Hey, that’s not fair to drug dealers. I’ve heard many kind stories about dealers helping people. If something happens to their customers then they can’t buy anymore. If something happens to Reddit mods, they just replace them.
Especially given the scabs mods (no, actually scabs was right the first time:-) that they brought in. Shudder - it’s foxes running the henhouse now, there will be blood.
From what I’ve been told, out of the three active subs I modded that got yanked and restaffed with whoever, only one isn’t a bot ridden mess.
And that one is kinda shit (again, that’s second hand) now.
Not that I was some paragon of modding, it’s just that you can’t have random assholes put in place after actual users are pissed off and expect things to work out well.
The kind of person that would step up and mod your subs after first the protests and then you being booted… let’s just say that they would not be “random”. All across Reddit those people that mods were forced to ban for harassment of others, who REFUSED to follow the rules, are now sitting on top of the thrones - but not to serve the community, and rather to see how they can get it to serve them, just exactly in line with Huffman’s vision:-(.
Don’t worry about your subs though - those who decided to remain were warned, so it is on their own heads. Your subs essentially died, and what remains are their animated corpses:-(. At which point no wonder they seem a little “different” now!:-P - a little less usable, less friendly, less relevant.
Meanwhile, we seem to be doing JUST FINE over here on the Fediverse:-). I’m far happier with this than I ever was with Reddit (which I joined quite late, 4 years ago). Most niche topics are basically gone over here, but discussing general topics is actually possible now whereas with Reddit it was not (at least, not without a LARGE possibility of being hit with a veritable army of hostile commenters, almost regardless of what was said or where it was delivered).
Edit: this is not relevant in any way shape or form but… I wanted to add it anyway, enjoy:-). JO
Neat explanation. Thanks. I also modded some communities over there.
It’s not only reddit i‘m seeing this happen on. At work, on discord, people with questionable morals start to get into power and take over from those who built stuff up.
It’s like we have an epidemic of the dark triad. Being manipulative, impulsive and brutal seems to get more and more normalized through our economic system.
There is nothing new under the sun - technology may be creating new avenues for people to rise up through, but the reasons for their actions remain the same. In Germany, it was the rise of radio that allowed Hitler to, for the first time in human history, bypass the established rule of that nation and talk directly to the populace, which he leveraged to become the ruling authority. At some point he was even banished, but managed to return. The similarities b/t him and DT are eerily similar, and yet those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
But as for our economy, on that note I think we are following more along the lines of old Rome. Surely that worked well for them, with zero problems, and therefore we will be safe from any harm, forever… right? R-r-right!? :-P
What’s odd about it is that the founding fathers directly warned us that this would happen. We simply did not care. Specifically, they warned about opening up voting to the “uneducated masses”, rather than the intelligentsia who had sufficient leisure time to think through the issues as they voted, not needing to toil in a field for long hours in the hot sun every single day. Do we have the means to now convert EVERYONE into the intelligentsia, with mechanization e.g. robots can do the vast majority of effort to farm our crops, and tools like the internet that puts information at our fingertips without even having to so much as turn the page of a physical book? In any case, there are those who do not WANT knowledge, and yet still want the privilege of being leaders nonetheless - e.g. those who showed up on January 6 to “defend the Constitution”, while at the same time admitting that they had never in fact read it, not even so much as once.:-(
I get it. I have the same exact drives inside of me, as do you, as do we all. The difference is that some of us are aware, care about that, and even attempt to fight those dark impulses - to be lazy, greedy, and the like. Sometimes anyway:-). Whereas those behind the scenes seem hardened in their resolve, to intentionally go in the opposite direction… and since most of the people seem to either want to join them or at least not oppose them, they are winning. i.e. Elon Musk and Steve Huffman both.
And as a former mod, you KNOW - it takes ENORMOUS amounts of effort to fight against that. It is SO MUCH easier to destroy than it is to create, or even to maintain.:-(
Yes, I agree on most points, especially comparing the different populists/fascists.
But radio was new, as is the internet and now we have a word for this behavior. Psychology shows us why people like musk rise to power.
Instead of taking away voting rights from people we deem „too stupid“, we should hospitalize people without a moral compass like we should do with serial killers to be instead of sending them to the electric chair afterward (or prison for life in europe)
If someone shows parts of the dark triad, they should be barred from any office that has any power over any other human being.
Are they great strategists? Yes! Are they unable and/or unwilling to empathise with their victims? Also yes.
Give them strategy work but dont let them take care of people. Its not that hard.
I don’t think it’s about stupidity per se - and I am a working-class person myself, thus have to spend many hours of every day doing my work activities, with less time leftover to devote to such things, so possibly I might be recusing myself even from this? - and rather I think it is about people who are educated vs. not. e.g. those who can spot logical fallacies vs. not, and if some subject is about to be voted on, someone who can understand at least the bare minimum of what is being talked about (is trickle down good? bad? neutral?). Anyway, that ship has sailed… I was just saying that the founders DID warn us, and we DID ignore them, and there ARE alternatives other than restricting voting, i.e. making a liberal arts style of education free for anyone who wants it.
