I had mine 14 years ago 100% free all thanks to Plan Parenthood. No pain for me and I was back in action after 5 days. Wife at time had no problem giving me the 20 our so releases I needed to make sure I was clesn of active sperm.
So after doctors said I was clean said goodbye to condoms and never been freeier.
They say you can get easily reverse so see no reason why women should suffer under a horrible surgery and be out of action for 6 to 8 weeks. When it takes 30 minutes and all well in 5 days.
Fyi mine also done here in Oklahoma but Tulsa area. I had to wait only 2 months for a slot.
They told me it be less likely that I could reproduce the longer I had it but I was assured it was easily reversed. Not that matter I am not interested in having any more kids.
Yeah when I got it done, my doctor told me to consider this as permanent procedure even though it is possible to reverse it. They want you to make this decision without the idea that a reversal is quick and easy or even possible
Most women who’ve had a hysterectomy have likely had a severe debilitating medical issue related to the uterus and so removing it probably makes them feel the most free they’ve been in a long time.
I agree, but the sad part is this is being done because abortion is illegal there now. It’s being done out of desperation, not because someone wants it done.
I understand the sentiment, but supporting this is sort of conceding the anti-abortion laws are there to stay and I don’t think we should accept that.
If you want to get a vasectomy, fine. That’s a personal choice. But the reason so many men are signing up for a free vasectomy isn’t because it’s a good financial deal. It’s because we’re losing the fight and we need to start winning it again.
I completely agree about the need to fight for our bodily autonomy. I’m old and postmenopausal even if I hadn’t yeeted the uterus years ago. But I am appalled that my daughters don’t have even the meager protection of Rowe v Wade.
There’s a tiny bit of my soul that is gratified however by the way more men are starting to step up and take on the responsibility of pregnancy prevention.
Here’s a few things to consider, but I’m hardly the person to give an authoritative list.
What are our quality of life targets?
We can support a crapton more people if we all go Amish. We gotta reduce growth to a global lottery system 30 years ago if we want everyone in the world to live like a median American.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all-age answer, either. People need more resources as they get older, and contribute less work in return. An aging population means more economic stress on the younger population, and less economic output relative to each senior citizen means less access to medical care.
What are our sustainability targets?
Some things are getting bad faster than others, some things are closer to breaking points, etc.
How much do we want to bet on degrowth vs. innovation?
If we assume only tiny incremental improvements for centuries to come, then we’re preparing for something very different than if we’re trying to keep research investment steady or even accelerate progress on things like fusion, carbon removal, microplastics remediation, and power distribution and storage.
What policies are on or off the table?
Some philosophies say that limiting a person’s reproduction is categorically immoral, even if the predictable consequence is that everyone dies. Some TESCREAL dudes say we should use nukes cuz the ends justify the means.
How do we mobilize these policies?
We have lived experience that an aging population isn’t great for getting effective policy in place.
What about the political fallout?
Population change policies certainly won’t be done globally in lockstep, which means in order to stabilize local economies, there will be more immigration for places where the internal population growth is slowing/reversing. That can easily lead to xenophobia, which could destabilize everything. It’s hard to fight global climate change when you’re dealing with local fascism.
etc.
That’s why I can pretty much only reliably say “people who don’t want kids… not being forced to have kids… is an unambiguously good thing” and I can’t extend that to people who do want kids.
I regularly see people calling for massive reductions in population and I don’t think they are as informed about the subject as they think they are. For starters I usually get the feeling that they think degrowth will be painless or relatively painless even when massive. It won’t, even a slight reduction in worker population each generation is massively going to decrease the standard of living, starting with pretty much every luxury service we have. Any innovation in tech? Yeah not gonna happen anymore, there is not enough breathing room in the economy to waste on fancy little toys. In a system set on degrowth any available resource will be exclusively used to maintain the status quo, forget improvements.
