Mr hawk I got your stamps!

Crazy, computers use power?

Yes, no, kinda, maybe.

The system is so bloated, corrupt, and convoluted there is no fixing it.

The bad actors are so many, so uniform, and so powerful there is no removing them.

The masses are so poor, tired, fractured, and ignorant, there’s no uniting them.

We’re looking at a likely push for a Trump dynasty. Even if the Democrats win, they’re really just controlled opposition to maintain the status quo and repiss off the red base by existing.

Say the impossible happens and all the bad guys die, there’s revolution that sees through the theatre of duopoly… Then what?

30% of the country eagerly embraced a convicted rapist after he spent decades being a piece of shit. 30% prefer Democrats making things worse slightly slower.

Everyone else checked out because they either know too little or too much about politics.

At the end of the day the problem is that nothing matters and it’s all just screaming into the void.

We could be 100% agreement on every detail and we’d just need 350 million other people to sign on to change a system they know is broken but don’t understand well enough to fix while very rich, very crazy people spend great deals of money to basically cause problems everywhere they can do they can sell a monthly treatment but never a fix because cruelty is basically always the point.

This is exactly how drug dealers operate; the first bump is free to get you hooked and dependent so they can raise prices and cut product because you don’t have alternatives.

There was a new Black Mirror episode along these lines as well.

It also raises issues with what happens when all firms use AI models that source the same data and we end up with a longer walk to the same price fixing…

Most people have a terrible understanding of most things because most subjects are basically infinitely complex and get worse the deeper you dig.

A representative Republic is the illusion of democracy at this point. You get to cast a vote for whomever you think will best ignore your ass while sucking off donors because the cost of elections is a product of capitalism and not a fault of democracy itself.

Any civilization that wants to function requires a government. The problem is usually who ends up in power.

Most people can’t understand all the issues. Elections are largely popularity contests for single issue voters. The key to popularity is lots of advertising. Supply, demand, profit, ensure it keeps getting more expensive because most media outlets are privately owned and publicly traded.

Trump was put into office via billions in free news coverage legitimizing an obvious and known fraud making election coverage a horserace for ad revenue instead of informing people about facts.

It’s never been easier to learn anything you’ve wanted to, but this is the first time people have actually started getting dumber to the point they dispute the shape of the planet under their fucking feet.

The better educated people are, the more questions they ask until they realize things don’t actually work like they’re told and then we get riots.

The US is a falling police state run by two private corporations that own the nation.

The dnc and rnc are privately held corporations that control who gets to run for office and both are well right of center entities.

Have you read about Smedly Butler and the business plot?

Unfortunately, what many don’t realize is a win for capitalism is a loss for basically everyone else.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

Tldr- the endlessly parroted “capitalism has lifted more people out of poverty” notion stems from a study that basically equated subsistence farming to poverty because despite meeting all their needs and desires it made zero money per day.

Basically, the entire notion that capitalism is swell is a lot like saying Africans were better off as slaves because they were previously unemployed and then given jobs. Which is basically the first argument capitalists tried to make while “extracting value” with the slave trade.

Oh, and the reason it’s mutually exclusive to democracy has already been demonstrated with Citizens United and putting unlimited dark money into elections and politics. If the law can be purchased, the wealthy have all the means and motivation they can to strip mine anything of value and pay for the propaganda calling it good.

The majority of all news is owned by billionaires telling us how to feel about what they tell us happens.

The Nixon campaign ADMITTED the war on drugs was a front to marginalize anti war leftists and black people. By criminalizing cannabis, they not only stifled Vietnam protests and the civil rights movement but also protected the profits of pharmaceutical corps, the alcohol industry, and the paper/wood industry.

The 24/7 news cycle came along to keep us hyper stimulated with bullshit we don’t even notice the things that matter and front line reporting has become a thing of the past specifically because of how motivated it made people to speak out.

Now, if you complain about Palestinian genocide you get called anti semitic by bots paid for by corporate interests and foreign states.

It’s all theater to keep us scared and fractured while they work us to death, steal our retirement with bubbles they pump and dump, and then start resource wars so poor kids will die for a chance at college.

Man vs woman, black vs white, gay or straight, it’s all divide and conquer to keep the workers from realizing the one fight that matters is the have nots vs the have yahcts.

