I work in the development office of a tiny city that’s surrounded by a major city. It’s an enclave for the mega-wealthy. Literally every household is at least millionaires, and we have our share of billionaires.
It’s surreal doing code enforcement on people you see in international news, or getting a call about potholes from a Hollywood director. Mundane civic stuff, but with extremely weird, powerful, entitled people.
Also, the houses we review are insane. We were doing irrigation inspections the other day and a lot of the sprinkler system served arboretums (plural) inside the house.
There’s one I was reviewing that has 3 bedrooms, but 14 bathrooms. Because they have galleries, a library, wine cellar bigger than most houses, the staff kitchen, etc.
Our municipal code has separate ordinances for Guesthouses and Servant’s Quarters (not allowed to be as big if it’s servant quarters).
We have a family that bought a 10 million dollar property to tear it down and build a private soccer field for their kids to use.
We had a homeowner cut down a bunch of historic trees to make room for a new patio, resulting in a 6-figure fee for illegally removing the trees. We dropped off the citation, and they pulled out a checkbook and paid the fine in about a minute.
Rich people live in a different world, and I drive there daily.
Why do I do it? It pays half-again more than my previous city, and I occasionally get to say “no” to billionaires.
In a fair and equitable world, communities like this would not exist, because these people would not have that wealth.
All extreme wealth has been stolen from the working class. That’s the only way it can be obtained.
No disagreement here. I work there for the paycheck and make no illusions about it. Everyone on the entire staff feels the same way. We’re absolute professionals, but we hold zero personal loyalty to the city or its citizens. They may be super rich and have the power to crush any of us, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re all beneath us.
And, oddly enough, that attitude is why we’re good at our jobs. Rich assholes loving together are gonna have disputes, and having a city staff that looks down on them instead of being subservient like their household staff means we’re uniquely qualified to make them be better neighbors to each other.
Just this week, I got into an enforcement discussion with an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. It takes a special kind of officious prick to disarm entitled assholes and their lawyers with the power of bureaucracy.
For about 50 hours a week, I am that prick.
Trump fanatics
US politics.
SUVs
People being terrified of cities and public transit.
I’m terrified of public transit only because of my social/generalized anxiety disorder, otherwise I’d love to use buses and trains. I wish we had more passenger trains in the US.
I don’t know where you live, but in PDX it’s a hit or miss. If you go during rush hours on a work day in the suburbs, then you are mostly fine. Otherwise… You have high chances of being harassed by homeless people, spat on, threatened, leered at, smelling something awful. So yeah, not divorced of reality.
You just described the for-profit mental health crisis which only persists because it is for-profit healthcare is detached from reality
How does this knowledge help me take the train safely?
I live near Chicago, and the worst I’ve experienced is someone yelling or playing loud music. I’m not saying bad stuff never happens, but it’s much safer than driving (admittedly a very low bar).
Yeah I lived in Boston and never had problem with public transit, same in Europe. I guess left cost IS different and not in a good way.
Live in a city in the south where driving is required. Went to Chicago last year and decided to stick to public transit when we saw how much it cost to park. It was amazing. Sure some people were loud or smoking in the trains, but I could def live like that. Idk what everyone is complaining about with the 15 minute thing
I’m from the South and I always hated having to drive. I think it’s also nicer/safer to drive in a place with public transit than without, because some bad drivers know they’re bad drivers and will take another option if it’s available, plus it just means fewer cars on the road. No public transit just sucks for everyone.
Immigrant parent that hates new immigrants. Of course, he’s a trump supporter.
Religion, nothing but group psychosis
Could I have my beliefs respected, considering that I’m not like those bigots who do harm to others? I have no reason to shit you for being an atheist, so please just learn to respect my values, thank you. /lh
P.S.: what I mean it’s that I respect your perspective, but I’d appreciate it if you didn’t insult mine. Simple as that.
Belief in things without proof is called delusion, expecting people to respect those delusions is called religion
How many girls and boys across the world are literally missing a part of their body because of religious beliefs?
This is not part of my belief
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Whatever, atheist. If you can’t show respect to people you don’t have credibility. I’m not even jew, that’s a completely different thing that I don’t acossiate myself with.
Utter whiny nonsense. Respect has to be earned. You can get tolerance though, as long as you aren’t harming anyone.
This what I actually meant. Tolerance.
Belief is separate from fact.
Things atheists should stop saying 🔼
Telling other people what to do, how novel
On point for religious nutters, though.
You think you’re smart with these quips?
It was poignant, and you reacted to it like a sore loser, so yes, it was objectively clever
Reality is but a quip. If only it were that simple. Ignorance is bliss. Not equally nor any other fashion. There is belief in fairy tales and there is not.
