism did some wonderful things in the so-called "Western world" (ironically including Australia that is located in the East, but you know what I mean:-), but in the USA at least, it looks like we are ready to end it. Not the capitalism part, but democracy. Or at least that is what the people - like Majorie Taylor Greene, a literal sitting congresswoman - are calling for, and Donald Trump too, who says he wants to be emperor "for a day". If these people get their way - and the likelihood looks to be something along the lines of just shy of 50%? - then the ability (/burden/responsibility) to vote will be removed. But either way, as I mentioned, the consequences of voting has long since been taken away from us, in certain main aspects - importantly, not all, but many.

Btw you are off on your numbers: try the numeral three. Not 3 million, but literally three as in one person more than two and one shy of four. THREE people have as much wealth as the entire bottom HALF of America - and that was 5 years ago, before billionaires doubled their portfolios just last year alone. More recently, I see titles like "The bottom half of American families hold just 2% of the country's wealth — while the top 1% of families have a third". That is beyond "outsized influence", they have it ALL (almost). Tbf, there is still a very healthy middle class it seems, but the wheels definitely seem to have come off of this ride i.e. the trends are not good, and the "outsized influence" of those at the very top who can literally purchase Supreme Court Justices with their enormous wealth is a problem that seems like it will only solidify the issues.

Also, don't glaze over the percentage of Americans that have only 2% of its wealth: to state it again, it is HALF. Granted, some are children, but many/most are GenZ to Millenials - those who have started families and are looking to purchase a home, but find out that not only can they not, but it looks likely that they never will. Is that an exaggeration? Only time will tell, but neither Trump nor Biden look to be fixing anything, and Congress only recently passed its budget for the 2024 year (which started on October 1) here a couple of weeks ago - we very nearly started into the 7th month of the year before it got passed. This is routine, now. And don't even get me started on the corruption of the Supreme Court Justices. Or our for-profit, click-bait media. So if help will not come from the Presidency, Congress, Judiciary, or Media, and it certainly will not come from corporations, then from whence will it come?

Rather, we will see a slide - sometimes steady, sometimes rapidly falling - into anarchy as people find themselves not vested in the system anymore; or alternatively the healthiest people will be those who simply give up and accept their new station in life, at the very bottom, as peasants, making up part of that HALF of all members of society who control <2% of the nation's wealth, and who cannot afford a home or advanced medical care. In short, America won't be what it used to be - the dream has died.

So, you are correct that Trump is an example of enshittification of politics but that it does not mean that the entire concept is invalid, however I am relying on that one singular point to make that claim. Also, I am not stating that it is entirely invalid - a glance at the European Union is enough to dispel that. Rather, I am stating that the current state in America is not good, and only looks to be worse. Btw if you have any counter-examples I would love to hear them, but I have heard that no country that has ever devolved to become a 2-party system has ever managed to survive, and that worries me. So even if we managed to fix literally everything else, so long as that foundational flaw remains we may still be doomed, even if the deadline would have been pushed back? In that sense then, therein may lie some glimmer of hope: Donald Trump was so bad, that he may have woken up this sleeping giant to realize its predicament, so we might finally be more open to tinkering with this democratic system that could be done better? e.g. replace first-past-the-post voting with something else, which would force politicians to actually offer something positive merely than claiming that they are not the other side.

Also, note that I am not advocating for a civil war, nor a coup. I am only stating that some people are, and the fact that a coup has already been attempted is proof enough that it could happen again, by the end of this very year even. "Cvil unrest" is present, and I am only trying to open my eyes to acknowledge that. Also, I agree that it is likely to be some kind of boring "constitutional crisis event", rather than a full-scale shooting one, though the latter is not beyond the realm of possibility either? The people who Putin has working for him are quite good at what they do... and they may yet find another way, like the January 6 attack, to turn a handful of people into a force for a much larger change. "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."

You... may not enjoy the answers:-P.

Hrm, strategic placement there... :-P

All that I know is that the questions are wonderful and it’s the only thing in life that never gets boring.

