• HalfSalesman@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I work at a tiny 10 person non-profit. I am by far the most computer literate person here by an order of magnitude, given my completely wasted software engineering degree. I offered in my downtime at work to fix a bunch of laptops used by our kids in the after school program that were malfunctioning in some way or another.

    I was told to stick to my job description by our Executive Director, and that they’d contact an external IT person to deal with it. I’m an Admin Assistant, which TBH kind of means I wear many hats anyway so my job description is very broad…

    So here I am, twiddling my thumbs, posting on Lemmy instead.

    Its not only giant corporations. Its infected every modern manager/executive brain. And I want to say, the executive director at my work I consider “one of the good executives”. At least by comparison.

    (My immediate superior I like… less. She’ll do something wrong, I’ll try to fix it, and I’ll get reprimanded for trying to fix it.)

    • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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      4 days ago

      As we go back to the future, may I paraphrase Doc Emmett Brown:

      Roles?!

      Where we’re going,

      we don’t need…

      “roles”.

    • dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      one of the good executives

      10 person non-profit.

      This sounds incredibly top-heavy for such a small company. The fact that you got micro-managed like that in such a rediculously small outfit is kind of unheard of, frankly. Usually small companies are the exact opposite, where there’s one owner/operator, the job titles are largely made-up, and everyone just gets everything done because there’s usually not enough expertise-hours to go around to solo every task.

      • HalfSalesman@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        I meant executives in general, not specifically at my workplace. There is only 1 person with the title “Executive” and shes generally pretty decent.

        My immediate boss is the Youth (After School) Program Director and they don’t have true executive powers, they just have basic supervisory powers.

        I will say, before the Youth Director was hired though, we all generally operated fairly autonomously and without issue, things went smoothly. Since my boss was hired, two separate youth counselors quit, one because her hours were cut (One of the few decisions I found pretty dumb by the executive director) and another specifically because she found my immediate bosses decision making actively hampered the quality of our program and she wasn’t working there for the money.

        I was once told I should apply for my bosses position and at the time I found the idea completely unattractive. I now regret not applying given who has ended up there.

    • Darkenfolk@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      (My immediate superior I like… less. She’ll do something wrong, I’ll try to fix it, and I’ll get reprimanded for trying to fix it.)

      Because it’s fucked exactly how she likes it, you trying to unfuck it messes up her whole system ;)

      • Rooster326@programming.dev
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        6 days ago

        Most people quite literally think they are above admin assistants.

        Imagine the cleaning lady rolls up and fixes the bug you spent hours on in a few seconds.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          6 days ago

          I worked at a company where the cleaning lady was considerably more intelligent than most of the managers. But you was held back because her English wasn’t really very good yet so she had to take what work she could.

          Meanwhile the managers would rock in at 11:30 and immediately go on an hour lunch break. Usually they would then demand a meeting in the afternoon so they could get up to speed with what everyone was doing which was only necessary because they have been AWOL for the past 4 hours.

    • MBech@feddit.dk
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      6 days ago

      We can’t just go around, doing stuff, without our evil divine overlords earning their share! It simply wouldn’t be fair to our corporate slave-owners.

    • Jax@sh.itjust.works
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      6 days ago

      I think it’s moreso that a system like that would ultimately remove the ability for the parasite class to exist. Can’t keep everyone tied to your goods and services if they are entirely capable of producing them themselves.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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    4 days ago

    And worse, beneath wage slavery, the “benefits” “welfare” system, that blackmails you into not doing anything, nor appearing like you’re doing anything, lest suffering imposed destitution, starvation, freezing, and death by denial of medicine access; and sometimes they’ll cull you in an hour of hate anyway even if you were conforming. The worst “bullshit job”.

    So much lost potential.

    Does rather evoke the notion of a genuine UBI & social dividend as superior. … But can we get that arranged in a mutual decentralised way, not dependent upon those who promote and enact dehumanising culls and countless other abuses upon us?

  • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I’m a big fan of the concept of an universal basic income. Where everyone gets ~1000€ every month from the government. For children, the parents get the money.

    And I mean everyone. Every legal resident. Including billionaires.

    To finance it I would tax both income and capital gains at ~50%. From the very first € you earn.

    The net tax load on most people would not actually change much. But it completely gets rid of situations where if people work more, loose their benefits and end up with less.

