I'm always amazed at how rarely the "go to uni and get a good job" angle is brought up in relation to our failing foundational industries in the west. We've been incentivizing people to focus on "escaping" the working class, rather than trying to find ways to make those jobs more appealing.

I work in healthcare. Treating student practitioners badly is the norm in a ton of places in this field. 60 hour work weeks are normalized, and wanting a good work-life balance gets you ostracized.

The worst part is that I had to compete to get into this job that treats me badly. My program only takes the top 20 applicants out of hundreds per year. The schooling is brutal, with midterm or final exams 2-3 times a week. This is possible because you are blowing through courses consecutively rather than in a semesterized system. Once you get to practical placement, you are treated like the workplace bitch, and you're expected to do 2-3x the work of a paid worker for free. Actually, you're paying tuition to be there, so it's even worse.

Don't get me wrong, some of the brutality is necessary. The rapid pace of learning makes it hard to forget anything. It's a great way to pack knowledge into the brain. But I would never recommend my program to anyone. It was a horrible experience overall. My job is pretty great minus the ridiculous hours, so I'm glad I went. But if I could go back and tell my younger self to do something else, I would.

I'm so glad I have a career where I'll never have to worry about crap like this. I'd love to see how the higher ups would like it if they had to be on camera the whole day with AI watching them for mistakes/phone usage.

I think one of the main reasons your theory isn't commonplace is the variance in tolerance people have for vigilance. Some people have a lot less tolerance, and appear lazy. Other people have an extremely strong tolerance, and to them, everyone else appears lazy.

I have adhd. My ability to motivate myself to do necessary tasks is very limited. But external pressures can improve my productivity by giving me less choice in the matter. By comparison, too much freedom can reduce my productivity by normalizing a reduced workload, making me intolerant of a workload I was previously capable of.

Laziness does exist. It can be fostered. But that doesn't mean you can't get improved productivity from a healthier balance in your workplace. Just as pressure has a range where it goes from motivating people to crippling them with stress, so too do healthy adjustments to workflow go from rejuvenating to lethargic.

I understand 90% of the science behind what I do as a medical diagnostic technologist. It's still fucking magic as far as I'm concerned.

CTs and MRIs? Atom spin/relax releasing detectable energy waves that are somehow able to be read and aggregated by algorithms into a high detail image of the inside of a human body? Tell me that isn't magic and I'll call you a liar.

If they offer an invitation right now, then this is no longer a war between Ukraine and Russia, it will be a war between NATO and Russia. How do you think that ends?

WW3 may be the last world war. No one is eager to start it.

I think we need to stop being so focused on the past. I was born in Canada, and instead of complaining and trying to change the world to suit my needs, I accepted the way the world is now, and used it to my advantage as well as I could.

Do I have all the same cultural elements of my ancestors from 500 years ago? No. Do I still own the land my ancestors did 500 years ago? Nope. But I've got a career, a home, a car, and a smartphone. It's more than a lot of people have.

Sometimes you have to accept that this is the world you were born into. You can either choose to complain and be miserable, or make it work for yourself.

We all use labor to meet our survival needs. Humans were just smart enough to specialize in different tasks, and we had to find a way to quantify our labor so we could trade it for different goods.

We don't all need to be farmers, so a doctor will pay a farmer for food, and a farmer will pay a doctor for healthcare. It's a much more efficient way to aggregate expertise in different areas, which means more services are available for your labor without you having to be capable of all of those different kinds of work.

A chimp may be able to feed themselves with their labor, but they aren't making themselves smart phones or performing advanced healthcare. Indigenous societies in North America pre-British are a good example of what humans are capable of without a complex market system to trade skilled labor.

Imo Genshin is a decent game at its core. The problem is that the gacha elements make it really hard to enjoy.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of capitalism. Especially the current state of capitalism in the west. It doesn't mean I want to go full communist, far from it. But I'm a mixed economy man. I think certain things should be highly regulated or even owned by the government (and, by extension, the people).

Healthcare is one good example to me. I think private is fine to an extent, but I would never want a fully private system. I think the model in Canada is a good place to start, where public is the go-to option, but private exists if you want to skip the queue and can afford it. The dynamic between insurance and private healthcare in the states makes for a toxic experience for patients, and that serves as one of the primary reasons why I would never want to go fully private. Doctors shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail to get your medication or diagnostic procedure approved when it's medically necessary, assuming the system can reasonably absorb the cost.

Mixed economies are the way.

I've noticed a lot of the same circlejerks in political channels. I don't dislike Lemmy. If Reddit caved and RiF came back tomorrow, I'd probably still switch back. But the longer I'm away from Reddit, the less likely I am to return.

That's not an entirely accurate perspective, but you're not far off. The problem is that fixing this requires hard decisions, and it requires people in power to act against their own interests.

You want wealth inequality to get better? You need to increase the value of labor. You do that by eliminating free trade deals, bringing production back to the west, increasing prices on goods, and severely limiting immigration. Do that, and the value of labor will soar.

You should also severely limit the ability for the wealthy to own properties to rent. One of the main reasons the middle class existed was that the family home was simultaneously shelter, and an investment vehicle.

The whole structure of investment and shareholding has to be rethought as well. Its built of the concept of infinite growth, something that isn't possible, and ends with businesses destroying themselves while trying to meet this impossible demand.

This isn't the reason piracy is coming back in my friend group. That reason would be the diversification of streaming sources. There's no way I'm paying $100 a month for streaming from all the major players, especially if they include ads.

When Netflix was all you needed, streaming was great and reasonable. It quickly became more trouble than it was worth over the last decade.