Thanks!

BTW nice meme. :D (yoink!)

Pro tip as a 3D printer owner/user though:

Oftentimes for small elements like this you can just contact the company and they'll send you a knob or whatever. (Probably won't be that lucky on repair parts though)

But I also enjoy the pride of seeing things I've repaired and longevitized with my own equipment. :)

A while back I would use those local secondhand auctions that mostly dealt in amazon returns. (As opposed to directly buying from amazon.)

I'm surprised how everything would be intact for a lot of items, but most commonly if I got bamboozled, it was something like, everything is fine except for missing a set of screws, or a single crucial knob or something.

People literally will just order the same thing again, pull the part they missed, and instantly return it. Which is especially scummy when it's no longer a secret these returns just get destroyed or incinerated for no reason.

It's just disgusting consumer-brain behavior. (Amazon, of course, being sheer evil, enjoys the market advantage of a "no questions" return policy.)

If it was a very specialty piece beyond a simple hardware store run, a lot of times I've been lucky enough to politely contact the manufacturer of a thing, sometimes I tell them I got it as a gift so they don't ask for a proof of purchase. And they'll just send me the missing bit. Free. Super simple. The most I had to do was take a picture of the model tag.

The fact that this was too much for people to bother with grosses me out.

Surplus clothes.

In highschool I liked having a lot of storage. So I liked things with pockets. Cargo pants were my jam! Turns out, military surplus BDU pants are somewhat cheap and VERY durable for around $30-$45 a pair. They can survive a tumble or two, can be repaired, wash easy, and breathe well depending on the blend.

Outdated or impractical camo is a fun aesthetic (can be punk as heck) and olive drab is a lovely color. (Thankfully I was never cringey enough to strut around in actively deployed uniform patterns unless it was on an airsoft field haha.)

Oh yeah, I have one of those funny tall-lanky bodies that you can't department shop for pants for. Tac-pants come in a huge variety of fits.

I also hated shoe shopping. So a sturdy pair of combat boots lasted me ages without falling apart, were all-terrain, and supported the ankles! These boots were made for wear, so I never had to be upset over scuffs.

The BEST part? No (visible) brand names.

I still have some of those pants I wear since I graduated in the early 00's. The ones with more cotton are a little threadbare now though. I just need some basic colors and my everday casual wardrobe is filled out. Acquiring replacements doesn't break the bank either.

Form and function. Durability and mobility. Picking up some groceries or hiking the mountains. Incredibly versatile.

I don't understand how the fashion industry continues to con people into expensive sweatshopped single-ply polyester that turns the wearer into a walking douchey billboard.

I say we let him have it. No, seriously! Just like we should let Musk have his Mars mission.

Give 'em a little certificate. "Look, you now own the thing! Good job!"

...Drop them off to survey their spoils...

...and frickin' leave 'em there to be forgotten forever.

Like everyone's bigoted elder who tones it down just a notch until their Great Leader is in charge again and they feel like they get carte blanche.

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

--Robert A. Heinlein

Yeah I don't agree 100% with this author or anyone, really, but I always return to this quote when I watch the world attempting to corral the magnificent potential wonder-beings that are humans, into hyper-specialized hive-pod roles.

All the jobs out there that actually pay seem to want people who were bred and raised their entire lives for that stupidly specific role to the exclusion of all else. Humanity's versatility is our strength, and once again, the rich want to covet it while making the rest of us into specialized parts for their machines.

So my answer is "learning." A lot of people don't know how to learn new things, and stop trying, probably because their schooling failed them.

They are then frustrated easily by inconvenience, and incapable of solving problems or finding help. This is a brain gone to waste.

A lot of people pick one specialization and decide to just not learn anything else and that's the most depressing thing in the world to witness. (I met a lot of older people who just stopped learning things after what must've been highschool. Huge yikes...)

Fix things. Make things. Fail a lot. Troubleshoot. PLAY.

Try whistling. Can you snap your fingers yet? How about training your way up to a handstand, maybe? Hey, yo-yos are fun.

Don't like guns? Go learn how to safely use one anyway just for perspective. Cars? Try learning your own (simple!) repairs. Never learned to ride a bike? Best time is now!

Try planning a hangout. Join a meetup that sounds vaguely interesting. Learn how to tie knots. Learn how to stop trauma bleeding. Sew a cloak or something maybe. Teach somebody else things you know!

Don't limit yourself by your first impressions of things you've never experienced. So many people look at something and just say "I can't. I'm not that person. I won't like it probably."

Our modernization led by ruling classes has stripped us of so many experiences and then sold them back to us with admission fees. So much human potential and knowledge has been siloed away and sold back to us as "goods and services", while we're relegated to being "consumers."

Human beings were made to do a multitude of tasks, and use their strengths to cooperate to the betterment of all, not to be alienated and separated by specific specializations they aren't allowed to stray from.

Seriously, enjoy how much absolute potential you have instead of doing one thing you felt good at and being scared to try anything else.

Yep. Right there with you. With my upbringing if someone was silent around you, they were seething at you for something you did. And you know what it was! (You probably don't, actually. Good luck guessing.)

This makes things unnecessarily interesting when I have long car rides with my naturally-introverted wife and I start feeling like I've done something terribly wrong when she doesn't have much to say.

Haha my laundry room door says this.

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.

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!