Thinking further beyond the immediate consequences there is the long term question of what we want to happen to humanity. If people think we should go extinct then degrowth is a perfectly viable strategy for making that take a bit longer, if we are to potentially survive indefinitely degrowth is not an option. We are consuming more depletable resources than any individual can count and a great many of them have already dropped below a level where we could rediscover them. For example: There is not enough surface ore (coal, iron, copper, etc) in the world anymore to repeat an industrial revolution. If we lose the capacity of mass production that’s it, no second attempt. And it is like that with many resources, Helium is running out in iirc ~100 years, Uranium for reactors in iirc ~80 years, nitrate needed for fertilizers is running low and concrete manufacturers are looking into alternatives to river sand because that is also running dangerously low. Now we can stop growth and extend the usable time we have left with these resources but they will run out eventually. Or alternatively we can stop pretending that stagnation has ever worked for anything (no not even nature works with stagnation, a forest with only old trees dies together with its entire animal population and is eventually replaced by a new forest with young trees) and start working on solution to that problem. If we don’t want to got extinct the only solution is to get off this rock and start mining the planets we don’t have to be careful with. We cannot strip mine earth because it’s the only habitable place we have but we don’t have that problem with any other celestial body.
As for the short term, getting rid of the excessively wealthy would be a good start, it’s not like we lack resources as is, it’s just that 0.1% of the population are hogging 99% of it for themselves. Imo eating the rich will net much better results than doing a china and having less kids (btw anyone check on how their industry is doing, cuz last I checked their government is panicking a bit about the side effects the decline in workforce brings with it)
Well a lot of social safety nets require on a continually growing work force, of course they could be removed but that will never happen. Immigration is also a good solution but it’s unclear if in many places that will ever be expanded. But furthermore, there is no reason to stop people having kids in most situations.
Exactly, burning. If we do away with the burning, trading fossil fuels for environmentally friendly alternatives, we can reduce or eliminate greenhouse gases, the biggest contributor to climate change.
This is such a short sighted and selfish thing to say.
I had a vasectomy, for many of the reasons stated here (the most important one being so my wife didn’t have to put her own body through any more trauma).
But I had 3 beautiful, healthy and perfect kids first
So that’s how we tell if people are having a good time? Whether or not they kill them selves!? Wtf. I’ve not had a good time but my brain is wired to not kill itself.
You must know more about it than me. What’s my reason then? I thought it was because of how hard life is and the extreme possibility to suffer but what do I know.
Don’t make your ladies have a more invasive surgery. Just get it done.
word, the differences in their longterm health outcomes are ridiculous with hysterectomy. We still get our testosterone and dangly bits, we just, er, cut the swimmers off at the pass. not having to worry about condoms / bc / etc? priceless.
That is if you can find a doctor who will give a recommendation for one. My partner has endometriosis and has wanted an oblation for a while but nobody will give her the ok cuz she’s in her 30’s and “she could still have kids if she wanted to.”
I thought stuff like that was a meme but she can’t find anyone. The first doctor I met with just wanted me to know a vasectomy was permanent and he gave me some vallium. $200 and 20 minutes was all it took for me and she’s STILL looking to get an oblation :/
We need to rehabilitate the rapists and murderers. They super pinky promise not to rape or kill again!!! It was just one time, come on... have some compassion!!
So you’d rather lock someone up for a few years, make it near impossible for them to get employment upon release and just hope for the best? Or do we bear the expense of tossing away the key or killing them instead?
As for funding - a cop with a gun is clearly the best option dealing with situations like someone having a mental heath crisis - much safer, cheaper, and freer to shoot them or toss them in prison too! We can’t rest on our laurels with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Reallocating portions of those police resources to people like counsellors hasn’t had dramatically better outcomes wherever it’s been tried (unlike throwing more money at the police, of course), but I’m clearly preaching to the choir on this one.
I’d suggest you ease off the boot-licking a little - I think the boot polish might have gotten to your brain.
I really don’t understand how people still hang on to defending EGS. It’s been shit since release, it’s still missing basic features years later, and it’s been found doing tons of shady shit.
I’m all for more competition in these spaces, because, you know, competition pushes the companies to one up each other and build compelling features. But EGS is just blatantly missing shit and is explicitly user-hostile by buying exclusivity to their vastly inferior platform. Steam hasn’t had to react at all because they’re still so far ahead, and Epic is just fucking trolling users by forcing them onto their platform without working cloud saves or even non-buggy installs.