Smarter than you? yes. Absolutely. You like to hunker down and talk to yourself with a very stern look on your face. You call it praying. You also like to let some old pedo effers dressed up in costumes waving a barely relevant internally inconsistent book of outdated medeival tribal ideas tell you what to do. You think accepting it without question at all, no matter how crazy it is-- faith-- is somehow a virtue. You’re a slave in a cult.
May your all powerful sky fairy strike me down if I’m telling any untruths here.
It’s not group psychosis or mental illness, true, but it is divorced from reality. Sadly, the human mind is capable generating demonstrably, obviously erroneous beliefs without suffering from significantly abnormal psychology.
Religion is a set of extremely successful myths, which have survived mainly by convincing people that you can’t be a good person without them, which frequently involves disparaging people of other beliefs as bad/evil.
In other words, a really shitty worldview.
Persistent delusions are actually a mental illness
But they’re not persistent delusions. Delusions are, by definition, NOT cultural in origin. This is something that gets pretty well drilled into you when you study abnormal psychology. There’s a difference between someone’s brain malfunctioning and them simply being possessed of outdated cultural beliefs or traditions. It’s why religious beliefs aren’t considered mental illness, but still believing in Santa Claus when you’re an adult would be.
that’s just them special casing it so that they can avoid calling it a mental illness.
It’s a persistent delusion fed to you by your parents, your parents feeding you it doesn’t change that it’s a delusion.
If someone raised their children to believe the tooth fairy was real and that everyone was going to lie and say that it wasn’t and that you have to believe anyway, that’d be a delusion, but religion is special because…? the only difference is that more people are doing it.
The only reason for the cultural exclusion is because they don’t want to define religion as a delusion, not because it isn’t one. It meets EVERY single other criteria.
No, the reason religion is excluded is because delusions aren’t supposed to reflect cultural conditioning. Delusions are, by their very definition, an abnormal brain process. Cultural beliefs are not abnormal brain processes, no matter how irrational they are.
Please understand that this exception is accepted by the entire field of psychology. If you disagree with it, you have 200 years of psychological debate and study to contend with. Don’t pretend you’ve read enough to claim you have grounds to disagree with something the entire field of psychology considers a settled issue. No matter how much you wish religion is a mental illness, it’s not. Sadly, the irrationality of religion is fully explainable within the bounds of normal human psychology.
No, the reason religion is excluded is because delusions aren’t supposed to reflect cultural conditioning. Delusions are, by their very definition, an abnormal brain process. Cultural beliefs are not abnormal brain processes, no matter how irrational they are.
That’s what i’m saying, the reason that cultural beliefs aren’t allowed to be delusions is simply because they don’t want to make religion a delusion. It’s common, so, it’s not a delusion. That’s the end of the reasoning. Should we really say that anything that’s commonly believed isn’t a delusion? I think that’s an exception made for a logical reason, it defends the field of psychology from culture, but cultures can share delusions.
Please understand that this exception is accepted by the entire field of psychology. If you disagree with it, you have 200 years of psychological debate and study to contend with. Don’t pretend you’ve read enough to claim you have grounds to disagree with something the entire field of psychology considers a settled issue. No matter how much you wish religion is a mental illness, it’s not. Sadly, the irrationality of religion is fully explainable within the bounds of normal human psychology.
The reason this exception exists is precisely as i’ve said, they’ve special cased it because they don’t want to define religion/cultural beliefs as mental illnesses. The very reason for this exception is because they don’t want it to count, not because it doesn’t meet every single other (much more important might I add) criteria.
they’re essentially going “yeah, these are delusions, but uh, enough people believe them and we don’t want to piss them off so here’s an exception”
I personally don’t think that’s valid at all, but I can see why they’d do it.
Just because a delusion is normal to have, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be a delusion.
religious beliefs aren’t considered mental illness
You’re right — it’s actually brain damage and cognitive impairment.
Damage to the prefrontal cortex resulting in cognitive inflexibility can result in a myriad of fixed beliefs—they’re not necessarily religious in nature.
And religious fundamentalism is a particular type of extreme religious belief; most people don’t hold to fundamentalism but are nonetheless religious, so the study doesn’t account for anywhere near all religiosity and certainly doesn’t refute the point that religious faith isn’t a form of mental illness.
I want to make something clear here: I’m an atheist and an antitheist, but I’m also a therapist and it really irks me when atheists try to conflate mental disorders with religion. It’s an example of atheists fueling their distaste for religion by giving in to amateurish ignorance about psychology. Learn what the fuck you’re talking about before trying to make claims that go against what all of the experts in a field of study agree upon. Honestly, atheists ought to know better.
The only thing atheists should stop doing is tolerating the nonsense of the religidiots.
And what’s this nonsense?
Belief without evidence
I mean, it’s the community that keeps people around. The rules and dogma push people who aren’t being served well by the community out.
