i am middle aged man, i experienced life since before even computer and smartphone is a thing like today.
back then, i feel that life is much easier, what i mean easier is more simple life, less competition, less stress, fresh environment, and more happiness despite lack of technology.
but right now, everything is just too complicated despite of power of tech, internet, smartphone, and AI helps, i feel that life is much harder right now, what i mean is like competition is everywhere, stressful everyday, crowded city, and i easily depressed these days.
is it just me or everyone else can relate to what happens right now?
Every time your life gets harder, some rich persons life gets easier. Welcome to capitalism.
I’m not even sure if the average rich person’s life is actually getting better by hoarding even more wealth. I tend to believe that being really rich is kind of an illness. Like an addiction where you never feel powerful or rich enough because there’s always someone that’s ahead of you. I feel that capitalism, especially in its current stage, is really bad for everyone.
Thirty-something Norwegian here. I am born into a rich, relatively functioning social democracy with a good welfare state. Buying my own home was a real struggle, even with a good salary. Many of my peers will never own, my younger friends will struggle to ever own, or never.
Unfortunately the welfare state is eroding, prices for everything is increasing heavily, and the private sector is a growing leech on the state.
the real problem is capitalism
May your welfare state never erode enough to remove your Healthcare and turn it into exclusively private!
Bills went up, pay did not keep up.
This is true, but It’s not just that. There is friction built into everything, designed to squeeze as much as possible out of us.
Yeah companies used to pretend to please customers and now they don’t even pretend.
The staff are minimum wage and don’t care because it’s a big corporation so you can’t get good service.
The price is high because the shareholders must be kept happy so you pay over the OSA Odds.
Corners were cut in several places making the product to please the shareholders too and the workers manufacturing got minimum wage in the factory wherever it was located and have zero interest in making good products as a result.
Basically capitalism ate itself
here i am still unable to buy a house or car
Yes it is, we are being squeezed! We have less ways out. I’m far better than I ever was, actually have better health, and fitness. Yet, it is hopeless.
i am suprised you still motivated enough to keep health and fitness in check despite of how bad things going on right now
I mostly don’t, my job forced me to be fit and lean. I at most hydrate, shower, and shave. I eat whatever garbage I can, and sleep in a dump.
My father revealed a secret. If he feels it is funny to just have secret income while letting me handle the debt, it’s going to be less funny when I give my 2 weeks in October. Maybe I will survive, or maybe kill myself. Will see.
But I can’t be sane with this kind of job, need to self-correct.
so its forced, i hope all the best for you
They broke the social contract. The thing that a polite, cooperative society is built on. So now we see what that means as more everyday folk realize it over time.
It’s definitely getting worse, you’re not imagining it.
There’s a whole lot of awful going on.
My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business, no, no dad, it really, really should not. Businesses do not care about people, businesses don’t want anything but money, your money, and they will twist, turn, manipulate, lobby, and flat out steal or harm people to get it.
So the next time you call 311, the non emergency police line, or God forbid 911 remember, your call is very important to us, a representative will be with you shortly. If you’d like to take a brief survey after the call just stay on the line. If you’d like to talk to our chat bot Sally just say, hey Sally!
My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business,
Anyone who sincerely believes that is too fucking ignorant and or stupid to be taken seriously. They’re a hazard to themselves and their polity.
He’s dead so you can relax
Sorry for the lol
My dad used to rant about how government should be run like a business, no, no dad,
The last thing you hear: Sorry but your citizen contract has been revoked in order to meet our 3rd quarter profit target. You have been terminated!
“It was in the user agreement.”
guess your dad regrets his rant now, everything is just business now.
He didn’t live to see any of this bullshit. He died bitching about her emails.
Simpler times.
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People who say what you say have fundamental misunderstandings about how governments work and about how private companies (“businesses”) work.
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I have had a few corporate jobs. Businesses are NOT efficient.
Imagine thinking businesses are efficient in big 26
Yeah, i mean we make more stuff than ever before per capita and all that, and yet we still have to fight harder and harder to survive. How so? We’ll these fucking billionaires are also richer than ever before. Crassus’ wealth is estimated at like $2B in today’s dollars. Rockefeller is estimated at like $300-400B. Musk is more than double that. It’s very clear what’s happening, the rich use the capitalist surplus as a weapon to extract more wealth from the poor.
im putting groceries on credit. i had a great credit score till this year, i havent even tried making payments on certain things including ER bills. only a matter of time before im bankrupt, and i am also disabled. i have given up on having a future and I’m only 32.
Mid twenties here, same situation. My bank closed my accounts lol
yeah it’s intentional.
oligarchs are hoarding the resources and getting people to distract themselves by pointing at each other while they stockpile their bunkers.
