Ah FPTP 🫠
Subscript5676
joined 5 months ago
We’re in a trade war.
But let’s reduce income taxes so that the government gets less money to run long-underfunded public services, maintain long-ignored public infrastructure, and fight the war. Oh, did we forget about the promise of some amount of financial support to people affected by the trade war.
Yeah, that makes sense.
/s
A broken clock is right twice of the day, but we don’t call it a working clock. And it’s worse when the clock actually works somewhat and changes its speed to match more times of the day.
I took at look at the synopsis of The Cult Smashers, and I wonder if it’d be easier to reach a wider audience if readers were going into the stories not armed with their presumptions about Jan 6th, not primed with the understanding that they are reading a book about human politics. These are what many would consider “heavy topics”, that some would think they should set themselves up mentally before diving into them. Perhaps it’s easier to start the story with something close enough to life to feel relatable, evoking some sort of emotional familiarity and hence comfort with the initial premise of the story, as it unravels and reveals how that world, where things work differently from ours.
As far as decentralized and the open source movement goes, I’m glad it’s actually gotten to a place where it feels somewhat comfortable and isn’t just scaffolding all around, always at the verge of disappearing into nothingness. It is difficult for such a culture to continue surviving in the sort of… societal climate (shall we say) that we have today, but I do believe that the seed has been planted, and it will always continue to exist in some form.
That said, Nature (as in, Ziran, or shall I write 自然) will take its course, but I do think that even its destruction, at least in the context of Earth, is a very possible future, thanks to the extended deviation we humans have taken. Climate change is itself a way Nature presents itself due to the changes within, and we already know how it can be the most unforgiving and violent phenomenon we humans have witnessed. We will be eliminated, lest we as a species realize our connection to Nature and its Path / Principle / Order.
Of course, if we exercise some optimism, it’s not impossible that a more grassroots form of a more cooperative society that values knowledge, as a subculture, would take hold. There are forces that seem to try really hard at fighting it, many of which are people who are well-known to us today, and they do win some of their skirmishes, and seem to have gathered enough of their forces to have brought us into the turbulent times we’re in today, but it has also shone a light on what’s at stake and what do they fear. As always, as where there’s despair, hope can be found.
This was an interesting article. Thank you for sharing.
The final two sentences hit me rather hard, despite being someone who just got into their 30s.
I tend towards a more pessimistic opinion that people have very little control over the Dao and instead it simply follows its own path.
A lot of people are very emotionally driven, and inexplicably and unknowingly believe in some kind of destiny, and that some path is already set out for them and they are meant to only walk it. And we see this reflected in basically every major religion, and even the irreligious are sometimes bought into it.
I don’t know how exactly we can change enough minds to help people look at the world around them, and their relationship with it, differently. We could create a grand story with a fictional world that follows those principles, not really in a mythological or religious sense, but simply a story of a different world. It may not immediately garner a sizeable following, and would definitely take a good storyteller to come up with interesting and perhaps even gripping stories that could change how we view life, but perhaps I’m just trying to force myself to be optimistic about humans.
I think you’re either quoting the wrong article, or misread the article. The article talks about the new ownership of The Observer, which is a sister publication to The Guardian.
It’s odd that this “The Standard” publication is the only one that seems to talk about the selling of the Observer and how it was handled, with some even smaller publications. That said, The Standard is majority owned by a Russian oligarch, sometimes sensationalize titles and events, and don’t always have their facts right.
Just to add to your comment, case in point, The Guardian sometimes covers Canadian news, and has recently published a bit more about current Canadian political events. They operate mainly in the UK but have a US office. They are independent and don’t have a corporate backer, and have been working relentlessly covering the events in the US since the new admin took power.
Digressing a bit, I’d urge people to use tools like GroundNews to find out the political leanings and maybe even the corporate owners of news outlets that you come across, and use that to your own judgement.
They’ve been spamming some attack ads about some fake strawman Carney on YT pretty damn aggressively. And idk if I’d ever call whatever they’ve had these last couple years a platform.
Thank you for the message. I don’t find your message to be as much of doomerism than you’ve warned upfront, and if anything, I think you’re being really optimistic, though not in a bad way.
On the topics mentioned under The Carrot, as someone’s who’s technically inclined, I’m not sure if I agree on finding new companies here just to replace the American ones, as it feels like we’re possibly leading ourselves down a similar path where few options exist and money, and power, ends up getting centralized and controlled by random individuals, leading to a possibly oligarchic scenario. What would stop the stakeholders from these companies from installing someone who would place profits before people, if not slowly replacing CEOs over CEOs as they slowly go down that slide? And we already have great decentralized options to replace many, if not all, of these services. Sure, they still have usability issues, but I think things, in this alternative tech landscape, are already in the right direction, even if they aren’t great and may even require a complete rethink. “There is opportunity, but we shouldn’t seek to just replace what’s lost as is,” is what I’m trying to say. If anything, Canada’s been a bit behind as we’ve relied on the US for so much for so long.
I won’t argue against your pessimistic views on life and humanity; I too sometimes think that way. It can be somewhat comforting, maybe in a bit of a twisted way, but it can make us feel a bit better. But I will say that it’s not helpful to others and yourself to keep thinking like so, about how a lot of people just seem too stupid, or that they are born into stupidity and are thus conditioned into thinking that stupidity is the norm, and that there is not real progress.
Real progress is being made, even now, despite all the chaos that we know of. The fact that people can talk about these problems, internationally and openly, despite some threats from those who despise it, is unthinkable 70 years ago, or even 100 years ago, and further. If that’s not progress, I don’t know what is.
History is repeating itself, but it’s not without its differences and variations.
And despair isn’t the end. Where there is despair, there is hope.
While I’m somewhat dejected that I can’t convince you to open up, I hope it becomes part of what you would think about again in the future.
Best wishes there
To the “brainwashing our kids” crowd, my stance is that the kids can decide for themselves if it’s brainwashing, as long as we aren’t actually doing that, and is instead simply equipping them with the ability to think on their own. So I’m not bothered by them, and I think we should make that narrative clear enough, with experts in and out of power to have their say, and the rest can complain all they want. I do understand that that doesn’t always work well in our political climate; just look at the carbon tax, but if we hold ourselves back just because some crowd might fight back, and essentially do nothing, based on the trajectory where things are going, I fear that we’re only sleepwalking ourselves into ruin. This applies to adopting PR as well.
In other words, I’d rather we say that we’ve tried to do things that we have good reasons to believe are good and may actually steer us in the right direction, than go for something that might please more people but is no different from our current trajectory.
From a slightly deeper page in the index tree
<3
So there we have another solution (or at least a part-solution) to our budgetary problems, thanks to some of the retirees (and that number might grow?).
Tbf, this is a hard convo to have, but politicians should be making these convos at the possible risk of getting disliked.
Instead of just proposing solutions without consultation, just ask! Be reasonable of course, but ask! “You’re getting this much money every month, and we’d like to know if you’d be fine if we give you a bit less, because X, Y, and Z.”
Not everyone’s gonna respond positively, and there people who refuse to be reasoned with, but that’s politics!
But ik, a two-party race forces them to basically try to win on every turn, and we have only FPTP to blame.