Boomers assuming people become conservative as a function of time as opposed to a function of “getting theirs”. I have no evidence but it seems to be you’re less likely to become conservative without having amassed some wealth to conserve…
Funny story, the only ethics required in my engineering degree was a 2-day unit on our professional code of ethics. We had a 20-question true/false homework on it, and the thing about a professional code of ethics is it’s not super intuitive. Most of the class thought they could gut feel their way through it, but you actually had to read the code because the wording was very specific sometimes. When it turned out that everyone failed the homework, the professor let us try again.
There have been at least two different countries seize the means of production over the years, it didn’t really work out for either of them. Turns out they just swapped one bourgeoise class for another, while the peasants and proles starved.
Sorry bud, that’s just an incredibly ignorant statement. If China was as capitalist as any other country then we’d see the same things happening in China that we see happening in actual capitalist countries. A good comparison would be with India that started roughly in the same place as China after WW2, but took capitalist route.
It’s also pretty funny that you seem to be suggesting is that you know better than 1.4 billion people actually living in China what their political system is. China is a state governed by the Communist party where Marxism-Leninism is the official state ideology. 87.6% of young Chinese identify with Marxism, and the party has 95 million members. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that these people do in fact understand what socialism is and what kind of a system they have.
Having special economic zones where capitalism is allowed does not make China capitalist any more than having some social services make Canada communist. One key difference with China is that all the essential industry is state owned, and capitalists do not appear to be in charge of the government. However, even Marx argued that capitalism is likely a necessary stage for developing productive resources needed for socialism and communism to be possible.
One simple test to consider is that China doesn’t suffer from regular crashes seen under capitalism. An inherent contradiction within capitalism is that the capitalists always want to cut pay for their employees to minimize the costs, while they also require consumers with enough spending power to consume the commodities they produce. This is why capitalism results in regular economic crashes when wages fall below the point where consumption can keep up with the rate of commodity production. At that point you end up with overproduction and a crash. If China was capitalist then it should be experiencing these kinds of crashes regularly just like actual capitalist nations are in the Western world.
And a related point is that quality of life in China continues to steadily improve and the government is actively working on doing things like eliminating poverty, creating public infrastructure, providing healthcare, housing, food, and education for all citizens. Chinese government practically eliminated poverty, and in fact China is the only place in a world where any meaningful poverty reduction is happening. If we take China out of the equation poverty actually increased in real terms:
China also massively invests in infrastructure. They used more concrete in 3 years than US in all of 20th century, they built 27,000km of high speed rail in a decade. 90% of families in the country own their home giving China one of the highest home ownership rates in the world. What’s more is that 80% of these homes are owned outright, without mortgages or any other leans. Real wage (i.e. the wage adjusted for the prices you pay) has gone up 4x in the past 25 years, more than any other country. This is staggering considering it’s the most populous country on the planet. Finally, even NYT admits that people in China enjoy high social mobility unlike people living under capitalism.
These are just a few examples of things that simply do not happen under capitalism.
Well, let’s just see what happened during cultural revolution, sure seems like an improvement over what was happening before pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25495509/
Meanwhile, Russia went from a backwards agrarian society where people travelled by horse and carriage to being the first in space in the span of 40 years. Russia showed incredible growth after the revolution that surpassed the rest of the world:
USSR doubled life expectancy in just 20 years. A newborn child in 1926-27 had a life expectancy of 44.4 years, up from 32.3 years thirty years before. In 1958-59 the life expectancy for newborns went up to 68.6 years. the Semashko system of the USSR increased lifespan by 50% in 20 years. By the 1960’s, lifespans in the USSR were comparable to those in the USA:
Quality of nutrition improved after the Soviet revolution, and the last time USSR had a famine was in 1940s. CIA data suggests they ate just as much as Americans after WW2 peroid while having better nutrition:
In 1987, people in the USSR could retire with pension at 55 (female) and 60 (male) while receiving 50% of their wages at a at minimum. Meanwhile, in USA the average retirement age was 62-67 and the average (not median) retiree household in the USA could expect $48k/yr which comes out to 65% of the 74k average (not median) household income in 2016:
The Soviet Union had the highest physician/patient ratio in the world. USSR had 42 doctors per 10,000 population compared to 24 in Denmark and Sweden, and 19 in US:
These are just some of the biggest technological and social achievements of the Soviet Union.
