Yes, lets see what the invest of $1000 in diverse/stable enough markets to not lose it would yield in 2 years compared to a 'depreciating entertainment device'. One of those is likely to make you feel worse about yourself.

Not to mention that regardless of what certain socialists seem to think, there should be wage differences. If you're smart and you work hard, then of course you should make more than one that's a stupid slacker. "From each according to ability, to each according to his need" says that if that's all you had the ability to do you're good no matter if it in absolute terms was much less. Fuck that, if he can produce so little then so should I. If you want to be the brain surgeon instead of the burger flipper, go for it. But if you can't make it I'm not sorry the burger flipper earns less. The way they define relative poverty there's no way that it could or should be eliminated.

My first choice was .127...

The first character of a TLD must be a letter.

The problem isn't gossipping or people not understanding "inside voice", the problem is loud-mouth asshole managers who think they're so important that everyone should listen to them whenever they're around.

The medium of exchange is not for wealth storage. Buy whatever commodities you like, just don't try to inflate them by using them as an exchange medium and don't try to extract wealth from the economy by simple savings. See, that didn't even require changing anything buy your persecutive!

Yep, that's exactly what I saw in my last job, where I had an "open concept" (bullpen) environment. The asshole bosses who talked about how great this was for "collaboration" all had walled offices with doors.

The problem is not the safety nets it's that whole countries have pushed expenses ahead of them through budget deficits and public debt. Like if your parents got a college fund and a car by their parents, but now they're so far underwater on mortgages and credit card debt they're bumming you for money instead. The safety net is based on a few people falling and many people catching you, but they built a bridge into thin air and now everyone is coming in for a hard landing all at once. If they'd just taken the cutbacks as they were needed to balance the budget the security nets would have held fine.

I worked in a bullpen in my last job (and this was one of the main reasons I quit without notice one day when I get too fed up with it). The software engineers weren't the problem; they're generally quiet. The problem was all the stupid managers constantly walking by, wanting to stop and chit-chat, or talk with my manager endlessly (he sat across from me), sit their ass on my desk while I'm trying to work, or worse tap me on the back when I had my headphones on. The other problem was the stupid loud air-conditioning unit in the ceiling directly over my desk that would drone for the entire day until 5PM sharp, when it suddenly became much quieter.

I had to stop wearing my headphones because of the assholes sneaking up on me all the time and nearly giving me a heart attack, and it eventually drove me nuts enough that when my manager gave me shit about coming to work too late (staying late to make up for it wasn't good enough for him, even though my productivity was far, far higher after 5PM when the noise and commotion all stopped), I threw a resignation letter at him and walked out.

My advice: never take a job in a bullpen environment.

I hear many people live in countries they describe as tyrannical, they identify as libertarians and advocate people voting with their feet. Then they stay.

That only works if peoples' tastes in music are similar enough. One person's "annoying" or "weird" is another person's "normal", and vice versa. Just about any modern country music is "annoying" to me, yet among a bunch of southerners that kind of music is perfectly normal. Rap is beyond "annoying" to me, but among certain demographics (namely various younger people), that music is also "perfectly normal". What if one of the people on the team is from Iraq and wants to listen to whatever they listen to over there? You don't think that'd be "weird" for everyone else?