• RadDevon@lemmy.zipEnglish
    12·
    13 days ago

    My brother used to work for an SEO company. They charged clients to have their web sites on directories which would improve their Google pagerank… until Google updated the algorithm to penalize sites listed in these directories. The company quickly pivoted to charging the same clients to have them removed from the directories they had just charged them to be listed in.

    • jerkface@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      12 days ago

      As much as I hate SEO companies, people who hire them are even worse, so I can only approve of this.

  • Kwakigra@beehaw.org
    6·
    14 days ago

    Capitalists will say that it’s fine for an economy to have a few capitalists own all capital and all physical and intellectual property while common people are only allowed to rent it from the capitalists at whatever rate the capitalist pleases. However, capitalists will also say that the evil of socialism is that you won’t be allowed to own property. That’s the most capitalist thing I’m aware of.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      4·
      14 days ago

      Yep, that’s why Marx is correct. Capitalism consolidates itself into large monopolist syndicates, removing the usefulness of Capitalists and eliminating competition, whereby Central Planning of public property becomes greatly more efficient.

      The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

      -Karl Marx, Manifesto of the Communist Party

      For more reading, Why Public Property? is a good article elaborating in modern lingo.

  • whaleross@lemmy.world
    5·
    15 days ago

    Here in Sweden we currently have the problem that hospitals are understaffed and keeping wages of nurses so low that a lot of nurses quit and leave the others with an even crazier workload so the hospitals buy nurses semi permanently from temp agencies that cost multiple times more and the rental nurses have better pay and agreements of overtime and such. We had a well functioning health care but then the privatisation of everything and selling out communally owned services to private profit making schemes since the 90s. Because our government has been dominated by right wing market liberals and “sossehöger” - social democrats that jump on right wing populism to stay in power when they can rather than being consistent in left wing ideals.

    Fucking end the market liberal experiment already. “The market solves all problems” - yeah, of it’s own interest which is how to squeeze out more profits regardless the how and how low it stoops.

      • whaleross@lemmy.world
        2·
        14 days ago

        It’s been the strategy of the right wing here since forever - get in power sell out as much they can (and for some unfathomable reason for discount prices), fuck things up in general, leave it to a left wing government to salvage what can be saved while blaming them for public service being garbage so they can motivate selling out more when they have power again. It’s a mix of blind idealists and profiteering scum that are in liaison with the right wing nationalist party with former nazi connections and obviously the Christian democrat leader that models the party according to the republicans is the most buddy-buddy with the fringe right.

        And the populist right wing of course romanticises about the good days when everyone had housing and was safe and provided and so on - that was built solely by the left and the right wing fought them every step of the way and that they have since then torn down. Blatant lies and disinformation all the way.

        But it is what people vote for. We get the societal break down we deserve.

        • Gbagginsthe3rd@aussie.zone
          2·
          14 days ago

          Whoa, I thought that just Australia was following American economics. The descent into privatisation on everything. I guess there are greedy and ignorant people everywhere. For some reason knowing Sweden is also going down the neoliberal toilet it makes me feel better and I dont know why. I guess its a feeling of inevitability.

          Reminds me of John Stewart stating that to combat vested interest takes energy and effort every single day.

          There are so many groups taking advantage of our overworked lives combined with the over abundance of useless information that distracts us from the real issues that impacts us. Its very difficult to know how and where to direct our energy. Of course thats my view as a social/environmental person. However, if you love the conservative/neoliberal view of the world. Then congratulations, things must seem pretty great right now.

        • im sorry i broke the code@sh.itjust.works
          2·
          13 days ago

          Same happens in Italy. It’s probable the govt will collapse before 2027 and they won’t campaign as much for the new elections, so the new govt will be blamed for all the problems these fuckers caused

    • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      EVERY instance of ‘public-private’ healthcare goes that route, touted as the wave of the future and a seamless melding of public interest and delicious capitalist pork, and then every single one of them gets drunk on the cash and goes toxic like this.

      It’s happening to Canada too. And France. And London.

  • Meron35@lemmy.world
    5·
    14 days ago

    Hong Kong’s subway system offers fare discounts if you use the entrances/exits that require you to walk through a mall, as part of their monetisation of spaces required to access public services

    • BertramDitore@lemm.eeEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      Donziger’s story is heartbreaking and infuriating, and I’m continually disappointed that so few people are familiar with his story and what the courts did to him. It’s one of the clearest examples of judicial corruption and the power and benefits that are afforded to corporations and almost never extended to the people fighting for what’s right and just.

