suppressing wages and social housing so that starvation and homelessness make labour cheaper
Motorcycle airbag vests that will not work if you aren’t up-to-date on the subscription payments when you have a crash…
Today I heard Meta has laid off workers because they brought their own food for lunch instead of buying it from the company cafeteria.
A more recent example comes from the med-tech giant Abbott Labs, which used DMCA 1201 to suppress a tool that allowed people with diabetes to link their glucose monitors to their insulin pumps, in order to automatically calculate and administer doses of insulin in an “artificial pancreas.” -eff.org
We joke about someday having to jailbreak our own organs, but we’re basically already there.
An exoskeleton let a paralyzed man walk. Then its maker refused repairs.
Mandatory “hide the opt-out if there’s even an opt-out at all” “AI” trash that is shoved into everything from operating systems to browsers. It’s less than useless, outright malicious in both intent and practice in many cases, and dumps more carbon into the air just so the “AI” trash doesn’t seem like a sunk cost investment for venture capitalists.
Did OP ask an LLM for the “most Lemmy question to ask”?
Here in Sweden we currently have the problem that hospitals are understaffed and keeping wages of nurses so low that a lot of nurses quit and leave the others with an even crazier workload so the hospitals buy nurses semi permanently from temp agencies that cost multiple times more and the rental nurses have better pay and agreements of overtime and such. We had a well functioning health care but then the privatisation of everything and selling out communally owned services to private profit making schemes since the 90s. Because our government has been dominated by right wing market liberals and “sossehöger” - social democrats that jump on right wing populism to stay in power when they can rather than being consistent in left wing ideals.
Fucking end the market liberal experiment already. “The market solves all problems” - yeah, of it’s own interest which is how to squeeze out more profits regardless the how and how low it stoops.
Damn, I didn’t know America was contagious…
It’s been the strategy of the right wing here since forever - get in power sell out as much they can (and for some unfathomable reason for discount prices), fuck things up in general, leave it to a left wing government to salvage what can be saved while blaming them for public service being garbage so they can motivate selling out more when they have power again. It’s a mix of blind idealists and profiteering scum that are in liaison with the right wing nationalist party with former nazi connections and obviously the Christian democrat leader that models the party according to the republicans is the most buddy-buddy with the fringe right.
And the populist right wing of course romanticises about the good days when everyone had housing and was safe and provided and so on - that was built solely by the left and the right wing fought them every step of the way and that they have since then torn down. Blatant lies and disinformation all the way.
But it is what people vote for. We get the societal break down we deserve.
Thats fucking sad
Recently?
How a lawyer in America got jailed for legally fighting against(and defeating) an American multi-national oil company that polluted the Amazon and more importantly harmed the lives and health of the locals with the pollution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OtIAZMqrZE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_DonzigerIn June 2022, a federal appeals court affirmed Donziger’s criminal contempt conviction. In March 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear further appeals.
I’m shocked.
Donziger’s story is heartbreaking and infuriating, and I’m continually disappointed that so few people are familiar with his story and what the courts did to him. It’s one of the clearest examples of judicial corruption and the power and benefits that are afforded to corporations and almost never extended to the people fighting for what’s right and just.
The purposeful degradation of repair.
Health Insurance that covers next to nothing but costs a fortune anyway.
☝️ recently got a covid test that based on all my research beforehand, it should have been covered except for $10 I would pay.
Jokes on me, it actually cost me $200 they charged to my credit card two weeks later. I didn’t even get to know the price at the time I needed medical care.
Sometimes other countries make fun of America for things they don’t understand. Not on this one, America deserves every bit of mocking it gets for it’s medical coverage atrocity.
You can get free rapid covid test kits from the US government with a valid mailing address.
A lateral flow test or something using a lab?
Must be a lab test as lateral flow is like £2:
https://www.boots.com/flowflex-antigen-rapid-test-lateral-flow-self-testing-kit-1-test-10312288Or $7 in Walmart: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Flowflex-Covid-19-Antigen-Home-Test-1-Test/837992467?classType=VARIANT&athbdg=L1200
Nose swab into a piece of lab equipment about the size of a bread toaster. They put the swab into the thing right in front of me but I didn’t note any further details about the equipment.
I went in for strep testing (which is what it ended up being). They advised covid test too due to local outbreak, I predicted that they might so had done some prep research and thought I could expect a much lower bill.
Lesson learned, avoid getting tested for covid 😂
It’s a developing country. You will catch up.
Also we guys in western Europe are happy we are not ruled by Russia or China, and that’s because of the USA I think.
I kind of like the US culture, but it’s ridiculous how they treat human beings when money and power is on the line.
It’s a developing country. You will catch up.
It isn’t and we won’t. The US is a post-developed country backsliding.