So in group this is natural to say. But external, directed at religious peoples, it’s not going to do the work of bringing them into your community. It’s not welcoming and it serves to push people to build walls rather than promote a change in thinking.
So i think you’re right in the context of being in community with a believer, but the comment wasn’t about that to begin with.
Alternatively, it’s hard to see how much religion is pushed until you’re outside of it. It’s like the opposite of getting a new (to you) car or phone. When you are, all of a sudden you realize how saturated everything is with it. It’s like living off the end of the runway of an international hub airport, there’s no rest.
I don’t deny there’s an element of groupthink within the Christian community that keeps its participants ensnared in the system while also alienating potential partakers, but adding the word ‘psychosis’ - like the user i responded to did - is rather disrespectful of the Christian position. You’d be falling victim to the outgroup homogeneity bias where you perceive individuals separate from your in-group as being alike and less diverse than yours. Just because you see many delusional participants does not mean all participants are equally as delusional.
Classifying belief in Christianity as psychosis simply shows one’s ignorance as they think one can only be religious if they’re “insane” which is just not the case since there are many who participate in Christianity with perfectly reasonable reasons.
I’m an atheist, but i think it’s high time, as atheists, we stopped making these stupid ad hominem attacks towards differing ideas.
is rather disrespectful of the Christian position.
Why is the christian position worthy of any respect al all? Labeling any idea thats “religion” as automatically worthy of reverence is simply privelage speaking, at best. At worst its deep stupidity protecting itself from analysis. You’re in a cult buddy. One that has inconsistent medieval ideas and a pedophilia problem. The fact that we even need to remind you of those absolute facts doesnt speak well of you.
It deserves its respect because it is largely practiced and is defended by many intellectuals. I’m an atheist just like you playing devil’s advocate. So let’s stop with the ad hominem
That doesn’t make it worthy of respect, the same used to be said of eugenics
OK fair enough on the ad homs, you are right on that and I apologize. I would challenge you on the idea that religion been examined as rigorously and freely as every other philosphical ideas. Faith is belief without question, is it not? And the christian bible is a bit of a joke-- most if not all “holy” books are. But they are held up as a standin for morality and we are demanded to respect them, and not ask too many questions about them, usualyl at threat of violence or other coercions. Isnt history littered with the bodies of scientists and philosophers who werent allowed to inconvenience the church?
It amazed me that when you find religious strife, atheists are often singled out for the worst punishments.
I think its summarized pretty well with this quote of Bakker’s: “Theres nothing the ignorant prize more than the ignorance of others.”I think if people should generally mind their own business unless something directly impinges on their individual freedom to live. That includes not making rules about how women should use their bodies. Let women decide that themselevs, or you’re being a tyrant. (I am an old white guy). Christianity doesnt beleive in that, and refuses to honestly examine it. Dogma and whatever the oldest white guy in a funny hat says trumps rational discourse every time.
the only “god” we should be worshipping is ourselves as entities that are constituent of a human society that differentiates us from the other animals. In my opinion, everything else is someone trying to use you or get you to adopt their worldview. This forces us to be our own masters and own the outcomes we create in the world. And to treat each other better.
What do you think?
Firstly, thank you for wishing to engage in peaceful discourse. And yes, I do agree with you on the fact that religion should be challenged just like any other philosophy. My point about according it respect was simply due to how the other users i responded to earlier resorted to ad hominems and not valid criticisms of the religion itself. Like i said, I don’t believe religion (especially Christianity) can be just thrown to the side as “group psychosis” considering how widespread it is and how much it’s defended by many intellectuals.
On the point of personal freedom (women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, sexual rights, etc), I 100% agree with your stance on Christianity infringing on those freedoms; especially considering the increasing liberalisation of society - which is a good thing - but i don’t personally think it’s a great rebuttal to Christianity’s validity. Like i said in another comment, Christianity is an absolutist philosophy, that means that regardless of the changing times or your personal feelings, its laws remain immutable. Does that mean that the Christian God is a jerk? Probably. But it’s what you’d have to deal with if he did exist.
Personally, i think the strongest argument against a God is simply the fact that he’s unpresent. As i believe about 90% of people are atheists simply because they don’t feel his presence. Every other argument is supplementary.
Taking the position gay/trans people shouldn’t exist is abhorrent.
You’d be falling victim to the outgroup homogeneity bias where you perceive individuals separate from your in-group as being alike and less diverse than yours. Just because you see many delusional participants does not mean all participants are equally as delusional.
The thing is, the second you let in a Nazi, it becomes a Nazi bar.
Also, yes we all know how indoctrination works.
Taking the position gay/trans people shouldn’t exist is abhorrent.
Once again, you’re committing the same mistake as before. You’d be surprised to learn that the discourse concerning this is more nuanced than before.
