Worked for a guy who treated us like shit, human bungee cords on trucks and fork lifts, paid under tge table for overtime, minimum wage if we were not at the clients house. Still in business today.

My father, who was generally a very jovial man and pretty fun, once threatened to beat me with a shovel because I wanted to take a break to rest.

He died of brain cancer about two years ago and I often wonder how long it was growing.

Nor does capitalism if I understand things correctly.

You wrote a lot, and apologies, but I didn’t read it all. Communism is an economic theory. Most of your examples are government misconduct, which happens both under communism and capitalism.

I don’t think either are a good system and would like us to work past the need for capital at all.

Honestly, driving a car. The average driver breaks a traffic law like every 6 seconds or something wild.

Economic systems are mostly about incentives. What are people incentivised to do by receiving the most reward.

Capitalism incentivises destroying competition, creating monopolies, expanding the wealth gap, donating to ineffective charities for tax breaks, paying employees as little as possible to protect profits, lobbying congress for no labor protections, and filling the media with nonsense to distract from all this.

Communism makes it so, in principle, you have no reason to overwork yourself, other than if you enjoy what you are doing.

At least that is my understanding.

"“The decision to close a store is never easy,” company officials said in a statement. “The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago.”

The stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, according to the company, a figure that nearly doubled in the last five years despite numerous strategies to boost performance, including building smaller stores, offering local products and building a Walmart Academy training center."

https://news.wttw.com/2023/04/12/walmart-closing-4-chicago-stores-company-says-losses-have-doubled-last-5-years

Doesn’t sound like theft was ever the problem here according to them?

That Walmart CLAIMED were closed for high theft.

Probably leave religion in the past, recognize the oligarchy as the source of most of our woes, legislate for a maximum income, laws to make home ownership by companies illegal, begin providing universal basic income, stop caring about the boarder and just let people in, decriminalize drugs and prostitution, criminalize bribes to politicians, break up the obvious monopolies, nationalize internet access, expand voter access and encourage everyone to vote, release prisoners from prison for non-violent offenses, close private prisons and reform tge whole court system, structure fines for laws broken as a percentage of income making them a deterent even for tge wealthy, ties minimum wage to inflation or tge gdp in some way so it can keep up without further legislation, open a new department that is not police to handle most calls more ethically, cap income within a company so no one can make more than X times more than any other employee of the company, simplify tge tax codes to close most loopholes, empower tge IRS to send citizens a bill instead of paying turbo tax, prevent civil forfeture, remove state ability to fine individuals without an income for not paying fees, expand disability benefits so you can have more than $3k in liquid assets and still get benefits, and so on.

These were all just off the top of my head.

Stupid people… their level… beat you with experience blah blah blah

Working isn’t the only way to amass capital either. In fact, it is surely the slowest method.

It takes education, you can work your whole life at being a pro golfer, but if you never receive guidance, you will not reach your potential.

Have always really enjoyed writing poetry and playing with rhyme and meter. I’ve never enjoyed reading poetry from famous poets. The first time I became interested in “high status” poetry, just for its status, I heard about the newest Poet Loriet. I looked up their poems, all excited to read clear, interesting takes on the human condition.

I think it was probably Kay Ryan at that time. Here is a poem by Kay that I found online:

The Elephant in the Room
Kay Ryan

The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.

It wasn’t the typical art critique that a layman would typically jump to that filled me, “I could do that” it was tge far worse feeling of, “If I had written this, I wouldn’t have thought to show anyone”

I pretty much decided then and there that poetry, like most art, it seems, has little to do with content or quality. More so with means and notoriety.

How is it people are at all surprised out society created a new generation more obsessed with being popular online than anything else?

It is very simple. When you are worried about yourself and your own actions that is normal. When you are concerned about what others choose, that is conservatism.

Removed by mod

Sorry, you can also earn Gems in ranked which you use to unlock heroes which are something like $25 each currently. Which is so much money. I miss when you bought a game for a flat fee and played it as much as you wanted to.

The one where the guys dead twin brother had the long-lost cousin who was married to the dude who murdered the brother, but we didn’t find that out until he cheated with the sister of the other girl (played by the same actress) who was lost on the mountain after the plane crash.

No, it was a a simple plug and play meme, maybe like “the African Chad” would have made the double joke clear. It’s just subtext as is.

The systems allow people to do harm, we need to violently oppose them.

Jeff Bezo may suck as a person, but capitalism is designed to make people like him as the ruling class. If you don’t like it, fight it.

But you live in a world where there are few union jobs, and the middle class has all but evaporated. We can’t afford to buy things because we don’t make enough money, so companies stopped making products for us. Brands no longer compete to create the best value for the customer, but to make the most short-term profit they can.

While unions may not be the best solution, it is clear the working class having a voice is a feature, not a bug.