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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: December 18th, 2023

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  • We’d have to double to triple the workforce in logistics and construction and other necessary sectors. A reduction in work hours necessarily means a reduction in standard of living - even with CEO wages factored in - because the overhead of necessities grows compared to societal achievements. We need the same amount of food delivered and the same amount of houses built, but now it takes two to three times as many people to do it. The same applies to doctors or teachers, so the additional workforce would come from other segments - which finally means reduction in standard of living for the average citizen.

    This assumes steady productive output. In some sectors, this assumption is wrong, but I think it’s a fair assumption for logistics and construction.

    Putting all essential jobs together (health, education, construction, logistics, agriculture, food retail, utilities, public administration, plus the required manufacturing and IT infrastructure) is already 50-55% of the workforce. In order for everyone to halve their workday, we’d all have to exclusively work only for the status quo. Which means no watches, no smartphones, no TV, no cinema, no museums, no parks.

    A reduction of work hours would be nice, no question. But we also have to remember that the work goes somewhere and time/energy/resource efficiency matters on a fundamental biological level. We have to be a productive part of society for it to function, and while this is usually co-opted by capitalists to extract money, it remains a fact of life.

    E: We’re already having healthcare only because we’re exploiting healthcare workers to the maximum. Even at the current status quo, treating them fairly would just not work. We’re already in a state of broken equilibrium between what we need and what we want. The healthcare workforce would have to double only for them to have a 40h work week.

    And then there’s people with three jobs who still can’t make ends meet. I propose we make the 40h week work for everyone first before we reduce further.




  • Me, too, most recently a coworker from Gera.

    I believe the money is part of the issue, and you expecting thanks is telling. Also, “the hand that feeds you” is the exact “lesser human” rhetoric I meant.

    If the populace never felt the effect of the money, it might as well never have existed. The West is angry for sending it and the East is angry for not receiving it. Whoever pockets it gladly stands by and watches the East and West fight each other.

    I don’t think the Soli is the right tool for the job. The money is just part of the regular budget and not bound to East Germany. Build universities or invest in faculties, infrastructure, etc. and make the region worth investing in from an economic standpoint and the rest will follow, none of which we’re doing.




  • I’ve come to realize most of our justice system is toothless. ICJ? Useless. EU? Lol. Verfassungsschutz? Nope. The police will enforce copyright law for movies because of corporate interests, but anything larger than isolated cases is too big to address. Law and order are mass hallucinations in the western world, easily exploited by anyone ruthless enough to try. And it feels like we’ve reached a point of saturation where the ruthless are no longer satisfied with what they were previously able to achieve within the confines of this hallucination, so they’re just tearing it down.

    What can we do about it? The overlap with anarchism is large: use cash, don’t buy from Amazon (or similar), use Linux, don’t pay for subscriptions. Don’t use AI. They want your money; don’t give it to them. Sadly, 90% of the population have no impulse control, or I’m asking them to abstain from the only pleasure they have left in their lives - everything else has already been torn down.

    I’m gonna go be depressed by myself for a while.


  • East Germany is a complex subject. A lot of money has gone into projects to help it catch up after the reunification since Russia completely gutted it, but not much of that money made it anywhere. The population feels left behind and unheard. They’re being treated as lesser through little fault of their own. Pretty easy breeding ground for scape goating.

    Plus it’s the exact same playbook as the US when it comes to “iMmIgRaNtS!!!”. Logic and reason has long left and there’s really no way to reel in conspiracy nuts once they’ve gone off the rails. Germany is only a few years behind the US.

    How would you even prevent this? The ideas spread by messenger and social media and infect people without critical thinking skills - which is most. Chat control is obviously the wrong approach, but what is the right one? How do you convince clanma who doesn’t trust anything anymore that the WhatsApp stats are made up and government statistics are actually trustworthy and backed by data?




  • I’ve actively started doing tickets manually again. Just reviewing is exhausting, and yes, in part because I’m overwhelmed by what I don’t understand. I’m somewhat new in our codebase and letting AI do all the work means I’ll never get to know it in depth. That means I’m not meeting the productivity goals managers have already adopted, though. :/