Hey now, those “market forces” are actually the work of the wonderful ‘Invisible Hand’! Which is of course the work of God and is definitely not being manipulated by all those billionaires behind the curtain over there…

I think equitable help makes sense as a parent, also fostering a mindset with your kids to not take much more than what’s needed. Post-18 I plan to help pay towards their car insurance, phone bill, and living expenses as long as they are at home. Once they move out, I’ll still help with what I can until they tell me otherwise.

I’m not optimistic I’ll be able to financially provide as much help as I would want to give. Also I’m not optimistic that a young person will be able to afford their own home easily 20+ years from now. Unless there’s more public housing or a sudden increase in the amount of houses being built, I expect real estate to keep going up but wages to stagnant, without intervention at least.

I guess it depends on how you define ghosting and the expectations you want to set with some people. For instance, I recently didn’t notice someone sent me a message a few weeks prior, so when I noticed it I responded right away.

If it’s family I doubt there’s a big expectation to always reply over text. If it’s close friends, sometimes people are just not in the right space to give a good reply so they might not have an answer. If it’s someone you barely know, I think it can be a bit hurtful to building a bond with them.

I regularly have ghosted people for weeks or months though as I’ve gotten older, but that’s more because I’m overwhelmed more. Idk if people want to talk I’m always open for a call, but texting isn’t my focus these days.

When education is purposefully defunded and left to rot for decades now, is it really that surprising things are the way they are? When voters are more educated, they tend to vote Democrat.

If a country wants to prevent this, then it needs protections that can’t go away for education. Furthermore, media companies need to be held to higher standards of reporting, and at this point I feel that influencers should fall under that bucket as well.

Personally, I don’t hate the idea of tying the ability to vote behind getting any Associates Degree. With the caveat that the college would need to be free and accessible to anyone that wishes to go, with a room and food expenses covered to accommodate people. I feel this is a fairer way to get Aristotle’s idea of restricting voting to the educated.

Severance be like:

I disagree that you can’t have those reforms be done that way. I agree with you that the changes are not in-line with unchecked capitalism, but the whole concept of the “invisible hand” is just for show anyways.

To give some accessible examples; you can’t house homeless people or give people healthcare and higher education because homelessness and debt is a whip to keep the workers working for whatever wage and conditions are offered by a capital owner.

Corporations and bought politicians may try to prevent the help from trickling down, but help can actually reach people in areas that care about helping more than just extracting wealth.

I think the problem is that issues are pretty complex and always involve money being spent to address or fix the problems. The core issue is people have been hesitant to individually fund the solutions since it’s easier to spread the costs out among everyone (e.g., individual states understandably didn’t want to bear the burden alone and wanted the federal government to bear the costs). At this point in time though, that looks to be not an option blue states can count on anymore. Blue States need to individually fund these programs to help people in their state, and only afterwards could those help options scale to help people federally.

You can’t deconstruct racism because it was invented in the first place to keep the working class at war with itself rather than struggling against the conditions set by the ruling class.

I agree with you that racism isn’t something that will go away any time soon unfortunately. I believe social media has only made issues worse regarding this with all the bots and bad actors trying to stoke some people’s racism and hatred.

If those people have something/someone else they can blame for their problems then it’s another way of getting around people’s racial biases. Bernie Sanders for instance has been having success recently among people living in rural West Virginia to direct their frustration towards the billionaires causing their problems rather than towards working-class people.

You can’t stop imperialism because infinite growth requires infinite and unrestricted expansion into new territories.

The big corporations are more or less starting to hit that wall now where they can’t really expand too much more. Foreign markets have become more and more saturated with existing businesses which make it harder for these conglomerates to get a foothold. They’ve been underpaying about as much as they can get away with and cost cutting about as much as they can as well. They’ve big corporations have more or less sent themselves into a downward spiral where pretty soon no one is going to be able to afford their garbage. When a majority of people’s income is going forward their bare necessities rather than on things they want it doesn’t bode well for the corporations who have nothing left to fleece away.

The system of capitalism manufactures its own required conditions through cruelty and social inequality (and yet, it’s these very things that lead to resistance), and without those necessary components the whole system collapses. The ruling class will not allow this to happen, because this system serves their material interests, and thus fundamental change cannot happen until the working class; whose material interests are directly opposed to those of the ruling class; is in power.

The billionaires and big corporations have gotten a bit too greedy lately, the bubble they created where people are just comfortable enough not to care about how rich these people are is very close to popping. The fact that working class people can’t even afford to buy a home is a bad sign for these corporations, just where are they expecting working class people to have families after all?

The interests of working class people to have their needs met is growing by the day. If inflation keeps soaring as we have seen, then progressive change is going to be demanded from our representatives. I believe Blue states should be the focus for that since any corporate politician paying lip service can be primaried with an actual progressive willing to fund programs to help people.

The ruling class will pay lip service and the occasional half-measure in order to obscure this reality and make “reformism” seem possible, but 1) that is all they will do especially in the absence of a real threat to their power and 2) they will always eventually claw back even the smallest and hardest-fought of crumbs. Crumbs are good and all but there comes a point where our energy is better spent fighting for the whole cake.

The game is close to being up for the corporate leaders where they actually will need to do their jobs; people are needing these programs now more than ever since wages have not kept up with inflation. The demand is they either help their constituents or they lose their jobs at this point. They can try to push things back and try to keep getting their donor money, but people have caught on. The cake can be owned if we primary any Blue state congressperson that isn’t willing to pass progressive programs. If we wanted to make it even easier to primary people, then we could also vote in an alternative voting system in Blue states.

