Honestly? Hot Slavic lady convinced me to buy some overpriced salt scrub at the mall. To be fair, it’s pretty nice…
Life
Joining the workforce
When houses first came out in Runescape, someone said Dragon Longswords look big om tables and I put mine on the table. The dude kicked me out of his house and stole my dragon longsword.
Macron
Voting this century.
A couple years ago I spent a few hundred on various audio plugins for music production. I also spent a few hundred on a DAW with all plugins. I was hooked by the flashy marketing and celebrity shilling, especially when I was stuck producing on the Corporate OS.
There’s plenty of FOSS plugins (including ones built into your DAW) that are at least as good as what Izotope and Native Instruments are selling for 100’s of dollars. Furthermore, they don’t have invasive DRM and don’t try to sell you features you don’t need.
If you are a Linux music producer (or are interested in becoming one), I recommend this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaDoRa5n8nQ
What about scams you’re born into, but stayed in waaaay to long? If so Mormonism and the Republican party.
Good for you for getting out of that!
Thanks
Socialdemocracy :(
What did social democracy do to you?
To me? it is lefternmost political movement allowed to exist in Polish public space, so for years it pretended to not be what it really is, the left wing of fascism, and i believed that.
For example when after completely disastrous “reforms” by AWS and UW (direct predecessors of current PiS and PO parties) in 1999, succdems won a most landsliding victory in post 1989 history of Poland, they realised policies that had nearly nothing in common with what they promised, but the usual neoliberal austerity. That did pissed off nearly all of their voters and in next few elections their results have been abysmal. Recently they got some more support and get a partial generational exchange, but they only went even further right, openly making coalition with right-liberals of PO.
Social democracy as a concept would work if those doing it would have a spine and not be traitors of the working class.
But whatever is sold as social democracy these days (or actually the last 20 years at least), I absolutely agree is a scam.
At least in Germany, there is no left party that is both realistic (not trying to be pacifist when facing bullies, or promising unrealistic things making sure they will never get more than 15%) and also truly acting in the interest of the people, sadly. SPD is the German version of what you said, slightly softer neolibs in sheep’s clothing.
Social democracy as a concept would work if those doing it would have a spine and not be traitors of the working class.
No, it wouldn’t, because the thing they want is still capitalism, and everything they do (riding on actual workers struggle) will be inevitably dismantled as soon as capitalists gain the upper hand again, as we observe time and time again. Socialdemocracy itself is a class treason and was born from class treason.
What is it that you call capitalism is the question.
Market capitalism is a practical approach to solving a intractable optimization problem - allocating finite resources in the best way to get optimal results (whatever it may be, such as maximizing production of certain goods while minimizing waste and loss and minimizing “unfairness”, however it is defined).
The alternative to capitalism is planned economy. It could not work 100 years ago because technology was not even close to the advancement level to be able to optimize a whole economy, i.e. solve a highly complex set of equations with billions of variables.
Maybe today it would work out, technology-wise, but it is not clear in detail how a society completely without markets could work. Certainly not everything is feasible to be decided by some election or by decision of some committee. It would lead to what was seen in the soviet union - bad planning based on incomplete and unreliable data.
Markets solve this problem and the whole thing works.
The question is who controls the markets.
In capitalism = neoliberal dystopia actually the capitalists themselves all instead of competing try to transcend beyond competition by either becoming a monopolist or becoming the market itself (“platform”). The fascist US oligarchs are working towards this.
On the other hand, China has state capitalism - the government has a strong upper hand, but use capitalistic market mechanics (with the needed biases to ensure the market is working towards the goals of the state, not some wealthy class).
Now you can explain to me how I maybe use the terms all incorrectly, but what I’m saying is: what China is doing is working, what the Soviets tried to do did not.
If China was not authoritarian, but had elections, it would be democratic and capitalistic, so what wie also call social democracy. In contrast to socialism, which is supposed to be democratic and anti-capitalistic, i.e. planned economy, which never worked and probably still would not.
The problem is not capitalism as a mechanism of economy, it’s the distribution of power. Corruption and decay and abuse is possible in every coceivable economic system. The question is, who is the system working for.
Ideally the state works for the people, in the sense of a collective of respected individuals, and the economy works for the state. If that is given, details such as the exact structure and processes for decision making and resource allocation are irrelevant, as long as they are sustainable and ethical.
Rush my passport. Fell for it because it was being provided by fedex!!! I filled it out at one of their locations!!!
In the end it does absolutely nothing, and its stupid fucking expensive. Nearly lost $2000.
Buying a car from a dealership.
New car it used car?
I’ve only bought two new cars but don’t consider the depreciation a scam, it’s something everyone knows is going to happen going into it so although I feel I made a bad choice doing it, I don’t blame the dealership. The high-pressure bullshit is also to be expected, sadly.
Used, OTOH, is an absolute scam. On trade-in, they make number adjustments to get the used car basically free and on the sale-end, they dress it up, tell the buyer that it’s been through a 5,000 point quality check and sell you whatever got bought at auction or traded in. They get even scammier if you finance through them. I’ve seen 16% interest rate for a buyer with an 800+ credit score.
The whole thing is predatory in nature.
True. I wish someone had warned me off of used car dealerships.
To add to all your points, maybe one car in 100 is a lemon (has something seriously broken), but 100% of lemons eventually get traded to car dealers for trade-in value.
I feel like the odds of getting a lemon new or private sale aren’t bad. But the odds of getting a lemon on a used car lot skyrocket.
Pump and dump of penny stock. 🤷
Religion.
The scammers didn’t get what they wanted, but they did get into my account. I got a call claiming to be from T-Mobile telling me that someone was trying to order an iPhone online to a second address and it was flagged as potentially fraudulent. They had all my basic account information, so it seemed like they were just asking me for verification, but really they were fishing for the additional details to confirm the order, not cancel it. It was when they tried to change my password and T-Mobile texted me the security code that I realized what was happening. They must have gotten my username and password from a data leak. They hung up when I started asking for proof that they were really T-Mobile. I’m glad that they didn’t get all the way, but I’m still embarrassed that they got as far as they did.
"I can’t hear you. What’s your extension again?
It’s seriously the second question I ask on a cold call. If they really are my bank / etc , then they’ll give me that super fast. If they try to give me a number, I assure them I have it in the phone book.
So many scams derail when you’re calling back an internal extension from the well-known switch-board number.
As someone who works in a call center, not all places have numerical extensions or ways to contact an individual. Some places you just get whoever is available next. Still, not a bad idea to ask for it, and if they give you a number, write it down and check it against publicly available info.
Crypto
How is crypto a scam? Can you be more specific?
MD5 betrayed us 😭
a video to help people understand the problem with crypto: https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g
I know the video says it’s about NFTs, but it touches on Bitcoin and blockchain first as background.
Without even clicking the link, I assume that’s Line Goes Up by Folding Ideas lol. Killer video, and tbh I could listen to Dan Olson read the dictionary and I’d be entertained.
You got it! It’s really an excellent video essay.
I’m just now starting to work through his other works, but everything he does is magic. Honestly the topic of “I Don’t Know James Rolfe” was basically as dull as the dictionary to me, but I enjoyed it anyway.
Currently working my way through his “Mantracks” video, which is so far about fossils and creationism.
I haven’t watched either of those yet, but I need to! “The Future is a Dead Mall” and “This is Financial Advice” are my faves along with “Line Goes Up”