The irony that they flag-wave “user choice” while doing this just totally baffles me.
You don't have to love them but they're still the closest thing to any competition at all. You can complain but they're most likely to improve if they're profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down. I get the "buying exclusivity" complaint, but honestly it's fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
You don’t have to love them but they’re still the closest thing to any competition at all.
That’s arguably true. But as I said above, the only reason competition is good is if it actually is a reasonable alternative and the companies and products they’re competing with have to make changes to keep customers, which in turn benefits customers of both platforms. Steam hasn’t had to do a thing to deal with EGS. It’s brought no benefits so it serves no purpose Because of this, GOG is better competition in many ways.
On the other hand, as I said above, it has brought many disadvantages and actively harmed customers with unclear game ratings, lack of things like cloud save, fragmentation in their game libraries, and legitimately broken games and wastes of money.
You can complain but they’re most likely to improve if they’re profitable, and it would definitely hurt end users if they shut down
How would this hurt customers? There wouldn’t be EGS exclusives. People would have consolidated purchases. Steam wouldn’t change. GOG wouldn’t change.
The only argument you could make is the lost purchases on EGS, which wouldn’t have existed if EGS hadn’t started in the first place. That’d be a loss EGS created. So it only furthers the point. EGS pretty much only harms customers.
I get the “buying exclusivity” complaint, but honestly it’s fucking impossible to get a foothold, I would do the same thing if I were them.
Okay, sure, the company is working in their own best interest. And? It still actively hurts the consumer. There is no value they are providing to the consumer. If there was an exchange in which the company provided some value in exchange for that detrimental action, it would be warranted.
But EGS offers literally nothing but problems to the consumers.
Instead of shelling out millions to shadily buy themselves into exclusivity, maybe they ought to have invested in their platform? I feel the state of the Epic Games Store reflects their view of gamers - mindless moneybags drooling for the latest releases, not as customers using a platform to play games. I don’t think we’d be better off with them in the game.
Launching a game in steam: click game shortcut on desktop, let steam check for updates, if there’s an update wait a minute for it to download and the game to launch
Oh then the experience is exactly the same with Epic, don’t see the problem then!
I was obviously talking about the experience if you start your game by opening the launcher itself, if you don’t then I don’t know why people care which launcher their game is on, the experience is the same everywhere.
Of all of those only the first one ever happened to me, they have cloud saves, never had an issue with mods… I think you’re mixing up the experience on release vs the experience today, native you should refrain from commenting if you haven’t used the product in a long time, you’re like someone saying “I don’t buy Japanese cars because I had one and it had shit power compared to my friend’s American car!” and that experience dates back to the 70s.
you should refrain from commenting if you haven’t used the product in a long time
What makes you think I haven’t used it? Sure, cloud saves were added recently ish. They still released and pushed for exclusivity without it, and also had their fair share of problems.
Of all of those only the first one ever happened to me
On the other hand, maybe you should refrain from commenting if you are only going to go off anecdotal evidence. There are plenty of people who have had serious problems with EGS. And their support is notoriously pathetic.
Epic starts an update before it has loaded the UI, slowing your computer to a crawl. The UI now takes ages to load because of the update running. You can’t stop the update, that requires the UI which they haven’t loaded…
...if all I wanted was a game launcher, Playnite and pirated .exes are 100% free. Steam at least has features that you are paying for, nobody is forking over $60 for games on Epic just for the privilege of using their shitty launcher unless they are an idiot (or they got a lot of cash to spare I guess).
You might also want to support the devs that bring you those games? But from what you’re saying I guess you pay for games just to make sure Valve gets money and you don’t care about the people actually making the games 👍
So let me pirate it and then donate to the devs or something. Or let me purchase it directly from them. Why should Epic get 10% for doing literally nothing? People like to focus on Epic vs Valve, but Steam could literally not exist at all and Epic would fail. They don't offer a product that is better than piracy. That's the bare minimum standard they need to achieve and they can't even do that. A pirated .exe + Playnite is an objectively better product than a $60 purchase on Epic, it's just the facts. Anyone that spends money on that store is a fool.
lmao so features in a store are all of a sudden important now? That's not what you said before, you said all EGS needed to do is launch the game. It's almost like... features in a gaming platform are important. Like I said. Now if only you could take this newfound realization and apply it to Steam vs EGS....
