Americans are just stupid, and it’s easy to whip us into a moral panic.

I’m having a thought. It’s easy to write them off as stupid, and they may be, but there’s also like… If they have really bad information, the decisions they make given that info as true make more sense. If you really believed that Harris was eating babies, or “she’s a communist that’s going to put the christians in a labor camp”, it would make sense to vote for the “lesser” evil.

Just need to figure out why they believe such falsehoods. it’s probably fox news et al.

Mostly backend for web development (django most recently), though I’m moderately proficient at react and JavaScript for frontend. Also testing and QA.

I’ve been applying to all of full stack, backend web dev, and test/QA. No bites. Learning more languages might help, but I feel like having 0 years experience in (say) Rust won’t get a lot of traction.

Maybe it’s imposter syndrome but I feel like I’ve always been a sort of middle of the road engineer. Good at some things , bad at others. It feels like with all the layoffs and AI, there’s less room for broadly competent people. There’s just going to be the top tier, fighting and getting paid less.

Wow those replies are terrible. I regret clicking.

If you own the company (or a lot of shares), you gain wealth by doing literally nothing if the company’s value increases. On top of probably just keeping the profits. Plus the “use my stock as collateral, give me a low interest personal loan, that’s not taxed as income lol” wealth back.

I’m not talking so much about the petit bourgeoisie that’s working hard every day making donuts to sell. I’m talking about big C Capital that buys something and just takes the profits.

The CEO at my old job can’t code. He can’t do UI design. He doesn’t do sales or customer service. He sometimes talks to other rich assholes to fundraise, but mostly he makes questionable decisions and hurts morale. But if the company goes big, he’ll get filthy rich and the people who actually built the thing will not.

That said, higher taxes on the wealthy (plus closing loopholes like the loan thing) would help. So would universal basic income.

It’s funny because conservatives cry about “welfare queens” that just take money for nothing, but it’s the rich who can do that. If you have a few million, you can just coast on investments. Little to no risk. Once again, projection.

You could also have salaries 🤷

The problem to solve is a handful of people who aren’t really doing much work get most of the profits. There may be other solutions.

so what will be the point of failure

It feels like a lot of the maga hats will die cheering and waving trump flags. I don’t know if that’s historically precedented.

It’s going to be hard to make any fixes when like 30-50% of the country wants hell on earth.

Job market is brutal, at least for tech. Every job gets 100s of applicants. There’s a lot of AI slop. Offered salaries are down. For some reason, management wants people to go into the office (which is among other problems a pay cut compared to WFH).

I’ve been unemployed since the winter. Had a handful of phone screens. Haven’t made it to a technical round yet.

My old job laid off all but one guy and a contractor.

Honestly, I kind of want to get out of tech but I don’t know what I can do that doesn’t require like a degree or is terrible.

Unemployment runs out soon. Not that the pittance the state gives is enough to live on. I asked what I should do when it runs out and they were like, awkward shrug.

Meanwhile there are billionaires living content lives of luxury.

How would you quantify ongoing projects where workers come and go and each of their specific contribution might not be easy to measure?

Probably some sort of collective ownership, profit sharing, with negotiation and consensus building. Other people more well read than me have spent a lot of time thinking about this. My starting position is that the standard capitalist model of “I pay you $10 to make a widget, and I sell it for $1000 and keep all the profits” is not okay.

Do they all also assume financial responsibility for any failures or lawsuits?

Do the owners assume financial responsibility now? I think that’s what LLCs and other corporate structures are for- to shield individuals from liability and responsibility.

Taking things too seriously, don’t most plants benefit from their fruit being eaten as part of their lifecycle?

Also it’s not like the workers typically get the long tail of profits. Most labor is only paid a salary, and the “owners” get to keep profiting. Workers should be entitled to the profits of their labor.

Make sure you speak clearly with minimal slang, or they might willfully misinterpret what you’re saying to deny your rights. Like to think you want a lawyer dog.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/10/suspect-asks-for-a-lawyer-dawg-judge-says-he-asked-for-a-lawyer-dog.html

He’s spiteful and stupid.

I wish they continued to follow them in a different show

“Middle Decks” ?

I think it’s kind of a cold start, bootstrap, problem. I don’t want to pay for journalism when I don’t have faith it’ll be good, but since no one’s paying for it it’s not good

Well, for one, they know they’re lying but they don’t care. It’s a tactical advantage for them to lie because a lot of people aren’t going to know.

If you’re pretty smart, imagine being drunk. All the time. Just moderately sloshed. That’s what I think it’s like for an average , kind of stupid , person. Poor memory, surges of emotions, incoherent thought. And they can’t ever sober up.

It’s just emotions. The words conservatives pick are just to satisfy their emotions. Facts don’t matter. They are like children. Failures of people. They shouldn’t be allowed to make decisions of import.

Ted Cruz is a piece of shit and there’s nothing we could do to him to make up for his malice and ineptitude. Though I’d be willing to see some attempts.

I’m reminded of “a libertarian walks into a bear”. Right wing folks have a poor model of the world

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A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc.

A lot of leadership is incompetent. In a reasonable, just, world they would not be in these decision making positions.

Verbose blogger Ed Zitron wrote about this. He called them “Business Idiots”: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/