About hospitalizing people without a moral compass, I have a better idea: why don’t we put them in charge of literally everything, everywhere? :-P Unfortunately this is no joke, b/c that seems to be what tends to happen.:-( Shareholders vote with their dollars, and more often than not they seem to choose to invest into people who rise up and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to make profits.
“Stupid”, “immoral”, “evil”, these are not just words, but in another sense they are, b/c what matters is how the world truly works - one principle of that being survival of the fittest. If we killed off the top half of all people in the world after sorting them by IQ, the remaining people might be more “stupid”, but they would be alive, in comparison to the alternative. Conversely, people such as Robert Iger the current CEO of Disney who has run the company for almost two decades, tend to remain in power at the behest of the shareholders, who could vote to expunge him at any time if they wanted. You might say “evil” or “greedy”, but they say “me likey, and want to keep”.
What you are missing though it that it is not just those INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE who are “greedy” or “evil” or whatever, it is the entire SYSTEM - e.g. if Robert Iger ever were to die (he is getting older now…), he would be immediately replaced, by someone who similarly meets the expectations, nay the DEMANDS, of the stockholders. So no, I don’t think it is anywhere remotely close to as easy as you describe. The people who own stock in that company may not be okay with owning a slave personally, but they are quite happy to benefit/profit from the misery of the workers who are forced to churn out that assembly-line whimsey, under what you and I might call “evil” working conditions, but which they call “cost-effective”.
So be careful with what you wish for. You might want those people prevented from taking office, but in turn it is THEY who are likely to abuse their power in order to prevent US from holding office. Might makes right. I mean… it ABSOLUTELY does NOT, and yet if you are not willing to fight for what you believe, those who are willing to take action will win the day. In one sense “they” even have a semi-admirable trait then that you and I lack: humility, to bow before the rules of the universe and work according to its precepts, rather than attempting to impose their own particular brand of morality onto it.
I always thought it would would be nice to put an array of leds behind a diffusing panel in each of my walls/ceilings. With as much control as reasonable over color/brightness and if it wouldn’t be insanely expensive with individual or at least regional control over them. Basically instead of drywall, panels that can be individually removed for maintenance.
But I don’t know what property of dry wall I would need them to mimic, would it be better to mount those panels in front of and still have dry wall rather than replace it?
I’m sure it would be pretty expensive, though not sure exactly how expensive. But it would make for some pretty nice options for ambience or mood lighting. And you can always turn the wall ones off or leave them super dim if you just want the room to look mostly normal. But you could program it to have like clouds rolling by over a green field, super diffuse of course, like you had your eyes unfocused. Or just pick a new wall color every day.
I guess you’d need acrylic or glass panels, but that wouldn’t feel or act like a regular wall. I think your biggest problem would be power consumption. You’ll probably be surprised how much power those LEDs can consume, especially on high brightness
Well, I suppose it’s about distribution and power levels. I mean currently my whole house is lit by LED, just in traditional sockets. But they aren’t expensive. And LEDs are more power efficient at lower power than their max. So having 10’000 leds that are rated for 0.5 watt each, running at 10% of that, wouldn’t be that expensive to run. About 500 watts plus the inefficiency of the system as a whole. But would be a similar or greater total amount of light as my current bulbs.
The initial upfront cost will certainly be the main cost issue. And yeah, acrylic panels is what I was thinking for diffusing. I don’t need it to feel like a wall, but I would need to know if drywall has some immutable property I would need to replicate, or at least make sure is still something that acrylic would take care of.
Edit: it looks like drywall is primarily used due to it’s flame resistance. So I would probably want to keep it. Acrylic is technically tough to ignite, but once it does ignite, it burns vigorously. So that is probably the main problem. Even keeping drywall behind it, acrylic covering every wall could be a very bad idea in the case of a fire hot enough to get it started.
Edit 2: Frosted tempered glass would be fine in that regard, but significantly more expensive. Ah wells, my VR house will have to have it instead. Much cheaper to do in VR, lol.
Or as some of us on the spectrum call it: the overstimulation aisle!
I respect your preference but live in fear of it. I have to walk briskly down that aisle, I’m pretty sure I would actually have a mental breakdown if my house was that bright, lol.
We went the other way. Replaced every bulb we could find with a lower wattage equivalent. Lit the living room with those flicker flame bulbs so it’s like being in a fire-lit cave at night. Replaced some more lights with dimmable salt lamps. Hung up Christmas lights in other places. There is virtually never a time after sunset when a room in my house is fully lit.
I’m ignorant, and maybe I shouldn’t ask this in a meme community, but wouldn’t a UBI become the new $0?
Like all the corporations now know we get x-amount more so now prices are adjusted to take a portion of that across all sectors, and now I’m back to not being about to afford the same things as before? Idk I don’t have an econ degree.
I think one of the most common sources of confusion about economics these days is not drawing the line between a market corrupted by some price-fixing cartel, and a free market where actual competition takes place.