The priority of news should be telling us what is happening in the world. Instead, it’s ad revenue, clicks, and sensationalism.

You have no rights when truth has become a toy of the ultra rich drunk on their own farts.

I’ll bite.

The bitch of post social media reality is attention spans are fuck all and you’re either going to be sacrifice specificity to be succinct enough for people to get the point or you cover all the details in a tome no one but the most pedantic or argumentative will engage on. The above was a massive over simplification, yes, but it at least sets a stage for a more significant suggestion.

I guess, unfortunately I’m a grown ass man with teenage kids and decades of reading but again to my previous point, citing all the above turns it into an academic project no one wants to fuck with but nitpickers.

What you have to learn and accept is that capitalism as an economic system is mutually exclusive from democracy as a political system.

I’ll again use simplified views for the sake of brevity at the cost of some nuance…

What is capitalism? Are you a capitalist?

Economic systems basically revolve around who owns the factory that makes the things and private ownership. Now, that’s not to be confused with PERSONAL property, items owned by an individual.

Capitalism is where the building is privately owned either by an LLC or some other corporate entity.

Socialism is where the building is owned by the workers.

Communism is when the building is owned by the government.

None of these have exclusive ownership of the concept of work, employment, wages, or anything and all of them exist side by side in the modern economy. I work in a municipal utility where money is collected from everyone to pay for infrastructure and resources owned by the city. We work with solar co-ops owned by the workers that get profit sharing and we consult with privately owned corporations that have higher prices to account for advertising and payouts to shareholders. Our local privately owned utility has higher rates and always raises them as much as they can meanwhile we’re legally obligated to save as much money as possible as stewards of public funds.

And due to all of that, we have lower rates and far better service metrics.

The focus of communism is serving society. The purpose of socialism is serving the workers. The entire point of capitalism is wealth extraction for capitalists.

But what the fuck is a capitalist? A capitalist owns capital. Having and using cash doesn’t make one a capitalist. Capitalism creates two groups in society: a small group of very rich capitalists that own the resources and a massive group of workers paid as little as possible to create and maintain those resources without getting much of them.

Every American is propagandized from birth to confuse consumerism with freedom.

Publicly traded corporations have a fiduciary duty to shareholders which is ultimately the engine of the race to the bottom. The short term focus on the obligation to beat q/q metrics is the reason people get laid off and you pick up their work instead. It’s the reason raises aren’t in the budget despite your cost of living going up. It’s the reason we all have to tighten our belts and make sacrifices for ‘the family’ and executives making hundreds times more get millions in stock bonuses for laying off the people responsible for those achievements and holding on to the duplicitous self serving ladder climbers.

This isn’t bitterness about the success of others or my personal failings. The system itself isn’t sustainable because the focus of capitalism has always been about acreting wealth by stiffing employees and customers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169

I’m so tired of being told I’m sad because I don’t have drugs.

I’ve tried a dozen medications and they all make me feel worse. One made me allergic to fucking sunlight.

Our world is broken and dying as the rich hasten it along and we’re gaslit to accept the blame for it.

The police are thugs servicing fascist tyrants and protecting them from us.

Wall Street, Walmart, schools, healthcare, fucking everything is about controlling and exploiting.

When I was a kid, super soakers were a hundred dollars. China has basically battery powered water rail guns at that same price point now while we still have the same hand pump plastic shit. The US gets farther and farther behind the world and yet somehow even more up is own ass despite being one is the dumbest and fastest countries on the fucking planet.

I’ve given up on hope. There’s too much money to be made off suffering.

“about a meg” because it’s almost unthinkable anyone cares about 3 tenths of a meg much less 2 hundredths.

Because you asked what I meant. Of course what I meant didn’t include your response to it. You almost seem offended my thoughts weren’t yours.

In short, Kant said people should be the goal, not the means.

It’s ok to make yourself dinner.

It’s ok to make your friend dinner because you want to make them happy.

It’s not ok to make your friend dinner because you want to have sex with them.

It’s not ok to make your friend make you dinner because you don’t want to cook.

Every facet of capitalism is exploitation by design as profit is unpaid labor. However classless socialism isn’t automatically devoid of exploitation.

None of us asked to be here. I certainly don’t want to be here anymore. Placing the value of a life upon the imaginary lines it landed between, how much money it’s parents had, or the color of it’s skin are all pretty fucked up.