academic studies on USSR
Professor of Economic History, Robert C. Allen, concludes in his study without the 1917 revolution is directly responsible for rapid growth that made the achievements listed above possible:
Study demonstrating the steady increase in quality of life during the Soviet period (including under Stalin). Includes the fact that Soviet life expectancy grew faster than any other nation recorded at the time:
A large study using world bank data analyzing the quality of life in Capitalist vs Socialist countries and finds overwhelmingly at similar levels of development with socialism bringing better quality of life:
This study compared capitalist and socialist countries in measures of the physical quality of life (PQL), taking into account the level of economic development.
This study shows that unprecedented mortality crisis struck Eastern Europe during the 1990s, causing around 7 million excess deaths. The first quantitative analysis of the association between deindustrialization and mortality in Eastern Europe.
Adult mortality increased enormously in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union when the Soviet system collapsed 30 years ago. archive.ph/9Z12u
I love how either no one anwers to these, or they claim they’re made up after pretending that they’re more informed and definitely not living in their own propaganda reality.
I bet the response to this will be that they don’t have time for these walls of text because they’re too busy working.
Probably because nobody is going to read a big wall of text like that, with the sole purpose of debunking. People have better things to do with their time.
Only question is what the fuck was US doing murdering people half way across the world. I guess that’s the whole missionary mentality coming from enlightened Europeans where your tradition is to go around the world to kill and enslave people.
The only thing that’s fucking stupid here is pretending that the west isn’t practising colonialism today and that your standard of living isn’t subsidized by the people literally enslaved by western companies theguardian.com/…/mars-nestle-and-hershey-to-face…
The CCP is literally enslaving and sterilising Uyghurs right now, cretin
Yeah you keep on peddling debunked conspiracy theories there since that’s all you’ve got to wok with. Weird how Uyghur population keeps growing. China can’t even get genocide right apparently. Should probably learn from the brits how to do it right.
Fuck off and learn something instead of spamming my inbox Tankard
After becoming the Communist Party of China’s chief of Xinjiang Province in 2016, Chen Quanguo oversaw a security crackdown that led to a drop in births so sharp that it shocked the world. Some observers accused China’s leadership of committing genocide against the province’s mostly Muslim Uyghur population through forced sterilization and abortion.
Love how you trolls always reach for whataboutism. How dare you hold countries to the same moral standard you say as you adorably stomp your little feets. Meanwhile, here’s what an actual genocide looks like bylinetimes.com/…/up-to-six-million-people-the-un…
They literally only claimed to be communist for a few years out of their decades long rule. They had cia connections. The vietnamese communists overthrew them and installed a communist democracy. But sure, they’re communist /s.
I love how being able to criticize a country you live in is hilarious for you. Says a lot about you really. Doubly hilarious that you think China is fake communist. It’s such an important cope for westies, cause accepting that a communist country does everything better than your beloved capitalism is a hard pill to swallow.
And if you bothered actually reading the shit you post, you’d find out that it counts youth unemployment from the age of 16. Being shocked at the fact that kids are going to school instead of working is of course nothing to be surprised about when talking to a capitalism enjoyer.
China is a capitalist country, why else would they be buying western companies?
This is such a hilraiously reductive understanding of what a capitalist country is. Using your “logic”, UK is a communist country because you still have public healthcare for now.
