The only difference between the conservative Burundi government and the conservative American government is what they think they can get away.

Probably lots of reasons, all of them fucked.

The main reason is probably money. There’s no better way to turn billions of dollars of public funds into billions of dollars of private profits.

It also reassures neoliberals that for all his rhetoric about forgiving loans and improving healthcare access, he’s still willing to kill children if there’s money in it.

It’s also a chance to show off the unstoppable force of American arms against people who are considered completely expendable to America.

So your objection is that they call a mass shooting a mass shooting? What magic number would you like them to use?

The important part was that you got the far-right talking point out there.

What a shame that would be

And you won’t get rid of Netanyahu until you get rid of Hamas and groups like them.

The reason the conflict hasn’t been resolved after decades isn’t a lack of hot takes, it’s because it’s stalemates the whole way down.

You ever heard the phrase “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”?

Well some people love being abusive pieces of shit.

Honestly don’t mean this as an insult, but you might want to consider being more concise, so that your point comes across better.

I’m cool with ranting. I enjoy the act of writing, blogs are long dead and it’s important to articulate why so many things in the world are fucking shit.

If we all work together, it’s been proven that it does turn things around

When?

The ones making Society horrible definitely win when no one pushes back.

They also win when people do push back, because thats how the game has been rigged. The extent of the public’s power is making them win slightly less.

The only way to stop companies doing unethical things is strict regulations, ruthlessly enforced. The only times “consumer advocacy” ever works is when the government steps in, which is why the ultra wealthy go to so much effort to ensure they never do.

One good person in politics, with power, is worth a million people boycotting.

Partly, this is because “the free market will solve it” is just a neoliberal lie. Sometimes, there’s simply no other choice as corporations race each other to the bottom.

So this streaming service might have gotten shitty, espensive or unethical, but you can move to another right? Oh no, looks like they’re shitty and unethical too, just slightly differently.

Then in six months time, they’ve each absorbed one another’s shitty, greedy practises anyway, ensuring consumers are fully exploited with nowhere else to go.

But the true power of neoliberalism lies in its giant book of premade excuses, so neoliberals (or neoliberals in disguise) will of course read from the next page:

“Oh that’s just because there isn’t enough competition. We just need to deregulate heavily and allow companies to do whatever the streaming equivalent of dumping toxic by-products in the river is!”

But of course, that won’t ever come true either. The companies that already exist will grow more profitable polluting the river and new entries into the market will be either stamped out, bought and stripped for parts or enshittified by the same greed over time.

Following the flowchart taught at exclusive, expensive schools the world over, the next excuse is to blame the consumers.

“Oh if people really cared, they’d simply stop buying things entirely. But they don’t, because these companies continue to bring in record profits. So secretly, consumers actually love their chocolate being picked by child slaves”.

While they do fight back with boycotts, public outcry and (in this case) things like password sharing and piracy, it’s nothing companies can’t crush if it looks like it might actually dent their profits.

At some point, consumers need to pick their misery and the choices are bleak but obvious.

They can accept the minor misery of advertising, even as they pay a subscription, just like the corporation knew they would.

They can escalate their own misery further by boycotting the entire platform or industry.

But the moral high ground doesn’t make spending your few hours of personal time each day staring at the wall suddenly as entertaining as whatever content you’re no longer watching.

Also, the company doesn’t care. That was part of their calculations and they’re still making even more money.

Or finally, they could maximise their misery and actually do something, like busting out the guillotines or becoming a politician that opposes neoliberalism yet is somehow allowed power.

So anyway, people are tired. The fight never ends and some people have fought it for 50 years already. Encourage them to take the third option by all means, but don’t shame them for taking the first option.

They might already be miserable enough.

Like every other piece of infrastructure. Are you actually advocating that people should just be able to build power plants wherever they want?

A lot of the anti-nuclear sentiment comes from the 80s when the concerns were a lot more valid (and likely before half the pro-nuclear people in this thread were born).

But blaming people on social media for blocking progress on it is a stretch. They’re multi-billion dollar projects. Have any major governments or businesses actually proposed building more but then buckled to public pressure?

Anyway, I’m glad this conversation has made it to Lemmy because I’ve long suspected the conspicuous popularly and regularity of posts like this on Reddit was the work of a mining lobby that can’t deny climate change anymore, but won’t tolerate profits falling.

Other people’s dead kids. They never think it will happen to their kids because they’re kept safe by daddy’s hero fantasies or robotic devotion to statistics.

Of course, it does happen to their kids.

Occasionally it happens to their kids because they indiscriminately arm the far-right, who then get upset nobody will give them hand jobs, so decide to indiscriminately fire in to crowds of people.

But mostly it happens because their children kill themselves with daddy’s guns, that they were probably taught at an early age how to load and fire because that’s what “responsible gun owners” crow about doing.

That wealth imbalance also pushes companies to force dumb shit like this on thier customers.

If Google were to just come out with a $10 a month plan that removed all the sleazy ways they try and profit from you, the overwhemling response would be “Oh great yet another subscription”, because these subscriptions have become a significant chunk of people’s income each month.

But what if greedy neoliberals hadn’t been pocketing our pay rises for $20 years and that subscription was functionally $1? Most people would be happy to blow $20 supporting 20 different content providers.

Unfortunately, their greed is insatiable. There’s always a room of executives doing their grubby little sums. “If people have $1, they probably have $2. We could double our profits! Then double our salaries!”.

Inflation just means “If rich people find out you’ve got more money, they’ll fuck you out of that too”.

The $1 will never be enough. They’ll keep charging more and more until people have nothing left to hand over. Then they’ll figure out more ways to squeeze a profit out of you. Manipulating you with ads, selling your private data, turning your body into expensive dogfood – whatever makes them a few more cents.