I think "it's human nature" is an excuse made by the ruling class to quell challenges to the system that benefits them.

Sociopathic hoarding and anti-social manipulation is an abberation that our system artificially elevates and rewards.

If we were culturally more hostile to attempts to rent out our lives and natural resources back to us, and didn't put zero-empathy profit hoarders on the front of magazines, things could be better.

I agree with you on group sizes though. When people are treated like hyper-specialized insects with ID numbers instead of identities, funneled into highly-specialized roles, every one a stranger to the other, something has gone horribly wrong.

Lol I see what you're getting at, but I'd argue that those (incredibly fun!) movies seem "prophetic" only by the same quality that makes them relatable and profound:

They're inspired by history. Just one example being how the prequel trilogy bears heavy resemblance to the governmental structure of ancient Rome, before, like Rome, collapsing from the inside from in-fighting and profiteering in an attempt to control the whole Galaxy, before becoming basically like various monarchies throughout history, that almost succeed in ruling the world (galaxy) by monolithic force.

It's why Firefly was such a success, when it flipped and futurized the American civil / revolutionary wars concept. It gives us something familiar enough to attach to, with twists that make it unique.

Edit: I welcome historians to correct any errors in my rather generalized understanding of history. I tried to get the point across while resisting research rabbit holes. ;)

Wow, that was smooth. Points for impact!

I wish these minds could have been put in charge for arguing for and hashing out a combined sensible economic system, as they might have had differing ideas, but all clearly wanted a system that was optimal for human beings to thrive in.

Instead, these fellows are deified as proxy prophets, excuses and motivations for wars and slavery, by those who seek to enrich themselves entirely at the majority's blood, sweat, and tears.

Trim federal spending, go into deflation, and drive the buying power of the currency up. This would allow people to pay down debts while maintaining standard of living.

My problem with this logic is the same problem I have when suited clowns claim they'll just raise prices on everything 300% if the minimum wage goes up by $2.

Say we "trimmed federal spending" (which is kinda its job as an entity, to spend towards the people, ideally), and somehow magically our already-printed simoleons became worth more per dollar...

What, besides intense federal regulations, would prevent bosses from just spinning this as some kind of crisis, and making it an excuse to pay us less because "each dollar is worth more now so you're making too much"?

"Entitlements" and "hand-outs" are necessary not because people are lazy, but because from a business perspective, jobs aren't worth doing anymore , but we do them anyway because we're forced to, if we want to participate in society at all.

TL;DR:

Basically, the solution is to tell the rent-seeking neo-gilded-age robber-barons of our day "Fuck you. Pay me." If they actually paid a fair wage for the profits their employees generate, we'd be able to "pay down debts while maintaining standard of living, and allow for a reduction of dependency on hand outs - which would allow for a further reduction in government spending."

That was a brilliant read.

I appreciated the nuance, and it even added a lot of perspective to the notion that Adam Smith's "capitalism" concept was not the evil and inhuman machine we experience today.

I've noticed this move to "technofeudalism" everywhere but didn't have a name for it. It's exhausting seeing how many services, products, businesses, whatever, all simply want to coast on monthly payments and lock-ins for what amounts to merely keeping the lights on.

The PetsMart thing was insidious. This surely solidifies the definition of "human resources": Seeking to control people as "assets" that generate profits like (proprietary) batteries.

It seems it should be a priority goal to undermine the corporate and wealthy's dominion over "assets." They'd be terrified of this, as they might actually have to do something besides acquire everyone else's hard work for a change!

Never heard of Qidi, thanks for sharing that! Bambu concerns me, frankly, from the "too good to be true in capitalism-land" standpoint.

They're obviously pretty quality built and do a great job off the shelf, but the closed source software is iffy to me too. I think some are suspicious they just don't want to reveal they're basically running tweaked Klipper lol. I'm lured by that temptation of not having to tweak and fiddle for weekends prospect too, but if I can't touch it at all or know how it works, my Ender3v2 still seems more appealing!

I'm concerned if other companies don't seriously step up their game, Bambu will reach market saturation and then go for the" enshittification rug pulling to impress investors" special.

Anyway don't want to be too negative, clearly people are enjoying those machines. But the maker community definitely needs to be ready to raise a riot if Bambu starts taking notes from HP / Apple / John Deere. :)

Yeah, it's not bad! If it's got a good clean view it can tell you when things start to look a little sus before disaster strikes haha.

It's even self-hostable, and a modest dedicated graphics card can be used to run the LLM completely locally. I haven't been able to get that running on my server yet though. (Nvidia drivers. Agh)

Otherwise they're pretty "freemium", which is understandable.

I've been out of the game lately though. :)

It used to be Spaghetti Detective, but they wanted to be trendy so it's "Obico" I think now lol

I extremely miss Craig Ferguson...

Okay you SCARED me there. He might not do "late late show" anymore but he's still around. :)

I got to see his stand-up live once and he was hilarious.

"Everything's shiny, Cap'n, not to fret!"

"You told me these packages were supported for another 6 weeks!"

"Your last Pacman -Syu was 6 months ago, Cap'n!"

"My OS don't crash. If it crashes, you crashed it!"

First Brock's love of "Jelly Donuts" that look suspiciously like onigiri, now this!

berated during a meeting with my boss a month later

A MONTH later. I'm willing to bet it didn't even impact anything, and boss wouldn't even have remembered it happened at all if they didn't scribble it down in their little black book.

Good job getting the heck out of there.

I had a boss like this too. Would never just talk to me about any concerns, they would act like everything is fine and then suddenly blindside me with a laundry list of petty complaints they've logged over like 4 months.

All it proved was they spent more time side-eyeing my work and spying on me than doing their actual job. When they weren't wandering off to the other side of the building chatting up other management about nothing, for hours on end, while I handled their job too, alone every day, of course.

Not all people are bad. But the intersection between stupid and evil tends to converge in management.