OP, it’s also going to sound like a cliche, but touch grass. The cancer-like tech companies want to replace your sense of community so that they have more power over you. F them, join a local group, and find yourself feeling more powerful when you have a real community behind you.
see also: misery loves company
Yep! Something about staring into the void, yada yada yada
You could post this exact question at literally any time in history and get a whole host of agreeing answers. That’s a basic sanity test you should use to determine that this is a question incorrectly put.
Same with how young people are lazy etc. etc. people never learn from history, it is just crazy.
It’s all I seem to see on forums these days, people complain about how the internet has gotten more depressing but don’t stop to realise it’s those same people posting stuff like this that makes it depressing.
tbh a large part of it probably has to do with you getting older and looking back in the good old days in rose tinted glasses
some parts of the world got better now compared to few decades ago, while others have gotten much worse
It’s really hard to tell what was just younger kids not being exposed to the world vs. things actually getting worse. I was a kid during '08, and things didn’t really change for me at home cuz my family was always very frugal, especially my dad.
Climate change has empirically gotten worse tho. Inflation, enshitification, food quality, all of it SEEMS worse but it’s hard to quantify it you know?
nah lil bro. The enshittification is real and huge. The quality of goods, particularly what used to be reputable brands, is 100% in the shitter. I have started only buying fabric with natural fibers in them because polyester sucks. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it used to be. I’ve been a regular grocery shopper for the entirety of this century. Things were pretty much the same price for years and years. There was a bump in 08 to punish us for electing a half-black guy and demanding reasonable pay, but then it stabilized until around 2018. Shit has increased in price by multiples while quantity and quality have plummeted.
We’re fucked bro. Get whatever enjoyment out of this life while you can. There are some unprecedented hard times coming. We’re going to pay for the recklessness and irresponsibility of the boomers. Buy hey, they got theirs, didn’t they?
This isn’t the boomers fault, what did they do? There is no reason we can’t get good pay and cheap groceries now, aside from capitalists knowing they don’t need to anymore.
All the boomers in government are the problem.
Fucking yanks have an 80yr old for fucks sake. Can’t be any more out of touch then being older then most of your country.
Australia is no better really anyone in politics gets there sits there gets old and out of touch.
Their needs to be a hard limit on politicians so they don’t run the country based on how it was as they grew up 65 years ago. That’s an entirely different world
No politician, older or younger can make change without permission from the ruling class. In the case of capitalist countries that is the capitalist class. A younger politician won’t change the fact that the capitalist class forces them to do there bidding for them.
What about unions?
If you beleive they can stand up to a corporation then there’s no reason politicians could do the same.
Not to mention authoritarian countries stand up to corporations they don’t support.
There’s no real solution
What unions? Union membership in Australia has been falling since at least the '70s (source). The press is almost always anti union resulting in some of them being legally dismantled when they ask for too many rights. Such as the BLF. The unions that remain today only ever go on strike as a last resort, when conditions are dire.
Regardless unions are able to go on strike because they take away something bosses need: workers. When workers go on strike profits for bosses fall immediately and bosses are forced to do what they need to get workers working again.
Politicians don’t have this leverage. Political parties must do the bidding of capitalists in order to maintain donations to fund their advertising campaign. The capitalist class owns virtually all media and have almost complete control in terms of shaping peoples opinion on the current government. Politicians can’t implement policies that benefits workers at the expense of the rich.
Not to mention authoritarian countries stand up to corporations they don’t support.
I’m going to assume by “authoritarian” you mean socialist countries such as Vietnam, China, Cuba etc. These countries have the ability to stand up to corporations because they are truly democratic. The press of our capitalist country (I’m Australian too) has told us these country’s are authoritarian because they pose a social order that competes with capitalism.
The reality is that these countries are able to stand up to corporations because their government is ruled by the working class, not by the capitalist class. This is also why these countries consistently make decisions that benefit the working class at the expense of the capitalist class. Decisions such as cheap or free healthcare, immense poverty reduction schemes, increasing wages etc.
So, I hear you, but i saw this meme of newspaper clippings going back to like 1900 where business owners were quoted “people don’t want to work anymore”. We think it’s a new idea but its like 100+ years old.
Maybe companies have always looked for ways to cut corners and screw customers, we just focus on our last 20 years. And it’s not that before we got older they were all reputable and its only recently they’ve gone this greedy path. Its just cuz we didn’t know about it as kids, especially cuz the interent wasn’t huge yet.
I’m not trying to say things aren’t getting worse. They definitely are. But what if we’ve had this long, general decline of everything that’s always been happening and we didn’t see it or feel it cuz we were just kids.
I think you are slow on the uptake. It has been this way for a while.