Lol. Welcome to chasing a pipe dream or crippling depression.

The answer is largely as simple as socialism plus Kant with some secular Jesus because any system that condones human exploitation will eventually implode due to psychopaths’ willingness to sacrifice others for power.

But literally basically everything is done wrong to maximize exploitation. Housing, schooling, medicine, food… All fucked to make the richest richer.

Liberalism is the slow road to fascism.

And this is how social media hijacks brains.

I work 4x10 wfh and I’m more productive than the people that go into the office despite spending no less than half the day playing videogames.

If the system had any legitimacy, Trump wouldn’t have been given office the first time due to violating both emoluments clauses much less allowed on the ballot the second time while being an impeached felon.

Even if you think the results of this election are legitimate (both Trump and Elon have as much as said they are not) the GOP has made no secret of P2025 or their goals of cracking down on blue states in future elections.

The slow road to fascism still leads to fascism. Democrats and Republicans are the gas pedal of imperialism. One pushes softly. One pushes hard. Before you argue consider the insanity of Greenland is basically exactly how we took Hawaii. Democrats are largely just good cop convincing you to fuck yourself over for the system. http://politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

Firstly, there are many reasons third parties aren’t possible but the largest is basically the Constitution mandating simple majority voting which naturally falls into a duopoly. A third party either cripples or replaces the one it’s closest to. CGPGrey can explain it further: https://www.cgpgrey.com/politics-in-the-animal-kingdom

Then you have to understand Democracy is a political system and capitalism is an economic one. In simplest terms, capitalism is a small group of capitalists that own the factories and get all the profit set opposite a large group of workers that sell their lives an hour at a time. The US has a legal fiduciary duty to shareholders which basically means profit must always be maximized. This is the constant pressure on wages to stay down and prices to go up. That doesn’t sound inherently terrible until you read into SEC EDGAR filings and find out that the overwhelming majority of every privately traded company is basically owned by BlackRock and cellar boxing has been used to rob American pensions and cripple American businesses including cancer treatments. https://www.reddit.com/r/Superstonk/comments/owpfc3/will_the_real_gme_bbemg_please_stand_up_part_1/

A democracy relies upon educated, competent citizens. Educated, competent citizens think critically, get engaged in politics, want clean water, safe working conditions, and well paying jobs. All of those hurt profits. What more people need to understand is capitalism will always have an intrinsic need to undermine democracy.

What’s more, democracy undermines democracy when it’s a representative republic wherein only the wealthy can run for office on platforms approved by the wealthy. The DNC and RNC are both privately owned corporations that say who can run on that ballot. All the talk of term limits is further myopic, ignorant self sabotage as there is only a shortage of competent, principled people willing to spend their life in public service. There is no shortage of amoral self serving opportunists for corporations to push through election after election. Eventually you just lose the institutional memory of all the competent individuals.

We’re supposedly a nation of the people, by the people, for the people, but once Corporations became people, they became the only people that mattered. 75% of theft is corporate wage theft but you can’t arrest corporations because they don’t have hands.

This is without factoring in the decades conservatives have spent filling government with end of days dominionists and out right fascists.

This “blue no matter who” bullshit is a different flavor of “lesser evil” that got us here because you can’t fix a system when it’s working exactly as intended. The founding fathers never wanted Joe Everyman voting because they knew he was a fucking moron. Voting was limited to land owning gentry because they were wealthy enough to not have to work and were able to learn.

All of our failing points are intentional. They don’t want smarter people. They don’t want more people voting. They want servile minions.

I remember reading a study on this where all the scientists replaced their home ranges because the results were so bad.

I’ve never worked someplace it wasn’t the default.

Ask what every department wants. Say it’s too expensive. Get the sales team exactly what they want but then realize it does nothing for any other department. Spend 3x getting it modded to do half the features of what the other departments need. Push it live as soon as the database is copied over but before training anyone.

This is a good question but you’re going to get a wild range of information because of a number of factors.

That number is a good starting point but it’s likely low especially if you’re physically active or using a vegan/vegetarian source.

Also, something one must keep in mind is that the vast majority of research in the field is built on the fundamental assumption carbs should be the largest part of the diet which is likely wrong as the body seems to run better the less sugar you give it.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLE8LmUoWei5Qp5Nz7C4FMNs6hGNx7M3Jg