I became self employed in 1996, boosted my hourly rate ~5x from wage to market, and moved to the sticks. My commute is the few steps from my bedroom to my home office and there's a nice trout stream about 100m from my house.

If you think that's strange, then my next sentence is going to blow your mind: I work with lots of people who've done the same. Madness! They make more money in exchange for working whenever and wherever they feel like it. These people think that their own happiness is worth more than sustaining a slave mind. Absolutely delusional! They should be taking pay cuts... uh, finish that for me because I've run off the track here.

What those folks who move out to nowhere as remote employees are fixin' to find out is that they've no leverage as employees when there are no competing employers in the area in which they live. I can understand wanting to GTFO of San Francisco, but taking that offer as an at-will employee is lunacy unless you're miserable already. It's a slick way to get moved, but if you're not moving to where there's a next opportunity you're dead-ending.

So, if you save the company money on office space and furniture, you take a pay cut in addition to screwing yourself out of promotions?

How about the more obvious interpretation, which is that Matilda diagnosed herself and TikTok noticed.

Here in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, no collective shit was lost. We voted to do municipal broadband, the fiber went in for townies, and wireless for the rural folks. Works fine, lasts a long time, won't rust, bust, or collect dust. I have 1Gbps FTTP with no caps for $75/month.

Lots of places, you can't do that -- vote all ya want and the state/feds (telcos and cable providers) will block it.

I live in a dinky town way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, and I'm on 1Gbps FTTP community network (county owned) for which I pay $75/month. I only get about 940Mbps out of it, but hey, not bad for "inefficient government services."

YMMV in other places, but here where the capitalist competitors can't compete on service, at all, or on price, I'm groovin'.

If that's what he was saying, my reply is completely mistaken and should be considered withdrawn. My interpretation is that tokens are just tokens, and that what the wise would focus on instead would be the experience of life of a people.

You fucker. You posted the first truly insightful comment of the decade on slashdonk when I unusually have no mod points. Not that my +1 would really make any difference.

Huh? I asked for clarification of a word salad sentence.

So, wish granted. I didn't claim false equivalence. Have a nice day.

Can you clarify your point, please? I've failed to parse it. It seems that you're saying that suppression of personal expression is subject to governmental interference in countries with dictators -- as opposed to what? Leaving that suppression of personal expression to the private sector?

It looks like mountains and pot shops to me. :-)

In the part of the world where that unlucky author got stuck, which is more or less my ancestral home, it's the cops who control the black market with violence, not the people. This story was covered in part on the news magazine 20/20 (in 1990 IIRC) but the video isn't available online any more. When a corpse is found along a back road, it's always law enforcement who left it there -- as a message that everyone in the county understands.

I know people (cousins and friends) who either don't dare to return to visit family, or go to great lengths to avoid LEO contact when they do, because they're on the kill list.

I live in a rural community about an hour's drive away from the nearest interstate highway. Have a nice day.

Heh. City people.

I'm over forty, but when I was ten the bank downtown had the only computer and wouldn't let me anywhere near it. :D

Weren't we just talking about the difference between great and other programmers a moment ago?