You can set up auto-updates and cloud saves pretty easily, hell there's even some crazy stuff like this for achievements (EGS social features are so barebones, who cares about achievements on there anyway?).
Multiplayer is a given, everyone knows you can't pirate multiplayer games with official servers. But if you were to play a multiplayer game, it sure as fuck wouldn't be on EGS unless there was forced cross platform because you know it will be dead. I notice when I play Risk of Rain 2 that there will be hundred of Steam lobbies while the cross-play Epic lobbies are completely empty. Epic players literally cannot play that game online. Money well spent for the three people that actually bought that game on EGS, I'm sure they are really thankful they could give Epic their 10% cut for doing nothing when they could have just gotten the game for free or on Steam and had a better experience.
Well, it seems they’re important to you so I’m pointing out the hypocrisy that’s all 🤷 You buy from Steam because of the features, say pirating is better than buying from Epic because of the lack of features, I point out the features they have that you don’t get from pirating and now you’re still being disingenuous, so that conversation can end.
lol you mean your hypocrisy? You said features don't matter. "All Epic needs to do is launch the game, that's good enough!" But now you are saying features do matter. Which is it? Taking this new stance to it's logical conclusion, Steam would obviously be the superior choice, would it not? Steam has more features than Epic, right?
Pirated games have features that Epic games don't by the way, namely the fact that you own the game and you are not limited by DRM. In my personal opinion that is worth way more than EGS achievements which are completely useless on a store with no social features anyway.
You: If that’s all I wanted (implying that you want more) I would just pirate the games because Epic doesn’t offer a product that’s better than pirating
Me: Well, Epic actually offers more than pirating games does if your care about that
You: Oh now you care about the extra features!
No, I’m trying to show you that their product meets your demands, that’s how arguments work.
Then there is zero reason for you to buy games from Epic. That is a function that can be performed for free. It's like paying for air or sunshine. What kind of idiot pays money for something they can get for free?
You just seem to be completely ignoring the fact that I've already addressed all the features you brought up and most of them are pretty useless or are available to pirated games anyway. Certainly they are not worth actually spending money on when GoG and Steam do all those things and much more. Even if you had cash to spare and you just wanted those features with minimal hassle, there is still zero reason to buy from Epic.
jfc I've never seen someone defend so vehemently a product not having features. Epic is a multibillion dollar corporation with apparently thousands of employees, they don't need you to bootlick for them.
I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and I buy them so the devs can continue making games, you’re pretty fucking dumb to waste money to have access to useless features!
I buy my games where they’re the cheapest and I buy them so the devs can continue making games
Oh man, I'm about to blow your mind then!
STEAM KEYS
Devs get more money since Valve doesn't get their 30% cut and they are cheaper than the Epic counterparts! It's a perfect solution!
What is the status of Epic's key program btw, is that something they don't have? Shocker.
you’re pretty fucking dumb to waste money to have access to useless features!
I literally use Steam Proton, Steam Input and my Steam Deck nearly every day, and SteamVR at least a couple times a month. All things Epic doesn't have. Gaming would be super annoying if I was actually forced to use EGS. Billion dollar company with thousands of employees, btw.
I literally use Steam Proton, Steam Input and my Steam Deck nearly every day, and SteamVR at least a couple times a month.
Oh wow, so you’re part of the absolutely miniscule minority of players who need those features, congrats, it doesn’t justify all the hate for the alternatives when the majority doesn’t need it. By the way… how do you use those features on GOG exactly? 🤔
Linux users, Steam Deck owners, VR players and those with Playstation or other non-standard controllers account for a fuckton of people. Easily in the millions to 10s of millions. If you don't want to take advantage of those features, that's your problem.
Linux: 1.82% (going down in August, includes Deck users)
VR headset owners: 1.92%
And there’s overlap.