Also, non-acceptance of LGBTQ groups isn’t actually a disproof of religion. I mean think about it. Christianity is an absolutist doctrine, that means that regardless of what you feel or how the times have changed, Christian law remains absolute. If an all powerful being deems it so that homosexuality is a sin, then all power to him really. You don’t have to like it, but that’s the reality you’re presented with if the Judeo-Christian God actually exists.
a disproof of religion
You’ve got the burden of proof turned around. Its not on us to diprove the existence of your mythical skyfairy. Its not our job to respect it in any way either. Feel free to start a religion that worships toe-jam if you want to. No one cares. What if I told you that lower intelligence correlates to higher religious fervor?
I’m not religious. Stop saying my mythical skyfairy. Also, you have to show me a source for your last claim and even if your last claim is true, correlation IS NOT causation.
I answered a simple question with a simple answer. You proved the point better than I ever could have. Now tell us how to think and talk again.
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How does one shove non-religion in someone’s face?
Do they just exist?
By not adhering to the doctrines of the people believing in the one true God of course!
🤡
Seriously, fuck these regressive idiots.
You are technically correct that most people that call themselves atheists are agnostics. But that’s a little like saying that .999999999999999999 is 1; it’s close enough that it’s not going to make a difference in almost all cases.
If you have empirical, verifiable, falsifiable evidence that a god exists, then most atheists will change their opinion. A person that believes in a god believes despite a complete lack of evidence.
It’s not that an atheist is saying, “I know your religion is wrong”; it’s much closer to, "you have not presented any falsifiable evidence that your religion is correct.
There is currently no way to know.
It’s true that you can’t prove a negative. On the other hand, no evidence exists that would tend to prove that a god exists. The lack of evidence is quite damning, particularly since people have been trying to demonstrate the existence of a god for well over 8000 years. Miracles have almost entirely ceased in the age of forensics, modern medicine, and photography; it’s almost like they only exist when they can’t be documented.
I agree with you
No
People should absolutely be free to practice any religion they want in the US.
No, Scientol0gy is criminal
People shouldn’t be able to shove religion in your face or the opposite of athiests trying to shove non-religion in everyone’s face.
No, The majority of atheists I am aware of keep it to themselves. The majority or Christians try to convert everyone they meet.
A true athiest is just as “delusional” as a true religious person. Both believe their idea is right on “beliefs.” No proof God or gods exist or not.
No, you’re speaking as a believer. A god would need to be proven first in order to be disproven.
Most “athiests” are agnostic athiests, not gnostic athiest.
Here we go telling people what to think again.
World would be a better place if “athiests” went more by agnostics.
Saying you agree there is a possibility of a god or not and denying the existence wholeheartedly are two different things.
Saying you’re athiest to a religious person is saying “I know your religion is wrong”. Saying you’re agnostic to a religious person is saying “I don’t know, but I don’t necessarily agree with you.”
Yup
There is currently no way to know. That is a fact, a hard truth. Thinking you have a way to know one way or the other is “crazy”
You can’t prove a negative, that’s a fact. Therein lies the fundamental flaw with theists, belief and opinion are not equal to facts.
The simple truth you cannot accept is understanding fact from fiction.
The hexbear instance. I have a fascination where everytime I see a post I can’t help but try to understand the thought process logically. I can only ever come up with deliberate misinformation or genuine dillusion.
I realised the rest of this comment is just me stream of consciousness trying to understand something so feel free to stop reading here.
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea. They are probably the furthest country in the world from what I’d consider socialist. Every government does bad things you don’t have to defend them because they ideologically allign with you on paper. And the same logic goes for any country that doesn’t allign with you having only bad ideas and obviously they then must be fascist/ follow nazi ideology. Like what?? Is there no nuance here. Please if there are any actual genuine humans on hexbear can you talk to me about that instance. I what’s going on over there?
One thing I personally can’t understand is their defending to the death of every socialist government. But by that I mean every government that has called itself socialist or been called socialist by the US as some sort of justification for undermining them, not if they’ve actually done anything socialist. Like do we have to simp for North Korea.
There’s a couple of points I would make in response to that.
First, a problematic aspect of the internet is that your existence is defined by the last thing you posted. Which is to say, if someone says that a story about North Korea is fake, then to a reader they are a “North Korea defender,” regardless of whether they hold more critical beliefs about it that they didn’t happen to voice in that particular comment. And there have been plenty of sensationalist, fake news stories about North Korea, as well as about other countries the US doesn’t like.
Second, most Hexbears are Marxist-Leninists, and an important thing to understand about that ideology is that it isn’t about one specific set of policies that are universally applicable. When an ML defends a country, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they think that country should be held up as a model for other countries to emulate.
