halfelfhalfreindeer

joined 1 year ago
[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're not supposed to hurt your friends.

A firehose in the sky that sucks the rain back in.

[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But it does describe the control of resources and to an extent force, which is "political" in addition to economic.

That's a valid point, though I still wouldn't call it a pyramid scheme.

[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're not forced to take on that debt though, nor is the debt unpayable unless you take on more debt. Some people put themselves into a ponzi-like situation either through poor financial decision making or circumstances so shit that they can't do any better, but the average person doesn't need to take out a loan on a freaking pair of nikes or even a car or house. It's a cultural norm to get a mortgage, but if you do the math it often doesn't make sense to and isn't anywhere close to mandatory. At most you could argue that the US government debt works that way, but even that's iffy and depends on your geopolitical outlook.

[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How so though? This sounds like a statement that's meant to be flashy but doesn't actually hold up. Pyramid schemes are characterized by a) an eventual lack of ability to recruit more people, b) recruitment rather than a product or a service being the driver, and c) a person at the bottom left with nothing, including recourse. Capitalism, even completely free capitalism, doesn't work like that unless you specifically rig it to do so. That's called "corruption".

 

So this is not something that's very often discussed in minimalism communities, but I've recently gone through the process of minimizing the merchants that I interact with. A lot of mental clutter is bureaucratic, and anyone who tracks their spending rigorously knows how often things get messed up. Cards getting charged mistakenly, companies trying to pull sketchy shit, deliveries not showing up, etc. A side effect of minimizing initially was that I just spent less time working out issues with underpaid and therefore lazy customer service reps, and I found that to be a huge unexpected relief, but not a fully effective one, so two months ago I just went through all of my cards and made a list of every single company I give money to every month and stripped out what I could. I was OK with spending a bit of extra money to pare down that list, but actually ended up saving money on net - sometimes you spend more money than you save trying to take advantage of deals and such, and the more companies you interact with the more you're going to get screwed over.

I tried to get rid of the following:

  1. Any companies I don't jive with ethically. Loblaw (in Canada) is horrid, and I was really only still buying from them because of the brief inconvenience of having to find an alternative (they're virtually monopolizing the grocery and toiletry sector at this point). I also took a couple of hours and contacted EVERY company I give significant money to to make sure they don't support Russia. Fuck you Proctor & Gamble. It's a huge moral weight off of my shoulders to know that, at bare minimum, I'm not making that situation worse. I only realized afterwards that I was SO SICK of walking into stores that just made my skin crawl, and how much it was weighing on me to support disgusting practices because convenience. This was, unexpectedly, by far the biggest plus.

  2. Any companies that had given me issues in the past. If you charge me a bullshit fee or don't make every effort to fix your mistakes, it's not worth my time. Banks were the biggest culprit here, followed by anything that Uber has ever touched. Also fuck you, Uber.

  3. Anything redundant. For example, there were some places I was just going to because they had the best price on one or two products. Not really worth my time. It's great that your toothpaste or whatever is 50 cents cheaper than the next cheapest one, but the mental energy it takes to go out of my way to go to that store just isn't worth it at this point. I also don't need to get certain categories of stuff at five different places - it cuts down on decision fatigue to just have one place where you get all of your [fill in the blank].

  4. Anything that I didn't feel good spending money on and was a headache. For example, while I love ordering delivery every once in a while, uber/doordash's customer support is just so, so insultingly bad and things go wrong too often, and in the end it's just too expensive. For that price I can invest in "my future" or "an experience", which is just worth more than that temporary comfort.

  5. Any random subscriptions or anything coming off of my card that I didn't really need. I had an annual subscription for a website that lets you make animated christmas cards. And the subscription renews in... April. WTF??? So yeah, that needed to go. Also cancelled spotify, had already cancelled netflix before I started.

I tried to find and add:

  1. Ethically "better" merchants. I found restaurants that offer in-house delivery so that I don't need to use food delivery apps. They. Are. So. Much. Cheaper. You can't beat $20 chinese food that lasts for two days. Credit unions are something that have been on my mind for a while. I also tried to find non-chain stores. I'm ok with the fact that I won't be ethically perfect as a consumer, but in that area too many people let perfect be the enemy of good.

  2. Things that I wanted to spend more money on, usually to align with desired behaviors. A thrift store with good prices, healthy fast food, and place to get books. I tend to respond really well to habitual behaviors, so I find that if I just plunk it into my schedule it grows on me.

End results:

  • Savings of $220 in first full billing cycle.

  • Cut out over half of merchants, weirdly. A lot of these were stores for everyday stuff - groceries, food delivery, drugstores, netflix and other digital subscription services, etc.

  • Deleted so many apps. BYE UBER AND FUCK YOU FOREVER.

