• 4 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2023

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  • 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.


  • 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”.



  • 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.





  • 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.



  • We have a huge amount of resources for very little effort though. Back in the day you could work your ass off in the field all day, but there was no medical technology to cure illness, no vast swaths of entertainment options, no heating to keep you warm (unless you made a fire), and no hamburger that could be delivered to your door with the touch of a button. If you could not starve, lose a toe to frostbite, or die during childbirth, you were doing pretty well.

    Right now you’ve probably never had to deal with hunger - even those under the poverty line can sustain a nutritionally decent diet (albeit an insanely boring one) in the developed world, your life expectancy is somewhere between 75 and 90, the water you drink is clean, there are no soldiers looking to skin you to death, and you’re lying on a fluffy mattress stuffing popcorn into your face. If you’re an average person, you probably have access to luxuries that were completely inaccessible just a few generations ago, and your working conditions are far better even if you find them boring.

    It’s also worth pointing out that a lot of the suffering you might argue exists is preventable. You’re not obligated to eat unhealthy foods, watch crummy netflix movies all day, have children (well, unless an old white dude decided otherwise), smoke, etc. The balance of individual choice vs. external influence is debatable, but certainly preferable to having no choice at all.




  • The maximum level is the level at which a) the average sentient being of that generation can be expected to live a net positive life, b) the addition of another does not reduce the positivity of other lives, and c) the individual being itself would live a net positive life. What is considered a net positive is its own question since pleasure exceeding suffering is subjective, but there’s a strong argument to be made that there is an increasing net negative, and that’s not nearly limited to the climate change argument (in fact that’s probably one of the weaker angles one can take).

    You can also go sliding scale, though you’d have to compete with the eugenics argument (which is possible), and say that some children are worth bringing into the world and others are not. For example, huge net negatives would be someone who sucks up so many resources that they make the average human life worse or someone whose circumstances make them far more likely to live a qualitatively poor life.