Everyone knows, and has always known, that this would happen, right? I mean, nobody actually thought that we wouldn't weaponize AI, right?

We weaponize everything that we can. It's in our nature. We achieve peace through mutually-assured destruction. The capacity for violence is the ultimate determinant of authority, so anything that can increase that capacity is an attractive target.

This isn't something that's ever going to change.

Many businesses went under during the pandemic. It wasn't because people weren't productive when they worked from home, but because people changed their spending habits. A few late projects won't kill any business that is well-positioned, but changes in the spending habits of their customer base absolutely will. I think you may be using the logical fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc." Your employer went belly-up after people started working from home, but that doesn't mean that working from home is the reason why.

We worked from home at my job too. During and for a long time after the pandemic. Things went fine. Now we have a hybrid model, two days a week in the office, but there are exceptions made for bad weather and on a case by case basis. And, we are making more money than ever. So, my anecdote cancels yours out.

It's a "net effect" phenomenon. The group of companies that dominated the entire marked jointly applied their political leverage to make 401k's a thing. And 401k's result in almost all of the investment money going into stocks of the group of companies that dominate the market now.

Though in some cases it is more direct.

I also read about interesting deals that states have offered to large businesses in order to encourage them to bring more jobs to the state. Specifically, the companies get tax credits and/or rebates that equate to the amount of money their employees pay in state taxes. It is calculated in an indirect way so that you don't have the money deducted from the paycheck and just outright kept by the employer, but the net effect is the same. And the politicians that offer this look like heroes because they bring jobs to the state.

Once upon a time, getting a job was generally the same as starting a career. The expectation was that one would stay with the company for their entire lives, climbing the corporate ladder at a natural pace, receiving job security in return for job performance. And then, once the job ended, the company would continue to contribute to the employee's life through the pension plan.

Then, the employer's tore all that down. They all united in the plan of downsizing, denying pensions to those who had little-to-no vestment in it, and denying pensions to all new hires. That wasn't enough, they wanted the money that they paid in salary to come right back to them, so they invented the 401k plan which accomplishes exactly that. The notion of staying with a company for your entire career is basically gone now, as companies downsize on a regular basis and show no loyalty whatsover. And, just to put icing on the cake, the wage disparity between the functionaries and leaders is bigger than it ever has been in history.

So, yeah, Gen Z is inheriting this middle finger. It's no surprise at all that they are giving a middle finger right back.

Unfortunate. Seems part of the standard business lifecycle though:

1. Enter an already-established market with a new product.
2. Be competitive by producing something high in quality and treating customers well.
3. Defeat the competition, or at least become one of the top players.
4. Cash in on your success by reducing quality and treating customers badly.
5. Maintain your position by erecting barriers-to-entry to new products, entering into illegal cartel relationships with competitors, or just buying all competitors.
6. Be the evil tyrant you were always destined to be.

I saw "Cannon" and had kind of a reflex response given my own bad experience with Cannon printers in the past. This article is clearly about cameras, not printers. Not even weird all-in-ones that have a camera (if such a thing even exists).

Feel free to ignore my post.

Brother printers are pretty good. They treat their customers well too.

As surprising as it may seem, depression is very common after retirement. One source.

When you are working it is easy to wish for a life of ease, and to believe that it will suit you. But as it turns out, normal human psychology isn't oriented this way. Adults have a limited tolerance for hedonism. After a while you not only get bored, but unexpected feelings of self-contempt start bubbling up from your unconscious mind. And it spirals downward from there.

The key advantage of retirement is not "I never have to work again" so much as "I can choose a job that is soul-satisfying, rather than high-paying." And also, you can choose a part-time job. And either way you will still be able to afford the things you need and want, without fear of running out of money shortly after your job unexpectedly evaporates.

A life dominated by fun and no work isn't as great as it sounds, for most people.

It was a Jurassic Park reference.

Maybe it was too subtle.

It's ok, we will just make sure to they can't produce lysine, so they will be forever dependent on us for it. Should they escape and go rampaging through a populated city, eventually they will die from lysine deprivation, and everything will be fine.

I have a few fixes to suggest, though they don't involve any "going back" to the bad old days. Rather, moving forward by applying our more culturally enlightened values more fully.

For starters, the laws and norms around marriage need to be updated. A lot remains that was cooked up back when "women were property" as you mentioned. Now that marriage is truly a union of equals, it needs to legally fit such equality. And, in particular, it needs to be a much safer thing to do than it is now, financially.