So if they’re not a model to emulate, then why defend them? First off, because the only means we in the West have of influencing their policies is through our government using military force, clandestine operations, or crippling economic sanctions. Second, because even if a socialist government is a failure, the extent to which it failed is important, because it will be held up as a criticism of socialism in general. Many Western leftists believe in simply putting as much distance as possible between themselves and AES (actually existing socialist) states, and will be some of their harshest critics to that end. But others, myself included, would argue that that’s the wrong approach, because it allows false and exaggerated claims to go unchallenged, which will then still be used to criticize the left no matter how much one tries to distance themselves from it. Like, people will call Obama and Harris communists, so it doesn’t seem to matter how much distance there is.
Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is a good starting point for understanding the perspective.
“the US doesn’t like”
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
Anyobe not knowing North Korea is the worst dictatorship on planet earth should get their brain tested.
I mean this is what OP talks about (or so I feel), people so out of touch you can’t even have a normal discussion with them.
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
OMG, like North Korea isn’t bad, it’s just the US that “doesn’t like them”.
You’re linking North Korea to the conversation about communism, when that alone is a fatal error: NK is equally as much communistic as they are democratic. As in, not in the least.
There has never been any kind of a long-term (5+ years) communist country on the planet. Prior power structures have always stepped in to decapitate communism in favour of a violently autocratic dictatorship much like a monarchy. What remained of communism was only ever kept as a thin veneer of legitimacy, much like a rotting Edgar suit.
I’m a capitalist. The person you are responding to sounded very reasonable.
“the US doesn’t like”
That’s very true. The us does not like north Korea. That isn’t saying north Korea is good. It’s just saying there are motives at play to make north Korea look as bad as possible.
If I said Jeffrey Epstein was a cannibal, you can say “no he wasn’t” without thinking he was a good person.
Not really important, but a capitalist is someone who has a significant amount of capital.
Someone who supports the existence of capitalism is called a liberal.
I’m a capitalist.
Do you work for a living? If so, then you aren’t part of the capitalist class.
Funny side note I think the problem with both systems is lazy people not doing what they should.
I won’t go over the example for how lazy people could effect socialism because I’m sure you’ve heard it a million times before.
I skip straight to capitalism.
People don’t vote with their dollar like they should. Everyone hates Walmart, they still shop at Walmart. Everyone hates child slavery, they still buy chocolate. Women want real pockets in their clothing, they still buy clothing that does not have pockets.
I’m lazy too in that way. I don’t shop at Walmart, and I don’t really like chocolate… But I hate how shitty airlines are… When I fly tho, I buy the cheapest ticket on the cheapest airline. Every single time.
That’s the problem with capitalism. I’m lazy, we’re all lazy.
It’s not laziness.
Most people are too resource poor, too time poor, and too exhausted from being violently forced to be profitable to someone else, to have the headspace to do what you suggest.
You can indeed spend every waking moment optimizing your life, but then you would be just one person among tens of thousands who could be successful doing that. 99.999% of people would utterly burn out trying to achieve the same. They don’t have the underlying intergenerational wealth that would give them the ability to do so, or don’t have the free time to do so, or have too high of a cognitive load just putting one foot in front of the other to do so. Vanishingly few people are “just too lazy” to do so, and of those who are, they are the ones who can monetarily afford to be lazy.
It’s why poverty is fiendishly expensive, and why it is almost impossible to escape poverty
Yes someone explain my poor phrasing. They even mentioned the word I mentioned but I forget.
I’m not the capitalist version of a tanky.
I believe the concept of capitalism could work, and I believe it would work better than socialism. Another common ground I have with socialist is that I understand the examples of my preferred… Arrangement of society have been corrupted and not run under the ideas they claim.
That’s what I mean by common ground and that’s where I sympathize. I wouldn’t want someone pointing at trump and saying “that’s capitalism!” And I would never point at Kim jun un and say “that’s socialism”
I also understand the “ideal, pure, perfect implementation” of either idea probably isn’t possible.
I lean more to capitalism.
That’s what I meant when I said “I’m a capitalist” I misspoke.
What on earth do you think you saying you are a capitalist does?
There are smart communists, and as you so succinctly prove, capitalists that are less so.
Pointing out I can disagree with someone’s ideas and still recognize when they are being very reasonable.
capitalists that are less so.
Ah the ol’ “you’re stupid” rebuttal. Works every time. Automatic win in every debate lol
I’m slowly learning to stop arguing with people whose first instinct is to throw out an insult
Yesh, look at OBJECTION s response, and call that smart if you like lol. There are people who are smart, and others who, well, aren’t.
Others
Ftfy
This is what I’m talking about. The US not liking North Korea is an objective fact. But because people on the internet treat whatever you last posted as your entire identity and belief system, then you assume that’s the full extent of my position on North Korea. You expect me to do the typical signals to disavow and denounce the country as part of the strategy of the Western left distancing itself from AES states. But I’m not interested in signalling anything, for the reasons I explained. The strategy of allowing and repeating all sorts of sensationalist nonsense for fear that pushing back against it will tie you to the state in question just doesn’t work.
