Grew up with one, actually. I think it was marginally better for drizzling, but pretty wasteful to keep clean. As an adult I just use a squeeze bottle, much simpler
That Clayton fight was also the reason I celebrated skippable cutscenes in FM. I picked it up again myself just for funsies, and I thought, "Hey. You've been doing some souls-likes and souls-lites. You can handle Kingdom Hearts of all things" before starting on Proud mode....
Sigh at least it's not "Get up on the hydra's back!" from 2. But unfortunately, I am a completions so still quite the grind. It will be worth it though. Right...?
I'm not talking about companies trying to make a buck for investors. Fuck investors. I'm just talking financial sustainability. It's more about maintaining inflow to keep up with outflow than building wealth. I'm trying to consider the viability for that kind of company, even privately owned. I mean, best case is you find investors who dont want a return, but want to do good. But that being nearly impossible (the rich got rich for a reason), private is probably your best bet. But still, I guess you'd want vertical integration and a commitment to long-term support and part recycling. If you make most of your parts, sustaining a commitment to support should be easier. That way, you have complete control over each part of the process and arent beholden to any more suppliers than you absolutely need to be. But you're essentially running several businesses at that point instead of one, so some costs go up. You need a bunch of different kinds of licenses and certs, depending on your part variability. Like, your PCB manufacturing section will need completely different facilities, approvals, licenses, management skillsets (so extra employees, skills dont transfer) etc compared to milling metal, assembly, or casting plastic. It's not something a lot of companies do because of the upfront cost and longer time to make it up. Going with 3rd party suppliers not necessarily always out of impatience, but because a reliable supplier is just cheaper. And if you get to the point of having to charge 3x your competitors because they can afford to undercut you, most consumers will not be choosing you. Sales drop to the point you can't afford to operate and, again, unless you have deep pockets to cover it.
It's a malicious environment for any kind of good-willed company to thrive. Price-undercuts work, and people dont always spend with long-term cost and company ethics in mind. They should, imo, but they simply dont always do that. And many can't afford to save up for the better or more ethical version, because they need one today and payday isn't for another week.
If you're a good company, you're already at a disadvantage because you have more lines you won't cross to keep yourself going. Amd te simplest way to offset the disadvantage is either deep pockets or luck.
Im sorry, I know this is a serious example of how (much more) fucked up the US has become, but i can't help laughing at seeing it summed up like this. We literally have to clarify that the President of the United States did not, in fact, fellate a horse. And it's not even one of those "What the fuck are you talking about Jesse" addressing the rumor moments. It's a legitimate possibility and concern.
Oh man, if I don't laugh at the absurdity I'll cry.
Oh, I mean the complete overhaul of the economic system is the goal to be sure, im just talking about the difficulties such a company would face right now. And im not talking about some shareholder value bullshit either. Employees need to and deserve to be paid for their time and labor. Materials cost money. Upkeeping current equipment costs money, and getting new or better equipment to improve the product or expanding to serve more people costs money. If you ever want to expand, and altruistically we're talking expansion for the purpose of helping more people, not pulling a profit, you need a profit margin by definition, even a sliver of one. You could get by for a while by charging at-cost price plus a couple of pennies. But if that dries up, employees go home without getting paid. Equipment and properties get sold. Manufacturing licenses are lost. Eventually the company either dissolves or is sold off to pay its debts.
Operating a company like that means you need to be prepared for very long dry spells, and if you want to be able to hold out for those and be able to do things like pay employees and keep licenses, you need deep pockets to cover it.
All this to say the revolution would need to happen before practices like this can be a reality, at least for the long term.
Yeah, appliances are a really tough place to not just make money but stay afloat. What happens when you've saturated the market with good products that won't need to be replaced for a long time? You'd end up having to charge an arm and a leg for them because you simply can't sell enough to operate. You'd still get orders of course, but at a trickle.
Idk how to fix the problem either. Part of me says government subsidies for companies with proven manufacturing records, affordable prices, and customer satisfaction? Like an incentive to not enshittify and allow those companies to stay in business? Otherwise the consumer shoulders the cost, which defeats a lot of the purpose. The point is to improve lives, and being prohibitively expensive won't work. But convincing any government to spend money like that for such intangible and long-term societal benefits instead of pure profit seems like an unrealistic proposition. Like, how do you sell peace of mind to people who already arent suffering and with no concept of true insecurity?
I've been wanting companies like the one described for a very long time, but fuck me does it seem unlikely and hard to pull off
When I was in college, it was very clear to me who wanted to or actually felt a need to be there and the people who were there because they were expected to. The people who didn't really want to be there simply went through the motions, did the bare minimum for whatever situation they were in, and immediately fucked off because they did what they showed up to do. Their goal wasnt to be there, ot was to get through being there so they could do what they actually wanted to. The people who were actually invested in being there put in the effort and did extra stuff to ensure their success. They formed study groups, watched some YouTube videos on fuzzy topics, talked to each other about the material, went over sample tests, etc. Their time after class wasn't the left-overs they had from their time at school, it was a resource to use to make their time at school better. Because school itself was actually their focus.
When I see statements like "Give it your all," that's where my mind goes. It tells me to not just go through the motions and expect true success at the other side. That shit takes work and dedication of time and energy. Not necessarily all of it to the point that you're damaging your health, but that is often where it ends up. And it's hard not to end up there if you compare yourself to others and feel a need to keep up to unrealistic standards.
In short, to me it means to actually apply your time and effort into it. Be invested in how well you do and what you can learn.
From what I understand they moved away from the Rand stuff pretty hard and publicly distanced themselves from it. I honestly never got anything but wholesome vibes from the dudes, even if they were a bit misguided in their early years. Their songs are usually about fostering connections with others, doing your own thing, and accepting others who are doing the same. That just translated into hyper-individualism and maybe buying into red scare propaganda in the seventies. The USSR and China really had a bad taste in everyone's mouth when it came to communism. Not saying they're perfect or that i agree with it, but i can see how they got there.
Oddly enough, for all its Rand influence, 2112 goes fuckin hard. Discovery was an absolute delight to me as a musician, and Priests is still raw af.