You’ll own NOTHING and be happy?

[freebeard]

NSFW language:

You’ll own NOTHING and be happy?

One might think he's exaggerating; but it gets worse:
This Is Where We Should Draw A Line... SomeOrdinaryGamers
Your refrigerator won't drive you crazy, you'd have to be crazy to start with.

[Logic]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W2EtrB98P-M

Heart meds @ 20-30 $ per month:
Bought out and repriced @ 500-1000 $ per month.
Because 'Pay or die!'.

Point being:
'Sharks' gather where the most money is.
Max $$ is @ 'Pay or die!'
'You can't take it with you'

If you take the time to look; the FDA and co. is staffed by Big Pharma, with a 'revolving door'.

[redpoint5]

We have the inalienable right to nourish our body as we find most acceptable. The FDA is a cartel that has a monetary and political interest in disagreeing.

Pay or die is inevitable. Indulgences cashed in on that. Again, people are free to decide if they pay or not.

I like the idea of 'you pay, I die'. The concept is an insurance that will cover your expensive prolonging of the death process, or a payment of your choosing to forego those expensive and hopeless procedures. It allows a person to choose to either be a costly burden on society to squeeze out a few moments of misery extra, or leave behind a legacy to deserving and appreciative people.

[Logic]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

We have the inalienable right to nourish our body as we find most acceptable. The FDA is a cartel that has a monetary and political interest in disagreeing.

Pay or die is inevitable. Indulgences cashed in on that. Again, people are free to decide if they pay or not.

I like the idea of 'you pay, I die'. The concept is an insurance that will cover your expensive prolonging of the death process, or a payment of your choosing to forego those expensive and hopeless procedures. It allows a person to choose to either be a costly burden on society to squeeze out a few moments of misery extra, or leave behind a legacy to deserving and appreciative people.

I hear you, but there's Another Way to look at this:

IF
you age @ half the rate;
you remain productive etc for twice as long, with zero of the above.
+
Way more invaluable experience and knowledge.


Some rare few have asked:
"Why do we age? And how do we slow, stop and even reverse the process/es??"
And found some answers!

IMHO:
Aging is as much of 'A Given' as 'Analog' was before the digital age dawned on us...

(Back in the age of Post Offices; would you have believed who said we'd be instantly communicating with anyone, anywhere in the world? (on camera)
Yet, a mere ~30 years later, here We (and A.I.) Are..!)


Back on topic:
https://www.youtube.com/@rossmanngroup/videos

[redpoint5]

Everything ages, and there are no examples counter to that. Entropy exerts dominance over time.

I'm not saying we won't develop substantial anti-aging therapies, only that entropy is a 1-way street, and that disorder is inevitable (not that we shouldn't rage against it).

Death is a tragedy because so much experience and knowledge is lost, with no efficient way to transfer it.

[freebeard]

I thought it was a story about $500 overmolded turn signals.

[Grant-53]

We are seeing an enormous amount of socialist propaganda attempting to cause disruption in our society. Class hatred eventually ends in mass graves. We are free to buy our food, medicines, and vehicles as WE SEE FIT for our individual conditions.

[Ecky]

Agree, partly. Class hatred eventually ends in mass graves is something I can agree with.

The part I'd amend is that every decision we make exists within a system. The moment you engage in any kind of trade, you're ceding some amount of autonomy. Money itself is a cession of autonomy, as you're now externalizing your valuation, and trusting something external to maintain that value.

My wife grew up in Indonesia, which has no effective regulation of imports (or anything really). Half of all children have lead poisoning, because not every individual can be an expert on avoiding products with lead. Most river water will burn your skin, because there isn't an effective authority or system to prevent anyone from dumping anything they want into them. The flip side? Most people pay no taxes, because there isn't an effective system to collect them, either. Most people there wouldn't have it any other way, as, while the country is technically a democracy, it's cronyism, where there isn't any real representation. Tax dollars spent has no accountability whatsoever. Local mafias are the real police, and the formal police force are generally regarded as thugs who will fleece and extort people for money. Whoever forks over the most, when the police arrive, will be the one not arrested on false charges.


The US is full of its own (often unrecognized) propaganda. Frankly, I'm glad I grew up somewhere (Florida) that had public schools, fire departments, police, and even parks, which are all "socialist" entities that work at least somewhat (or did at the time). I'd likely not have made it to where I am today had these institutions not existed. My family had nothing, and I make an upper middle class income now. My wife's family didn't have public schools, and she is fortunate they were affluent enough to send her to high school and then university at their own expense.

I'm similarly glad I don't need an individual subscription to a private company for every individual road I use, and that each of those roads doesn't need a way to scan and charge each vehicle entering and exiting. Indonesia has such things.

On the other hand, I'm also glad I didn't grow up in more of a police state than I did. At the time, the balance seemed pretty reasonable, between protecting people from each other, while not being overbearing.


My take, people are quick to put a label on something for ideological reasons, without stepping back and looking at it from a purely functional perspective. Society doesn't exist without some agreed-upon rules. Every decision to add or subtract a rule has benefits and consequences. Every system exists on a "socialist-anarchist" continuum, but also on a "representative/authoritarian" continuum, where the rules that exist are derived from group consensus, or they're derived from some smaller group that has power and no accountability to the public. Most systems that are ideologically driven, fail. Be careful with your ideologies.

Circling back to the original topic, "everything as a subscription" and ownership of nothing will of course happen so long as you have a system that (for whatever reason) allows consolidation of ownership. A private company has every incentive to do this, as it's profitable, and it moves control from the buyer, to the seller. Companies exist to make profit. Making a (good) product is one way of doing that, but not the only one. Free markets working as intended.

[freebeard]

...as WE SEE FIT...

The Left/Social Democrats are big on Noam_Chomsky today; but back in the day he wrote Manufacturing Consent

Manufacturing Consent
1988 book on mass media by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media is a 1988 book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. It argues that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication Continued in Wikipedia

Like 1984, it was supposed to be a warning not a playbook.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Like 1984, it was supposed to be a warning not a playbook.

And yet, here we are.

From my point standing outside the system, I see a majority of people repeating propaganda as though these were their own ideas. On both sides of the American political spectrum.