I mean, that’s 4 years of our lives taken! 4 years of opportunities that were more challenging because they wanted a number on a computer to go up! 4 years of feeling worse than necessary about my finances and management of them and general personhood because i felt like i couldn’t afford anything because everything was priced egregiously!

And now they’re saying ‘oh well we fixed it now’. Fuck you!!! Get over yourselves! Holy shit, I can’t wait to happily be friends with the giant corporations again!! Just the arrogance that we’re happy to once again be at their beck and call because they changed the numbers they could’ve always changed. Sickening.

And I feel like I have a brain disease because i’ve been worrying and posting for years about how disgusting it is that they’re just cranking the numbers up to see what’ll happen and obviously no one will stop them because this is an oligarchy — and i kept getting well-ackshullyied into the ground by esteemed logical posters explaining how supply chains work. Well look at this shit you motherfuckers!

Just the amount of incredibly deep and sophisticated social engineering is so disgusting:

It’s a savvy play for shifting perceptions of value, crucial for consumers in the decision-making process of where to shop for bread and eggs. Customers benefit by saving some money; retailers possibly benefit even more by being known as the company that magnanimously trimmed prices.

Go to hell, stop shifting my value perception. I should be able to decide what I feel about milk or zucchini. When I think about a croissant I should be thinking about France, not Target pricing strategies.

Most importantly, the theater of making grand pronouncements about lower prices is great for retailers’ reputations. Forget about all the price hikes grocery retailers and food brands implemented in the last few years — now companies would like consumers to focus on the savings they’re offering. “They’re all leaning into this inflation-oriented messaging,” says Stambor, which he notes is interesting because food inflation isn’t high at the moment. It’s the accumulation of past inflation that we’re still feeling the sting of; the prices just didn’t come down.

And we’re meant to thank them for this! I hope to god they can’t put the genie back in the bottle with this. I won’t forget 2020, I’ll hate these bloodsuckers til the day I die.

  • Cowbee [he/they]
    22•7 months ago

    What do you mean by “exploitable?” Are you asking if Socialism magically removes all problems and functions perfectly? No, it doesn’t, but it does solve the fundamental problems that necessarily exist with Capitalism outlined in Wage Labor and Capital.

    • Schwim Dandy
      13•7 months ago

      I guess what I mean is that it seems like it’s the entities in power and not the political system is what’s causing these atrocities. I imagine they could do just as well if you told them today that they’re doing it under a socialist umbrella. I’ll try to give the linked book a read.

      • Cowbee [he/they]
        13•7 months ago

        Any system can have bad actors, even non-hierarchial ones like Anarchism. Socialism fixes the economic exploitation created by class conflict within Capitalism. Telling Workers that they are actually in Socialism despite being Capitalist doesn’t change anything about exploitation, nor does it solve issues like the Profit Motive, Class Conflict, or the Tendency for the Rate of Profit to Fall.

      • nickwitha_k (he/him)
        8•7 months ago

        I think that you may be mixing up two things here: political systems and economic systems. Capitalism, socialism, and communism are economic systems. Political systems are things like monarchy, republic, and oligarchy.

        I will also highly recommend Wage Labor and Capital. I had to study it in university and find that it is a good high-level analysis of the systemic issues in the capitalism. For a deeper analysis from Marx, while he is most known for communism, his magnum opus was really Das Kapital, which is not about communism.

        • Schwim Dandy
          5•7 months ago

          I definitely was due to ignorance, it was not intentional.

          That being said, the economic system in place is always at the mercy of those in political power, is it not? I’m not being fecicious, it just seems to me that no matter the conomic system in place, human nature seems to be to find a way to exploit it. I just can’t think of a scenario where that can be protected against.

          • nickwitha_k (he/him)
            3•7 months ago

            It definitely was due to ignorance, it was not intentional.

            That means you learned something new today! :D (I don’t mean this in a condescending manner at all - I just love learning and even when it’s vicariously through other people).

            That being said, the economic system in place is always at the mercy of those in political power, is it not?

            Yes and no. There is a really complex interplay between political and economic systems. Despite this, differentiating between the two types of systems is an important tool for better understand how they work and influence eachother and society.

            I’m not being facetious, it just seems to me that no matter the conomic system in place, human nature seems to be to find a way to exploit it. I just can’t think of a scenario where that can be protected against.

            That’s a fun thing and you’ve unknowingly underscored a massive flaw in a lot of political and economic theory (especially the later). Humans must be understood through multiple lenses:

            • We are animals; biological entities with material needs to sustain life and drives to reproduce (some exceptions, like ace folks, though arguably, there are more forms of reproduction than biological). Nearly all biological entities pursue some form of reproductive competition/selection. Even the baboons who selected for less aggressive/more cooperative males select against these traits, competing with groups that are not selecting for cooperation. (Further note: I do not say this to mean that I believe that competition “human nature” - there are too many counter-examples but, from a high-level perspective, all organisms are effectively competing, even if, paradoxically against competition.
            • We are not rational actors; humans do incredibly illogical and irrational things all of the time. Many of the popular models championed by supporters of neoliberal capitalism completely fail to account for this, instead, assuming rational self-interest.
            • And many others.

            ETA: From my perspective, as one who is cooperatively-minded, the best political and economic systems are the ones that can be currently conceived that result in the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people while providing protection to vulnerable populations and individual agency. I also think that this is a process rather than an endpoint - technology and organisms evolve over time, our social constructs have to do so as well in order to be useful.

            • Schwim Dandy
              2•7 months ago

              This was incredibly informational, thank you.

              We are not rational actors; humans do incredibly illogical and irrational things all of the time. Many of the popular models championed by supporters of neoliberal capitalism completely fail to account for this, instead, assuming rational self-interest.

              I think this has made more sense to me than anything else I’ve read so far as of late. If I am understanding it correctly, Capitalism is sold under the guise that companies will only prioritize profit to the point at which it begins to harm some part of society but no further because we all know that would be bad and we’re not bad people when in reality there are bad people that are ok with doing exactly that.

              This seems to me like less of an oversight and more of a “we, as tobacco CEOs do not believe that smoking is addictive”, right? The masses may believe differently but those at the top of these systems, companies and law making entities have to know that what they’re doing is putting profit over humans. Were Europeans any better at implementing Capitalism before or is the system impossible or nearly so to protect against this?