Every now and then Lemmy has an actual discussion like this that gives me hope that it can become more than just an idiotic link aggregator. Thanks!

A fine is a business expense to a organization like Sony.

We had a world class transcontinental rail system that was stunningly expansive. Much of it, especially the branch lines that went just about everywhere people built towns and cities, has been abandoned, sold, or converted to bike paths. Now we have basically a freight only system with near zero branch service, and some local and inter-city rail transit that is utterly shitty by developed world standards.

I’m in the road kill is vegan camp, so sure after Winnie croaks chow down.

Google, this fucking phone, the cesspool of fezbuk, the shittified streaming services I can’t manage to unsubscribe from…

For example the mastodon app on iOS sucks ass.

Party is also known as neurodivergent hell. Avoid. If you can’t avoid, the kitchen is a good place to hide.

Eastern.

There is technical content on Reddit that is higher quality than stackoverflow and the rest of the internet has been enshittified. So I’ll still take Reddit search hits over most anything else.

They give me the hair raising creeps but I leave them alone unless they invade my house.

Have you tried snorting it?

If I’m not sure, does that mean I am a bot?

Austin has been a tech center since the 80s.

My DMV has always been staffed adequately by helpful people who do their job well. YMMV.

AFAIC the op is an example of neoliberal propaganda.

No.

The rules aren’t intended to limit negative effects, for the most part. Instead, as you know, the rules are focused on transactions and contracts and making sure property rights are prioritized over all other rights. My objection was to your characterization of the system as ‘capitalism without rules’, and that somehow ‘Capitalism is meant to have rules to make it fair and prevent anarchy’. Meant by whom? Certainly not by the neoliberal ideologists. Certainly not by the oligarchs ruining the planet. The era of ‘fair capitalism’, what has been labeled the ‘fordist era’, the New Deal era in the USA and the social democratic era of the european democracies, that is now long past.

However, even under social democratic reform, capitalism requires perpetual growth, it is a system of accumulation that rewards growth and growth alone. A system that is sustainable, that is not dependent on growth, that allows human civilization to exist in harmony with its environment, such a system would not be capitalism.

So Ben’s grandfather.

Sure. And to the extent that the sole proprietor has to compete with corporate chains their business almost has to be as shitty to their employees.

The current system has a shit tonne of rules about how to do capitalism. It is not a free for all or an anarchy. It might be developing into a neo feudal system, with fascist oligarch clans running various nation states, but still lots of rules for running the beast.

A proprietor of a restaurant is not a capitalist, he’s a shopkeeper. An owner of a restaurant chain that is expanding constantly, a Macdonalds, a Starbucks, a corporation that has to demonstrate perpetual growth to satisfy its investors, that is a capitalist.