YES - THIS IS IT!!! Like, whether we have free will or not, I do not know,(but as we mentioned, it doesn't even matter b/c either way we need to act as if we do) but whether we SHOULD have free will is something that we could answer... if we knew for certain that there was an external entity. Star Trek is famous for exploring this. Like even if the actual Zeus did exist (they never met him iirc but Kirk did run into Apollo/Mercury at some point...), what "claim" would he have over humanity? Same with Arthur C. Clarke's (2001 A Space Odyssey) saga: just b/c they gave us our start (into sentience, or even seeding DNA & thus life itself?) doesn't necessarily mean that they should have agency over us...

Whereas on the other hand, whatever OS I am running on my computer (Mac OSX for me, though I hear that some people on Lemmy prefer Arch btw:-D) very much should obey my commands. e.g. when I tell it to reboot or to shut down a misbehaving program, I want it to do it NOW (or at least... soon, even if it needs a few moments to wrap things up, that's arguably far better b/c then it can do so safely). That, to me, seems to go beyond "might makes right", b/c we literally put in love, care, attention, and design into making that OS. The gulf b/t human sentience vs. like a worm or even a bacteria is far lesser than the gulf b/t us vs. the programs that we write, in terms of autonomy. We own it b/c we MADE it. (I am ignoring future AIs where we set up the system but then it kinda makes itself - a fascinating thought that very likely could qualify for an exemption, so here I am just bypassing that line of thinking entirely)

Anyway, I love thinking such thoughts:-D. I have no idea if doing so offers practical benefits (I kinda do not care!:-P), but it very well might. e.g. just how much agency / oversight did Elon Musk offer to building his Tesla cars? With all the crashes & potentially actually fatal consequences, it seems that even he did not put in the effort to truly know what those cars are all about. Thus if some hacker were to do so, would they "take ownership", and be able to bypass certain features & controls, in a manner that even Musk himself (& most of his engineers) has no idea exists - and in so doing, would they have that "right", or is that just another example of "might makes right", where they can & therefore they do? (which is a power that they could wield for good - e.g. go ahead and pay the subscription service, in order to help keep the company afloat, and yet still patch security vulnerabilities that the company itself never bothers to implement - so such a thought would not have to be solely due to piracy & stealing considerations)

According to such thinking then, if the Illuminati control the world, then can Anonymous help fix it, like Robin Hood? Except that Power Corrupts, and Absolutely Power... well the latter actually often turns around and converts to good, given enough time passing and the proclivities of the person, but even 99.99% Power corrupts nearly Absolutely, so it might end up being the other way around - perhaps they will merely join or subvert the Illuminati, or even become co-opted by them unknowingly? Trump presented himself as a style of "Robin Hood"-esque "savior" type, saying how he was going to "drain the swamp" and fix all the problems, but he did not work out so well. And while that attempt was blatantly obvious to anyone who has eyes, who is to say that the next attempt will be so readily detectable?

You do not need to apologize: Trump had a lot of us fooled, and I don't think your underlying idea - motivated by compassion - is wrong at all. I happened to not be fooled, at least in that same sense, but only b/c of my background having been similarly fooled by earlier events (so without those, I easily could have been), and even now I agree that he did a lot of good: by exposing the vulnerabilities inherent in our system, he may have done a lot better than Hilary Clinton would have to cause them to be fixed? She would have papered over the whole situation - her whole message was just "the status quo is absolutely fine" - but it is FUCKING NOT FINE!!!?!!! So I understand why people voted against her, even if that meant voting for him. Even now, I think her particular brand of insensitivity to people's needs is far more toxic & deadly than whatever Trump may have wrought for us - even if that leads to the death of America, it seems preferable to me to at least be honest about that death, rather than to keep claiming the "this is fine" meme (as in, "THIS IS FINE - OR ELSE!! Do not say that you are not fine, or you will be imprisoned!"). Unfortunately, Democrats seemed to have learned very little from the whole thing.:-(

Part of what I mean in that I am losing hope for democracy, is that I am wondering if I should be gaining hope in whatever may replace it? If this truly is a non-viable solution to begin with, then whatever we end up with later could potentially be better? Like, instead of a nation full of suicidal people who cannot afford housing and hate their jobs, what if we accepted that we are mere peasants and at least came to peaceful coexistence with that thought? I dunno, maybe I sound like a subversive there, but it is a thought that I cannot shake from my head. Is being a slave more "honest" than being a "free" employee, who nonetheless depends on their job for food/housing/medical care/existence? I guess you could say that I am questioning EVERYTHING - even just what our "freedom" may offer us? Unlike the earlier discussion points we mentioned, I despite these thoughts... but if they are coming at us regardless... then I at least want to struggle to open my eyes, regardless of whatever I might see:-(. In so doing, I am prepared to leave my religion, or double down harder on it, or shift it over to something else, or wherever the facts (as best as I can see them anyway) may take me. And that's good imho - I feel proud about that aspect of myself:-).