Lots of people just assume collusion in all markets. I think that’s a cartoonishly simplistic view of the world, but you gotta remember lots of people assume “capitalism” refers to the thing better called “a price fixing cartel”.
They will, but then there are landlords who can jack up prices for no reason and you’ll pay them because you don’t want to be homeless. Landlords win, everyone else loses.
No because taxation would be adjusted so the average person is no better off.
It’s about raising the lowest earners to a minimum level that they’re able to live on, without making them jump through hoops or prove they are poor or prove they have been looking for work for 40 hours a week or some bullshit.
The way I think about it is by creating a scenario. We give 100% of people $1000 dollars (just for sake of argument). Some people use this for groceries, others for car payments, others for investments. Some people don’t even realize they got that money bc they were so rich. Some people can afford to pay for school supplies for kids. They key point is not everyone is using it for the same thing.
The reason it sounds like it should become the new zero is bc it does happen in some situations. If the government gave everyone that rents $100, then landlords will raise rent by $100 a month later. The main difference between the two is how specific the scope of the money is.
Yes, there would be economic changes (not necessarily downsides) such as higher inflation due to government spending, but also increased GDP which will stimulate the economy drastically. It will lead to higher unemployment, not bc people stop needing to work, but bc they can quit their second job or focus on taking care of kids full time (which that actually doesn’t change unemployment, but it would change the workforce numbers).
I am not an economics major or anything, but I tried to give reasons to explain why we would expect these changes to happen in the real world.
UK gave away a lot of money during the pandemic to support low earners, it backfired real hard.
Governments should invest into education so people can move to more productive jobs which pay more money. That will improve the lives of everyone. There should be no low skilled jobs in developed countries. Giving free money instead is always a bad idea.
I don’t think that mechanism you’re referring to automatically finds its new equilibrium right back where you started.
Let’s take rent for instance. All the current renters in lowest income bracket now have $1000/mo more to spend.
Next income bracket up now has $800 more to spend. Not because the UBI is varying, but because the tax people are paying into the UBI is varying. So this next bracket up is putting $200 into it as taxes and getting their $1000 check. At a certain point, there are the people who break even. And above that, people are paying more into the system than they’re getting back. That’s worth mentioning.
But focusing on this lowest income bracket as if it’s a little segmented, separate economy. Like a slice, to analyze it.
Town with 100 people. Let’s say there’s 105 units of housing, making for a teeny bit of pressure on landlords via competition. The landlords live elsewhere; ultra simple model here. Each of the 100 people gets $1000 more to spend. Fuck it, all they’re spending it on is rent. It’s the only thing they have to buy.
Well, there’s still competition between the landlords. If a landlord’s got an empty unit, he can offer it for $200 less than the other guy and get a tenant in there. Excess supply is good for consumer negotiating power.
But also, let’s say all units just go up by $1000/mo, and swallow up the UBI.
Then other developers now have a new equation in terms of the costs and benefits of building new housing.
Maybe now that you can charge $1500 for an apartment instead of $500, it’s worth it to build a new apartment building. It’s become more profitable.
So someone builds a new apartment building, and there’s 120 housing units for those 100 renters. Now you’ve got 20 desperate landlords (or one landlord with 20 un-rented units) willing to take say $1000 instead of $1500.
That pushes the price of rent back down.
Of course it doesn’t actually sway wildly like this. Every player thinks ahead about all the moves that can be made.
Like if your apartment building is profitable at $1500 but not at $500, what’s the cutoff? Maybe if rents drop below $1200 your new apartment building is going to lose money.
There’s some equilibrium point, and that’s what the market price settles into, as people finding themselves far from that point find it profitable to move toward it. (You make more money renting out five units at $1000 than you make renting out two units at $1500 - lowering the price is profitable here).
So now to crack this model open again, what is this “other place” where these landlords are coming from to invest new money in housing?
That’s where we bring in the higher income tiers, the ones who pay more into UBI than they receive out. The money is coming from up there. In those places, the people have less money than they did before, and so it is becoming less profitable to fulfill their needs. Maybe the amount you can get for a luxury apartment in manhattan drops from $50k to $49k per month.
Ultimately, resources used to fulfill demands, get slowly and steadily re-allocated to serve money’s new center of gravity, which is slightly lower than before.
Prices go up for poor people goods, but not enough to eat all the income. And the new amount of money flowing improves the offering, even at the same price levels, by bringing more investment overall into those industries.
Not really. It’s not magical money that just appears.
It’s redistributed money.
Things may increase in price, not because of greed, but because supply and demand jumped dramatically. Think of all the people who now have money to buy random things like treats or toys.
That’s not a bad thing! Suddenly, companies need to hire more people to increase supply, because people have resources to spend.
Expensive stuff still exists. No matter what. But the bare minimum quality of life increases dramatically.
I walked into that aisle recently and got such a warm feeling of comfort and nostalgia I almost started crying. I can’t even explain why. I love it so much.
I think it is because when you see it for the first time as a kid, it leaves such an impact that whenever you see it again, you feel nostalgic. I personally feel the same when I go through the carpet section and seing all the rolls of carpets hanging on the walls.
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