From what I hear PR would likely lean more conservatively, so maybe they would be more on the fence.

after the need-based scholarships that I got

Dude…

You quite literally benefited from a fund of money set aside to help you go to college and you are okay with pulling the ladder up behind you.

You didn’t need student loan forgiveness because you got a scholarship. I feel the most logical perspective would be that we shouldn’t be gatekeeping passionate individuals from continuing their educational journey.

College should be free for anyone to go to. College students are adding more dollars to our economy for each dollar that we spend on their education. For higher level degrees, the benefits to our economy could be even greater for each individual.

Take the example of a doctor, if we paid for more doctors’ educations then we could have more specialists available for complex surgeries, potentially extending lives and raising the quality of life for many individuals. Saved lives also means that there are more people contributing to the economy as well.

When the makers of a game don’t setup rules or enforce them, then the game can suck because of how unbalanced it can get.

The issue at the end of the day is with the game makers (politicians) not making the game fair and fun. Elements could be added to balance the game, such as cash being distributed each time you pass GO (a monthly Universal Basic Income[UBI]) and setting lower costs the on the property you want to rent. More properties could even be added to the board to help lower the cost of owning a property.

The game in theory could have some interesting elements, such as innovation and competition fueling creativity. But when the game makers totally removed themselves from a judging role, those interesting features completely disappeared due to the big players being allowed to swallow up all the competition.

The big players’ greed also fuels the game to be worse for everyone, including themselves. Incentives to create the lowest priced products sounds great on paper. However, when the greed from the big players has caused the majority of players to not be able to afford even their cheapest products, then suddenly those big players start cutting corners. More and more. Until they are providing their customers with actual garbage and they might even call it ‘food’ too!

Contrast this with if people were actually getting a base amount of money (thanks to UBI) and those same people could afford to not just have the worst/cheapest versions of everything. Suddenly, the scale can be flipped to be a race geared around providing the best and highest quality goods and services. Rules can be enforced to punish wasteful, unsustainable, and unethical business practices as well, since people aren’t dependent on everything being a race to the bottom.

I’m sorry that you and your family had to experience such frightening times like that. I’m glad that they both pulled through.

Only if you agree that it’s what you want, because I could if you want that. But I don’t have to if that’s not what you’re feeling right now.

-Also me saying exactly this about dinner.

I feel I need a few weeks to respond when I notice people dog piling me. It’s not common, but I don’t want to deal with all that negativity out there gate with people when I’m just looking to have a conversation.

Some people are looking to jump on you the second you even broach some topics which can be a bit frustrating.

Thankfully most of Lemmy has been so friendly, it’s other places that actually have gotten to me more.

deleted by creator

Well, I know I’m real, so by virtue, I believe you to be as well.

Do I think I’m smart enough to have been able to come up with a language system of my own that makes sense to me rather than just a bunch of mood grunts? Nope.

The test? My understanding of the test is to see if we can be good people and if we can build a symbiotic relationship with our planet and other planets. It’s been a rocky few millennia for us people, but in spite of how chaotic life has been, it oddly feels like we are all much closer together than in prior generations.

I feel that what we need to do to make things better starts with ourselves. If I’m happy, then I can share my happiness with others. If I hold love in my heart, I can share love for others as well. If I hold anger, judgment, or dislike then those things can tend to spill out, even when that’s not what I would want. Connecting with my roots has helped me to have my heart, rather than being cold and more self-centered.

If we’re in a good spot, we can help our friends, we can help our neighbors, our local communities; we can create a culture of positive change. When everyone’s backs are against the wall, people need community now more than ever.

Taking that step forward every day will help you; for me, it involved making a promise to myself to never stop moving forward. Hydrate yourself often, focus on getting nourishing meals three times a day, building yourself a routine will help, having a cup of coffee each day is beneficial, limit caffeine intake to one or two cups and only before noon, play brown noise in the background to help drown out any rude or critical thoughts or feelings, and low dose melatonin =<1mg for sleeping soundly and peacefully at night helps as well. I recommend visiting a therapist if you can afford it, but invest in yourself today because you are worth it. I spent a decade learning these lessons, but I’ve been thriving more the past few years now :D

For the record, I said several authoritarians, I didn’t say every one was one. I would say your reading of my comment was uncharitable at best and rude at worst.

Do you often ride on trains?

Also, how would you describe the sound it makes on the tracks?

Marxism itself wasn’t necessarily tainted, but his ideas of socialism and communism definitely had a social stain associated with them. So by association it had a black mark.

I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t seen it for what it was supposed to be, when it was weaponized by authoritarians and then attacked by capitalists. It’s supposed to be a grand thing of the people coming together, not stained in blood.

I think you may have misread what I said there about the reformist part. His ideas were revolutionary for the time, but many of the ideas could be applied by reformist.

I think his ideas can reform a capitalist system. It’s probably one of many ways his ideas get off the ground. The big thing was changing the system, it’s not necessarily all about how you get there.

What do you mean? A reformed and reforged system is a new system.

I could give you a multi-hour long breakdown of my views but something tells you’re not interested in a long-form dialogue here.

I think you’re spot on, Marx specifically has a lot of connotations the general, uninformed public is terrified of.

I remember when I had to read it for a class the first time and the vibes in the room was exactly like you’re opening some of book of sin. I was scared of a book, as a college student at the time. Then we actually started reading it, and it was like “wow this guy gets the issues of the system”.

While I personally have agreements and some disagreements with Marx, I think he helped give me a lot of solid ideas that the system itself could be reformed and reforged.

I think it’s a shame that his ideas had carried a public taint to them for so long, due to several authoritarians co-opting his message. I have no clue why it’s not required high school reading at this point, since I feel it’d go a long ways towards helping more people get curious about improving and changing the system for the better.