Yeah man that and the cheese are just unforgivable
Americans stupidity is another one that they get correct but there’s plenty of things to laugh about America as there is to laugh about 3rd world countries.
I cannot find the exact quote but it was something like “If you don’t grow, you’re dying”. This is the source of all enshittification. Companies are being forced by VCs to increase revenue every year to meet unreasonable revenue goals just to satisfy a handful of investors.
Microloans, also called microfinances. Very popular in developing countries in South Asia, and also the same thing that is responsible for the suicide epidemic of farmers in India. With high interest rates and fixed time-period constraints, they’re the most cruel and fucked up things to ever exist, they’re worse than indentured serfdom.
Sounds like ‘pay day loans’ in the US.
Back in the day, a loan shark was a criminal who charged an outrageous 20% interest for money. Working class folks were at the mercy of these “six-for-fivers.”
Ronald Reagan became President and now established banks could charge 35% or more.
(Looks at my credit cards)
Yall got any more of that 20% interest?
Yeah, a factory worker would get $5 and pay back $6 the next week. That was a terrible crime. Then Reagan deregulated the banks and it became business as usual.
To be fair, usury is much older plague than capitalism, but it’s been one of capitalism roots, and capitalism cranked it up incredibly.
I’d like to add that there are good versions of “microloans”! I learned that there used to be (or still are, didn’t check) non-profit " banks" in some parts of India (and South africa I think) that would give out small loans of a few dollars to a few hundred dollars (which can be quite a lot of money in India). There was no collateral and low interest, but a group of people had to apply for a loan together. Until the first loan was paid back, the rest of the group couldn’t apply again. It was meant to provide financial backing and capital to microbusinesses (e.g. fishers, farmers, peddlers) that would otherwise be excluded from the financial market due to a lack of collateral and otherwise be forced to take high-interest loans.
SHGs (which is what you’re talking about, also called SBLP in some places) are not a majority, their lenders/borrowers are often people within the same marginalized group, and it is very slow, so people tend to avoid them. MFIs dominate the microloan industry, and they’re very exploitative.
Thanks for the info! I didn’t think they were widespread, but figured they might be a bit wholesome and would light up this thread :)
My boss once said to a group of new joinees including me," Eventually you will be able to afford subscription to all the streaming services."
Well, that was a lie.
That person who was in a car that ended up crossing three lanes, hitting a pole and then hitting a tree. They declined an ambulance because they were scared of the ambulance bill - then got a bill for $150 for refusing the ambulance. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Vote with your wallet” means more money gets you more votes.
Some users leaving Reddit/instagram/twitter is not a problem, especially considering network effects, but some advertisers leaving is a crisis.
I think you misinterpreted the phrase. “Vote with your wallet” means that if you’re unhappy with a product/service, you stop using/paying for it.
“Vote with your wallet” means more money gets you more votes.
This is the basic idea of capitalism. The more capital you have, the more say you have in directing the meas of production.
Some people have so much capital, they can singlehandedly decide that thousands of people are going to work on some space launch company, for example.
So long as the capital markets were willing to continue funding loss-making future monopolists, your neighbors were going to make the choice to shop “the wrong way.” As small, local businesses lost those customers, the costs they had to charge to make up the difference would go up, making it harder and harder for you to afford to shop “the right way.”
https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/12/give-me-convenience/
Food for your thought.
Again, I think you are misinterpreting the phrase. The quote you provided proves it. If you’re not happy about the “right way” of buying things you can buy elsewhere, aka “vote with a wallet”. The phrase means that you pay for a product/service you are comfortable with. For example, if Amazon offers a great deal on something you’d like like to buy and the price is, let’s say, 30% lower than a regular retail price, voting with a wallet would mean that you ignore the Amazon’s deal and buy directly from a merchant.
Are you purposefully missing the point? If the greater market is uninformed and buying inferior offering; soon that is all that will be available.
You clearly haven’t read the full essay.
I have, but the moment I got to the Napster Wars part I realised that the article is nothing more than the “eat the rich” rant. I despise the music labels and all the crap that happened in late 90s but it’s not an excuse to go “over the law” just because you think the law is bad. I know, there were many implications of piracy that shaped the current landscape of music industry but still, just because you don’t agree with the existing law, it doesn’t mean you should “work” around it.
Again, if you’re unhappy with record label, vote with your wallet and buy from the independent ones. The more people to vote with the wallet (in the way you misunderstood) the less power major companies will have.
it’s not an excuse to go “over the law” just because you think the law is bad… but still, just because you don’t agree with the existing law, it doesn’t mean you should “work” around it.
Then what’s a good reason to go around the law? It’d be pointless to go around a law you do agree with.
Bruh… lmao…
Clearly you’re refusing to understand the phrase.