Controllers aren’t part of the survey but there are other options to use a PlayStation controller on other platforms… I mean, you use GOG too, you said it yourself!
And by the way, no one believes for a sec that you send a single cent to devs whose games you pirate and no, pirating a game doesn’t legally make you an owner of said game.
I don't pirate games, I buy them from Steam or GoG like everyone else because I'm not an idiot. I have absolutely zero incentive to buy from a platform with no useful features.
Which will requires to download the game beforehand so what’s the difference between downloading and installing right away vs downloading to install later? You can still launch the games without logging in.
It’s not 2006 anymore, high speed storage is cheap.
That's a terribly wasteful way of thinking, why can't we just download something once and have access to it forever? Steam allows local network installs and GoG has installers, what's Epic excuse? Don't forget, billion dollar company with 1000s of employees :)
My point is that no matter which option, the data is on your computer, it’s no more wasteful to download and install right away vs download the installer and store that data to install it offline later. Heck, you’ll need more space with the second option as it requires the installer AND the installed game to be stored.
But they are great for indie developers. They’ve done a lot to serve the indie community by buying their games and distributing them as a free game. It gets indie studios out of the hole and into the public eye.
EGS itself is a graveyard for indie games, game discovery is complete shit and they have no plans on improving it..
When it introduced Steam Direct, Valve prioritized the development of Steam features that helped users discover games they might be interested in, such as the Discovery Queue. The Epic Games Store will continue to get interface updates, but as a matter of principle, Allison says that Epic will not track user behavior and use it to algorithmically recommend games. Epic has said in the past that it's more interested in supporting the game discovery that already happens outside of stores, such as on Twitch and YouTube.
Steam has great features to advertise indie games such as dedicated events and such so a lot of indie hits have come from it, like Valheim, Fall Guys, Among Us, Terraria, Stardew Valley, Rimworld, Factorio, The Forest, etc.
It may have been great, but not in a sustainable way.
For Epic those exclusive contracts were part of their advertising budget.
I honestly wonder how many indie games that started as an epic exclusive are still around today because of that exclusivity deal or if they only survived because eventually the exclusivity expire and they were able to list on other platforms
Leave your reviews wherever you want and check your reviews wherever you want, there’s tons of websites to do so, you don’t need to leave your reviews where you own the game.
Fucking hell, what you guys want is for Steam to have an absolute monopoly over everything related to PC video games! Here’s hoping no one ever takes the helm off Valve and makes decisions you disagree with because we’ll be stuck without any alternatives if it were only for you guys!
How old is Gaben? 60? He’s obese and has been for ages? Yeah bud, I don’t want to be a bringer of bad news but I wouldn’t expect him to be in control for the next 15 years!
You literally can’t leave a review on steam unless you purchase the product. So your solution for me is to rebuy a game I already own just to leave a review? You don’t even know what you’re talking about. Enjoy your devil’s advocacy because that’s all it is.
So your solution for a massively profitable company that’s laying off employees, is to instead of implementing a feature the user’s request, just shirk the paying customers desires and leave it up to some third party website? What if I don’t want a review of the game in general, what if I want a performance review of the game as it runs through that specific launcher? I don’t believe that you believe that review sections in stores aren’t useful. I think you’re just being a contrarian. And I think it’s very strange You’re going to bat so hard for a company that doesn’t give two shits about you, but have fun with all your disagreeing with everyone I’m sure you’re getting quite the high.
You mentioned having product reviews as a “basic feature” they should be working on instead of laying off employees, I’m pointing out how ridiculous it is to consider that a necessary feature and how ridiculous it is that you’re complaining that you can’t leave reviews on Steam unless you own the game there when there are plenty of other places where you can leave your reviews.
I’m only disagreeing with people who have idiotic arguments against a product I consider perfectly acceptable.
I know they’re not literally throwing it out, if that’s what you thought I meant. I know they’re selling it to someone else, but how often does this result in a good outcome? I’m predicting this is the start of the end of bandcamp. It wasn’t even good to begin with, but it was the only unified place to buy music.
Why not raise it for everyone? I mean, this is a step, but it’s weird to think this group should make closer to a liveable wage, but these groups should work full time and not afford to live.