If you see yourself in others, whom can you harm?

It is a common bumper sticker on vehicles that I saw a few years back, often alongside the words "Coexist". The latter phrase is fantastic, but the phrase I mentioned really rubs me the wrong way. I believe it is Buddhist? Anyway, as you picked up on, my reaction was not how it was meant to be interpreted:-D - and I get that, and don't even hold it against the statement itself, except... I still have my preferences about the whole affair, and I happen to hate it:-P, and I am okay with having that emotion about it. Life is a journey, not a destination, and all that.

I wanted to be sure that I conveyed that I feel like I cannot win when it becomes a “struggle” - even at best if one side or the other were to totally conquer the opponent, then I overall would lose.

Speaking of life being a journey, it seems to me that it was not meant for us to be comfortable 100% of the time, nor perhaps safe either. If we were hyper-diligent and did everything correctly, every time, would that be "good" - is that then our "goal"? Certainly the opposite cannot be true, b/c then we'd be dead, but is the goal then the opposite, or is that a fallacy of False Dilemma? Moreover, is there just one path through life, that a "perfect" person would have taken, let's say if they were in my situation, or are there many ways, and our flaws are what make us beautiful, in part? This is one area where religion has helped inform my thinking: the word "perfection" should (perhaps) rather not mean "lacking any flaw" so much as "being complete, lacking nothing (major)". Therefore I do not strive to eliminate my flaws as if this is some kind of war and my goal is to murderize my opponent, but rather I accept them, embrace them even, and thereby find my peace. And then I get up off my butt and do something about them, one at a time, and it never sticks, but still I keep moving forward - and you know what? That is enough for me. Perhaps Nirvana, for us, is not absence of pain - or in other words, even if it was, we are human beings and not meant to exist in such a state? Thus, I do not want Discipline to always win, nor Comfort to always win, but rather both, each as seems best in the current moment. Maybe that's stupid of me, but it's a thought.

Anyway, the context was that people love you, b/c you show care & attention to them - but I hope you also fail to do that sometimes as well too, so that you can take care of yourself as well? Yes, you read that correctly: I wish failure upon you ("muwha-ha, a pox upon thee!!", ahem no wait, not like that!:-P), when/where/as appropriate, if that helps you to ultimately succeed. e.g. if you have a job interview the next morning, and you are fairly nervous about it, and then someone calls you at 2am needing something - perhaps they got drunk and wanted a ride home from 2 towns over or something - maybe don't answer? Hopefully they'll be fine, but you also need to be fine as well? The "right" thing to do in that moment may not always be to continue to give of yourself selflessly, if doing so would cost you a big job (which perhaps the drunk friend may not have even remembered, b/c of their drunkeness, but when sober they may have even agreed with the decision?). Anyway, you (Kendrick Lamar) already said it: "I choose me, I'm sorry" (hopefully not always as in "solely", but at least sometimes it does need to be done!?).

Btw, good luck with your whole house situation - I am certain that cannot be trivially easy to handle:-).

Recommended by who though? Spez, that's who. Race-baiting works to increase "engagement" e.g. clicks and comments, thus it continues.

Exactly - bad implementations of communism, bad implementations of capitalism, bad implementations of whatever utopian form of government we can dream up in theory, all suffer b/c they are bad implementations, even if in theory they are perfect. Beyond that, some theories may themselves just be "bad" overall, if the theory is too far removed from reality.

One problem that the USA has found for itself is having allowed itself to devolve to become a 2-party system, where no other parties matter. This is a fundamental phase shift b/c at that point the parties no longer try to accomplish positive aims, and instead merely try to "not" be the other side. Biden won b/c he wasn't Trump, Trump won b/c he wasn't Hilary Clinton, Obama won b/c he wasn't Romney, or McCain, Bush won b/c... well it goes back many, many decades. Afaik, no democracy has ever survived that.

