Race to the bottom vs. race to the top. Both are happening. Some are probably competing for most delicious lemonade, but only these two capitalists can afford it and the rest of us drink their piss. The idea of competition in order to race to the top is not a bad idea, and can be usefull in some contexts. It’s just that the race to the bottom is usually omitted, or presented as a positive rather than a negative. The idea being something like:

capitalism leads to good things, capitalism leads to people drinking piss, ergo people drinking piss is a good thing.

taxes or the guillotine. decapitilization or decapitation.

I prefer the first option, but ultimately the outcome is what’s important.

©

because of copyright?

Why can’t people just be normal. I am being my normal self, but other people seem different. Bastard freaks.

if only I knu how to renu my cells :(

Studying the Child marriage in the United States Wikipedia page. Looking at the map legenda that says ‘red = 0’, thinking ‘surely that means it’s forbidden, right? right??’ What the fuck.

Old enough to marry but too young to divorce. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard this week.

Been seeing some more pictures of cats lately, and I feel like it’s exactly what we need more of on Lemmy

I just learned the term ‘ReTruths’. It’s such doublespeak

That’s why a universal basic income is a good idea. I’ve also always been very interested in anarchism. I think what it does well is that it gets people to do exactly what they think is right, it creates a society where people are motivated by their inner workings not by external power structures, and it makes sense to think there’s some untapped potential there. But I also tend to think Anarchism might be a bit naive, or far from where we are as a society right now. But UBI seems more realistic and might get us a bit further down this path than we are now. People could still work for a loan, full time or part time or whatever they want, but it becomes more realistic for people to choose to do voluntary work.

Exactly, that’s why we need to convince governments to pay for FOSS.

Ye but like I said, here in the Netherlands, and I think across Europe people will automatically think of jews being sent to extermination camps like Auschwitz. Look at the dutch wikipedia page on deportation, the second paragraph explains that the term could technically be used to for instance describe migrants who are sent back to their country of origin, but it isn’t used to describe that, because the term is so very much associated with the Holocaust, and so a different term (uitzetten) is used to avoid this intensely negative association. So you’ll understand my confusion when the term directly linked to the worst crime against humanity is here suggested to have a positive connotation. And I don’t think the Jews had much of a chance to argue against their deportations.

Who will be the new Marinus van der Lubbe?

What maybe confuses me is that the word deportation to me already has an intensely negative ring to it. Here in the Netherlands, if we hear the word deportation, I think most people instantly think of the Nazi-regime. Therefor I see no need for any other word to show how it’s actually awful. But perhaps the situation in the US is different when it comes to what associations are stuck to these words.

Maybe it’s also something else, but it is nonetheless deportation too, and the definition she gives is not correct. Words have meanings and you can’t just pretend a different one to make a point.

School shootings kill some, but smartphones destroy entire generations.

sure, it’s nice to do something about loneliness. Makes me think of human libraries, where you can borrow a human to have a talk with. But please, let’s do these things voluntarily and not for profit. There’s something nasty about “I’m only willing to speak to you if you pay me”.

LibreOffice is forked long ago from the extremely corporate OpenOffice effort, which in turn originated from the non-open-source Star Office. Not all FOSS comes from enthusiasts.

That’s a fair point. I would also be very much in favor of governments subsidizing certain FOSS projects. There’s a lot of work to be done, and people certainly deserve to be paid for it too.

FOSS software will win eventually. It may take time, but if good FOSS software is being built by enthusiasts then a time will come where proprietary software fucks up. And when it does, FOSS is ready to take it’s place. And as soon as FOSS has become a standard in some field, why would there ever be a need to go back to proprietary?

Here in the Netherlands our house of representatives has 150 seats and they’re filled by 15 parties, the biggest of whom has 37 seats, the second 25. People sometimes suggest that political fragmentation makes things more complicated, because usually at least 3 or 4 parties are needed to form a coalition. I don’t really think it matters because I look at it this way: there are different views on things in society and compromises need to be found one way or another, it’s where this takes place that’s different. In one case it’s on the conference of 1 or 2 big parties, in the other case it happens in parlement/government where the many small parties meet. The benefit of a many-party system is that people actually got a choice, if you’re on the left and don’t like what a particular party is doing, you can pick another leftwing party. You don’t have that option in a 2-party system, you’ll probably stick with your party despite everything you don’t like about it. Here, if a party really fucks up, they’re done for, a party can get 20% one election and 1% the next one. The system is more dynamic. At the same time, the actual governments usually have an overlap, like there will be different coalitions, but our center-right party has been in the coalition for over a decade now. There may be a certain charm to knowing that every other election a completely new set of people forms the government, but that also has many downsides I think. There’ll be little continuity, republicans undo everything democrats have done and in 4 years we’ll see the reverse. Haven’t heard any really convincing arguments against political fragmentations. It’s just the path towards it that may be difficult if you’re in a 2 party system, because as soon as you go third party, you’re hurting your side of the spectrum. What would be helpfull is if it would happen on both sides simultaneously. Can’t you setup a structure where people from both sides would together commit to voting third-party?