Well, there are at least two separate, though not unrelated, problems:
1. Good jobs are hard to find, so some people try to make a living instead by influencing what other people buy, in exchange for kickbacks from the sellers.
2. The sellers offering the largest kickbacks are never the sellers offering the best value for money, because if they are, a reseller can buy the products from them, charge a higher price, and spend some of the markup on kickbacks to product shills. This results in a systematic bias toward overpriced junk in heavily advertised products.
3. While some knowledgeable people do still take the time to share their knowledge and unbiased judgments, which is for example mostly how Wikipedia is written, Google and other search engines are increasingly directing search traffic to the product shills instead.
I agree with you that, given problem #1 and problem #3, problem #2 is sort of inevitable, and all three problems tend to mutually reinforce each other. But I think we could reduce either problem #1 or problem #3 by an order of magnitude without significantly reducing the other one. In particular, we might not be able to completely solve the SERP quality problem without solving the jobs problem, but I think we could improve it enormously just by writing a better search engine, which is an easier problem than fixing the entire economy.
I'm sorry to hear you're back on the streets, and I hope your situation improves before you die. I'm glad you're not dead yet because I often find your comments insightful. Happy new year!
I'm not back on the streets yet. I moved a few weeks ago. I have been told this is a temporary solution and I live in fear, as I have for several months now, of ending up back on the streets and dying there.
I don't see surviving that a second time, for reasons I don't care to dig around in.
Crap... I have enjoyed reading you here. We have a borked up system where someone who has a keen mind and something to say ends up struggling. Not sure what to say here other than I hate it.
Making sure we have the basics available to people should be a top priority. And yeah, some would take advantage. I've reached the point, due to many people I know struggling, where I basically don't care. Let them.
The net good out of all that would be worth it, and maybe, just maybe a little less money is made, or efficiency or whatever crazy metric being looked at isn't peak optimized... Again, just don't care.
Given all we have and the smarts, tech, info available, we should not be facing this crap too many of us are.
That's all, just venting a little and I sure hope your situation can improve.
Happy Holidays and all that. You are one of the good people, and it shows.
We need to solve the housing supply issues in the US. (I don't know where you live, I just don't feel qualified to speak to issues in other countries. I've studied them for mine.)
That's off topic for this discussion, but deeply intertwined with why so many people are so desperate for money and throwing in the towel on ethics in favor of asking themselves "Does it pay enough?"
As for Wikipedia itself, I stopped contributing a few years ago, since I did not have the energy and the time needed to fight the systemic bias that the editors had (and have) on a variety of topics.
Also, 2021 was probably the first year in which I did not donate to Wikipedia.
I would argue corporate shills keep some information confidential by removing specific things on Wikipedia. Arguably, they do this to protect cut-throat predators in powerful positions. Which is why these cut-throat predators have an artificially cleaner reputation at the expense of exploitable people arguably. I don't completely trust Wikipedia when it comes to information about politicians, rich people, famous celebrities, specific "philanthropists", etc. Ricky Gervais, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Graham Elwood, Lee Camp, Whitney Webb, George Carlin, Aaron Russo, and other people made me not trust Wikipedia anymore. Wikipedia comes across as another way to put information online through rose-colored glasses to some extent for protecting people in powerful positions, such as the C.I.A. intelligence agents, by making confidential things nonexistent on public websites. People can claim I went down the rabbit hole all they want. But I know that the rise of Orwellian online surveillance, creepy phone verification systems, dehumanizing censorship, brainwashing social credit scores, decreasing human rights, increasing wealth inequality, cut-throat rulers, mental health issues from not being rich during this pandemic, and younger generations being less professionally skilled than older ones are happening internationally now. I find cut-throat rulers who have lots of money are keeping most people trapped during this pandemic via vaccine passports, not letting them renounce their citizenship, online surveillance, censorship, monopolizing the internet at the expense of online anonymity, not letting them be employees without coronavirus vaccinations despite negative side effects that killed some people or worsened their health significantly, forcing people into coronavirus quarantine needlessly that makes them financially threatened when they are getting unpaid while being quarantined, etc. From what I experienced, Wikipedia has favoritism of information that benefits the ruling class only. I would rather go to other online sources for truly investigative journalists that are not shills for oligarch-owned media companies.
1. Good jobs are hard to find, so some people try to make a living instead by influencing what other people buy, in exchange for kickbacks from the sellers.
2. The sellers offering the largest kickbacks are never the sellers offering the best value for money, because if they are, a reseller can buy the products from them, charge a higher price, and spend some of the markup on kickbacks to product shills. This results in a systematic bias toward overpriced junk in heavily advertised products.
3. While some knowledgeable people do still take the time to share their knowledge and unbiased judgments, which is for example mostly how Wikipedia is written, Google and other search engines are increasingly directing search traffic to the product shills instead.
I agree with you that, given problem #1 and problem #3, problem #2 is sort of inevitable, and all three problems tend to mutually reinforce each other. But I think we could reduce either problem #1 or problem #3 by an order of magnitude without significantly reducing the other one. In particular, we might not be able to completely solve the SERP quality problem without solving the jobs problem, but I think we could improve it enormously just by writing a better search engine, which is an easier problem than fixing the entire economy.
I'm sorry to hear you're back on the streets, and I hope your situation improves before you die. I'm glad you're not dead yet because I often find your comments insightful. Happy new year!