Is North Korea really “the worst dictatorship on planet Earth?” Are they worse than, for example, Saudi Arabia? Are they so much obviously worse that anyone who thinks Saudi Arabia is worse “should get their brain tested?”
It’s like talking about sexual abuse and someone saying that the person raped is now not “liking” the rapist, but a million times worse.
Ok, maybe you’re right. Perhaps it’s important to mention the horrible things the US and North Korea have done to each other. Like when the US invaded and killed 15% of their entire population (primarily civilians), carpet bombed the country, and deployed all sorts of chemical weapons, or when North Korea, er, sorry, what did North Korea do to America that’s “a million times worse than rape?” Gonna have to refresh my memory on that one chief.
Look they first thing I’m confused about is why you started your comment with a sympathetic viewpoint to North Korea, like I would’nt open my essay about how nuclear energy is good with Chernobyl wasnt that bad. Your basically delegitimising everying else after that, which is unfortunate because there’s a lot of interesting things in your comment.
And then I disagree with the false and exaggerated claims unchallenged part. What exactly do you mean. This seems like a catch all to dismiss anything that you disagree with. Nuance is everything embrace it. More importantly, because the only state you’ve mentioned is North Korea I’m now prompted to assume the AES’s you’re talking about is north Korea.
Look they first thing I’m confused about is why you started your comment with a sympathetic viewpoint to North Korea, like I would’nt open my essay about how nuclear energy is good with Chernobyl wasnt that bad. Your basically delegitimising everying else after that
That’s a perfect demonstration of my point. The only thing I said about North Korea is that there are fake stories about it, which is true. I have no interest in saying or tolerating false claims just to make my position seem more appealing, or to avoid being accused of something. If speaking truth delegitimizes me somehow, if it makes people think I’m a bad person or something, then so be it, it doesn’t change what’s true.
And then I disagree with the false and exaggerated claims unchallenged part. What exactly do you mean. This seems like a catch all to dismiss anything that you disagree with.
I linked a video to give an example of what I was talking about. I recommend watching it, it’s a little long but it’s informative while being entertaining and well-produced (it has 3.6 million views with good reason). The video describes a story that was very widespread in the media with lots of mainstream sources talking about it, which claimed that everyone in North Korea had to get the same haircut as Kim Jong Un. That story was completely and totally false, it was a wholesale fabrication. The two guys in the video travel to North Korea and get a perfectly normal haircut to disprove it. It also mentions several other stories that turned out to be fake news.
You’re jumping to conclusions when you say that I “use it as a catch-all to dismiss anything I disagree with.” I’m not going to dismiss claims that are actually backed by evidence, but I am going to investigate whether there is actually evidence backing up a given claim.
More importantly, because the only state you’ve mentioned is North Korea I’m now prompted to assume the AES’s you’re talking about is north Korea.
That’s a silly assumption, as there’d be no need for a term like that if it only applied to one country. AES states also include for example Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, China, and the USSR (prior to it’s collapse).
I’m still confused why you’re including north Korea as a socialist state
Because they either live in their own dream world, or they are pushing the idea that communism is good, which is hard if you use and listen to facts.
Start off with an enormous lie, everything after that might feel not that un-true.
People use all sorts of metrics to determine whether or not a state is socialist or not, so it’s hard to find neutral terminology everyone can agree with. North Korea calls itself socialist and has a centrally-planned economy, and has been historically aligned with other countries that also call themselves socialist (such as the USSR and PRC), so it seems reasonable enough to me to call them socialist. Should I call them capitalist instead? Seems a little odd, especially since I live in the US which has a much larger proportion of the economy in the private sector.
North Korea calls itself socialist
They also call themselves democratic.
Are they? Would you call their system democratic? No?
Why one and not the other?
For one thing, virtually every country on earth claims to be democratic, whereas only some claim to be socialist. There are many countries that claim the label of democratic that don’t consider the DPRK to be a democracy, but the countries that claim the label of socialist, such as Cuba, generally recognize the DPRK as socialist. If would be strange to refer to a group of countries as socialist and then exclude a country that those countries recognize as being socialist.
It’s worth noting that one of the main reasons the DPRK is not considered democratic is not because of the way the government and elections are structured, but because it doesn’t allow its elections to be monitored by international observers.
They’re not socialist because the means of production is owned by literally one guy?
The means of production are mixed between public/state ownership, collective ownership, and private ownership, actually.
I take it that your metric for whether or not a state is socialist is something like, “Worker ownership of the means of production.” But that metric has a lot of ambiguities that make it difficult to apply practically in an objective way. Which workers own which means of production, and in what form? Suppose we have a system where everything is state-owned and the state determines who can use what when based on a truly democratic process - but then, an organization of trained professionals in a given field go on strike to demand things be done the way they want. If all the workers should own all the means of production, then the strikers are out of line, but if the workers in a particular field should own the means of production in that field, then the state is out of line.
