The idea that medieval peasants somehow had more free time than the average modern american still is absolute bullshit
Paleontologists will tell you otherwise. One reason you had all those giant cathedrals going up in the Medieval Era stemmed from the enormous excess labor just wasting around in between harvest seasons.
Agricultural surplus creates free time. It’s the whole reason why people opt for farming over hunter gathering.
There’s a staunch libertarian view on Lemmy, wherein people will advocate for personal liberty ahead of technological progress. The Country Mouse has it better than the City Mouse, because he can own a gun and drive a big truck and smoke weed without the neighbors ratting him out to the cops. The lack of basic amenities - subways and school systems and high speed internet and big medical centers - is worth the increased personal autonomy.
The “Serfs had it better” trope takes this to its logical conclusion. Rolling back the technological frontier 500 years is worth it, because the surveillance/police state and the corporate oligopoly even on the fringe of society is seriously that bad.
I don’t agree. But I can’t really argue against it. This is just a personal preference. Its not any kind of objective truth.
So you’re not really a serf if you’ve got plumbing? The labor relationship with your employers isn’t the issue?
The dark cowboy rides again.
Showing up in Alberta with your COEXIST bumper sticker and immediately getting shanked by a dozen MAGA heads with Nazi tattoos
Are you saying you disagree with the Biden’s Green Power expansion
I disagree with his fossil fuel expansion. The green power plan is being promoted, first and foremost, by market dynamics as wind/solar drop below coal/oil and the demand for AI continuous power reignites nuclear.
But our actual carbon emissions aren’t falling. We’re producing more carbon today than when Biden took office. And the demand for electricity means even more fossil fuel consumption into the future.
I can’t imagine being pro-wildfire.
Then you’ll love living in a desert.
Or thinking Biden’s actions 50 years ago are a negative mark on his presidency.
Asking the fox to guard the hen house for the fifth year in a row, hoping for different results.
Biden shut down the Keystone XL Pipeline
Biden protected forests made vulnerable by the previous Trump admin
Biden attempted three different times to cancel all student debts
Joe Biden’s Role in Creating the Student Debt Crisis Stretches Back to the 1970s
Etc.
Biden was a good president.
Counterpoint: No he wasn’t.
He didn’t do everything I wanted
He signed off on a handful of bills that reinflated a depressed economy one more time, while the quality of life in the US continued to decay. Then he threw vast fortunes away on Silicon Valley boondoggles and foreign military interventions, while climate change ravaged the interior of the country. Finally, he cemented a swath of Trump Era policy on immigration, Latin American foreign policy, abortion, and voting rights through a combination of continued reinforcement and inaction.
And to top it all off, he insisted on running in a virtually uncontested primary, then fumbled the nomination to his woefully unprepared VP a few months before the election.
One final point. If you look at states that have increased their reliance on revenue from fossil fuel extraction and you look at states that trended more conservative during the last eight years, you’ll find a troubling trend. O&G money has been powering the GOP since Reagan. But every subsequent Democrat in office has worked to make the industry more lucrative for businesses that conspire towards their ouster. Its been a recipe for defeat for a generation. Also, not terrible good for ecological conditions or foreign policy.
you being able to only get one internet service provider at that apartment, despite that being illegal now
Your option is the Mediocre Internet everyone uses or the Shit Internet that exists pretty much exclusively to fulfill this requirement. Fuck Windstream, somehow managed to be worse than Comcast.
Work more night shifts. Date more goths.
Cut the toxic diurnal people out of your life.
My wife is predicting a civil war.
I don’t think the police or the military are particularly divided on who to support. A coup maybe.
But liberals won’t be putting up a fight once the media starts labeling them Hamas/Hezbollah and you can’t post your pink pussy hat on Instagram without getting put on a list.
Any countries who are not sliding into fascism that would be interested in hiring two well-educated adults?
There’s always Ireland. Mexico is looking pretty good right now, given the flood of cheap imports and the resurgent manufacturing sector.
Depends on who wins. They’re only insurrections and riots when brown people and leftists do them.
The next J6/Charleston will be covered more favorably than the '64 March on Washington was, now that Bezos et al have shown their colors.
You live through enough of these “Most Pivotal Elections” and the effect is muted.
I remember Bush winning in 2004 vividly, the soul-crushing realization that Americans were ready to continue the relentless slaughter of Arabs for another four years with a fuck-you kicker to anyone LGBT looking to come out of the shadows and get married. (Nevermind the shady vote counting in Ohio).
That was after the 2000 election was stolen in full view of the public by a nakedly corrupt court.
“How could so many people be so blaise about this shameless disregard for democracy, civil rights, and rule of law?”
But then 2008 rolls along and suddenly I’m surrounded by conservative revanchists who want to talk about secession, because a black guy just won the presidency. And it begins to occur to me… “Oh, I’m just living in a fascist country”.
Now, having familiarized myself with US history a bit more, another fascist winning in one more corrupted and propaganda soaked election cycle makes perfect sense.
It is now easier to identify political whackadoos and disengage
I would have said that four years ago, but between Elon’s Twitter and COVID anti-vax hysteria, it feels like crazy people are coming out of the woodwork.
multiplying $5,000 a day by so many years is a silly comparison
Sure.
it ignores the dominating factors to building wealth
It ignores the existence of wealth by focusing on income. And it neglects where income comes from.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist but also they don’t exist because they stuff X dollars under their mattress every day.
Something of a joke about the modern billionaire is how much debt they’re carrying around. You don’t become a billionaire by having a high salary. You become a billionaire by getting access to enormous volumes of low interest credit, in order to monopolize a limited stock of productive capital. It isn’t like being an employee with a sky-high salary so much as it is a member of an elite club with access to amenities nobody else is allowed to use.
Gradually inflating the currency
Gradual inflation that happens under the national growth rate is fine. You need more currency moving at a faster rate in an expanding economy.
Gradual inflation in a contracting national growth rate is a huge problem.
Thomas Picketty lays this all out mathematically in “Capitalism in the 21st Century”, and builds a strong economic case for a high graduated tax rate as a means of tying inflation back to real economic growth.
Where are you getting 4% annual compound returns, though? That’s faster than the historical growth in global GDP over the equivalent time period.
This but unironically. I’ve got a coworker who took vacation days to help build a temple up in Pennsylvania. He was incredibly proud of his contribution and happy to participate.