The heart of capitalism is definitely theft - theft of labour; theft of time; theft of energy; and theft of value. Intrinsically, it is a system that creates hierarchy and rewards exploitation of fellow human beings. The core tenets of unregulated capitalism are, subjectively in my opinion, a reflection of the evil of the sociopaths and psychopaths who benefit from how the system operates.
While I believe in communism as an ideal and socialism as the next-best-thing (preferably governed anarchically), I don’t see how western societies will be able to immediately get from where we are today to there without terribly bloody war in which countless lives are lost and suffering of the proletariat is rampant.
I think that moves to restrict capitalism (UBI; genuinely enforced workers’ rights; nationalisation of critical industry; stripping corporate personhood to hold individuals liable for the actions of companies; universal high-quality public education from birth to higher adult studies etc.) are the way to edge closer towards a more utopian society.
I don’t know how we make that happen while the billionaires and centimillionaires still have their thumbs on the political scales though. But, a man can dream.
Exactly right: a doctor who earns $500k/annum is working class where a landlord earning $50k/annum is capitalist class. The division between the two comes from whether or not the person sells their labour to generate income versus making money from capital assets without expending labour. It has nothing at all to do with the amount earned.
Now, the truth is that there are a fair few working capitalists - those who sell their labour, then use the proceeds of that sale to purchase capital to gain further income - but that’s where the waters get a bit more muddy. I am one of these people; I earn dual income from my job and from my investments. Many might consider me a class traitor, and there’s a fair amount of reason to that accusation, but I personally consider that I am just operating within the confines of the system I was unlucky enough to be born into. I’ll consistently vote for people who would take away my privilege to capital investments but, until they gain power, I’ll use the current system to my advantage.
It’s your land-bordered neighbour (who threatened to annex you, be it facetiously or seriously only time will tell) invading a country in your hemisphere. It’s worth knowing about. I’m Australian and I think it’s worth knowing about.
Learning to read analogue clocks also helps provide some foundational learning for circular geometry - being able to quickly identify relevant segments of a circle and their respective fractions (5 minutes = 1/12 = 30° = π/6 rad etc.) helps build towards being able to compute circular geometric problems more easily in later years.
Yeah, the more heavily-clothed version is clearly the edited part. Her waist shrinks right down (along with the chair behind her) and the top has extremely uniform colour across it that doesn’t reflect the lighting environment accurately.
This is the exact problem I have with sitting to take a piss and, while I find it more comfortable, I’d prefer not to have to wash myself in the sink after every piss to feel clean again. Standing just cuts out the chance of getting that icy spicy porcelain all up on my wing wang.
I worked at a company that did this, and the retention rates were quite good against comparable businesses in the industry. They made huge savings on not having staff turnover. It’s actually just a wise business decision in addition to being the right thing to do.
I’m hedging that society won’t collapse. You might as well ask why I bother to show up at work - if society collapses the money I earn won’t be worth anything. If I’m betting on society to collapse, I’d be investing in stocking a bunker with weaponry and canned foods. I don’t see that as being a valuable investment yet.
There are larger, more established correlational studies that show a link between dental health and overall physical health as well. There needs to be much more study done but preliminary evidence would suggest that preventive dental care provides for a cheaper overall health cost for a person over their lifetime.
On one occasion when an idiot was blaring music from their phone so loud the whole train carriage I was in were forced to listen to it, I queued up some metalcore and held my phone up so close that it was near his ear. He jumped, startled, and then tried to start a fight with me which was a bitch to de-escalate and prevent myself from getting punched without other passengers verbally backing me up and him eventually getting off at the next station.
Suffice to say two things: it’s not something I’ll likely do again for fear of my own safety, and the people who do this have a significant overlap with people who consider personal violence to be a warranted response when inconvenienced; i.e. they’re selfish, violent arseholes.
Fair, and that’s why I personally have a portfolio of metals, but gold regularly outperforms inflation - especially in troublesome economic times such as we’re in right now.
Even if you were somehow able to, you'd only be able to withdraw it in dollars anyway, it's not like you have a physical pile of gold in a vault with your name on it.
Not sure what the rules are where you’re from, but I have a literal pile of gold, platinum, palladium and silver bullion in a safe in my home. Yes, I absolutely have a physical pile with my name on it - when I decide to put a sticky note on it and write my name on it.
Nah, just buy gold. Gold has consistently outpaced inflation in just about every time period as high inflation leads to a skittish market who invest in gold and cause the price to buoy. Given the current AI bubble combined with the Trump Effect on global economics, my gold investments have made a killing over the last 12 months and continue to perform really well - even with the dip over the last couple of days.
I’ve worked in two different inbound government call centre-type environments and can confirm that callbacks are always queued as per their place in the queue. This is using Genesys, which is a very commonly used virtual contact centre software, and using different iterations of the software at both jobs.
If you don’t get a call back at all that could be due to call screening/blocking (most call centres call out from a ‘no caller ID’ number) and if you have to wait longer than the expected time, that’s likely due to the existing calls taking far longer than the average or median call length or a number of people needing to be off-phones for a period (due to breaks, emergency, a planned/unplanned meeting, or to catch up on overdue admin tasks).
Many times my inbound work has been a callback and the person who requested the callback either doesn’t pick up or it goes straight to voicemail. Depending on the service, the worker may be trained not to leave a message, as is the case for many banking/financial institutions or crisis support services such as domestic violence or child protection hotlines, as voicemails can cause a security or personal safety threat.
I mean, I understand the imbalance of power dynamic, but you’ve also hit on a strong point that she was in her early 20s. We shouldn’t infantilise adults by assuming that they don’t have the power to enforce consent when they’re fully cognisant of the gravity, nature and consequences of sexual activities that they engage in. If that’s the case, then we need to raise the age of consent to at least 25.
The heart of capitalism is definitely theft - theft of labour; theft of time; theft of energy; and theft of value. Intrinsically, it is a system that creates hierarchy and rewards exploitation of fellow human beings. The core tenets of unregulated capitalism are, subjectively in my opinion, a reflection of the evil of the sociopaths and psychopaths who benefit from how the system operates.
While I believe in communism as an ideal and socialism as the next-best-thing (preferably governed anarchically), I don’t see how western societies will be able to immediately get from where we are today to there without terribly bloody war in which countless lives are lost and suffering of the proletariat is rampant.
I think that moves to restrict capitalism (UBI; genuinely enforced workers’ rights; nationalisation of critical industry; stripping corporate personhood to hold individuals liable for the actions of companies; universal high-quality public education from birth to higher adult studies etc.) are the way to edge closer towards a more utopian society.
I don’t know how we make that happen while the billionaires and centimillionaires still have their thumbs on the political scales though. But, a man can dream.