Honestly I would consider that being a self-employed small business owner.

Whatever a “Kroger” might be

Kroger is a supermarket chain in much of the US, but some of their stores use different branding. I just meant it to be a recognizable example of somewhere you might get your groceries.

And I’m not frustrated, it’s not about the money, it’s the principle.

When I said frustrated, I meant in a general sense about the economy, as in higher grocery prices. But I guess I did misunderstand your motivation for this. So it’s not about how much suppliers/stores are actually charging, just that they raised prices at all? And you view that as stealing?

Someone in the chain did raise prices for items I can’t boycott, I don’t care who.

And I guess that’s the problem in my eyes. If you intend to punish someone, it should be focussed on whoever is responsible. I’m sure you would agree it is unreasonable to yell at a cashier when your card gets declined for example. I’m also skeptical that you can’t boycott, but without specifics I’ll have to take your word for it.

Also I don’t need justification. To whom should I justity? to you? lol.

I judged you because you shared this with other people on the thread, which I view as inviting feedback. But you are right that my opinion isn’t important. What matters is that you can justify your actions to yourself. Whatever your morals are, I doubt it includes indiscriminate punishment. Maybe ask yourself things like, “What would it be like if everyone acted the way I do?” or “Will this lead to things getting better or worse?”.

Well said. To be clear, I agree with your outlook on human nature, but I try to check myself on not being optimistic to the point of ignoring people’s history. People do change, but we can’t presume in which direction that will be. We must remember improvement is a hope and a genuine possibility, but not an expectation. On the other hand, Orwell is regarded as insightful for good reason but of course he is also very cynical about people and the future.

A catspaw is just a term for someone who is used as a tool of another to their detriment. It comes from a French fable where a monkey convinces a cat to grab some roasting chestnuts for them to eat, but the monkey eats them all while the cat ends up burning its paw.

Edit: This is the fable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_and_the_Cat

People tend to approve of their own representatives, and blame others in Congress for unsolved issues. We have become good at identifying problems while minimizing our own contributions to them. And in general, as a country we are very divided on the way things should be changing.

For presidential candidates especially, I’ve found people tend to latch on to reasons to dislike someone and ignore positive things, except perhaps for their favorite candidate. It’s a form of tribalism. But from what I remember Trump and Hilary were both considered distinctly weak candidates at the time.

Yeah, I view them as catspaws. They are assisting someone working against their interests without understanding how they are being used. You can show sympathy for them while nonetheless opposing them.

And you’re right that everyone should have the humility to accept they also sabotage themselves sometimes. But electing who will lead the country is high stakes and some accountability is fair.

You were correct in the first half then you fell right off.

I was going to comment that as well. They’ve identified the problem correctly, but rather than trying to fix it they decide to cement it in. We want people to be able to accept they were wrong and think (and vote) differently going forward. That sort of growth is how things get better. This vindictiveness just makes people defensive and want to double down on mistakes when doubt and regret could have lead to character development.

By all means, hold people accountable, but if you don’t allow them to change you are giving up hope entirely.

Your local Kroger isn’t robbing you. Neither are their suppliers in general, but even so you are not punishing them by shoplifting. The store already paid the producer for it regardless of whether the item is sold or stolen, meaning they don’t care either way.

If you want to steal, that’s your prerogative, but don’t pretend that you’re morally justified to take out your frustrations on someone unrelated.

Probably best to start contributing to an IRA after exhausting the employer match on a 401k. You have more flexibility with it and don’t have to worry about later rollovers. If you can max that out, then go back to the 401k until that is maxed, but most people aren’t able to do both each year.

Here’s a flowchart of the best order to spend money from one of the financial subreddits. The best yields are on the earlier investment types each year, so if you are reading this please try to save at least a little regularly. It will save you so much later on. If you don’t know what to invest in, historically an index fund like SPY or Vanguard will get you good returns with lower variance than individual stocks and doesn’t need to be closely managed. A 401k will have more limited options but I would still try to look for a wide market index fund.

Yeah, I’m not sure how those would be affected overall. Housing unfortunately has been going up in price quickly for a long time despite largely stagnant wages. But I expect having a reliable stream of income would be a significant benefit for low income people to be able to afford at least what they would have otherwise. It’s an area that really warrants more attention regardless of whether UBI is implemented.

