Giving money to Amazon, Wal-Mart, Microsoft, Google .etc
It’s like, you can’t have an argument for price gouging, when you’re enabling them by spending. If people were smart, they’d stop giving them money 10 - 15 years ago and they’d be right now, trying to reconstruct so they can be more economically friendly than how they are now.
Stop. Electing. Fraudsters.
Especially when the fraudster is a convicted felon.
I’m doing better now, but 15 years ago Walmart was the only option I had for food. Local/regional grocery stores were more expensive and I was living paycheck to paycheck with growing debt.
“If people were smart they would stop buying the most cost-efficient option” is really not feasible.
“If people were smart” they would read and stop putting oligarchs in power.
“If people were smart they would stop buying the most cost-efficient option” is really not feasible.
In fact, more and more people don’t have the luxury of buying more expensive options.
Of course, stealing is an option, and I think ‘If people were smart’ they would accept that stealing from Walmart is not an ethical or pragmatic problem, but it’s a risky behavior so I wouldn’t criticize people for not stealing. [edit: see Fubarberry’s reply]
Stealing from walmart also isn’t sustainable if many people are doing it. For example there were a ton of walmarts and other stores in the Chicago area that recently closed due to high theft at those locations. Now whole communities there are left without convenient shopping options, which can be a big problem for people with limited transportation options.
That Walmart CLAIMED were closed for high theft.
You can look up videos of some of the stores that were closed, they were basically being straight up looted.
I remember seeing the videos, and thinking to myself how I didn’t understand how they could afford to stay in business like that. So when they announced they were closing those stores for theft, I didn’t really think the given reason was ever in doubt.
"“The decision to close a store is never easy,” company officials said in a statement. “The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago.”
The stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, according to the company, a figure that nearly doubled in the last five years despite numerous strategies to boost performance, including building smaller stores, offering local products and building a Walmart Academy training center."
Doesn’t sound like theft was ever the problem here according to them?
Good point. If there aren’t other local stores remaining to fill the gaps, then that would be a critical problem.
Walmart, Kroger, etc.'s entire business model is to undercut other local stores to drive them out and become local monopolies. If they exist in a location there likely aren’t many, if any, local stores remaining…
Stealing isn’t right.
The Walmart near me closed due to high theft. There were actually people stealing from the construction site when the store was being built, so it really was a ticking clock as to how long the store itself would even last.
Some people are just awful.
Stealing isn’t right.
I conditionally disagree. In fact, there are many real situations where stealing is the right option. There are valid reasons why folk lore glorifies figures like Robin Hood. And when it comes to international conglomerates like Walmart, which hoard astronomical wealth while others who can’t afford bread starve nearby, theft of the hoard is justice in its most appropriate form (if one values human survival more than legal property rights).
Even stealing from Walmart isn’t right.
Why not?
Look. There was a subreddit that got banned because it was a bunch of shoplifters, dumb ones, showcasing what they stole. They all claim that they’re doing it to hurt corporations.
If anyone had a clue at all about working retail - that’s not how it works. The corporation is going to be sailing just fine. It’s you, the worker and the store that’s getting hurt.
And that’s why these shoplifters are absolute assholes. They steal enough, the store is closed, many jobs lost.
How the fuck is that hurting the corporation?
But you’ll notice that the price comparison is narrowing and Wal-Mart is slowly not looking better off than the competition. It’s almost like shopping at Dollar Tree is more feasible, it’s what some of us are going to be forced to be doing if not now. Just shopping Dollar Tree almost regularly.
Entirely depends on region. Walmarts strategy is to take a loss in an area until all local competitors are out of business then crank back up until that area is profitable enough to subsidize new areas. In my area Walmart is cheaper than pretty much everyone except dollar stores, and dollar stores treat their employees even worse while having even worse quality food for barely any cheaper.
Ignoring the fact that alternative voting systems exist and there can be more then two political parties.
They’d stop doing capitalism. Entirely. If people in the US were smart, they would have been the vanguard of the communist revolution in the late 1800s when Marxist ideas were starting to spread in the us.
That depends, people can be smart but malicious, non-coorperative, or selfish.
The prisoner’s dilemma shows that there are systems where individually, the “smart” individual thing to do is globally non-optimal.
Even smartness and altruism alone isn’t enough. Medical professionals are smart and out to help others, but any ER doc/nurse will tell you they have limited trust in their patients (rightly so in the real world).
Does “everyone is smart” also include both “altruism and cooperative trust in others”?
Marxism is critically flawed about surplus value and definitions of egalitarianism unfortunately so while it all sounds nice on paper it never worked in practice
Except it’s currently working in practice in many countries, one of which is more successful by every measure than the US. Also Marxist-leninism is responsible for being more people out of poverty than any other system of socioeconomics.
deleted by creator
What exactly are you suggesting?
It’s important to consider, most of the communist states which fell were couped by or at war (cold or otherwise) with the USA. So it doesn’t make sense to transplant the trend of communist states falling into a scenario where their single biggest threat is gone.
- Americans Can Now Expect to Live Three Years Less than Cubans
- Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says [UN] Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
- China’s Energy Use Per Person Surpasses Europe’s for First Time
- At 54, China’s average retirement age is too low
- China overtakes U.S. for healthy lifespan: WHO data
- World Incarceration Rates If Every U.S. State Were A Country
I know it’s a joke, but current communist countries have the same average Human Development Index as current capitalist countries.
