Health Insurance that covers next to nothing but costs a fortune anyway.
☝️ recently got a covid test that based on all my research beforehand, it should have been covered except for $10 I would pay.
Jokes on me, it actually cost me $200 they charged to my credit card two weeks later. I didn’t even get to know the price at the time I needed medical care.
Sometimes other countries make fun of America for things they don’t understand. Not on this one, America deserves every bit of mocking it gets for it’s medical coverage atrocity.
You can get free rapid covid test kits from the US government with a valid mailing address.
Americans stupidity is another one that they get correct but there’s plenty of things to laugh about America as there is to laugh about 3rd world countries.
Recently?
How a lawyer in America got jailed for legally fighting against(and defeating) an American multi-national oil company that polluted the Amazon and more importantly harmed the lives and health of the locals with the pollution.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OtIAZMqrZE
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_DonzigerDonziger’s story is heartbreaking and infuriating, and I’m continually disappointed that so few people are familiar with his story and what the courts did to him. It’s one of the clearest examples of judicial corruption and the power and benefits that are afforded to corporations and almost never extended to the people fighting for what’s right and just.
In June 2022, a federal appeals court affirmed Donziger’s criminal contempt conviction. In March 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear further appeals.
I’m shocked.
I learned about this during the pan through interviews he did with Chapo Traphouse. Absolutely nuts.
Yep, learned about this just yesterday from the YouTube channel BoyBoy who covered the situation quite well and had a lovely interview with Steven (as lovely as such a depressing topic can be)
Here in Sweden we currently have the problem that hospitals are understaffed and keeping wages of nurses so low that a lot of nurses quit and leave the others with an even crazier workload so the hospitals buy nurses semi permanently from temp agencies that cost multiple times more and the rental nurses have better pay and agreements of overtime and such. We had a well functioning health care but then the privatisation of everything and selling out communally owned services to private profit making schemes since the 90s. Because our government has been dominated by right wing market liberals and “sossehöger” - social democrats that jump on right wing populism to stay in power when they can rather than being consistent in left wing ideals.
Fucking end the market liberal experiment already. “The market solves all problems” - yeah, of it’s own interest which is how to squeeze out more profits regardless the how and how low it stoops.
Damn, I didn’t know America was contagious…
It’s been the strategy of the right wing here since forever - get in power sell out as much they can (and for some unfathomable reason for discount prices), fuck things up in general, leave it to a left wing government to salvage what can be saved while blaming them for public service being garbage so they can motivate selling out more when they have power again. It’s a mix of blind idealists and profiteering scum that are in liaison with the right wing nationalist party with former nazi connections and obviously the Christian democrat leader that models the party according to the republicans is the most buddy-buddy with the fringe right.
And the populist right wing of course romanticises about the good days when everyone had housing and was safe and provided and so on - that was built solely by the left and the right wing fought them every step of the way and that they have since then torn down. Blatant lies and disinformation all the way.
But it is what people vote for. We get the societal break down we deserve.
Whoa, I thought that just Australia was following American economics. The descent into privatisation on everything. I guess there are greedy and ignorant people everywhere. For some reason knowing Sweden is also going down the neoliberal toilet it makes me feel better and I dont know why. I guess its a feeling of inevitability.
Reminds me of John Stewart stating that to combat vested interest takes energy and effort every single day.
There are so many groups taking advantage of our overworked lives combined with the over abundance of useless information that distracts us from the real issues that impacts us. Its very difficult to know how and where to direct our energy. Of course thats my view as a social/environmental person. However, if you love the conservative/neoliberal view of the world. Then congratulations, things must seem pretty great right now.
Same happens in Italy. It’s probable the govt will collapse before 2027 and they won’t campaign as much for the new elections, so the new govt will be blamed for all the problems these fuckers caused
Thats fucking sad
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Sounds like ‘pay day loans’ in the US.
Back in the day, a loan shark was a criminal who charged an outrageous 20% interest for money. Working class folks were at the mercy of these “six-for-fivers.”
Ronald Reagan became President and now established banks could charge 35% or more.
(Looks at my credit cards)
Yall got any more of that 20% interest?
Yeah, a factory worker would get $5 and pay back $6 the next week. That was a terrible crime. Then Reagan deregulated the banks and it became business as usual.
I’d like to add that there are good versions of “microloans”! I learned that there used to be (or still are, didn’t check) non-profit " banks" in some parts of India (and South africa I think) that would give out small loans of a few dollars to a few hundred dollars (which can be quite a lot of money in India). There was no collateral and low interest, but a group of people had to apply for a loan together. Until the first loan was paid back, the rest of the group couldn’t apply again. It was meant to provide financial backing and capital to microbusinesses (e.g. fishers, farmers, peddlers) that would otherwise be excluded from the financial market due to a lack of collateral and otherwise be forced to take high-interest loans.
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Thanks for the info! I didn’t think they were widespread, but figured they might be a bit wholesome and would light up this thread :)
To be fair, usury is much older plague than capitalism, but it’s been one of capitalism roots, and capitalism cranked it up incredibly.
“Vote with your wallet” means more money gets you more votes.