Not sure what point you’re trying to make there to be honest. I’m guessing you’re trying to create some emotional appeal there, but we can find pictures of western regimes committing far worse atrocities today. In fact, US regime alone is responsible for over 300 million deaths nyupress.org/9781583679890/endless-holocausts/
Quite telling that you can’t find anything recent. I love how you just keep spamming these because you think it’s a clever commentary without realizing that it just shows what a little ghoul you are.
On a computer if you click and drag the image if the ghost image has a transparent bg you won’t see the checkerboard. You can also save the file by dragging it to the location you wanna save it to.
It’s been downhill since Windows 7. I think this will be my last Windows PC.
I just don’t feel safe with Windows that next time I boot up there won’t be some fresh horror I didn’t ask for and have to go research how to put back in the bottle.
It’s like having your computer pre-rooted with malware.
Jumping between Mac and Windows I keep accidentally awakening Cortana when I try to copy and paste. Now that god awful, universally reviled feature if finally getting deprecated but it still brings up the damn window/modal/pice-of-shit just to tell me that it’s gone. If you want to be gone, then go! Don’t make a fuss telling me about it. Just go. No one wanted you in the 1st place. Fuck.
Come join the fight against evil, join those who wish to give you control over the shit you own, go ahead and load www.fedoraproject.org onto a USB and try it out. Most software either has excellent alternatives, or works fine under Wine!
That’s exactly what it is. Defender is removing PUPs (potentially unwanted programs), but only those unwanted by Microsoft, while Windows is installing unwanted programs left and right. Windows is legitimately acting like malware. Not even a joke.
I’m curious as to how much something like shutup10 helps with that. I was always tempted, but never tried it. I barely touched windows these past few years anyways.
Merlin is amazing. I heard birds outside my new apartment and thought of them as nice background noise. Within days of installing Merlin, I could tell sparrows, cardinals and robins apart without seeing them. Whenever I heard a new bird, I’d grab my phone and open Merlin.
One day it sounded like a robin and a cardinal were having and argument while both simultaneously having a stroke. Merlin figured out it was a catbird, a relative of the mockingbird that learns the songs of other birds then strings pieces of them together in a disorganized song to impress the ladies. Basically, the male catbird who can sing the weirdest songs using the most species signals that he has “been around” for enough seasons to learn all those songs and therefore must have good genes the females want to pass on. It’s mind blowing to learn all this about things that are going on outside your window.
It’s pretty great, there’s also Cornell’s companion citizen science app called eBird that you can use to count birds around you which is useful to ornithologists to track bird population density and migration patterns!
I’ve only gone back for a minute since College Football has resumed, but even then seeing all those ads in formerly clean Oldreddit made me feel gross. Comfortable content will happen here in time, I believe it to be true
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
Not the same event. It’s rather like if someone was talking about the migration in response to the Homestead Act and you mention the Donner party as though it was part of that.
Not related to what you are responding to but just as an interesting symbolic link between the two things you mentioned, iirc the first people killed, butchered and eaten by the Donner party were their native scouts, afterwards mostly erased from the story in popular telling. Just as the homesteaders first ethnically cleansed the native Americans before hunger for more land turned them cannibalistically against each other
That is interesting! I didn’t know they had native guides, though I suppose of course they would and of course those guides were the first sacrificed by colonizers.
Looked a little more into it, they weren’t actually the very first eaten but were the first (and by some accounts only) to be murdered for the purpose of eating. They both refused to eat human meat before fleeing (they’d been warned their murder was being planned), but were caught up with down the trail a few days later. Shortly after they were butchered the group (a segment of the party that had been sent ahead) that did it were harboured and fed in a Miwok village (the guides having also been Miwok I think). A grizzly tale.
I am pretty sure they mean the revolts from right at the start of the PRC. Wikipedia is a hostile source and I don’t endorse it, but it explains well enough that the Land Reform Movement started before the end of the Civil War and mostly ended by 1953. Because the CPC/PLA only had so much manpower and China is huge, they had very little direct involvement, and instead just said in so many words “we aren’t protecting the landlords’ claim to their property, do what you will”. The peasants then independently seized the land, usually either killing or driving out the landlord, and distributed it among themselves or sometimes held it in common.
