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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: April 20th, 2026

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  • It’s not even about efficiency. I suspect that this is easier on her back, because she doesn’t have to keep pace with someone who doesn’t coordinate with her and who makes sudden, unexpected moves that cause her to wrench her back. As someone who has lifted a lot of heavy things in his life, I always find it easier and less painful to move something on my own whenever possible.


  • Tango@piefed.catomemes@lemmy.worldBlackRock is the worst
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    13 days ago

    Oh, I wasn’t arguing in favor of the system. I was just pointing out that if one was to look for the mustache-twirling villains behind everything, they wouldn’t find them at Blackrock. The people working at Blackrock are simply deluded enough to think that they can stave off the pension bomb forever if they just keep the numbers going up forever. As you rightly point out, the system isn’t sustainable. But as long as the overall economic system doesn’t get the drastic general overhaul that it needs (but that nobody has the stomach for), it’ll remain a Nash Equilibrium whereby nobody can move to end it unless everyone does.


  • Tango@piefed.catomemes@lemmy.worldBlackRock is the worst
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    13 days ago

    The main problem is that investment funds need the constant growth in order to pay for people’s pension. If you don’t have index funds that return above a given yield, year on year, then there’s no way for pensions to work because there aren’t enough young people being born to work and pay taxes to support the older people’s pensions. That’s why every financial services company is pushed, hard, to return more and more profits. That’s why governments don’t regulate them harder: because they NEED the financial sector to be greedy on an epic scale, or else the economy doesn’t work.

    https://youtu.be/nBEgJZdd2BQ

    SETH: “Shit, this is really gonna affect people.”

    WILL: “Yeah, it’s gonna affect people like me!”

    SETH: “No, no, real… real people.”

    WILL: “Jesus, Seth; listen, if you really wanna do this with your life, you have to believe you’re necessary. And you are. People wanna live like this, in their cars, and their big fuckin’ houses that they can’t even pay for? Then you’re necessary. The only reason that they all get to continue living like kings is ‘cause we’ve got our fingers on the scales in their favor. I take my hand off? Well then the whole world gets really fuckin’ fair, really fuckin’ quickly, and nobody actually wants that. They say they do, but they don’t. They want what we have to give them, but they also wanna, you know… play innocent, and pretend that they have no idea where it came from. Well, that’s more hypocrisy than I’m willing to swallow, so fuck 'em. Fuck normal people. You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow, if all of this goes tits-up? They’re gonna crucify us for being too reckless. But if we’re wrong? And everything gets back on track? Well then the same people are gonna laugh 'til they piss their pants, 'cause we’re gonna look like the biggest pussies God ever let through the door.”

    SETH: “You think we’re gonna be wrong?”

    WILL: “Nah, they’re all fucked.”

    The whole world economy is based on a system whereby the global regions and demographics that Have, extract wealth and value from the regions and demographics that Have Not. And everybody here commenting on this post are Haves. Maybe not on the scale that some others are, but I know I certainly didn’t have to walk several hours today just to get clean drinkable water. Given what some people are forced to do without despite how hard they work, I really shouldn’t be able to afford the lifestyle I have for the amount of work I do. But I can, and that’s because my government tilts the scales in my favor. And even I’m financially screwed compared to some other people! The only way to fix it is a complete overhaul, and nobody has the stomach for that.






  • One of the main reason a country’s government will subsidize or otherwise encourage green energy and EV adoption is as a geopolitical strategy to reduce dependence on oil, due to the fact that most oil-producing nations are deeply unstable for one reason or another. The USA’s problem is that it is one of those deeply unstable oil-producing nations, and so it wants to keep the renewables market suppressed and the oil and oil derivatives market boosted.

    Here in Ireland we don’t have one jot of domestic oil production, so renewables are seen as a way to not be held hostage by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and idiotically unnecessary wars in the Middle East, and idiotically random tariff wars) because we do have our own water, wind and sunshine. America doesn’t have that natural incentive to the same extent that we do.