    1000€ should be just about enough to life a frugal lifestyle. A flat with a partner or flatmate in a small town. Produce to cook a flexitarian diet. A public transport pass and a bicycle. A Samsung Galaxy A17 with an internet plan. And all those other real necessities of life.

    If people want luxuries, they will still have to work. Someone still has to produce those consumables after all. But everyone should be able to get all of their basic necessities covered.

    • lime!@feddit.nu
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      7 days ago

      it’s a good idea but it requires that costs don’t adapt. that 800€ apartment you wanted? well since you’re already getting a subsidy it’s now 1600€. after all, if you discount the subsidy it’s cheaper!

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        7 days ago

        Exactly. What’s to keep the sellers from just jacking everything up?

        College was expensive, but affordable, until the government made it easier to get student loans. Colleges responded by wildly jacking up their prices, and now you literally have to voluntarily take on a lifetime of debt to get a college degree for a job that probably won’t cover the cost of your loan. And what did the government do? They went right along with it, and demand repayment before anything else.

        They recently started a benefit program with Medicare that gives you some money each month to buy health related items in drugstores and such, and they responded by jacking up the prices in Walgreens and CVS.

        I’m all for UBI as well, but it has to comes with price controls so the corporate parasites don’t just take it all. UBI Gouging has to be a harshly enforced crime.

        • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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          7 days ago

          What we need is to jail people who do exploitive shit like this. Just like any other harmful acticity we jail people for.

          Or maybe jusr, OP’s 50% tax deal ramps up the more acxumulated wealth and property you have. Tonstrongly discourage that practice. Like sure, you exploited your rent holdings and you are a ten millionaire. But now we are taxing you at 100% so we can bump people’s UBI subsidy up enough to account for your exploitation.

          Good job, you accomplished nothing in the end.

          • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            We can’t jail them without a law that makes it illegal.

            And if we introduce rent control, we need to replace it with other incentives to build new apartment buildings. Ideally ones that create a slight oversupply of housing. Otherwise, in a decade or so, you get cheap rent but tons of homeless people because the supply is insufficient.

            • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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              7 days ago

              The incentive is that its what is good for society and good for everyone. The ince tive is doing good. Because people need places to live.

              Needs of the many vs needs of the few and all that.

              Laws can be made. Laws are all made in the first place.

              • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                Building apartments currently cost about a quarter million per unit. Plus interest on the mortgage. Most potential landlords don’t just have millions in liquid funds.

                Nobody will be taking out loans like that if they won’t even earn their investment back if everything goes to plan.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
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          7 days ago

          well that’s a uniquely us problem which doesn’t really apply to the rest of the world.

          • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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            7 days ago

            I don’t doubt that. In America, our government encourages the Sociopathic Oligarchs to exploit us. That’s why they love it so much here.

      • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Yes, it definitely has to be recalculated frequently. If it doesn’t, it will be about as useful as the US minimum wage after some time.

        But as I said, most people wouldn’t have significantly more or less money than they do today. At least I carefully calculated those numbers so that most people would have pretty much the same, for Germany in 2019. So I don’t really expect prices to go up drastically.

        It’s not that people suddenly have 1000€ extra. Either their unemployment benefits get replaced by that UBI, or they now have to pay an extra 1000€ in taxes.

        • lime!@feddit.nu
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          7 days ago

          it’s not even supposed to be an “extra 1000€ in taxes”, it would just be gradually eaten up by taxes the more you make.

          the big problem is, a lot of people on long-term sick pay who are not allowed to work would get less from this system. there needs to be something to deal with that.

          • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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            7 days ago

            Currently the tax rate is progressive. In the future it wouldn’t be anymore. But because those progressive taxes only apply to income over a certain threshold, people with lower incomes would profit more.

            This system would not replace social security. If you get a pension due to age or sickness or in your first year of unemployment, you would still be covered by your mandatory insurance. Same with your mandatory health insurance. And you’d still have to pay for it on top of your taxes. The employee and the employer pay 20% of the gross income each.

            • lime!@feddit.nu
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              7 days ago

              it’s my understanding that the system would replace social security. the savings from slimming down the systems responsible for payout would be part of what made the entire thing possible.

              • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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                7 days ago

                It would replace long term unemployment benefits. And minimum pension. The benefits that are paid directly by the government, not mandatory insurance.

                It would be mostly financed through getting rid of progressive taxes.