What does “freedom of the press” mean here in amerikkka? Is it a freedom enjoyed by you or I or any other common person, has it ever been?
The answer to these questions is no, the freedom of the press is freedom only for those who own the printing presses and that freedom is the freedom to use the press as a megaphone for views and ideas that help them and those in the same class
It always goes back to the material conditions and who owns the means of production
You pointed out North Korea’s prison population as a counter to their superior urban planning to the USA, but they also have a lower prison population.
I’m not really in the business of sourcing things to users from an instance that is basically a Sealioning factory.
Ultimately, I will get told I don’t understand economics until I’ve read all three volumes of Das Kapital. Ironically, it’s no different that libertarians saying you don’t understand economics unless you’ve read the works of Milton Friedman, or more importantly, Ayn Rand.
You can’t accuse people of sealioning in a conversation you chose to participate in; it’s not sealioning to expect you to actually back up your assertion.
Ultimately, I will get told I don’t understand economics until I’ve read all three volumes of Das Kapital. Ironically, it’s no different that libertarians saying you don’t understand economics unless you’ve read the works of Milton Friedman, or more importantly, Ayn Rand.
You literally, not figuratively, just made up an argument to refute. Want to talk about reddit debate fallacies, how about straw men.
You’ve spent your life steeped in capitalist ideology, but have you read any socialist theory? Your comments continue to demonstrate your complete ignorance of what we’re talking about, so why are you talking about things you fundamentally don’t understand? Is something being complicated evidence of it being wrong somehow? Why do you think being given book recommendations is so unreasonable? Do you want to understand us or not? Is your brain too rotted by the internet providing immediate gratification at all times for you to read?
They can’t. Every single one of these libs keep saying they have sources but at most will link fucking wikipedia then say that anyone who disagrees just isn’t discussing things in “good faith” or whatever bullshit
Salvador Allende got couped three years after his election. Are there any ways you can think to prevent a foreign power from undermining future hypothetical socialist governments that wouldn’t be authoritarian?
Yea, because they just gave up and certainly didn’t try to defend themswlf, sadly even a gun is of no use as poor third world country facing the world power, I can’t see a way to prevent that.
sadly even a gun is of no use as poor third world country facing the world power
Cuba is the most notable example of the many countries that have proven this wrong.
If you have popular support and guns, the options for the U.S. are either mass, indiscriminate slaughter or leaving. We usually get tired of the mass, indiscriminate slaughter after a few years.
Yea, the CIA got rid of them and installed one of the worse dictators in history. Luckily the fight against communism is over so I have my doubts it would happen that way again but especially for a poor country I see no chance whatsoever be that with or without violence :(
The coup in Bolivia kind proved that even social democracy is off the table if it interferes with imperialist interests.
This is a problem that all anti-capitalist ideologies have to face.
The capitalist hegemony has an interest in preventing nations from shifting away from the status quo, so socialist, anarchist, whatever revolution that is fought, however it is fought. It will have to carry out some practices that would be decried as authoritarian to protect themselves from outside interference.
I don’t see how you would protect yourself in that scenario, you seem to think they just let it happen on purpose which certainly wasn’t the case, America is just a lot more powerful than any third world country. I do agree that the rich will always fight any attempt because they loose power and money from such a move and as soon as you interfer with imperialistic interests you are fucked byond recovery anyway.
I don’t see how to protect this hypothetical socialist state either. Cuba has managed to escape any attempts that the US has made to overthrow it’s democratic mandate but it had the support of the USSR in it’s early stages and there’s no hegemonic power right now that could be of similar help.
I’m not a particularly bright person, and I don’t think I’ll ever have a proper answer.
