this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
392 points (91.2% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35758 readers
555 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

In the last 5 to 10 years everything seems to suck: product's and services quality plummeted, everything from homes to cars to food became really expensive, technology stopped to help us to be something designed to f@ck with us and our money, nobody seems to be able to hold a job anymore, everyone is broke. Life seems worse in general.

Why? Did COVID made this happen? How?

(page 2) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] MaximilianKohler@lemmy.world 15 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Chronic disease and general poor-functioning has been skyrocketing and the vast majority of people just ignore it like it's no big deal.

Obviously it's a big deal when the intelligence and competence of a majority of people has been severely diminished. We're now living in Idiocracy. And it's why for two elections in a row we've ended up with the choice of two senile old white men.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] Trollivier@sh.itjust.works 14 points 9 months ago

Late stage capitalism is your answer, my friend.

[–] dynamo@lemm.ee 12 points 9 months ago
[–] L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works 12 points 9 months ago

My take: the result of decades of incompetent leadership, at all levels from the government to individual households, that ultimately lead to a society that mainly uses dilatory tactics instead of finding solutions to its issues.

What happens when the economy crashes? We push the goalposts back a few yards so that it's actually better now and will become a problem later instead. Notice how the frequency of market crashes is increasing? It was every 50 years or so, then it was every 10, now we've had 3 in 5 years, yes I'm fucking counting COVID you had literally over 60 years to prepare for a worldwide pandemic and you sat on your asses.

What happened with education? Well let's see. Why do we pay for education in the first place? To increase our knowledge and push the boundaries of human civilization, or to put it bluntly: we don't wanna live in a world filled with idiots. But like why do we need education? Cuz like jobs or something...Ever wonder why you MUST have a degree for a job? That's a legal requirement, if something is on the job posting as a requirement then it's a fucking requirement. Suddenly everyone needs a higher education, because the job posting is a legal requirement that must be met, else ye suffer the consequences of immediate disqualification. Fortunately the law miraculously doesn't really care which degree you have, the companies get to choose how narrow the scope is and if they don't do that well that's on them lol xD! So we need a degree, but let's say we don't wanna put in the effort to learn all that hard shit. Besides, we just need survivabile minimum wage, so let's aim for that. It sure is convenient that all these now impacted universities made up all these new bullshit degrees so they could pretend to deal with the influx of morons that are getting intimidated and bribed into their schools via their parents. This sounds like a game to me, and I love games. Wait wait wait wait. We said that we want education because we want people to be smart, but like technically we only need education to get a job. Suddenly education is like this super fun game where you get sorted into a socio economic class in a fun and interesting way. And then people realized they could influence that as early as elementary school, and well gee fuckin golly! They get to vote and control the public education because that's how public school works. And if we loosen up the restrictions on what our kids need to get good grades, their chances of getting into college get better. Guess what? Money also works too, if we have money we can avoid the tiring scramble of public education and just pay to win baybee!!!!

Why does the everything suck? Because it's owned and operated by investment firms and run by people who are the result of decades of systemic degradation. And who's to blame? The worse generation in human history. The only generation in United States history to have a losing record when it comes to war lose, while simultaneously being the single generation to have started and sustain the most wars! The same fucking generation that didn't die off at 55 because their children didn't huff lead gasoline like they did for Christmas and actually got bothered to learn medical science - as much as I shit on the education system as a whole, there are always some tryhards that slip through. The same generation that still controls 60% of the political offices in this country, while at the same time being composed of the top 1% of mentally unstable weak and decrepit elderly part of the population. The same generation that voted to fuck over retirement pensions from the previous generation back in the 70s or whenever it was, and then now in past decades have undone all of that to secure retirement protections for them suddenly now as they reach their sunset years. The same generation that still currently in the current fucking year of two thousand twenty-four are the two frontrunners for Presidential candidacy.

And you know what the funniest thing about it is? It's not just the United States. How's Japan looking over across the Pacific? A problem with a top heavy elderly population? Wow who could've guessed. What about the boys across the pond? What does the British parliament look like? Who are still the leaders of China, Russia, North Korea? What families are still in power in the Middle East?