                • lime!@feddit.nu
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                  7 days ago

                  isn’t a progressive taxation system meant to ramp up as you earn more, not down? that would lose you money by getting rid of it.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        Which is why UBI should be coupled with UBS (universal basic services). In this context, at the very least there would exist also a rental board (like Quebec’s existing Regie du Logement). If you’re more ambitious, housing would be a universal service and taken out of the market altogether. And don’t forget that that 1600E income of the landlord would be also taxed.

        More generally: https://ubiadvocates.org/inflation-and-ubi-separating-fact-from-fiction/

        If UBI is financed through measures that inject new money into the economy, such as deficit spending or monetary expansion, the risk of inflation may be heightened. This is because the increase in the money supply outpaces the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services, leading to a general rise in prices.

        Conversely, if UBI is funded through redistributive measures, such as progressive taxation or cuts in inefficient spending, the inflationary pressures can be mitigated. By targeting resources from high-income individuals or unproductive sectors of the economy, such funding mechanisms redistribute existing wealth rather than injecting new money into circulation.

        This ensures that the overall level of demand remains relatively stable, thereby limiting the potential for inflationary spirals.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      I’m a big fan of it in concept, but TBH the pandemic made me think twice about it. By that I mean, I watched quite a lot of people get put on furlough, so essentially having their needs met while not having to work, and they went fucking crazy, like screaming fights in the shared hallway over literally nothing at 6am crazy. And it happened really fast too. I think a lot of people are so indoctrinated into the concept of having to show up to work and be told what to do that they kind of short-circuit when left to work it out for themselves.

      Not that I think we shouldn’t do it necessarily, and I’d hope over time it would even out as people got used to it, but it would need to be done very carefully I think. Even if the math and the politics of it make sense, you also have to sort of account for the irrationality of people as well, which I don’t often hear a lot of discussion about.

      • flamingleg@lemmy.ml
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        5 days ago

        we need time to collectively un-domesticate our thinking, and to basically recover enough of our lost human identity to even have bandwidth to imagine some way of life other than wage-slavery. It won’t be easy or quick to undo generations worth of programming, but the disruption is coming either way, AI and the looming collapse demand it.

        Covid also woke lots of people up. Suddenly families had time to spend together (including dysfunctional ones), suddenly normies realised that maybe giant pharmaceutical companies actually don’t care about the population’s health so much. It showed people that governments can and will drastically intervene in their lives (including by making money rain from the sky) when there is some threat of elite interests actually being effected. It was a huge, scary and unprecedented event, so it makes sense that people would freak the fuck out. You’ll notice i didn’t even get into mandates or the insane mania our media pushed during the period.

        IDK there was more going on than just ‘people suddenly had free time again’. But you’re right lots of people are already so conditioned that the thought of having the ability to spend their own limited earthly time however they wish literally scares them. These people have been separated from their own humanity, and even if the work is painful they deserve to be recovered as anyone else.

      • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Many people also go crazy like that right after they retire. At least for a while. Structure is important for humans, and many find it difficult to create structure themselves.

        But an UBI wouldn’t mean that people would suddenly be out of work. They 'd still have to work to keep their lifestyle

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 days ago

        sorry but this is kind of insane logic, it’s almost literally “if i free my slaves they wouldn’t be able to feed themselves”

        I don’t think it’s an argument worth even thinking about, if it’s an actual problem it’s something that can be dealt with. Talking about it just gives fuel for people who want to prevent anything from ever changing for the better.

      • L7HM77@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Just to put my 2 cents on the plate, it seems like a lot of people are stuck in living arrangements they don’t actually want to be in, purely for economic reasons. Lots of personality mismatch in close quarters, work is an escape. UBI would probably break apart lots of lives, but hopefully people will build back better.

        In respect to being paid to work on hobbies, a lot of the tech sector was furloughed as well. FOSS projects massively improved, seemingly overnight. I’ve dabbled with Linux on and off during the 2010s, 2021 felt like the year where everything finally clicked together, now I run Linux and FOSS on everything where possible. I’m not sure how to find data to dispute or support that link tho, might just be me.

    • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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      7 days ago

      People need cars to live where I am. There is no public transportation and cycling is far too dangerous, no one even tries. They give up their homes before their cars. Tons of people living on UBI would be living in their cars.

      • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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        7 days ago

        In a political climate where you could actually implement UBI, you would also be able to implement walkability policies.

        Also, e-bikes. E-bikes is where it’s at.

        • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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          7 days ago

          Yeah e bikes aren’t even allowed on the roads for now. The walkability problem is a matter of the billions and billions of dollars it would take to essentially redo every road in the county. Some zoning changes could help a little but we’re generations of work away from being walkable

          • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            The trick is to implement temporary measures at first. Like turning a lane into a sidewalk and a bike lane, by placing planters. Then when it’s time to renew the road anyway, the status quo only has one car lane in each direction.

            In that situation there will be both the money and the will to build a grade separated sidewalk and bike lane.

            • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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              5 days ago

              Our roads are already only one lane in each direction. No shoulder, no sidewalks. Sometimes they’re marked as narrow and only one car can get through at a time. It’s a ditch in the side, not grass. People get killed on these roads all the time. Widening the roads means imminent domain land seizures, adding underground waste water runoff capability, and adding all of the infrastructure you’re describing. I won’t see 5% if our roads fixed before I die.

              • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                Sometimes they’re marked as narrow and only one car can get through at a time.

                That should be the case every 200m or so, if there is no sidewalk. It’s really effective at slowing drivers down.

                With a speed limit of around 10km/h streets like that can be safe and pretty comfortable for pedestrians

                • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
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                  4 days ago

                  These are roads big trucks drive at 100kkmh on all day long. Hilly roads with blind curves. No one goes anywhere without a car here.

          • acargitz@lemmy.ca
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            6 days ago

            I’m being speculative, right?

            In a political climate where you could actually implement UBI, you would also be able to …

        • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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          7 days ago

          Yeah not in rural areas, we need cars.

          Now, im all for banning bro trucks and crossovers over 3500 lbs. If you cant get by with a miata or a wagon, you have to get a special license for a bigger vehicle and pay more because youre damaging the road and endangering others 10x more in your 10,000lb f350 diesel.

          • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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            3 days ago

            Housing in rural areas is usually dirt cheap.

            So you can probably afford a car and a rural apartment for the cost of a transit pass and apartment in a well-connected town

            • bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works
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              3 days ago

              Totally. And for me thats better, I like having a house and garage with space. I dont mind not being in a busy city center because I feel caged in, and all there is to do in those places us go to bars all the time, something ive never been into.

              I go downtown to the arcade sometimes or out to the fitness center/rock wall by my place and thats plenty for me. Sometimes go to the local theater plays and movies. All a 10 minute drive

            • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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              5 days ago

              yeah, reminder that even the USA has an 80% urban population! (below is per-state percentages)

              Half the US population lives in these counties:

              And
              Two out of three people live in the 100-mile border zone

    • Tetragrade@leminal.space
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      7 days ago

      UBI is a billionaire slop ideology to defuse political tension with gifts, accelerating capital accumulation in the process. It places the 99% as clients of a power-holding elite. It’ll produce a few generations of hapless losers, who’ll be utterly incapable of defending their rights when they eventually roll a cruel patron that decides to take it away.

      • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        Statistically, university students, part-time employees and non working people in single income households are the most active in protests. They have the time, the means and the education to do so.

        Wage slaves don’t have time. And if they unionize they might get fired and not have anything anymore. So they don’t.

        A UBI means everyone is capable of protesting. Why would that produce hapless loosers?

      • Dirty AnCom@discuss.online
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        7 days ago

        Exactly. UBI is a reactionary socialist concept. It is a bandage for a bigger issue, meant to appease so as not to incite revolt. However the real issue is a commodity economy / money. Its really hard to get the masses on board with abolishing that without global revolution.

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    Sounds a bit naive on paper.

    But thinking about it, I want to fact-check wikipedia sources for a living. Also make tools to automate shit. Also I fucking love assembling and fixing furniture so I could do that too.

    No need to even pay. As long as I am not homeless or starving to death I would be happy and fulfilled doing those kind of work.

    Tho I do think doctors and teachers etc should still make some extra money for the years of expertise before even starting the work.

      • Parafaragaramus@infosec.pub
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        7 days ago

        Your kind cling to your flesh as if it will not decay and fail you. One day the crude Biomass you call a Temple will wither and you will beg my kind to save you.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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      7 days ago

      It’s one of those things I’d love to see done as an experiment as long as it could be done ethically. Build a little town somewhere and have no prescribed jobs, just let everyone do what they want and see how it pans out.

      Another one I’d like to see is to have two areas as identical as possible - same geography, climate, resources etc. and populate one fully with left-wing people and one with right-wing people and see which one does better. Unfetterd Socialist Utopia vs Unrestricted Ayn Rand Libertarian Boot-strappery or whatever. Settle it once and for all lol.