Nor does it seem to matter even, b/c regardless of who wins, the wealthy are in charge. School shootings are a perfect example of that - our CHILDREN are being MURDERED... and nobody gives a damn. I recall one poll result where 80% of the American people were for some form of gun control, and that rose to >90% of responsible, registered gun owners! Also that was a decade ago, so surely after all that we've seen since, it could be even higher? There is nothing that engenders bipartisan efforts in Congress these days - but 80-90% agreement among the American populace is astounding!!?!! However, it does not matter one bit what we want - b/c the lobbies want something else there, and they are willing to pay 10-fold more than the counter-lobby, hence children continue to be murdered all across the nation (typically in poorer schools though).

In addition to being horrific, that example also reveals that our democracy is beyond broken, it is no longer "democracy" at all, but a plutocracy where regardless of whoever votes for whatever goal to be done, the rich control what actually gets done, regardless.

So to fix something like that... assuming that it even could be fixed, would take... I have no idea. But going to a political rally will not begin to cover it. We may literally have a civil war coming up, or at least it is highly expected (among experts, it is said) to have some kind of "constitutional crisis event", much like the January 6 protests where Donald Trump attempted the most ineffective coup that I have ever heard of, yet still was solidly an attempt.

And one potential reason for all that is that whereas the wealthy previous wanted to use middle-class workers to be the underpinnings of society - doctors, researchers, lawyers, engineers, etc. - now they gloves are coming off, and they would have divide the world into the haves vs. have-nots. That CPG Grey Rules for Rulers really helped me see this clearly, though also depresses me:-).

Reminds me of that SNL parody sketch:-)

Not for the direct reaction itself but I thought there was something about spraying the container down or some such... I am probably entirely BSing here:-). In any case, whenever someone figures out a method to make it practical, then we'll see whatever downsides there may be to that:-P.

College students do - they have other priorities than to be taking care of their own homes.

I am no fan of capitalism, but the least we can do is to be accurate in portraying its faults - and to say that "no one needs" is too extreme imho.

he was famously trying to build a way to transfer electricity over long distances, and I’m assuming this isn’t possible without incurring huge losses.

Yes, I believe you are correct about that, although I too do not know what precisely those limitations are:-).

For one thing, Tesla was not entirely truthful to his investors:

Astor thought he was primarily investing in the new wireless lighting system. Instead, Tesla used the money to fund his Colorado Springs experiments.

And for another, he chased down the wrong path for awhile:

The observations he made of the electronic noise of lightning strikes led him to (incorrectly) conclude that he could use the entire globe of the Earth to conduct electrical energy.

So, it is not quite a full "conspiracy" to claim that he somehow deserved additional funding despite all of his past shortcomings. It sounds to me more like hindsight being 20/20, we now realize how he was correct, how he was wrong, and overall people try to use him as an example of capitalism's failings. Like the first rule of inventions are that when one fails you should try try again, except that's obviously not true - yeah try a few times but ultimately spend your time on what looks most likely to work, not repeating to extend forward a string of endless failures. i.e., people try to use his example in spite of the facts, not because of them. Maybe, it looks like.

And it's likely true - if as much effort had been put into that technology as was put into Edison's, perhaps we really would have solved that long-distance problem by now - maybe. Therein lies the germ of truth imho: you cannot overcome it if you refuse to even so much as try? So in that case, it is truly the constraints of capitalism that killed the spirit of innovation there, as in we could (maybe) have had something, if only profits were not people's sole motivation.

Similarly and in a much more damaging manner we see drug companies researching palliatives and "care options" rather than actual cures. The goal of any corporation - even ones working in a medical field - is solely to make profits. Hence Viagra and Cialis, and funding goes towards further development of pain relief and such, even as funding was taken away from research towards cures for common diseases (even ones the researchers themselves believed they were "close" to solving!).

All of this works together as arguments against capitalism being the best economic system - it works well in theory but only up to a point, similar to socialism, and irl the systems that have worked the absolute best was a blending of the two, with each providing a different mixture of benefits and detractions. e.g. if Tesla had been under a socialist system or in more of a blended one, could his excesses have been reigned in and what innovations would we have today in that case? We will never know ofc, but at least I am attempting to frame the argument that I commonly hear from people who don't quite state their reasoning, so this is my attempt to reconstruct it. :-)