Our ancestors have failed us. They have failed their brothers and sisters. They have failed our entire goddamned species. I am embarrassed and ashamed for all intelligent beings anywhere and everywhere in any reality where intelligence is possible that we are capable of such idiocy.

I take great solace in the fact that they will not be around long enough to etch their final memory into the stones of history. And we will.

Despite all of that it feels to me less like things are getting worse and more like a loud death rattle from a bloated creature - the final shout before the eternal void. I see the same feelings as mine in both my cohorts and in the future generations. I have hopes for the future and strongly believe that the world is just now entering the upswing. It's painful and awkward right now while the old skin sheds, but I am confident we will emerge from our chrysalis transformed into something greater. Maybe that guy who brought up the 12 year delay on the Mayan calendar shit earlier in this thread was on to something; the timing is just too coincidental.

[–] Chainweasel@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because anyone who was old enough to remember how bad the great depression and world wars were are all dead and the people in power fell like they have something to prove.
I mean why should it be just their parents and grandparents that made the history books?

[–] Powerpoint@lemmy.ca 12 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People elect Conservatives. Don't elect Conservatives. They want to make the world shit.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Goodie@lemmy.world 12 points 9 months ago

I'll do my best to explain what I can. But it's hard, and many PHD dissertations will be written on this. It's not exactly something that can just be explained.

But yes, Covid was probably the most easily identifiable source. In addition, you could make a claim that Putins' moves, the support from Russia to for various "alt-right" groups, and their eventual war in Ukraine (assumedly, aiming for culmination in reuniting the Soviet Union) have an impact. Lastly, we have various AI projects reading "maturity" (or at least public notoriety), and various services realizing they were missing out on a piece of the "AI pie".

Covid was.... bad. It's a new, deadly disease that potentially leaves people with life altering side effecs (long covid). The Vaccines are good, if not great even for having been developed so quickly and drastically change your likely outcomes, but they aren't full immunity (like we have for Polio). This left governments in a dammed now if you don't support people, or damned later if you do. They all chose various levels of later. Some governments supported businesses directly and left people alone to suffer, others supported people and left businesses mostly alone. Either way: Cash injections into an economy produces inflation.

Fighting inflation... the most commonly accepted method in the western world is to raise interest rates* and then let it play out. With the loss of cheap money from low interest rates, many businesses are now being pushed by their owners and shareholders from focusing on growth to make profits (eg: Raise prices, crack downs on password sharing, API use).

There are other claims you could make, and construct narratives with. For a few years now companies have been growing by expanding into growing countries, but now the number of countries left is short, and companies are running out of places to expand into to grow. Once again, as growth becomes impossible or undesirable, the focus shifts to extracting profit from your existing base. We are reaching maximum saturation.

*Alternatives: If you would like to slash government spending... see Argentina's inflation (it's bad), for windfall taxes see Spain (it's good).

[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago
[–] TwoGems@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

People keep electing conservative fascists like morons

[–] rekabis@lemmy.ca 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

America, in particular, doesn’t exactly have an alternative.

To wit,

“Americans are served by three political groups, but are represented by only two political parties.

“The alt-right have a party all to themselves, while the centre-left share a party with the centre-right such that they cannot effectively function.”

You take a look at any president since the Carter administration, and they have all been right of centre. Obama was solidly centre-right. Biden is on the threshold of being fully right-wing.

About the only people who sit anywhere to the left are people like Bernie Sanders and AOC, and in most other countries they would be considered solid centrists and milquetoast moderates. They are not extreme-left in the least.

America has no left-wing politicians, much less any on the far left.

But on the far right? pretty much the entire GOP is sitting there with their asses hanging off the fascist end of the political horseshoe.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] DessertStorms@kbin.social 9 points 9 months ago
[–] Zeon@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (3 children)
load more comments (3 replies)
[–] aesc@lemmy.sdf.org 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Have you read Cory Doctorow’s book on enshitification? I think he focuses more on the Internet but might help answer your question.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Robaque@feddit.it 8 points 9 months ago

Capitalism, etc.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›