As it stands, getting married introduces serious financial risks including being financially responsible for children produced by infidelity, having most of your retirement savings and your house taken from you when your spouse leaves you (even if you did nothing wrong), and possibly spending the rest of your life as an indentured servant to your ex. Such risks are unconscionable, especially given the very high divorce rate and the fact that prenups can simply be discarded by a judge. If we want marriage (and consequently birth) rates to go up, we have to fix this.

My "move forward" proposal is to have a "modern marriage" that does not include the joint property ownership at all. Both members of the marriage are "on the hook" for their own financial well-being. Neither member should "give up their career" for the marriage, as that would be terribly irresponsible. And both parties should fully understand this before going in. They maintain separate accounts, separate investments, separate property, etc. They do not file joint in their taxes. But they do live together so they can share expenses however they see fit, make medical decisions for each other if emergencies come up, and of course raise children together with equal guardianship rights. Should they split up, each just walks away with whatever they have earned, and they default at 50/50 custody of the children.
I don't know that we should eliminate the option for a traditional marriage, we just need to have this kind of marriage as a viable option with no legal tricks whereby it can be legally treated as a traditional marriage when it hits divorce courts. More people would be willing to get married if it was safe like this.

I have typed a lot. Maybe I will just throw out some other ideas without much explanation or justification. Like, our education system needs to be repaired (no more student loans for un-employable degrees, and elimination of this practice of teachers grading their own students (aptitude assessments should be done by a separate body with no financial incentives to grade inflate). The medical industry needs repair (insurers require discounted rates from hospitals, and hospitals cannot charge insurance more than patients, so hospitals jack the prices way up for everybody, forcing uninsured (and some insured) people into medical bankruptcy. This is obviously stupid though I don't have a specific fix ready to suggest). MUCH better enforcement of our anti-trust laws (we really need to break up more cartels, especially the grocery cartel) and government-assisted removal of barriers-to-entry in mature markets (like, we need more telco providers, more internet providers, etc.).

I am done for now. But there is a lot we could improve. We just choose not to, for bad reasons.

I carry a dumbphone. No apps on it!

Hah! Take THAT Allstate!

Nothing about being a scientist makes someone into an honest person.

Researchers need to show results in order to continue being researchers, not to mention put bread on the table. There is fame to be gained as well. AND, science has the ability to motivate action on a large scale, which means that corrupt political actors have very strong incentive to (one way or another) intervene and insure that the results are what they want them to be.

Science is valuable enough to be worth protecting. But that doesn't make it easy to do.

Food distribution is the problem. We already produce enough food to feed the entire planet, and huge amounts of it get thrown away. On top of that, governments pay farmers to abstain from growing food to their full capacity just to ensure that the bottom doesn't fall out of food markets.

Ramping up production efforts will do zero good. It doesn't matter how much food you have if you can't get it to the people who need it.

Furthermore, it doesn't help to get food to those in need "every now and then." On holidays, in the spirit of giving. Such efforts bankrupt local farmers and put the entire community in a worse shape overall.

The problem that must be solved is sustainable distribution. Until that is solved, most of what we do are just feel-good efforts that can cause as much harm as good.

Unfortunately that isn't an easy problem to solve. Giving away free food sustainably requires a sustainable funding effort, not only to pay the farmers but also all the workers in the distribution chain. It adds up and yields no profit. You can pay for it through taxes of course, but that will bring political fallout from those who don't want to pay such high taxes. On top of that, a steady supply of free food can result in a lot more babies, who will now need even more free food. Unless something is done to keep the dependent population in check, no solution will be sustainable.

It really is a hard problem to solve. That's probably why it hasn't been solved yet.

My personal favorite "best effort" is microcredit, which uses donor-backed micro loans to bring impoverished communities to economic self-sustainability. It isn't perfect of course, but it works a lot better than many other efforts.

Well here's the thing: everything leads to class exploitation. This isn't a product of any specific technology or economic model; it's a product of human nature.

There has never been a successful utopia in which there were no classes, all humans were equal, nobody was exploited, and things ran smoothly and sustainably. Every attempt at producing such a society fell apart immediately and ended in violence. There was always plenty of finger pointing..."it would have worked if they had done their part!" But "they" didn't do their part for the very same reason that "they" won't do their part any time it is tried again: their incentives give them good reason not to.

In small groups, humans can get along. Sometimes. In large groups, the exploiters always rise to the top, and always find a way to exploit, regardless of any other detail. Eliminating any kind of tech will not change this, and exploiters will always try to use new tech to do this, so that is a net-neutral.

Don't like being exploited? Fight back (economically and politically, preferably not violently). Find a way to use the tech against those who are using it against you, and go from there. That's how humans do things.