    • Crotaro@beehaw.org
      1·
      14 days ago

      Yep, learned about this just yesterday from the YouTube channel BoyBoy who covered the situation quite well and had a lovely interview with Steven (as lovely as such a depressing topic can be)

    • sigmaklimgrindset@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      14 days ago

      In June 2022, a federal appeals court affirmed Donziger’s criminal contempt conviction. In March 2023, the Supreme Court declined to hear further appeals.

      I’m shocked.

  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    14 days ago

    Motorcycle airbag vests that will not work if you aren’t up-to-date on the subscription payments when you have a crash…

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
      1·
      14 days ago

      I mean, it kind of makes some sense. Part of what they’re doing is checking your location, speed, bearing, etc., and–IIRC–using cell signals for some of that. That’s bandwidth, and someone has to pay for it, even if it’s not very much. OTOH, Helite makes a vest that uses a tether, and that’s going to work well enough in most cases.

      I think that there might be some that have options to pay for it all up-front instead of having a subscription, but I’m not positive; I just rely on leather and Knox inserts.

      • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        13 days ago

        I don’t have any direct info on how it works, but I would have assumed it could be done completely offline with some sort of accelerometers. But I am a Lay Person so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

        • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
          2·
          13 days ago

          Accelerometers don’t work that great with motorcycles; when you go into a hard turn, the accelerometer still thinks that you’re straight up, due to centripedal force. You’d actually need gyroscopes. (…Which is why adaptive headlights for motorcycles end up being so expensive, and why only BMW specs them, and only on one or two touring models.)

  • superkret@feddit.org
    3·
    14 days ago

    Today I heard Meta has laid off workers because they brought their own food for lunch instead of buying it from the company cafeteria.

    • beliquititious@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      3·
      14 days ago

      Well yes, but also no. Meta fired those folks because they were using their lunch stipend provided by meta for things other than lunch. Petty, given how much they were paying the employees, but almost certainly a breach of contract on the employee’s part.

      Meta is probably trying to do layoffs without paying layoff costs or taking the stock hit layoffs can cause. Which is still capitalist AF by any measure, lol. For fans of watching what kind of shit the oligarchy is trying now, Meta is definitely one to keep an eye on. Mark Zuckerberg has been moving very conservative very quickly lately.

  • UlyssesT [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    14 days ago

    Mandatory “hide the opt-out if there’s even an opt-out at all” “AI” trash that is shoved into everything from operating systems to browsers. It’s less than useless, outright malicious in both intent and practice in many cases, and dumps more carbon into the air just so the “AI” trash doesn’t seem like a sunk cost investment for venture capitalists.

    • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
      1·
      14 days ago

      I’m in the middle of trying to get a fairly expensive surgery.

      If I had insurance, I would need to pay about $15,000 (between premiums, copays, annual deductible, coinsurance, and out of pocket maximums) with the only insurance available to me through my workplace before anything would be covered. So it’s not really worthwhile, right? Well, the surgery I need–around here–gets quotes of as much as $89,000. The most recent quote that I have is around $18,000. Keep in mind that the surgery takes about an hour, is a surgeon, one OR nurse assisting, and an anesthesiologist. The fee for the surgeon and nurse is about $5000, and the facility takes about $10,000. In the case of surgery in a hospital–rather than an ambulatory surgical center (ACS0—it’s even worse. With the same surgeon and OR nurse at an ACS, I had a quote of $16,300; at a hospital the quote was $49,000. The surgeon and nurse get the same fee regardless, which means that the hospital charged >$30,000.

      …And good fucking luck getting a lot of places to give you prices at all, even though DHHS has mandated pricing transparency. Even if you know exactly what CPT billing codes are going to be used, it can be days of back and forth before you can get a price. If you need shit fixed NOW, you’re just going to be stuck with whatever they charge.

    • Vanth@reddthat.comEnglish
      1·
      15 days ago

      ☝️ recently got a covid test that based on all my research beforehand, it should have been covered except for $10 I would pay.

      Jokes on me, it actually cost me $200 they charged to my credit card two weeks later. I didn’t even get to know the price at the time I needed medical care.

      Sometimes other countries make fun of America for things they don’t understand. Not on this one, America deserves every bit of mocking it gets for it’s medical coverage atrocity.