      • digital_alchemist@discuss.tchncs.de
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        6 days ago

        It’s one of those things I’d love to see done as an experiment

        I believe you’ve got a fantastic idea here, not only to see how this one idea pans out, but to learn how we might build a better society. There’s little reason we couldn’t simultaneously have multiple test centres, each using a different system. Scientific method 101.

        China famously began its modern transformation in the 80s by creating Special Economic Zones. These were cities where many of the economic rules for the rest of the country wouldn’t apply, and where new theories could be tested. There’s no need to agree with the goals China was pursuing, and for-better-or-for-worse have subsequently achieved, to acknowledge the method is brutally effective.

  • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    7 days ago

    Kinda similar. I work in HVAC-R. There are a ton of times where I’m working on a system where I would love to just spend a few more hours making part of it better and then another few hours streamlining things to make future work on it easier. But we charge $200 per hour so no customer wants me to spend 12 hours making their system perfect; they want me to spend 2 hours and just get it functional. If I didn’t have to charge money for my time then not only would every system I touch run like a dream, but they would also be beautiful. As it is people more frequently wind up with duct taped functional travesties and then refuse any follow up work to fix it properly.

    • pandakhan@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      Not that I’ve had much luck with this, but I have tried to explain to customers/managers that the work is like to do is preventative.

      Sure it’s “expensive” now, but this reduces potential failures AND reduces maintenance time in the future.

      This means we spend $ now, but save $$ later 🤷🏻‍♂️

  • HurricaneLiz@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I invent utility and design patents, but am on disability and can’t afford to patent them open-source. My brain and body won’t let me have a regular job, but I could do this all day long if the social infrastructure was there

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    7 days ago

    This is why a ubi is so essential when society evolves to a post scarcity state.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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      7 days ago

      I’d recommend reading The Dispossessed by Ursula LeGuin if you’re interested in an in-depth depiction of how an egalitarian stateless society could function without money.

      • Random Dent@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        Her short story “The Day Before The Revolution” is a good add-on to this too, and the preface is interesting IMO.

        My novel The Dispossessed is about a small worldful of people who call themselves Odonians. The name is taken from the founder of their society, Odo, who lived several generations before the time of the novel, and who therefore doesn’t get into the action-- except implicitly, in that all the action started with her.

        Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic “libertarianism” of the far right; but anarchism. as prefigured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism’s principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories.

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
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      7 days ago

      Yup but that would require the true ruling class to see their blood spilled to get it. Progressive people have tried and continue to try to push UBI throughout the world. In Canada alone we have had recent experiences both on the Federal and Provincial level. They intentionally get hamstrung or directly shut down to poison any potential results.

      The longer we go without UBI the worse it’s going to get. Christ look at youth unemployment globally let alone the general struggles youth are dealing with that didn’t exist even 20 years ago. We need UBI yesterday but we are still struggling to get people to even entertain the concept of it.

      • Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca
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        In Canada alone we have had recent experiences both on the Federal and Provincial level

        We’ve got a new UBI pilot program starting this year! I have no doubt it’ll get set up for failure just like last time, but it’s fun to think about a world that’s not run by sociopaths. Of course, even if it does go well it’ll be useless without crippling Capitalism first to prevent companies from just raising prices and funneling the individual UBI money into shareholder pockets.

    • Sludgeyy@lemmy.world
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      We should push for a UBMI

      Universal Bare Minimum Income

      “Basic” is debatable

      Hard to argue everyone needs the bare minimum

      Maybe they aren’t going to be able to buy their art supplies at first. But it’s definitely a start.

      Wonderful thing about art is that multiple people can share the same crayon box

  • Andrew Furrow@mastodon.furrow.me
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    5 days ago

    @Five this is fascinating. I’m sure I’m not alone in this: even just the internal bureaucracy and culture within a company suppresses (smothers) people, and, in some cases, deliberately prevents them from doing what they’re best at. I’m sure the theoretical free plumber you mentioned would be seen as a threat to the livelihoods of 50 different hedge fund backed outfits here in Las Vegas (Goettl for example…🖕you Goettl).

  • OddMinus1@sh.itjust.works
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    7 days ago

    Honestly, if I was given time for it and a wage where I wouldn’t have to worry at all, I would probably be building drywalls.

    • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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      I would be taking care of other people’s gardens. I’d encourage them to let me build habitats for native wildlife. And doing work outside is just so relaxing.

      And I would build an alarm clock app, that lets you set the alarm according to the weather. It would allow you to set up alarms for snow and black ice. That way you can clear your section of sidewalk and use alternative transportation options to get to work.

      Or maybe I’d open a repair-shop. One that also allows people to do the work themselves with tools and instruction.

      • Jack_Burton@lemmy.ca
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        Or maybe I’d open a repair-shop. One that also allows people to do the work themselves with tools and instruction.

        I would use the hell out of this. I’ve been focusing on repairing over buying lately and it’s not only cheaper (obviously), but it’s really rewarding. Some plumbing, sewing to repair clothes, computer repair, I’ve come to realise that many things are easier to repair than you’d think and the biggest hurdle is just being shown how. For those of us who learn best by doing and being shown in person (not video) this would be amazing.

        • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world
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          but it’s really rewarding

          Exactly. I don’t even think that service could be offered any cheaper than having an employee do the repair.

          But it’s fun. And it gives people insight into repairability, they can use for their next purchase.

  • Cruel@programming.dev
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    7 days ago

    There are plenty of jobs people don’t want to do unless they’re compelled. Lots of people wouldn’t even bathe if there wasn’t social pressure.

    • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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      I completely disagree. I think most people want to do something, but they don’t have the means and opportunity to do a thing that fulfills them. I fucking HATE having a job. Coming to a place every day to do the same thing, it kills my motivation to do ANYTHING. The only reason I have one is to eat and to do the things I WANT to do. Usually pretty productive things, such as gardening, programming, repairs.

      Those are all productive things. Things I COULD earn money for, but then they become work. I have to do them to survive, and so I no longer find the joy in doing them. If I could do them and not have to worry about bills being paid, I would by all accounts be a more productive member of society.

      I don’t think people are all that fundamentally different. We have some differences in preference, but when you get down to the basics the majority of people are pretty similar. Some will fall through the cracks or abuse the system, but by and large no one WANTS to be useless. That’s a learned trait.

      • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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        People like the person you reply to probably also don’t think “sitting on your ass making art while just existing on the subsidy” isn’t “productive enough” or some shit either.

        Without realizing just how much of our current working society is built on completely pointless busy work nonsense. But its in an office and done in excel so its “Work” and its “productive” because it makes some rich asshole at the top richer.

        If AI is doing one positive thing, its really really showing this out for the reality it is, because AI is pretty good at turning pointless data into equally pointless reports.

        And I agree with you, people WANT to do things. I think even those dude who “don’t want to bathe” want to do things yoo, they just may not be “productive” things, or maybe they don’t want to bathe because they see the banality of everything we do in the world so why bother.

        • Ookami38@sh.itjust.works
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          Exactly. No one gets to the point of not maintaining basic living standards when they’re raised in an environment of excess, stability, and choice. You get to that level when you’ve either never experienced anything other, or been beaten down enough to realize it’s pointless. Hell, I’d go as far as to say every thing living has the drive to get up and at least survive and procreate. They shut down and stop wasting energy when that seems impossible.

    • Galactose@sopuli.xyz
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      7 days ago

      Well at least they won’t commit crimes out of desperation like joining the military industry complex or worse Nazi-militia groups like ICE

    • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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      5 days ago

      you do realize that many of the most vital and least pleasant jobs are only performed because people have immense amounts of empathy or inherently want to do them, right?

      Or do you think nurses have good wages and working conditions? lmfao

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
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      I would work literally any job if I knew I was genuinely helping my community become healthier, safer, and better able to enjoy life instead of the current system, where my labor only serves to put more money in the pockets of oligarchs.

  • m3t00🌎🇺🇦@lemmy.world
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    greed corruption uneducated lazy. if all crimes are legal, there’s nothing stopping an easy fix. lawyers run cover by dragging things out for fees. the mad plumber would work for free if he didn’t have bills to pay.

  • Aljernon@lemmy.today
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    I’d be doing pickup truck stuff. I’m already that guy to my friends, family, and coworkers. Dump runs, moving, transporting large purchases like furniture, or bulk purchases like potting soil. Hell, sometimes I get free wood from trees cut down to drag home, split, and give away free to the neighbors. I’ve definitely thought to myself before that with a salary and a gas budget I’d be content with just doing that all the time.