And should the economy be transformed, fully and immediately, to that ideal? Historically, both the USSR and PRC attempted widespread collectivization of farms, like with the Great Leap Forward, which was an abject failure. That’s not to say that farming collectives cannot be successful, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect immediate and total transformation to that model or else a state isn’t socialist.
“This”, honestly.
The expectation that people in office jobs can be productive for 8 hours per day.
As a person who works a trade this blows my fucking mind that you can get away with doing nothing.
I am productive for less than an hour a day. I don’t do anything. I have nothing to do. I drive for an hour each way to sit and do absolutely nothing so I can feed and house my family.
Some days I have to convince myself not to drive my truck into something at 85 mph. No person is meant to live like this.
The alienation of labor is real. Hang in there, we’ll need you when things get better.
Can’t you do something yoh like for the rest of the time? (I don’t mean LITERALLY the other 7 hours xD) Like reading, learning to draw,
learn Thai on duolingoetc.I try. I can’t really look like I’m not working or I’ll get in trouble. Sometimes I read, but that gets boring after a while.
I relate to you. I only have about 2ish hours of actual work a day on average, and I have to drag it out all day just to look busy. I never expected that it would feel soul sucking to have so little work but still be chained to your desk. I thought I was lucky! (And I certainly am in someways)
The irony is that when I first started, I was efficient and would read when I didn’t have anything to work on. But my boss didn’t like to see me reading, so he would give me more work. The issue is that there is only so much he can do at a time, so it resulted in me finishing assignments, and him being so overloaded he wouldn’t get to them until weeks or months later. Now I just pretend to be busy, so he doesn’t feel like he needs to give me more, and I’m not having to remind him of documents in review that are weeks old.
Sorry for the rant, I am currently sitting here pretending to be busy while slowly dying inside.
I agree! I’ve spent years perfecting the art of looking busy, and that makes my free time more enjoyable. Although there still are rough days.
How do they pay you to do nothing?
My last job was like that. I was needed for about an hour a week. I just sat and listened to podcasts all day every day.
My current job, I do about an hour a day, and outperform all of my colleagues. Luckily I’m at home most of the time and just lay in bed watching things all day with my cats. When I have to go into the office, it’s painful.
That’s a fantastic question. The company is foreign owned and it’s just a sales office. The CEO is a fantastical liar that hides things well, and firing a bunch of people would not look good for him. As long as we are making a profit, no one really analyzes how much fat could be trimmed. I don’t even care if it were me to get laid off either. Actually, please lay me off.
It’s fairly common. We have a team of 11 people that does the work of half a person. The 8 person team I’m on now does less work than I did by myself 2 years ago on a different team between those 2 teams, there are also 4 managers
Some days, like once every two years, you actually do it by accident; you come in, get shit done all day, and you get like a months amount of work done.
And then you get all nervous that someone might find out and set new expectations for you, so you have to kind of spread out the results of the work you did on that miracle day.
Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late, ah, I use the side door–that way Lumberg can’t see me, heh–after that I sorta space out for an hour. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I’m working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I’d say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
You’ve got upper management written all over you.
Donald Trump is not only running for president again, he might actually win.
If 2016 taught me anything it’s to not trust polls. Doesn’t matter how hard ahead Kamala is polling until your ballot is actually cast.
It also doesn’t help that you have the “Lemmy.ml” crowd calling you a fascist if you vote for Kamala, because in their twisted world having trump win is better eomehow
To your second point, it’s because most of them hate the US and/or capitalism, and want to see it implode.
…Without realizing that the only things that are going to fill that power vacuum are worse.
Are there better countries than the US? Damn skippy there are. Do any of them have enough power to do anything if the US implodes? Absolutely not.
That would be terrible for worldwide peace and stability. US has too much power and influence for an implosion to not cause worldwide chaos. Trump would mean US siding with other dictatorships, like Russia, China, Iran. Russia would likely succeed in Eastern Europe. Taiwan would likely be occupied by China. NATO vs an alliance made of US, Russia and China would be very uncomfortable.
Dreaming.
I work in a manufacturing facility where the assemblers, mechanics, machinists, and technicians, are unionized. My white collar, not unionized colleagues simultaneously express jealousy about the benefits the union members get while also saying they shouldn’t exist while also complaining their own salaries are too low and not keeping up with inflation.
My dudes, this is what unions are for. If I worked one of the covered jobs, I would join the union in a heartbeat.
Join them, don’t try to tear them down.
Crazy how union participation peaked in the 50s with 1/3 of the workforce in one, at a time where a man without advanced education could provide for a wife, multiple kids and own a house.