  • Just feel a lot more free and better, because a lot of places are out of my mind, completely, especially things that had been nagging at me forever.

  • MUCH better customer service. Goddamn, these "small businesses" that everyone talks about. They actually treat you like a human. Now I understand the hype.

How on earth is TFA too female led? Han Solo, Kylo Ren, Poe... it's not even "female led" let alone "dominantly female", and even if it was that wouldn't make it inherently sexist.

I think there's two subsets of these people.

One subset is actually really smart, book smart even, but just doesn't have a personality that aligns with the format of the education system. Those people tend to do really well in a different environment where they have more intrinsic motivation to succeed. For example, I know someone who didn't do well in school even though he had the ability to because he just didn't really see any reward, so he had no motivation. He went into finance and got through uni and his first few job with flying colors, because there was a reward at the end of the tunnel to pursue.

The other subset just doesn't do well with any sort of "bookish" stuff - math, sciences, finance, engineering, etc. just don't really fly. A lot of them I find feel a bit lost because they feel pressure to find a passion or orient themselves around a career when they just don't have anything that sparks an interest. I find that those people tend to do well when they pursue "active" jobs that don't feel like school. A person I know in this category struggled with school throughout his life, but was really good at working with people and interacting on that emotional plane. He went into social services and now works as a crisis counsellor. Most of the "schooling" was basically just situational training, and the job itself is so intuitive to him. Honestly if he didn't have bills to pay I swear he'd do that job for free. Other people in this category are ok with a job just feeling like work, so any high paying trade tends to work well because they can go to work, do their hours, and then enjoy life.

[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm sure this isn't the biggest thing, but I used to work at a big chain grocery store and "accidentally forget" to scan certain items. Old woman with a food stamp in her hand vs. u/spez-level arrogant billionaire CEO? You pay me $10/hr you fuckers, if you want me to notice the toilet paper in the bottom of the cart you'd better up my pay or help that chick out. I was far from the only one.

I'm sure everyone has had at least a couple of cases. For me it was when a bank employee performed a cash advance, which I have never, ever consented to in my life, and then claimed I had given her permission to do it. Read: she fucked up and blamed it on me. I requested the contact info of her supervisor, who had the audacity to suggest that it wasn't a large sum of money and I should essentially suck it up. That branch manager got an earful and a half and a phone call from the competition bureau (which was great, because it usually takes multiple complaints for them to take action).

Now this is the Karen-y part. Whenever a company that I'm a regular customer of does something morally wrong (as opposed to a mistake or a less than competent employee), I boycott them until, in my estimation, I've cost them 100x the sum of the initial disputed amount (I have substitute actions for cases that don't have a clear dollar value). In this case I cancelled my credit products with them. My boycott is set to expire (i.e. reach the 100x mark) in February of 2024. The rationale behind this is that if 1% of consumers do it, it'll no longer be worth it for them to continue the practice, and it gives you a satisfying end goal. You can't boycott every company that wrongs you indefinitely - I only have a handful on my permanent blacklist - but I can make my peace with it if I know I've comfortably done my part.

[–] halfelfhalfreindeer@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Why could "getting you" not be a person's most important to-do item? Would Putin not benefit greatly from getting Zelensky? Would the person up for a promotion not benefit from sabotaging their competition? Would a drug lord not benefit if his competition accidentally slipped and fell and died? There are so many instances in which a person would very logically (not to mention emotionally) benefit from targeting you personally - that's basically the foundation of politics and resource distribution.

I also lost weight, mostly out of stubbornness. We were sitting at the dinner table and people were making fun of my "mathleticism", I responded by jokingly saying that I could be super athletic if I chose to, and my sister then said she'd give me $1000 if I ever became "athletic". She still hasn't paid me. They still make fun of me, except now for going "from mathlete to athlete". So really I didn't accomplish much.

 

Food is my #1 time suck and I'm honestly dying to get a consistent plan down, but it's terribly hard to make a plan that allows you to buy the same things every week and use up all the perishables.

 

They own brands such as Pampers, Olay, Old Spice, Pantene, Oral B, Herbal Essences, Gilette, Dove, Hellmann's, Axe, Knorr, Magnum, Breyers, and Lipton, among others.

See here: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jul/03/unilever-named-international-sponsor-of-war-by-ukraine

And here: https://sanctions.nazk.gov.ua/en/boycott/

 

I think I'm in the heavy minority because I really dislike the whole having children thing (maybe that's me projecting lol). I'd rather focus on my adult sims and usually adopt an older child and then age them up to a teenager if I want a new character. I like starting from scratch in different neighborhoods and stuff, but it's hard to stay engaged with one specific sim for very long. You can only get divorced so many times ya know?

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