Yet again, I agree! But wouldn’t you also agree that the system always had this in-built inequality? What I meant to say was that, while it was less immediately obvious at the start, the subsequent pooling and acceleration of said pooling were always going to happen within this system.

And that’s why I suspect that this was the plan all along, because it has been visible from the start, it didn’t require a retrospective if one was paying enough attention. And those who did got very, very rich.

But even if everyone would have been paying attention*, there would be no room for equality, otherwise the entire pyramid would collapse, taking everyone’s “more than” with it.

I haven’t seen that one, no!:( It just starts with the spider gripping a raspberry:(

Edit: can’t really say having them euthanised makes this any better, tbh…

I have deep-seated arachnophobia and deeply appreciate the grotesque, and I still feel so bad for the spiders, c’mon! I at least hope they died of natural causes well before someone decided to try using them as a grabber toy… Like, at least that!

On a marginally related note, has anyone noticed how frustrating all of the Darth Vader “NOOOOOO!” gifs are because they don’t include that awkward stumbling off of the operating table?

On a thoroughly related note, what happened to our version, the European one? I seem to remember we had something similar, Eutelsat, or smth?

Edit: checked, yep, Eutelsat. What gives, like? Why not use that one?

Our free market’s good, yours is the problem! Gotta read the fine print!

Two words: moisturising lotion.

Ooh, Jezzer! Oh, the drinking we could’ve done together afterwards!

My first thought: “can you imagine bringing a large flock of geese at a Revolution? That would, indeed, be healing!”

I swear the Universe never stops getting more and more interesting to me, even if it’s in a pretty horrifying way!

If someone tried this with me, the second photo would depict someone laughing maniacally, because that’s one hell of a joke from where I’m standing! Bona fide knee slapper!

Edit: this (sorry about the distribution platform, it’s YouTube…)

Well, yeah, it’s the pyramid scheme to end all pyramid schemes, not arguing against that. But that was the Dream.

And “not cheap” as in “had a wage,” as opposed to not being paid at all as a slave (although there were some costs involved with that as well, so not entirely free - I am not arguing for slavery in any way, I was just boiling down the expenditure). But wealth was clearly still pooled at the top, while most people were no better off than they are now, when talking strictly about wealth distribution ratios.

Edit: the only advantage they had was that land was “free for the taking” (if they were willing to do a little genocide beforehand), but even that ended up pooling around a handful of people once things and people settled in.

Yep, it was nice. Free music, at any time, all you needed was a charged battery and a cheapo pair of cans. Hell, I still have an MP3 player. It’s no larger than a Zippo lighter, MicroSD support, full radio with wired headphones as the antenna.

*Well, free as in you paid your “subscription” when you did your taxes, standard radio fare.

Counterpoint:

As I get older, I gain more knowledge and wisdom. As I gain more knowledge and wisdom, my perspectives develop. As my perspectives develop, my comprehension of my own limitations grows as well.

Ergo, old me saying that old me is dumb has way more weight than younger me saying that younger me was dumb, because younger me had shit for brains and barely any idea of what it means to be dumb. But older me has a much better idea of* how much of the dumb there is!

In short, if I say I’ve never been dumber, you’d better fukken believe I haven’t!:))

Think you took a wrong turn somewhere, this is the Technology community…

Nope… zero. It’s just what I feel is the right thing to do, regardless of results. And, on a more self-serving note, I will at least die with a clear conscience knowing that I did all I could do to follow and respect my principles, to be at least a quasi-decent human being.

Agreed, that was the “advertised” goal, and the overall shape things took once it was set into motion. But looking at things now, in retrospect, I genuinely believe that’s just what everyone was told to sell them on the idea, with the actual plan being very different for those who had access backstage, y’know?

I mean, it’s much easier to motivate people to uproot their lives (regardless of how abysmal their living conditions were at the time) by promising a Land of Opportunity For Everyone, instead of telling them “yeah, we’re a bunch of rich guys who want to get even richer, and we need cheap labour to get things started, then work for us, so that we may accumulate all of the wealth.”

Yaaay!🥳 My brain’s getting better at brain things!

To be perfectly frank, I can relate… Not gonna give up trying, just that I’ve never had much use for optimism given how things have been going overall.

“I’m so sorry I’m repeatedly punching you in the teeth, I have no idea how to stop! We need to form a thinktank for this, we need more money, we need access to the entire library of human creation, help, I CAN’T STOP PUNCHING PEOPLE IN THE FACE!”

That guy was ridiculously correct about a frightening amount of things…