There is a lot that’s wrong with Cuba and I certainly wouldn’t want to live there but it’s one of if not the only better places (in terms of things like access to healthcare, housing and such) in south America despite heavy sanctions and the dictatorship but I have absolutely no idea how they still exist, it’s a fucking miracle considering the the circumstances and they do it at very high costs in terms of technological progress. What I always viewed as huge mistake is the UDSSR or China as partner, they never cared much about the ideology (they did kind of care for a perverted version supporting some parts whenever it was convinient for the powerful but really not much) and fought for their own interests, doing so wasn’t/isn’t just a risk to your reputation which would be fine but also your autonomy and many of their goals aren’t any less imperialistic than Americas.
Chile was coup’d by a faction in its own military with western backing, not actually invaded by the west. Chile could have prevented this by preemptively purging fascist officers in the military. This would have saved Chile but condemned it to being called fascist on lemmy.
My main issue with authoritarian attempts to achive anything close to socialism failed because of coruption and similar shit if they didn’t just use it as nothing but a talking point in the first place so I don’t see that as viable option to achive any kind of equality ether.
That the USSR managed to last long as long as it did despite being invaded by more developed nations multiple times during the aftermath of its revolution and eventually collapsed largely due to its own internal corruption does put paid to the idea that some authoritarian measures will help protect a socialist state from external attempts to destabilise it.
The problem seems to be one inherent within the structure of states. Any heirarchical structure like that is fit to be abused by someone sufficiently self interested that they’d put their own interests above the interests of the people gestures at Mikhail Gorbachev selling the USSR out to the Western core for his own enrichment.
Anarchism, being decentralised, might be able to withstand some of the issues that were present in the late USSR. But previous anarchist attempts have been crushed by outside actors much easier than socialist attempts.
Absolutely but authoritarian states are at a even higher risk in that regard and you got enough powerful enemies as a socialist already. One of the biggest issue for Arnachism next to the absurd amount of very different interpretations is ironically Socialism/Communism, parts of many revolutions had Arnachist ideas and so did big parts of the historic worker movments (Black is the flag of the Arnachist and Red of the Socialist worker) but they never really managed to get any of them in to the new system even after a successful revolution. It’s all a very tough question and I wish I had good answers but I fear the truth is none of us dose, at least we oppose fucking capitalism I guess, that’s a start and history has shown it can spread to bigger parts of society in some cases.
You misunderstand. When liberals violently overthrow the aristocracy, that’s a liberation movement. When socialists violently overthrow the capitalists, that’s authoritarian tankie red fascism.
Chinese socialist revolution before Mao’s leadership is pretty legit. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, are all real socialists, they truely cares about the worker and envisions a better future for China.
If anything, many Chinese intellectuals in the republic era really cares about the little man, like Lu Xun, Lao She, etc.
I don’t think I’ve seen this position before and it sounds pretty wild ngl. Let me just lay out my understanding.
Mao disagreed with the party on the basis that he felt the peasants had more revolutionary potential than the small, new proletariat working in what few factories existed in China. Mao’s arguments were rejected, and the party’s commitment to rigid ideology over analysis of the specific material conditions of China led to them being crushed by the Nationalists and massacred. It’s the whole reason that the Long March happened.
The few surviving members of the party regrouped, though they were hunted to the ends of the earth and had extremely little manpower or resources. Despite this, because they used Mao’s approach of appealing to the peasants, who reflected the majority of the working poor, the communist revolution spread like wildfire, gaining more and more supporters everywhere it went.
:::spoiler Once the communists gained power under Mao’s leadership, this happened.
I don’t deny that the party before Mao had good intentions, but it seems to me that history has proven their approach wrong in an incredibly decisive way. They tried their approach when the party was in a better position and failed miserably, they tried Mao’s approach after that miserable failure and it succeeded on an enormous scale. I’m pretty curious to know where you disagree with that.