Some users leaving Reddit/instagram/twitter is not a problem, especially considering network effects, but some advertisers leaving is a crisis.
The users down here trying to teach you what it means while you know it better than them lmao.
“Vote with your wallet” doesn’t mean “if you don’t like it don’t buy it” but if that you don’t like the new iteration of the product reason you shouldn’t buy it, thus letting the company know it wasn’t good enough and they should do better. This premise is flawed because it sounds like some democratic shit, but the only ones who can vote with their wallet are the whales that actually have % on that sweet company revenue: for the average user there is no vote because to matter it would have to scale with other consumers. Something so far unachievable because for a tiny, “loud” minority there is the clueless majority.
Today I heard Meta has laid off workers because they brought their own food for lunch instead of buying it from the company cafeteria.
Well yes, but also no. Meta fired those folks because they were using their lunch stipend provided by meta for things other than lunch. Petty, given how much they were paying the employees, but almost certainly a breach of contract on the employee’s part.
Meta is probably trying to do layoffs without paying layoff costs or taking the stock hit layoffs can cause. Which is still capitalist AF by any measure, lol. For fans of watching what kind of shit the oligarchy is trying now, Meta is definitely one to keep an eye on. Mark Zuckerberg has been moving very conservative very quickly lately.
You see, I at least buy food from my lunch stipend, although it’s usually my grocery trip and not necessarily my lunch of the day. And I only get about 7€ lunch stipend per day, not >40€.
Capitalists will say that it’s fine for an economy to have a few capitalists own all capital and all physical and intellectual property while common people are only allowed to rent it from the capitalists at whatever rate the capitalist pleases. However, capitalists will also say that the evil of socialism is that you won’t be allowed to own property. That’s the most capitalist thing I’m aware of.
Yep, that’s why Marx is correct. Capitalism consolidates itself into large monopolist syndicates, removing the usefulness of Capitalists and eliminating competition, whereby Central Planning of public property becomes greatly more efficient.
The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
-Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party
For more reading, Why Public Property? is a good article elaborating in modern lingo.
Capitalists also say “You’ll own nothing and be happy”, the part they leave out is that it’s because you will rent every from them. In filthy socialism, the state holds everything in trust for the people and nobody makes any profits from ownership (the true power of capital).
This is golden.
A more recent example comes from the med-tech giant Abbott Labs, which used DMCA 1201 to suppress a tool that allowed people with diabetes to link their glucose monitors to their insulin pumps, in order to automatically calculate and administer doses of insulin in an “artificial pancreas.” -eff.org
We joke about someday having to jailbreak our own organs, but we’re basically already there.
An exoskeleton let a paralyzed man walk. Then its maker refused repairs.
these are straight out of Repo, the Genetic Opera
Maybe thisClient :3?
Voyager
I once read that there are some states in the U.S. where firefighters don’t put out fires in houses that don’t pay a monthly subscription.
I live in an area with a subscription fire service.
It’s not expensive - around $200/year. And if you don’t have a subscription they still come and put out your fire or cut you out of the car or whatever needs to be done. You just get a bill for $3000/hr/apparatus that responds.
But I still find it abhorrent. Just put it in my fucking taxes and be done with it. Jesus.
I live in an area with a subscription fire service.
I thought the earlier guy was doing a joke. I knew that those were a thing in the 1800’s or something, but even today?
You just get a bill for $3000/hr/apparatus that responds.
That’s pretty insane. So basically the firemen and ambulances are too expensive for the average citizen to use, and if you happen to be black, you probably don’t want to call the cops either.
Great services.
Private fire fighters have been a thing since at least the 1600s.
No no. Not “since”, but “in”.
It genuinely shocked me those still exist in the states. That’s fucking insane.
We have a somewhat different mentality about public safety here in Finland.
yep, we can say the same thing about slavery.
That sounds apocryphal.
Not sure about the modern equivalents to this, but in Rome (please correct if wrong) it used to be like that. Firefighters would only put out fires of houses that paid them and otherwise just stood there, watching.
At least that’s what I read in one of those “did you know this about the ancient cultures?” articles and those aren’t always reliable either.
My boss once said to a group of new joinees including me," Eventually you will be able to afford subscription to all the streaming services."
Motorcycle airbag vests that will not work if you aren’t up-to-date on the subscription payments when you have a crash…
Hong Kong’s subway system offers fare discounts if you use the entrances/exits that require you to walk through a mall, as part of their monetisation of spaces required to access public services
Charging money for supplies after people had there whole lives uprooted by a natural disaster. Cough cough hurricane helene
Don’t forget cops and military protecting stores in disaster zones, full of supplies that will wind up getting paid for by insurance anyway and will go bad before the store reopens.
Owning more than one home
There’s nothing wrong with that.
Actually owning two or three homes is okay-ish. The problem is when you own tens and rent them all
Two or three makes you a slumlord
You can own “beach” and mountain houses for vacation, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are disgustingly rich. The problem with people owning multiple houses is that they reduce the possibility for other people to buy or own a house, and most of the time they are rented and the landlords don’t have a few houses to rent but tens
