• 2 Posts
  • 33 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle
  • the US is a fractal scam. At every level, everything is an attempt to extract money from ill-informed “suckers”, from the running of the government, to the prices of supermarket groceries, to the tipping culture at restaurants, to even finding a place to put your car [1]. Every single thing is someone’s grift. In order to function in America, you need to be willing to be suckered to some extent. There’s no way around it. Unfairness is baked into every transaction, and increasingly more social interactions.

    What a quote. I will add that “we” also like to believe we have the most fair system. And in many ways, the “gotchas” are much more hidden and systemic than other countries. For example, you might be scammed haggling with someone in Southeast Asia, but we get scammed everyday by credit card companies making bank on every single transactions.













  • I don’t think this is actually as bad as people say.

    It’s not that we won’t have drinking water. Municipal water use is tiny! And provided with enough incentives (higher costs) people will use less water. And this can be done in very reasonable ways by issuing water tiered rates.

    Agricultural water use, is a whole different topic. However, until we can incentives better water management on our massive agricultural lands, it’s only going to get worse.






  • Consequence of insulting the business that employs you is that you’ll get fired. To limit the consequences here is to restrict the property rights of the business to hire and fire the individuals they hire.

    More realistic scenario, if you’re an insufferable person spewing nonsense all day, people in your social circle (and those near you physically) will distance themselves from you. That’s the natural consequence of anti-social behavior.

    There is no speech without consequence. To have speech without consequence is to expect cause without effect.


  • I can share the perspective of why I joined beehaw instead of the other services.

    I used to be on the side of free-speech maximalists, but after seeing communities crumble because of toxicity driving out people, I also came to see the same problems with social media that the beehaw folks see.

    On anon/pseudo anon places, the social structure to correct anti-social behavior does not exist like in real life. So to create an environment that’s tolerable to the majority of people, you have to isolate and punish the bad actors.

    I’m past the age where i want to be spending time on things and places where people are hateful and mean all the time.