US life expectancy in 1940 was 62, almost double that of China. The state of medical knowledge and technology doesn’t matter if the people don’t have access to it, as was the case with many Chinese, especially rural people. What actually made up a large part of the difference was not antibiotics but vaccines, which were around well before WWII, but Chinese people had virtually no access to them. Under Mao, China implemented something called the Barefoot Doctors program, through which large numbers of doctors were trained quickly and sent out to rural regions, relying primarily on Western medical knowledge, though they also used some traditional herbal remedies due to the massive amount of medical supplies needed to expand care across all of China. The program was a success and resulted in the sharp rise around 1968, when it was implemented.
Another factor was land reform and increasing food security. Yes, the GLF was a failure, but before the communists came to power, famines were an extremely common occurrance. Rural Chinese were suffering under extreme poverty and brutal exploitation under the landlords (really more like fuedal lords), and the communist uprising redistributed the land which allowed farmers to keep more of what they produced.
Generally, there were a lot of improvements in the lives of rural Chinese that were very basic and obvious. Anyone who went and observed their conditions could plainly see things that needed to be changed. But no other faction - the KMT, the invading Japanese, the European colonizers, the Qing, etc, hell even the communist party before Mao wasn’t interested in trying to reach them, as I mentioned. The reason Mao got so much support from them, and the reason that he knew they could be radicalized, is because he actually took the effort to go out and live among them and listen and learn about what their lives were like.
Those reasons are why, despite the failure of the GLF (which we can discuss if you like), I would still argue that there have been a lot of material improvements for the people of China which wouldn’t have happened under any historical faction but the communists. Notably, Chinese life expectancy has now surpassed that of the US, while China has emerged as a major economic and geopolitical power, despite having once been one of the poorest countries in the world.
Chinese socialist revolution before Mao’s leadership is pretty legit. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao, are all real socialists, they truely cares about the worker and envisions a better future for China.
So no revolution at all? 95% of the critical mass and anything that can be called a large scale revolution (with organizational successes of the masses) happened in China in the 30s and had little to do with Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao previous work ,no matter how admirable. The CPC almost died and was built back up multiple times by the time Mao succeeded and Mao was vital in that. You cant get more legit than revolution under Mao. Under probably the worst odds and situation any communist party and revolution had to face they endured, made correct and miraculous choices and political and military manuvers at every turn and won, uplifting and liberating hundreds of millions of peasants and women. No Mao, no successfull revolution in China and no emancipation of the masses. Good luck doing the long march and outmanuvering the KMT from the countryside by amassing immense support with Chen Duxiu’s ideas about the peasantry.
Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao may have envisioned a better socialist future for China but they were and would have been unable to make it happen. They lacked both the military genius, the correct analysis on the peasantry or the rhetoric and vision of mass politics that Mao had that allowed the CPC to pull through against all odds and win
Maybe for now, but as soon as more people switch to Windows 11 or Microsoft apps that constantly show you ads and are basically spam / adware themselves, Linux will get more appealing.
Microsoft is unfortunately learning from social media companies. Not only do you PAY for the product, you are also the product, and get your personal info stolen and get served ads even while you pay.
It's getting to the point where I'm seriously eyeballing Mint again, or Kubuntu. And I'm the kind of person that's generally too lazy to even dual boot anymore.
Just do it. I used Windows mainly out of apathy for years. But once I made the switch, I never looked back. Mint is easy to use and doesn’t get in the way. And there’s zero shitfuckery going on.
Might sound stupid, but I want to be apathetic about my OS. I mainly game and I have been using Windows since I was 8. I know it in and out and if I am not forced to (or if ads really get that crazy), I am not gonna switch. It’s just nothing I am remotely passionate about.
You mus have a nice install. I see them when I press the windows button. I see them when I press a random combination and this wierd left side window pops up and task bar shows you not only weather but also shares.
