Dewey McBrewster

Local stores have very little locked up here. My area has industry, which provides wages. Wages produce taxes. Taxes are used for police. Through surveilance police arrest shoplifters.

Complacency of theft only backslides society. I will agree that a waning industry, or that our hyper-fixation on growth effects society negatively, but that’s another discussion.

If someone offers a free item, someone will take it whether they need that item or not, whether they can afford that item or not. Nature takes the path of least resistance. It’s easier to take than to work.

As such, there is no incentive to work if the item is free. If there is no incentive to work nothing gets made. Yet people will need things so you’re forced to make items people need. Which makes items not really free after all to the dismay of many an anti-capitalist.

Regardless, there will always be some percentage of the population that will feel above the rest, mainly due to mental deficiency or addiction, independent of the economic system. For punishment of theft I would prefer to see forced induction into the municipal workforce for 5 years, flat sentence with a minimum wage earned in municipal bonds, held in a community barracks with a tapered reintegration into society. A sort of forced communism for those who can’t cope.

I’m ready for the downvotes.

I just read a report that said there are many jobs available and in my hometown, I see a steady request for help wanted, technical and other.

I also know that many people find certain categories of jobs menial such as factory work or farming. Maybe it’s an ego, perception thing, maybe because it’s hard work.

AI is taking and going to take jobs, but it would also open jobs, just look at the jobs we need right now that have appeared. Construction of data centers, water more important than ever, copper mining and refining, networks and sysadmin, energy sector, semiconductor manufacturing and many more like photonics (should reduce power and water usage.)

Yes it’s moving very fast and that’s scary. Propping things up, bailing out, however does nothing to improve the situation. Spending the money that would be incurred by UBI on training workers and providing them with equipment would be far more effective.

Maybe, Pixelfed.

If you consider this from an evolutionary standpoint…

The human race is built upon many layers. Some of those layers are animal while others are highly social. Think clans and tribes for thousands of years. If you didn’t fit in that was it for you, it was the collective that made survival possible. Because of this we constantly judge and compare ourselves. It’s ingrained in us through a long succession of embodiments that cared where we stood in the pecking order of the tribe and how we looked to attract a mate. That’s what brought you to your existence. Old habits die hard, and you are seeing them manifest in different ways, we are walking around with the hyper-sensitive, status-obsessed, mate-seeking hardware of a hunter-gatherer, but living in a world of social media.

Want to know more? Richard Wrangham, R. Douglas Fields, and René Girard have some interesting theories on the origins, mechanics, and triggers associated with what you see in society.

Yes! I vote for 65 age cap.

You know, I’ve heard RFK Jr admit to some some pretty fucked up shit… but, I’ll take honesty over the lie through your teeth, sell out to the highest bidder mentality any time. Admitting that, “yes it was me who put a bear carcass in Central Park, or that, yes I have done drugs and or had addiction” takes an amount of courage that few in the public spotlight are willing to take, and for that I feel admiration and wish others could be as forthcoming.

If they want to do dynamic pricing, maybe we’ll just have to start dynamic shopping.