This is a great question, I figured it would be the state wide minimum wage and the article nice focused on fast food. But it is indeed only fast food workers. The statewide minimum wage otherwise is $15.50.
it sort of does by default.. if the fast food joints are paying 20, most everyone else has to match or improve on that.. i would expect, i'm not an economist..
You would think so - wouldn’t you? But all the fast food places are paying $15 an hour here, and minimum wage is less than that, yet some places still have minimum wage jobs. What’s even stranger is these are often both important and shitty jobs - like medical aids or the like. I honestly don’t know why anyone would want to work somewhere that pays less than fast food places, but it seems common. Not only that - fast food places (claim anyway) to not being able to get sufficient workers to be fully staffed still.
yeah it's not a comprehensive effect, but it will definitely impact the baseline in a lot of places.. a lot of jobs till have to start offering more, it's that simple..
I would, and currently do, work for less than the local Chic-Fil-A is hiring for. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, all the big ones around here will pay at $16/hour starting.
However, fast food work is a whole different beast. It is constant and involves hard labor and instant memorization. It requires you to be in the “lunch rush” mindset all day long, because the business model relies on training everyone to do everything so you can run the kitchen with a skeleton crew. It is humbling but demoralizing when dealing with both customers and managers, both of whom assume you are inherently beneath them.
I did my time, about 4 years of fast food. Pretty sure it knocked a decade off my life
I guess I was just comparing things like an elder care aid which also tends to require hard work / labor (possibly worse than fast food, lifting and turning 200lbs+ patients), dealing with literal shit every day (changing adult diapers etc), and similar being treated like crap. But doing that for $4 less an hour seems surprising to me.
That said, the closest I ever came to fast food work was a dining hall in college, and it wasn’t busy all day or particularly hard work. Nor was instant memorization needed, we had slips people filled out with their order. Which is basically what the fast food places do now with the kiosk / app / or counter ordering. Maybe it’s also location dependent, but around me fast food is just slow now, so I do wonder if the “unable to hire” is more “I don’t actually want to pay for 5 people on shift anymore”. McDonalds seems to be moving that direction by just eliminating order takers in favor of kiosks and using their app.
I agree, elder care is also in the very top tier of mind-breaking labor.
I respect your opinion on the fast food industry, but it comes across as reductive and dismissive when you word it that way. I’m glad your experience was better, I’m sure it has everything to do with who your leadership was. Now let’s fight to make that sort of experience the standard!
I don’t mean to be dismissive, though I can’t help being reductive given my “only as a customer” experience this decade. To me, and my interaction group, fast food jobs appear to be a bunch of stuff that seems like it should be a minimum baseline for logical people to accept.
no professional org limiting membership
no special credentials needed to be hired
no minimum educational requirement
extremely available geographically
lots of competitors / options for getting hired
lots of labor needed / advertised for anyway
Most of the negatives I’m aware of would apply to what I know of the jobs paying less than fast food. And going back to my college days, for someone in poverty / worried about paying for basics - working in food service often has a less advertised benefit - cheaper / free food while you’re on shift during your food break. I’m not claiming any job is for everyone, but I am suggesting if you could do elder care or work at Wal-Mart, you likely could work at a local fast food place and (now) make more money, so I do wonder why people don’t. At least as long as seemingly every fast food place is advertising for workers.
I fully understand not wanting to go after maximum earnings as the only consideration in a job - I could very likely make more money in a different job (I guess theoretically most people could), but would take major hits to work/life balance, flexibility, etc etc. But I’m also not in the market at minimum wage - and when I was working minimum wage jobs, I switched in a heartbeat when I could get a dollar more an hour across town. The one thing that would differ is if I could go full time vs part time at a slightly higher rate. And I don’t actually know if that’s what’s hurting the fast food companies filling their staffing needs. If they’re not offering full time to all the employees they already have when they have to close sometimes due to lack of staff - well, that’s another one of those illogical things to me. “Saving money” on benefits while not being open to make any money always felt like knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing.