Does this just means countries that have historically been associated with the communist bloc, which is to say opposed to the US? Because I’d find it hard to make the argument that any communist or socialist country really exists today, even kind of. They’re all operating under the same fundamental worker-owner principles.
I mean China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam. It’s debatable whether they can be considered socialist, but they are usually given as examples of “failed” communism, so I felt it was important to note that’s not really the case, at least judging from the data.
Voting for fascists/not voting
The obvious answer is fossil fuels, right? Few people want to cook the climate, they just can’t quite fathom something that abstract and slow-moving, so they do it anyway.
Less obviously, feeding all our most sensitive data to random websites and apps. Again, the threat just doesn’t look enough like a sabre-tooth tiger.
Fossil fuels is kinda a prisoner’s dilemma issue. Everyone cooperating to save the planet is obviously ideal, but realistically there are always going to be companies/countries that won’t. And as long as it’s cheaper to not be environmentally friendly, there’s always going to be someone taking that option.
For example, lets say country A passes new regulations on manufacturing to be more environmentally friendly. The new regulations take the country’s manufacturing from low pollution to very low pollution. However the increase in cost causes many companies to stop manufacturing locally, and instead outsource their manufacturing to country B with low regulation and moderate pollution during manufacturing. The end result is more money leaving the local economy of country A, and increased global pollution.
It’s a similar prisoner’s dilemma for the individual companies involved. If your competitor is able to make their product for cheaper because their process is less environmentally friendly, then they can undercut you and put you out of business.
The tragedy of the commons is definitely part of it, but until recently there was a sort of global consensus anyway. Domestically climate change action - real action - is unpopular.
Few people want to cook the climate, they just can’t quite fathom something that abstract and slow-moving, so they do it anyway.
I don’t think the problem is that people are unaware. Even people who believe they are against cooking the environment have other rationalisations, like “the economy isn’t able to shut down all the coal plants yet, it’ll collapse”. Propaganda is a hell of a drug.
No, it’s not that people are unaware, or even don’t believe it, it’s that they can’t reason about it strategically
It’s spending now to save later. If that’s about military spending or emergency services everyone gets paying taxes for it, but words are as far as most will go to stop nonspecific far future weather. Even when people talk about the situation with climate change, you hear them frame it in moral terms instead of practical terms.
Case in point: Canada has a carbon tax, and a majority want to get rid of it. Denialism is not a prominent part of the campaign, just the fact that it costs something. And not even much, and it’s all given back in refunds - doesn’t matter, the extra gas cost people will bear is zero.
That we haven’t learned more from history and keep making the same mistakes over and over.
Thinking that “being smart” means shit. We need to realize that the people who run things aren’t necessarily smart. Presidents aren’t necessarily smart. Professors aren’t necessarily smart.
And being smart doesn’t mean you’re good. Evil smart is a nightmare, because destroying is so much easier than building.
What would we do if we were good? Now that’s a question.
There’s smart and then there’s cunning.
A lot of people in power aren’t smart - they’re cunning.
Drinking alcohol. Lots of people drink way too much and make life ruining decisions.
Processed food and high sugar diets are killing us.
These foods are addictive, and ubiquitous. A well informed and smart american would still have a problem switching over to whole food only. (Where the ingredient label only says one thing).
+ meat
Yeah, I said it.
I respectfully disagree, but in glad you have a diet that works for you
capitalism
@yogthos @NeoToasty 🤣 almost got it…just a bit farther;)
:)
They would understand that socialism is not communism. Also you can have capitalism and socialism at the same time, you just have to give and take a little.
They would understand that socialism is not communism.
Socialism has so many definitions that this can be subjectively true or false. This isn’t even some trivial gotcha, the terms were used interchangeably even by significant writers of the 1800s. For another example, a socialist mode of production and a capitalist mode of production are contradictory.
If one wants to make these kind of broad claims without starting pointless arguments, they’ll need to use a more specific term than ‘socialism’.
You’re wrong about literally all of that.
Op probably thinks socialism == Scandinavian welfare states. Most online USA midwits don’t know the difference
That’s what I think of about socialism. The democratic socialist Scandinavian countries
The ones that explicitly state they are not socialist?
Do you identify as an American per chance?
I identify as your mom, loser
That explains the lack of education
lol shut up dumbass
If you want your contribution to have any weight at all, you’ll elaborate. As it is, it is just worth dismissing
As it is, it is just worth dismissing
If we dismiss dismissals, this will go on looping forever. The person they replied to did not elaborate on some very dubious claims, and as is, are just worth dismissing.
I dismiss your answer !
So people can just say whatever shit they want offhanded and not be criticized, but if you want to say they’re wrong you have to give exhaustive reasoning and proof for each and every thing, huh?
That’s a really dumb thing to believe so I’m wondering if you just speak frivolously without thinking and would like to walk your position back a bit.
Thinking that they have the “one simple trick” for everything when most matters are actually a complex network of issues where there isn’t one answer.
And not counting for the variables like what could go wrong, short-term gains, long-term gains .etc
They’d stop believing people are stupid, especially those they disagree with, and realize that their differences are mostly made up by the ruling class to keep them in line.
A person is smart. People, not so much.
Great movie
