Giving money to Amazon, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Google .etc
It’s like, you can’t have an argument for price gouging, when you’re enabling them by spending. If people were smart, they’d stop giving them money 10 - 15 years ago and they’d be right now, trying to reconstruct so they can be more economically friendly than how they are now.
A person is smart. People, not so much.
Great movie
Building electric car charging stations without security cameras.
About 75% of the chargers are disabled in my city. The primary method of disabling them is roll up with a sawzall and just chop the cable off. Gets you $5 worth of crack, which is always a nice incentive structure when there’s unguarded copper lying around.
The only chargers that survive are in front of 24 hour businesses.
Because with stuff like this you cannot simply say “everyone should know better” they don’t know btr, they don’t care, they don’t understand. For a myriad of reasons people will always do stuff counter to best logic, so you cannot ask them to. The only practical way to prevent stuff like this is through regulation and a government that serves the people. Lol it’s nice to dream.
Yeah, and also even if there’s smart people doing it, it doesn’t matter. Supposed 10% of people don’t use Amazon, as long as 90% are fine, it won’t affect them. Most people won’t look beyond “it costs me less”, the whole reason thing like temu is widespread is exactly that. People don’t care about other people, ethics of things, or even the long term effects of their actions. They just see low price vs high price on everyday setting.
If a chain restaurant gave half price food for a year in a loss to take out all local businesses people would gladly buy it. And then when everything is gone and that chain raises price because there’s no competition they’ll just blame other people, economy, whatever they can find.
In many cases it also comes from the side that people can’t afford to spend more money for the right reasons. Many people are living paycheck to paycheck, and those that aren’t, are still not well off and want to save as much money as they can for retirement/emergencies. You can’t count on anyone except yourself for your future, so they’ll take whatever costs them less now.
If a chain restaurant gave half price food for a year in a loss to take out all local businesses people would gladly buy it. And then when everything is gone and that chain raises price because there’s no competition they’ll just blame other people, economy, whatever they can find.
Nice summarization of modern day capitalism, this is pretty much the play book. Operate on a loss and Survive off of investments until you have created a monopoly, then the price is whatever you want, use your newfound endless wealth to pay the government to create fake consumer protections that’s only goal is to increase the startup capital required to attempt to compete with you thus securing your monopoly, all while the poorest people have all of their money transferred to the people with too much money.
Then you have people come around with this unwise narrative that people need to just “choose with their wallets” like somehow you can convince enough people, who are at a majority financially unstable because of unregulated capitalism, to spend more money than they have, to stop capitalism. I totally understand where they’re coming from with this, but sadly it just serves the capitalists by placing the blame for their gross greed on the people instead of on them. Its the same thing with consumer recycling agendas when global warming was a new concept, its redirecting the blame onto the wrong people.
Believing public figures on camera, or on a dais with a mic in front of them.
It’s not about “smart” vs “dumb.” People’s ideas are shaped by their Class Interests and Material Coniditons.
Stop generalising groups of people.
I cannot think of a proper example rn, but I see this everywhere.
meme example
group a does x
also group a: says something contradicting x
This happens across the board, not only in political topics.
they would stop wasting their money
If people were really smart, how would they post insults to make them less obvious?
Stop. Electing. Fraudsters.
Especially when the fraudster is a convicted felon.
I’m doing better now, but 15 years ago Walmart was the only option I had for food. Local/regional grocery stores were more expensive and I was living paycheck to paycheck with growing debt.
“If people were smart they would stop buying the most cost-efficient option” is really not feasible.
“If people were smart” they would read and stop putting oligarchs in power.
“If people were smart they would stop buying the most cost-efficient option” is really not feasible.
In fact, more and more people don’t have the luxury of buying more expensive options.
Of course, stealing is an option, and I think ‘If people were smart’ they would accept that stealing from Walmart is not an ethical or pragmatic problem, but it’s a risky behavior so I wouldn’t criticize people for not stealing. [edit: see Fubarberry’s reply]
Stealing from walmart also isn’t sustainable if many people are doing it. For example there were a ton of walmarts and other stores in the Chicago area that recently closed due to high theft at those locations. Now whole communities there are left without convenient shopping options, which can be a big problem for people with limited transportation options.
That Walmart CLAIMED were closed for high theft.
You can look up videos of some of the stores that were closed, they were basically being straight up looted.
I remember seeing the videos, and thinking to myself how I didn’t understand how they could afford to stay in business like that. So when they announced they were closing those stores for theft, I didn’t really think the given reason was ever in doubt.
"“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."
Doesn’t sound like theft was ever the problem here according to them?
Good point. If there aren’t other local stores remaining to fill the gaps, then that would be a critical problem.
Walmart, Kroger, etc.'s entire business model is to undercut other local stores to drive them out and become local monopolies. If they exist in a location there likely aren’t many, if any, local stores remaining…
Stealing isn’t right.
The Walmart near me closed due to high theft. There were actually people stealing from the construction site when the store was being built, so it really was a ticking clock as to how long the store itself would even last.
Some people are just awful.
Stealing isn’t right.
I conditionally disagree. In fact, there are many real situations where stealing is the right option. There are valid reasons why folk lore glorifies figures like Robin Hood. And when it comes to international conglomerates like Walmart, which hoard astronomical wealth while others who can’t afford bread starve nearby, theft of the hoard is justice in its most appropriate form (if one values human survival more than legal property rights).
