awsamation

Shit, I remember these in school. And I’m 22, pretty sure early 20s isn’t ood enough to count for an “are you this old” meme.

By that reasoning there is nothing preventing you from being prosperous except your own greed.

Go out into the wilderness and be prosperous like the cavemen. Having your tapwater taken away shouldn’t hinder you, those prosperous cavemen didn’t have the luxury of any modern amenities. Just the streams they could find and the food they could scavenge or kill.

Abandon your greedy insistence on enjoying modern luxury and go prosper. You’re the only thing stopping yourself.

And I’m sure you’ll have no trouble staying connected when you find the cellphone tree. After all, if humans didn’t create anything then everything must be naturally occurring. It’s just an illusion that modern technology requires creation of parts that could never exist naturally.

Humans absolutely created prosperity. The thing that was already here was nomadic hunter gatherer tribes that were perpetually one bad winter away from death.

Cutting off necessary resources is cruel. But refusing to acknowledge that those resources are provided by man made systems doesn’t help you. Going to bed hungry is very natural. Wild animals do that all the time. Tap water is not natural, everything about how that water got from the river into your tap was man made.

Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s better, and just because it’s man made doesn’t mean it’s bad.

To be fair, Ford builds them as work trucks. Like you said, the biggest thing you can buy without needing an upgraded license.

The triple cab, pickup style box, and lift kit are all aftermarket. Straight from Ford it’s at most a king cab with a frame rail back. Then you’re supposed to put on some kind of working back (toolbox, dump truck, lift arm). That’s the kind of thing you see in official marketing images.

I used to work for a company that built garbage compactor units and put them on the back of trucks like these. The main selling point was that you only need a regular license and you can fit into narrower spaces than a full size garbage truck.

That “seem” is a tricksy word. Someone who is good at trickery is going to seem trustworthy, otherwise they probably wouldn’t be good at trickery.

Just like how parents spend most of their time preventing their toddlers from committing suicide.

They’re stupid, not suicidal.

So ethics aren’t a concern for you

Quite the opposite actually, as a farmer raising my animals ethically is a daily fact concern. I just don’t buy into your supposition that raising them is inherently unethical.

How about the adverse health effects

If I live long enough that eating meat is the primary thing that got me killed, I see that as an absolute win. I like riding motorcycles, I also like beer and sugar and baked goodies. I fully expect something else to get me well before a lifetime of eating meat has the chance. And I’m okay with that, I’d rather live a few years less and get to keep partaking in the things I enjoy. Plenty of people live into their 80s without giving up meat, and living into my 80s sounds plenty long to me.

environmental impacts of the meat industry

I believe that until nuclear is being seriously considered as the solution for clean electricity, then it isn’t worth worrying about which of my habits are supposedly causing the climate crisis.

Any considerations there, or is all about how delicious steak is to you?

I wouldn’t say it’s “all about” how delicious steak is. But I would say that in all of your examples “less steak” doesn’t seem to be the most prudent place to start, or to consider at all.

They live more comfortably than you do. In an environment literally designed to maximize their ability to grow.

Y’all continually fail to understand that farmers have a direct financial incentive to keep these animals happy and healthy. Stressed animals don’t grow nearly as well as happy animals, and small animals don’t make money.

Taking proper care of the animals is more profitable in the long run, even if you assume that all farmers are heartless monsters who enjoy watching needless suffering (we aren’t by the way).

They live more comfortably than you do. Food and water freely available, plenty of space, other animals to socialize. No worries or responsibilities, not even a real concept of the outside world. The farm is all they’ve ever known, and it’s all they ever need to know.

If we’re putting bacon, sausages, cutlets, and ribs in the same category because “it’s all pig”. Then I want to make sure that bulb onions, shallots, scallions, and leeks are also counted as one thing because they’re all just onions.

Look me in the eye and tell me that bulb onions and shallots are different but bacon and cutlets aren’t.

Is it still anecdotal if literally any farmer will tell you the same? Because they will.

