Some people love their country like a child loves their parent. Perfect, the strongest smartest ever, can do no wrong. Any criticism is an attack and unacceptable.
Some people love their country like a peer. They see their strengths and their flaws, and they want them to grow and improve. Sometimes that means hard conversations and difficult changes. But they do want what’s best for them.
Maybe something that reflects on all the loss. Dead from COVID, chaos from government programs shutting down, allies betrayed, and a mirror in the center that says something like “you did this”.
I enjoyed the simplicity of old video game RPGs where the price of the item directly scaled with the value of the item. Armor for 1000gp was just straight out better than the one for 300gp.
If we were all in the room, we could strangle Sam Altman or whatever other capitalist dog was calling the shots.
I suppose you this touches on how I’m in the US, where everything is skewed towards insane nonsense. It would be extremely unusual to find a conservative of any sort here that would support anything remotely anti-car, for example. Even if it would save money.
Not a fan. It admittedly can be an amusing toy - type something in and wow look what it did! But the costs are high, and our society isn’t a utopia where people don’t need to labor for survival.
Maybe if we were post scarcity it wouldn’t matter that much. But we’re not, and this AI stuff is going to hurt labor, benefit the ownership class, and probably be mildly bad for end users too.
They’re in favour of things like universal medicare/dental care, because those programs are shown to be a net benefit fiscally and socially.
I’ve never met someone who was “socially liberal fiscally conservative” who believed this.
They’re usually pro good things, but they don’t want to pay for them, so they’re not actually pro those things at all.
“Small government” and “private individuals will handle it” typically means it just won’t happen.
Assuming they’re American: they’re an idiot. Sorry. They don’t understand how things are intertwined, and you can’t have social justice for free. If you let laissez-faire policies be, you don’t get socially liberal outcomes. You get capitalist dystopia.
Any plan that depends on “and then the common person develops discerning taste” is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time
I was going to say something similar to that too. Specifically, the consolidation of power means there’s less smaller companies taking risks. You’d think a big company with Disney money could afford to be weird and experimental, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
I say this despite enjoying superhero movies
Others have touched on this but this also feels downstream from the capitalist hellscape. Most people don’t have a lot of spending money. Movies are pricey and a bad money:time ratio.
I bet if wages were up, more people would go to the theater. I don’t want to spend $40 to watch a movie and eat popcorn, but I’d consider it for $3.
I used to use RPG.net a lot. They have pretty strict moderation, which keeps the place from turning into some kinds of shit holes. But you also can’t tell someone they’re a fool, or all Republicans are traitors. Takes some getting used to, but is probably worth it.
Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.
Also frustrating: how end users don’t care. You can explain how Uber mistreats employees or Airbnb causes rents to rise double digit percentages, but they’ll just be like “oh but it’s convenient”.
Twitter is a Nazi bar but “it has such good memes!”
If people cared just a little more, things could be so much better.
every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income.
One irritating note on this: there’s a limit to how much social security tax you pay per year. So if you’re making a lot of income, you just stop paying this tax partway through the year.
This is pants on head stupid and regressive. It should be the other way around. Your first, let’s say $10,000 should be exempt from the tax, and it should get steeper as income goes up.
Rich guy absolutely does not need the bump in take home pay from hitting the cap. Poor guy definitely could use the extra income early income not being taxed.
I’m just so mad all the time about people licking the boots of the rich. They don’t need breaks! They’re rich! They’re going to be fine!
I am skeptical of things that sound too good to be true, and also I feel like the current US government would fuck it up, but maybe things won’t be terrible forever.
I read this and the other linked article about how bad musk is at poker and I’m so mad now. He’s such a fucking fool.
If you think ‘voluntary’ is acceptable for anything important you want corporations to do, you have no business making decisions about real life. If it’s voluntary, they’ll only do it if it benefits them.
If those Internet duds that get mad about black people in video games spent like half that energy being mad about, like, wage theft, we’d be so much better off.
Meanwhile, the US is trying to go to 60 hour workweeks and 6-day workweeks.
Labor needs to organize, and the rich need to be broken.