Even stealing from Walmart isn’t right.
Why not?
Look. There was a subreddit that got banned because it was a bunch of shoplifters, dumb ones, showcasing what they stole. They all claim that they’re doing it to hurt corporations.
If anyone had a clue at all about working retail - that’s not how it works. The corporation is going to be sailing just fine. It’s you, the worker and the store that’s getting hurt.
And that’s why these shoplifters are absolute assholes. They steal enough, the store is closed, many jobs lost.
How the fuck is that hurting the corporation?
But you’ll notice that the price comparison is narrowing and Wal-Mart is slowly not looking better off than the competition. It’s almost like shopping at Dollar Tree is more feasible, it’s what some of us are going to be forced to be doing if not now. Just shopping Dollar Tree almost regularly.
Entirely depends on region. Walmarts strategy is to take a loss in an area until all local competitors are out of business then crank back up until that area is profitable enough to subsidize new areas. In my area Walmart is cheaper than pretty much everyone except dollar stores, and dollar stores treat their employees even worse while having even worse quality food for barely any cheaper.
Ignoring the fact that alternative voting systems exist and there can be more then two political parties.
They’d stop doing capitalism. Entirely. If people in the US were smart, they would have been the vanguard of the communist revolution in the late 1800s when Marxist ideas were starting to spread in the us.
That depends, people can be smart but malicious, non-coorperative, or selfish.
The prisoner’s dilemma shows that there are systems where individually, the “smart” individual thing to do is globally non-optimal.
Even smartness and altruism alone isn’t enough. Medical professionals are smart and out to help others, but any ER doc/nurse will tell you they have limited trust in their patients (rightly so in the real world).
Does “everyone is smart” also include both “altruism and cooperative trust in others”?
Marxism is critically flawed about surplus value and definitions of egalitarianism unfortunately so while it all sounds nice on paper it never worked in practice
Except it’s currently working in practice in many countries, one of which is more successful by every measure than the US. Also Marxist-leninism is responsible for being more people out of poverty than any other system of socioeconomics.
deleted by creator
What exactly are you suggesting?
It’s important to consider, most of the communist states which fell were couped by or at war (cold or otherwise) with the USA. So it doesn’t make sense to transplant the trend of communist states falling into a scenario where their single biggest threat is gone.
- Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans
- Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says [UN] Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
- China’s Energy Use Per Person Surpasses Europe’s for First Time
- At 54, China’s average retirement age is too low
- China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
- World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
I know it’s a joke, but current communist countries have the same average Human Development Index as current capitalist countries.
Does this just means countries that have historically been associated with the communist bloc, which is to say opposed to the US? Because I’d find it hard to make the argument that any communist or socialist country really exists today, even kind of. They’re all operating under the same fundamental worker-owner principles.
I mean China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. It’s debatable whether they can be considered socialist, but they are usually given as examples of “failed” communism, so I felt it was important to note that’s not really the case, at least judging from the data.
The obvious answer is fossil fuels, right? Few people want to cook the climate, they just can’t quite fathom something that abstract and slow-moving, so they do it anyway.
Less obviously, feeding all our most sensitive data to random websites and apps. Again, the threat just doesn’t look enough like a sabre-tooth tiger.
Fossil fuels is kinda a prisoner’s dilemma issue. Everyone cooperating to save the planet is obviously ideal, but realistically there are always going to be companies/countries that won’t. And as long as it’s cheaper to not be environmentally friendly, there’s always going to be someone taking that option.
For example, lets say country A passes new regulations on manufacturing to be more environmentally friendly. The new regulations take the country’s manufacturing from low pollution to very low pollution. However the increase in cost causes many companies to stop manufacturing locally, and instead outsource their manufacturing to country B with low regulation and moderate pollution during manufacturing. The end result is more money leaving the local economy of country A, and increased global pollution.
It’s a similar prisoner’s dilemma for the individual companies involved. If your competitor is able to make their product for cheaper because their process is less environmentally friendly, then they can undercut you and put you out of business.
The tragedy of the commons is definitely part of it, but until recently there was a sort of global consensus anyway. Domestically climate change action - real action - is unpopular.
Few people want to cook the climate, they just can’t quite fathom something that abstract and slow-moving, so they do it anyway.
I don’t think the problem is that people are unaware. Even people who believe they are against cooking the environment have other rationalisations, like “the economy isn’t able to shut down all the coal plants yet, it’ll collapse”. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
No, it’s not that people are unaware, or even don’t believe it, it’s that they can’t reason about it strategically
It’s spending now to save later. If that’s about military spending or emergency services everyone gets paying taxes for it, but words are as far as most will go to stop nonspecific far future weather. Even when people talk about the situation with climate change, you hear them frame it in moral terms instead of practical terms.
Case in point: Canada has a carbon tax, and a majority want to get rid of it. Denialism is not a prominent part of the campaign, just the fact that it costs something. And not even much, and it’s all given back in refunds - doesn’t matter, the extra gas cost people will bear is zero.
Voting for fascists/not voting
That we haven’t learned more from history and keep making the same mistakes over and over.