A surprisingly large amount of effort goes into trying to keep the livestock from hurting themselves or getting themselves killed. That’s inevitable when essentially turn off natural selection, they end up losing any sense of self preservation. And why not, they do have multiple humans who’s entire career centers on keeping them alive until they’re ready for slaughter.

Nah.

Steak is delicious, and at the end of the day it’s only a cow.

Exactly.

Everyone loves to support local independent small businesses when it’s convenient. And some people even have the gumption to hold to those ideals when it’s difficult. But the vast majority don’t care most of the time.

When big business makes it cheaper and more convenient to buy from them, most people will. I’m just as guilty of that as anyone else. When money and time are plentiful I love supporting a local bakery for lunch and a local book store for that greeting card. But when I’m pressed for time or money is short, it’s straight back to Walmart to get a card and an entire meal for the price of one baked snack from the local place. And in 10 minutes instead of half an hour.

And the megacorps don’t need a majority market share to win. They don’t even need a large enough market share to be profitable, they just need to make sure your market share is too small to survive. And once you fail, then they can change practices away from kill competition and back to make money.

Do you actually care that much about the creative story behind the latest widget that was added to your new appliance? Are you going to be choosing the 30% more expensive option every time because of that concern.

We aren’t talking about art here, very few people give a shit about getting a “personal connection” with their new toaster. We’re talking about buy use forget consumer goods. And if someone else is selling the same quality and the same features at a lower price, that’s the one that your average Joe will buy. And will keep buying until you can’t afford to keep making and selling yours because you can’t compete on the metrics that people care about most.

And you’re going to compete with them on price then? Even when they can and will sell every unit at a loss until you’re driven out of the market. Unless you’re wealthy enough to be part of the good ol boys club, you can’t afford to play that kind of game. They can.

I’m sorry for, pointing out how popular isn’t the best choice of word?

But no matter how you slice it, popular isn’t a great descriptor. Whether you choose the prescriptivist “the dictionary says x thus the word means x no matter what” or the descriptivist “most people use the word to mean y thus the word means y no matter what”, in this case they both agree.

Both groups agree that when I say “Jim is popular” it makes you think that people generally like Jim. It evokes some level of communal approval. The dictionary literally defines the word to mean likeable, and the general usage still seems to denote general approval.

So either way, it doesn’t represent the Empress situation. A situation where the majority of the community at best doesn’t care and at worst openly dislikes her as a person because of her behavior, but still comes back for the games. She has a monopoly, but that doesn’t make her inherently popular. Most people who know seem to dislike, and most who don’t will also have no bearing on her popularity.

Because those big businesses are only motivated by the profit possibilities.

If you take away that protection then they’ll just stop trying. They don’t give a shit about any of the motivations you listed. They’ll wait for you to come up with something new, then use the advantage of their size to force you out of the market. You’ll end up either giving up or trying again at which point they’ll just repeat the cycle.

And there’s nothing you can do to stop them because now you they can be as open as blatant as they want with directly using your exact plans.

None of those motivations you listed actually need IP to be abolished though.

If you’re trying to differentiate yourself from the competitors, having IP protection is jn your favor. The large corporation you’re competing with can’t just swoop in and destroy you by making an identical product at a such a loss of profit until you run out of money.

If you’re fueled by creating open source knowledge, well you can already do that. You can choose to release your IP into the world for anyone to use unrestricted.

And for a sense of community, well that’s just the second point again. Abolishing IP was never going to make you feel community with Amazon. But having IP isn’t preventing you from having community with individuals. You can still work on a project together without abandoning the idea of IP ownership.

Depends on how exactly you define popular.

If you use a definition that includes anything like “liked and admired” then she doesn’t fit. Her service is busy but as this thread shows, most people openly state they only go to her because they have no other choice for these cracks.

Using popular hides how many people actively want to jump ship if only there was competition. It’s like saying that Comcast is popular because they have so many customers who don’t have a viable alternative to using them.

Popular feels like the wrong word. If you’re the only game in town for a specific service, that doesn’t inherently mean you’re popular.