Microblog Memes

All those points are always resisted by Conservatives / Regressives.... They are fucking wrong about every solution to every problem we face since the dawn of time.

Have you considered that those things aren’t done not because of stupidity but because a small subset of society that holds most of the political power and media benefits from those things being done?

The system isn’t flawed in the sense that it doesn’t work. It does. Extremely well. It just doesn’t work for you and me or to make everyone’s lives better.

We've known for years that starting school at 08.00 is detrimental to school-aged children and teenagers, but we keep doing it.

Yeah, but we also know school is more about free childcare that allows both parents to go to work than it is about actual education.

We've known for years that WFH can be just as productive and even more so than RTO, but we keep doing it.

We also know that a large part of the real estate market is dependent on leasing office space.

We've known for ages that housing homeless people helps them and society much better than criminalizing them, but we keep doing it

Again, creating more homes drives down property value.

We've known for ages that repressive stances on drugs are counterproductive, but we keep doing it.

It also creates jobs for police officers, income for private prisons, and strips minorities of their rights.

We've known for ages that a 4-day workweek results in gains for everyone, including the owner class themselves, yet we keep on doing 5.

This is once again an issue with the real estate market. Cutting the work week also cuts into profits of companies dependent on demand made from people commuting to and from work.

starting to think that gaining knowledge and insight is completely useless if the results are never taken into account if they don't fit the currently reigning narrative.

It's not that we don't take account of the results, it's just that the results do not benefit the nonsensical economic system we've adapted to. Our system does not create value from the things we have, it creates value from the things we withold.

We've known for ages that paying for social services, healthcare and unemployment benefits increase the amount of spendable income the working class has and that this directly benefits the real economy while more income to top earners only means that that money is lost to the economy.

Most of the problems the US is facing could be fixed, or at least alleviated with social democratic programs. Better economy, better education, less crime, less partisanship, less drug abuse, less violence, less stress, less fear, better mental health, better physical health, less homelessness, more gender equality, more racial equality, more job security, better wages, better lifestyle, more happiness, less religion, etc. etc.

You have to cycle out old fucks to get progress.

After my generation dies you might be able to move forward in some of those fronts.

I will say, about the school times, that the biggest issue is the parent schedules, not the kids. Shifting times makes it much harder on parents, unless you also push tradwife-ish values: one parent must give up their career to care for the kids. It's a sticky topic without an easy solution.

Edit the responses about the school times illustrate my point. I'm not saying there's no solution; I'm saying there's no easy solution that isn't contentious.

You have the understand that your culture is not predicated on logic, reason, or the scientific method. Its designed to feed the capitalist machine and perpetually increase productivity. That's the only real outcome measure.

Starting school late will make it difficult for parents to get their kids to the bus stop / school on their way to work. We can't disrupt the productivity of the parents - that's the priority.

WFH decreases the control your employer has over you and also diminishes the value of their real estate. Will someone please think of the capitalists?

Housing homeless people is socialist. We musn't disincentivize productive behavior!

Drugs and all "crime" must be allowed to happen and then stamped out by force. Only then can we use fear to control populations and define an outgroup that becomes our baseline for dehumanization.

All of this is by design in Western and many other modern cultures. It was never really a question of knowing better.

F.e. the current Dutch penal code was accept in 1881. Thats 144 years ago.

Part of the issue is that we are mostly stuck in an economic structure that cannot continue forever unless everybody partakes. Getting more wages every year, getting more revenue and profit every year, just doesn't work for eternity. In theory, if everybody got their 2%$ wage increases and interest was just 2% a year (excluding promotions or corrections for pas years etc) it would be fine.

The circular economy theory is one of those theories that attempts to fix that AND also work on helping the repair, reuse, recycle movement.

What they're trying to do is funnel public dollars to their friends who make the equipment that the police use.

Don't forget funnelling a steady stream of prisoners into their corporate prison system...

Also criminalizing any political opponents...

In a normal state of things the police doesn't decide who is a criminal, the justice system does and that should be separated from the government. Sadly there are more and more corrupt countries these days. But yeah giving them more money for anything else than to get more/better personel doesn't help.

What's cool is they are exporting it. The cops where you are look up to the American style. When the American cops retire, they will be hired to train your cops with seminars and books. Its a fun little community. So you're an outsider, but not for long. Just a few more years of passively waiting and you will be an insider soon.

It's worse than that. Some folks actually reject the idea that those poorer than them should have nice things, or even OK things. This is why there are voucher programs, why so much social housing (when it was built) are ugly, plain boxes showcasing the worst of brutalism.

I feel like most rich people would reject 1000$ if that meant a poor person got 500$.

everybody knows how deverstating low crime and high purchasing power are for business

Chaos, artificial scarcity, and violence feeds the system and justifies its existence.

Otherwise, why would we still have a mass incarceration system? Why is it still punitive in nature with terrible and inhumane conditions normalized?

A cycle is created that makes people unemployable and industries and those in power reap the benefits at every stage of these people's lives - any police contact is effectively a scarlet letter. Specifically, many corporations benefit from the slave labor sourced from prisons and the private prison industry is its own can of worms.

With AI tooling screening job applicants with proprietary criteria, public data brokers, mass surveillance disguised as "adtech", people search websites, social media (where people have a tendency to overshare personal details), systematic reporting of arrest records/etc. in newspapers (generally with no updates to reflect the person's current situation); you can literally be unemployable in the US with no conviction or crimes that have been expunged or sealed.

If you have a felony or misdemeanor on your record - good fucking luck getting a job in today's market - background checks are normalized and are extremely accessible to employers. It's no wonder why people turn to crime to exist, discrimination is effectively legalized - there is insufficient regulation and protections for job applicants.

The only way to prevent crime is to rehabilitate those who commit crime and to provide services to enrich people's lives before they would otherwise commit crime. We also need to respect people's privacy upon rehabilitation - we shouldn't be permanently labeling (or dehumanizing) those deemed to be fit to return to society (e.g. people that aren't violent or who aren't a threat). We have to give them a path to participate in society.

Here's a decent meta-analysis you can start with.

Sixteen reviews met the inclusion criteria. The reviews were comprised of nine peer-reviewed articles and reports from systematic review databases, five technical reports, and two working papers. Table 1 shows the reviews organized by objectives and geography

Their excuse was rampant abuse, so instead of fixing it, they just closed them.

California had a great mental health system in place.

I'm sorry, but no, we really fucking didn't. Reagan was wrong (about everything) to close them, but they weren't good before he did that by a looooong shot