I kind of like Windows 11, but even the Pro version is riddled with ads. The search banner in the taskbar has them regularly, there’s a large number of falsely installed Microsoft Store apps in the Start menu (which get downloaded when you click them, like Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, Instagram, I think also TikTok and I’m certainly forgetting some), the whole “news” menu on the left side of the screen is just that too. The Windows 10 default Mail app (which I think is close to be the perfect email app on Windows) is also being retired in favor of Outlook, the free version of which has an ad displayed either as a banner at the bottom of your mails list, or as an unread email at the top of it. This prompted me to enjoy the Thunderbird update, which isn’t as good but has no ads. And that’s not even counting Edge, the shortcut of which gets added back to the desktop on a regular basis, which redirects all HTML help pages and searches to itself instead of using the default browser.
You might not have seen any ads on your W11 computer, but it’s probably either because you have a system-wide adblocker, installed scripts to remove some of the most invasive bloat, or simply hand pick and manage carefully all apps and and settings on your systems (that’s what I do, but when I do I make it so I won’t see it again). Or you don’t notice them as ads, which is sadly very possible.
The thing is, why would you want any of that crap to begin with? Like sure you can disable it, but wouldn’t it be nicer if… You know… it wasn’t there in the first place?
Like if you had the option, wouldn’t you want to ditch Windows for something a little less anti-consumer?
Hypothetically, let’s say there was an OS that meet all your needs, wasn’t riddled with ads and trackers, and tries to empower you as a user; wouldn’t you choose that OS?
Linux seriously needs to figure out laptop battery life. Not much chance of going mainstream when installing it means a 50% drop in your battery life. Until then, I’ll use Linux on my desktop and just disable all the adware spam shit in Windows on my laptop.
Sorry for the uncalled advice, but you might want to avoid Ubuntu. Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu) is being rather obnoxious pushing for a technology called “snaps” that has a bunch of issues, among them performance.
Mint is fine. In fact I’m distro-hopping from Ubuntu to Mint again.
Exactly! This sentiment is why I ditched Windows in the first place. That and the combination of unnecessary annoyances that slow my workflow in which the majority of Windows users seem to be desensitized too.
Linux already works for my use case, so why would I want to voluntarily deal Microsoft’s anti-consumer practices? I don’t.
There is a bit of irony that those most willing to make said ultimate evolutionary sacrifice for the betterment of the world are potentially the least to be likely responsible for the problems in the first place. Leaving more room for those who are.
I’ve come to the realization that some people really really do enjoy having children and actively want them. I am not one of them. You probably aren’t either or you’d understand it. I don’t understand it either, so I assume it’s for a niche that isn’t me. Or rather, less assume, more have seen. I know these people exist as I’ve seen them, but I do not understand them. But I figure that’s ok.
Unfortunately, most people don’t take this sort of view and assume everyone is like them, leading to stupid absolutist nonsense that they can’t seem to see past.
Kids are way cooler than most adults I know. At least those past the age of screaming to be fed. They’re willing to listen and learn. They’re excited about everything. You can fix a kid’s bad mood by making a funny face. Fucking adults are the ones out there screwing everything up (including kids.)
That’s true, some kids are very cool to hang out with. They’re just people, after all, and everyone is different. Children of course are very much a reflection of their environment, with a few exceptions.
I guess what I object to is people who think the only reason they exist is to reproduce, and that somehow it’s extremely virtuous, like they’re doing the world a favor. What’s the point of living only to have children? That’s what a virus or something does. There needs to be something more interesting about a person, more going on than ‘I reproduced’.
Yes, how’d you guess? And yes, that is on purpose. I’m also quite aware that people who are parents think it’s odd or unusual to not want to do that. I’m not saying I think children are ‘bad’ or parents regret their choices (although realistically, some do) … just that personally I don’t get it, same as I don’t understand why some people would want to have 5 dogs. I’m over 40 and have known plenty of people who are parents and mostly, they seem to like it. I’ve had several girlfriends who wanted to have children and I was basically uh, no, you should do that with someone else. But also my life is pretty fucked up. Maybe if I had better health and had chosen a more stable career I’d feel differently.
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