Crazy that people aren’t rioting in the streets.
The Parasite Class. That’s what happened. These are people for whom any amount of wealth will never be enough. So they extract it out of the working class by cramming down wages, making all aspects of life precarious, and raising prices.
We all suffer and the 0.1% accumulare more wealth than they could possibly spend in a thousand lifetimes.
Yeah, my white collar, salaried, not unionized brother works for a major manufacturer and constantly complains about unions. Then he’ll go on to talk about all the overtime pay he gets while traveling … not appreciating that salaried positions don’t get overtime pay (in the US), and he has the union to thank for that.
while also saying they shouldn’t exist
what is their argument?
Nothing substantial, just parroting propaganda. Union workers are lazy. Unions are anti free market. Unions get in the way of businesses being profitable, which would in turn benefit employees.
…And yet, if the company treats employees in a way that employees feel is fair and reasonable, then employees are extremely unlikely to choose to unionize.
For a short time I had the pleasure of working with a small site that treated the union as a partner and not an adversary. On the company side, it was an EH&S manager, not even the EH&S lead, who led annual negotiations with the union. There were disagreements and compromises, but both sides walked away every year feeling benefitted and ready to collaborate for another year.
Well, Corporate can do better than that. They sent in HR to run things this year. Everything is an aggressive conflict. EH&S dude was immediately recruited to a company down the road and left. Cue HR’s surprised Pikachu face when all goodwill with the union disappeared overnight and the union is just as ready to play hardball.
I am glad I got to see one example of a company and union working together for mutual benefit. I think there will be vanishingly few situations like this throughout the rest of my career
I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.
Driver’s in Atlanta Georgia.
The left two lanes on i85 are for faster drivers and right of way is a real thing!
Customers. Seriously, how absolutely incapable are some people. I wish I could force some of them to write down all the questions they have, make them watch a 5 minute YouTube video and then only bother me if they still need help. Jesus Christ it’s a hardware store not kindergarten where I’ll take you by the hand and tell you not to eat the crayons.
Stupid doctors. Starting in the medical field, I had this notion that a doctor is this kind of universally intelligent, best-of-humanity kind of person.
Some of them are.
But some of them are absolute dumbasses who happen to have a photographic memory that carried them through med school… Like, full blown trumpanzee, falls for conspiracy theory bullshit, superstitious nutjob, knuckle-dragging, slack-jawed idiot.
It shouldn’t be possible. No one who makes it through med school should be mentally capable of instantly plummeting to the rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study (which fortunately most of those types deliver at least passable quality of care).
I do the same with lawyers. Some of the Trump lawyers have been so bad that I question the Bar exam’s ability to weed out the worst.
I’m not sure if there’s any field where everyone is qualified. It seems there is no perfect method for objective qualification, without letting idiots slip through the cracks.
One of the better methods is to have a supervisor watch them in practice, but how do you qualify a supervisor? The whole cycle repeats again
There are some really stupid doctors, scientists, electricians, architects and welders, all of which are occupations where incompetence can have dire consequences.
There are recent cases of flawed scientific papers, used as guidance for procedures (ex: surgery), and causing potentially thousands of deaths.
https://youtu.be/HTlKGKaOQPY?si=2oXTn6UdR0Fuxtgj
Cases like this is what feeds anti science movements and conspiracies. In many circumstances “science” shouldn’t be trusted when there is no line between flawed science and good science.
rock-bottom of stupid as soon as they step foot outside of their field of study
That’d be too many people around me, from the qualified kind. I’m not a doctor though.
Sorry, it’s impossible. It’s normal for people to be what you described. Just human.
I mean, if you actually manage to create a working procedure for such selection, half the people in the profession will have Aspergers, always red eyes and sleep at work, and the other half will be NT, but some bloody geniuses whose abilities would rather be used in something like fundamental science.
I know a few people closely that I’d consider a genius. I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered. He changed fundamentals of microbiology. One high school dropout, one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
I only know one that went into a field where their genius mattered.
That’d be one more than I know, if we don’t count relatives.
One high school dropout,
My tribe.
one just surviving and making decent money doing whatever they try.
That actually sounds nice.
It’s not that doctors are stupid. Quite the opposite; I strongly suspect that, by any seemingly-objective measure of intelligence, doctors are going to average significantly higher than the general population. (…And veterinary doctors even more so.) Having cognitive biases, believing in conspiracies, etc., isn’t a symptom of stupidity; it’s a side effect of being human and having emotions. You’ll find that very highly intelligent people end up being more effective at rationalizing dumbass, batshit crazy beliefs; the number of engineers, computer scientists, attorneys, etc. that are, for instance, Mormon is astounding.
step foot
Bone apple tea!
Wooaah I had to google this one, it’s a bone apple tea I’ve definitely used!