Since the pandemic I’ve been working from home and that gives me time to take food-shopping off of my wife’s share of the household work. I noticed pretty quickly that every supermarket under the Kroger group was gouging on prices, so when they acquired Safeway I discovered there’s a WinCo in my town. (WinCo is employee owned, has the feel of a warehouse/bulk store, and it beats Kroger/Walmart/Amazon/GoodFoodHoldings stores on price, by a lot. Plus, the employees don’t have the energy of beaten animals and that matters to me for some reason.)
Good on Chicago doing this but there are already alternatives to Walmart and Whole Foods in some places if you look.
WinCo is legit. The bulk section alone makes going in there worth it. Need oregano? You can pay $5.99 for the jar at Kroger (in my area, Fred Meyer) or you can go to the bulk section of WinCo and pay $0.37.*
Numbers not exact, but it is literally that drastic a difference.
Yeah. I got a bunch of resealable/airtight bulk containers and will probably never buy spices in those little 2oz shaker-jars again. My pantry is a small store by itself now, it feels better to get like a pound of a spice for $7 than it does to buy 2 ounces at a time for $7- and all those trips I don’t have to make to get a spice I just ran out of is totally worth it- my restocking trip is… from kitchen to pantry, takes seconds.
Eh, where I live the employee-owned grocery store is of lower quality and higher priced than Walmart.
I went in expecting more, was sorely disappointed and left without buying anything.
It’s essentially the same products in a worse store for a higher price.
I know a lot of people like to beat the ‘employee-owned’ drum, but unless that translates to lower prices or better quality, I don’t see a reason for customers to subscribe to it.
I agree. At the end of the day it’s a business. But if two companies offer similar products go with the employee owned company.
The main thing about is decision making structure. Because employee or community owned stores are owned by the users. It means the end users have power over what is offered. As opposed to big box in which case it is non local non user shareholders.
But if two companies offer similar products go with the employee owned company.
Completely ignored my point about lower quality and higher prices.
It means the end users have power over what is offered.
What do you mean? The employees or the customers? I don’t really care if the employees have the power. That just moves who’s trying to take advantage of me.
As opposed to big box in which case it is non local non user shareholders.
It also doesn’t matter if they’re local.
What matters is if they give me a better deal. If they can’t do that, I will go with someone who will.
I almost completely agree with your first and last points. I was trying to say if they provide the same product at the same quality and price try to prefer the co-operative. I say similar because, personally I’d give some leeway to the co-op. But there are limits and co-ops are businesses and if they give sub par products and services than we shouldn’t buy from them.
The power is held by the owners. If it’s a consumer co-operative it is controlled by the consumer and a worker cooperative is owned by the workers. So the end users of products or the ones who have jobs. It depends on how it’s structured.
I somewhat agree with your last point. The big thing is ownership is wealth and control. If you control your store you get to chose the available options if someone else owns it it means someone else has control. So I’d rather I have control over it. Again with the previous thing. If someone else can do it sooo much better than I than I should someone’s product.
But we have to be careful because you can lead to the problem with data and big tech. I use an alternative to Google Cloud that is a cooperative but I have to pay. But with Google I don’t pay but loose my privacy. In that instance you have to determine what’s more important, given what I need it for is comparable to what I need what is important and I chose ownership and privacy over having neither of those.
It’s very literally interstate commerce when presented in that fashion.
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the US Constitution specifically empowers Congress “to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among states, and with the Indian tribes” (emphasis mine).
If that doesn’t satisfy someone’s definition of “Constitutional Originalism”, then I don’t know what will.
Suffice to say: all of these regressive laws around trying to prosecute abortion-related travel and transport of goods that are coming from the legislatures of those states are absolutely unenforceable and categorically bullshit.
Epic had been mostly hands off with Bandcamp. Songtradr is a licensing company in the run up to an IPO, they are very likely to hit Bandcamp with the enshittification hammer hard.
Depending on what changes occur, it could really fuck with the vaporwave & barber beats genres, given they uses a lot of samples. We might have to change to using a Shopify or Bigcartel storefront. Hoping we don’t, but seeing that Songtradr wants to IPO makes me think enshittification is at hand.
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