One could make the argument that it has, via political changes. DOGE, for instance, who's cuts have been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths, would have been very unlikely without social media.
Because of the misinformation that led to DOGE cutting funding on programs that saved a lot of lives, but cost almost nothing. People elected the present government based on the lie that the budget could be balanced by cutting things like foreign aid and the arts, but in fact those things are a rounding error in the overall budget.
I feel like the media is anticipating a new Democrat controlled congress, and so they are starting to bang on the national debt panic drum in preparation. Not that the debt isn't a problem, and $40T is certainly a milestone, but if the dems do somehow get back in power I'd bet $40T that we will all be treated to endless op-eds about how we have to do austerity because the debt is out of control.
The military will still get it's $1.5T+ budget tho. There's always enough money for more bombs.
It's starting to feel hopeless. A decade of party rotations and this issue still exists. The fiscally liberal will spend and the fiscally conservative aren't being fiscally conservative. How come we no longer hear about DOGE? How long until 20% of all tax revenue goes just to interest on the debt?
DOGE shut down and was a farce from the beginning. Typical Musk. He only shut down regulatory parts of the government that were investigating him and stole as much data as he could. A few publicity stunts like installing starlink near the White House.
DOGE was an obvious farce that defunded and destroyed necessary programs on a purely ideological basis[0], intimidated government employees[1], created far more tax waste than it ever found, much less claimed[2,3] disrupted legitimate government functions by firing necessary employees who needed to be rehired[4], exfiltrated an unknown amount of private data to Palantir and who knows who else[5,6], and then after permanent damage to the government was done, was closed[7]. It's mission is complete, there's nothing more to hear about them.
I'm sorry if you ever thought DOGE had anything to do with an honest, good-faith effort to reduce government waste. If so, you were lied to. Its purpose was to purge the government of ideological enemies, protect Elon Musk's business interests[8] and lay the groundwork for the transition to authoritarianism.
> No one will care because it's just another addition to the mountain of slop, and the guy bagging your groceries can do it.
In Western culture we tend to define ourselves based on our job, aka our economic output. That person is a fireman. That person is a doctor, or programmer, or whatever. As such, we are nowhere near ready for a world in which AI does all the knowledge-based work and leaves humans with nothing but manual labor. You* need to realize that your life never had any more meaning than that of the grocery bagger, or the ditch digger, or the vagrant, or even the criminal.
*the general "you", not you specifically.
Just like with a video game, just because the cheat mode exists, doesn't mean you have to use it. I suggest you do things you enjoy doing, and not worry about what value other people may or may not see in the results. Some people get great satisfaction from creating sand sculptures, while always knowing the work will be destroyed in a matter of days, or even hours. Take pleasure in the act, rather than the result.
I'm taking up drawing again. Whenever I find myself doomscrolling I pick up my sketchbook. I'm also trying to read more books. Every time I'm about to open a social media app, I try to open my ebook app instead. But years of too much social media has already atrophied those mental muscles, so it's been difficult.
I mean, they've been saying they were going to do this. They didn't even try to hide it. Independent journalists have been covering it for a year or more.
>Some categories everyone accepts shouldn't be working: children, students, retirees, new parents, the sick, and the disabled.
There are plenty of people who do not accept this.
We had to outlaw child labor because lots of people thought children should work. Students are shamed for taking on debt to pay for their schooling. People think they should have to work their way through school. Retirement is coming to be seen as a luxury. A great deal of jobs in America don't provide any kind of parental leave, so clearly some people think new parents should work. Same thing with sick leave. People go to work sick every day because that's what the system demands of them.
The only category that is even close is disabled people, but even then it's not universal. Goodwill thinks disabled people should work, and they have a legal exemption from minimum wage so they can employ them. There are also lots of people think the disabled should just be exterminated because they can't work.
Woa. I'm with you all the way but let's agree that the people who think the disabled should be exterminated is a minority many of whom died at then end of world war II?
Even if I tolerated someone else exterminating people, hell even if I helped in some way I would still know that it is not morally defensible. Of course with 8B people you will find some willing to exterminate the disabled but not "lots" by any stretch.
I'm sure it is a small minority who think that way. It's impossible to tell for sure, but my gut tells me the number is still larger than we might want to believe.
Yesterday they were expecting the report to show 80k+ jobs added. So, this is much, much worse than expected. The market is up because they expect this will keep the fed from raising interest rates, and also because the market is increasingly detached from reality.
Jeff Bezos will be happy to let you rent one from him. He's said this is how he envisions the future of personal computing. You will own nothing, and so on.
This is so colossally stupid, even by MAGA standards. We're literally spending billions to make things worse, because apparently any form of renewable energy makes the frogs gay or some stupid shit.
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