Maybe billionaires should be filmed and streamed continuously, since their behavior has such a big impact on the world. If they don’t like it maybe we shouldn’t allow them to control such incredible assets. I’m sure billionaires have nothing sketchy to hide, right? What we will see is probably how they are hard working people who are not at all detached from normal folks. Right?
That’s not limited to modern technologies. I have a lot of books laying around that are judging me by looking at me like ‘why the f are you still not reading me??’. Projection is my middle name
I learned that just now.
I just use RSS feeds to follow YT-channels. It’s doesn’t seem any less convenient than a YT account.
Can’t be that much work, can it?
This is wonderful, I’ve been struggling with piped for some time now, it’s always asking me to sign in to confirm that I’m not a bot. Also it’s showing me videos in very low quality and often it stops loading halfway through the video. With this I get to see good quality videos once more, without unwanted pauses and without financing yt in any way. Great!
But ads are not functioning, they are destructive. They are by no means cheap either, people are paying through being manipulated and we are paying collectively for the damage it’s doing to our world. We’d be much better of if we had only direct payments. Direct artist payments will always be the more effective and efficient financing structure because then we pay just for the creative output, not all the unrelated economic parasitic activities.
The solution is very simple and there is nothing that inflation can do about it: we don’t watch ads, we pay creators that we want to support, and if from these donations a creator doesn’t earn enough money he has two options: 1. One has an intrinsic drive to create and publish so he does so through other means, for instance by working a part time job. If this sounds unreasonable then let us not forget that already most of all human creativity is financed exactly like this, it is only the exception that is financially lucrative. 2. One chooses not to create (or in a less costly manner). You could think of this as a sad outcome, but you’d be better off concluding that this creative output wasn’t so important to anyone, not to the creator nor to the public. This means we’d be left with the better and more intrinsically motivated creative content.
So let’s not justify ads, but let’s reject them in the most radical ways we can.
Ads exist because people want to make money. So these bad actors go out and look for places where people like to spend their time, and they poison these places with their money-hungry practices. In the process they destroy the innocence of all these manifestations of human creativity, and manipulate people into buying shit they don’t actually need, effectively destroying the planet through overconsumption. That’s not even mentioning that ad-companies put us on a path towards a mass-surveillance society, just because big-data leads to more effective ads. I can’t help but see ads as a destructive force of evil in our world. I like human creativity in it’s many forms, and I’m all in favor of rewarding creators to a certain extent, but using ads seems to be the worst possible method of doing so.
(not intending to criticize your comments, just spreading the anti-ad gospel ;-)
it just doesnt work as a system in our current cultural framework
True. But our current system fits our cultural framework, because it has shaped it to be the way it is. That in itself is no reason to stick with it. Not saying this can easily be changed. But we shouldn’t lose sight of far away possibilities just because they seem far away. It’s worth it striving for a better world.
People like to contribute to society because it feels good. People will respond positively to you if you contribute, and you will feel good about yourself. and you will feel like you’re part of something bigger, that you matter not just to yourself but to others too. Look at how much voluntary work is being done in society in all sorts of fields, this is being done for these reasons, not for money. You could argue, that this is mostly in certain fields, and most work would never be done for free. For instance a lot of volunteers are care-givers, and it’s easy to see why this is very rewarding. But would people go into the mines to mine coal just to benefit society. Well no, in our society as it is certainly not.
But could it be that we’re conditioned to think about our society in this way? In our society people get paid to do such things, it would feel very wrong to us, if people usually get paid for dirty work, that suddenly this would need to happen voluntarily. That would obviously be really unfair. But we could try to imagine what a world would be like without money. If you live in a community that functions like a sort of small anarchist communist society, and you’ve never heard of money or being paid for stuff, then it’s not hard to imagine someone caring about the well being of his community and wanting to contribute for previously mentioned reasons: feeling good about contributing, having a certain status because of contributing. It’s easy to see how people currently think, but it could very well be that people currently think a certain way because things currently are a certain way. And that if the world would be different, people would also think and behave different.
Surely in any case there will be a limit to the ‘working extra hard’, and it might be different from where the limit is for people in our current system. But that doesn’t have to be a negative. Competing to gain as much money as you can often goes far beyond what seems healthy. Money is such an integral part of how our society functions that for many it’s become a sort of obsession. When thinking of how you could live a successful life some people can only think: if I earn a lot of money, then I’ll be successful. And obviously this is bollocks. You’re free to define life success by whatever measures you deem important, but comparative study will show that the ones who earn most aren’t always the ones that feel most happy and fulfilled. Focusing solely on money often just stems from an insecurity, if it’s just money than I don’t have to really think. It can feel comfortable to not have to think because this objective of earning as much as I can is predefined and I can try to optimize my performance based on that. I think a lot of people can see how that’s a very lacking view on how to live, and it certainly won’t be the most rewarding strategy for life if you want to feel happy and fulfilled.
You’re saying all human ambition is based on money-hunger and thankfully that is false.
It’s not about glory, it’s about feeling the discomfort so that it will influence your behavior as intended. Can’t speak for chronic illnesses, but if you’re having the occasional cold or whatever, why not just take the message and lay in bed for the time being?
Open source government, eh? Don’t know if this would work completely but I like the direction.
That’s true, but if you’re letting it get to angry heated bitter arguments, that’s at least partly your fault. With an open mind and a friendly attitude you can mostly avoid those.
wow that’s bleak. Very few people around me share my political beliefs, but they certainly don’t disgust me. One of my colleagues beliefs every conspiracy in the book, she’s at the total other end of the spectrum when it comes to most arguments, but I’ve also noticed that she is the sweetest nurse I know, treating patients with empathy and compassion. Rather than coming to the point where you avoid arguments, I think people should develop the ability to have differences of opinion without being revolted by the other. An opinion doesn’t define who or what someone is in the slightest.
Are arguments really that bad? I think this is a rather cynical point of view. I don’t want to reach this stage.
That was an interesting read. Thanks. Do you study economics as part of an education? Or did you just dive in to it out of personal interest?
Thanks for the elaborate response. To me the ‘taxes don’t pay for public infrastructure’ seems bizarre. Are you saying public infrastructure shouldn’t have to be payed for by taxpayers, or that it isn’t payed for by taxpayers? I can understand you making a point about the first given your MMT explanation, but taxpayer money IS actually being used for all sorts of public infrastructure, isn’t it? A government could use money creation for every project, but they don’t, they also collect taxes…
I would also worry that the risks of (hyper)inflation are being downplayed in this theory. But too be fair I’m not an economist, nor do I have knowledge about MMT, so I’m really not the person to refute any of this. It’s interesting and I’ll look in to it with an open mind. Thanks
There is a lot wrong with what you’re saying. Taxes don’t remove money from the economy, because it all goes back into the economy. Tax money is most definitely used for all sorts of things including for infrastructure. A government can’t responsibly create endless amounts of money. The amount of debt a country can have should be related to the size of the economy. Where you’re right is that taxes are a way of redistributing money in order to influence society in all sorts of ways. Which can be good or bad.
Been playing some Xonotic recently. Good times with FOSS.