Increasing the money supply does lead to inflation, but it’s not as simple as you make it seem. It’s worth pointing out that generally people intend UBI to redistribute money rather than add to the current supply. If necessary, there’s no reason that you can’t have stronger price regulation for any destabilized industry.

Because even if there is inflation, that doesn’t mean prices go up evenly. For example, staple foods are fairly insulated from inflation because of steady demand and low barriers to entry. If it seems noticeably profitable, a lot of people can start producing it and undercutting each other. Industry collusion is very hard to achieve the more players there are that can sabotage the group.

If UBI covers only basic needs (implied by the B) that are purchased at steady amounts regardless, that opens up the lower classes to a lot more optional spending. So you would probably see the most price increases on things that are currently bought by the upper middle class. Expensive hobbies, premium brands of things with cheaper alternatives, and services in general would probably become more expensive from induced demand.

He doubled down on it when it wasn’t really acknowledged. After he said he wasn’t paying, she responded with an explanation for why her friend was coming. I mean she did say ok, but that might be agreement or just a way to move on the conversation. Like, “Ok, but what if I told you…”

It’s not clear if the new explanation was meant to change his mind, but the only change between that and the fake explanation before is his statement that he wasn’t paying under the first situation. So it may have been a negotiation tactic. Either way, if this was real she should explicitly agree that he isn’t expected to pay for her friend and he should obviously not be so crass about it.

Yeah the cat food thing was so stupid and really divided the vegan community on Lemmy. When I was first reading Stamets’ YPTB post I was wondering if it was the same user but that was an admin named Rooki. They were both just using similar tactics of “misinformation” removals to win arguments while being incorrect themselves.

Here’s the context for anyone wanting it.

Edit: Ignore this, I somehow misread the section detailing their conditions for removing mods as removing members of their team. They are more active than I thought, but it sounds like they at least require a fairly high bar for gross violations, although this may qualify.

~~Do they remove people as mods? My understanding is that’s up to the other mods of the relevant community. I would expect admins to generally stay out of that unless the community is actually abandoned. Otherwise, they should let mods run communities independently when possible.

They expressed their distaste for JL’s actions, but I would think it’s not an admin’s job to judge a mod as unworthy of running their community unless they do something egregious enough to warrant an instance ban.~~

You can find plenty of examples of users who deserved their punishment, and plenty where the mod was power tripping, and plenty where both parties were out of line. A mod being accused of something in a post doesn’t imply they’re guilty of it, only that the poster thinks so. It’s like a public forum where people can bring attention to alleged abuse of power when they might otherwise be silenced by an imbalanced power dynamic.

As a means of holding mods or even admins accountable, I consider it to be one of the most important communities across all Lemmy instances. I also find the drama personally entertaining.

Yes. He is able to reason as a man does, and so he is held to a similar standard.

In the book, Frankenstein’s monster is a tragic character but also kills several people without real justification or remorse. He shouldn’t be romanticized either. Both he and his creator are villains.

Then again, the movie doesn’t sound like it’s going for a faithful adaptation, so maybe this version is strictly a victim.

That’s ridiculous. We would make terrible roommates.

Has to be H, because I live there and if I had to get every meal imported to me that would be very annoying.

Look, if he did some actually criminal shit that I don’t know about, he should have been arrested, tried, and sentenced accordingly. That would have been justice. An individual simply choosing to kill him is murder from a vendetta. No accountability. No argument for others as to why he deserved it. It means he can’t be made into an example of a villain that we overcame as a society. He is instead made into a victim, so him and everything associated with him is treated with sympathy it should never have.

But as far as I know, he was hated for spreading ignorant shit ideas. Those can’t be defeated with a gun, and that is the real danger he represented. Bad ideas need to be identified as such to establish the person giving them as ignorant and not worth listening to. Gunning him down like this bolsters his arguments instead of dismantling them.

Celebrating the murder legitimizes it as a valid response for saying things that people don’t like, and that’s a dangerous precedent for anyone trying to change the state of things for the better.