• 3 Posts
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Joined 5 months ago
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Cake day: December 4th, 2024

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  • Not OP, but probably price gouging? Especially regarding things where you aren’t afforded the reasonable opportunity to make an informed decision (healthcare, baby formula plus necessary clean water). Also maybe regional monopolies (internet service) or pretty much anything involving an event or venue (ticket pricing or cost of a slice of pizza or a can of beer at a festival).

    In all of these examples, you likely don’t have a heads-up or the chance to choose something else. Admittedly, most of the examples off the top of my head were unnecessary luxury spending, but how in the blue fuck is it okay that any of them are literally a situation of “pay me whatever price I decide or else a person will die”?

    Pretty fucked up if you ask me.


  • Okay, but now do housing and groceries and you’ll see why people don’t have extra money laying around for another Nintendo and its Mario kart.

    Economics is significantly more complicated than a bar graph of inflation-adjusted video game price tags lol. Hell, even just value of each game in their respective release time period is more complicated than that. I doubt there’s anything unique to this new game (other racing games have done the open world thing several times starting like 15 years ago), but the kart racer genre itself was new back in the 90s.


  • Because people continue to accept that price by agreeing to pay it. The price of a product is dictated by what people are willing to pay for it. If the price is so low that the seller isn’t happy with it, they don’t sell it and stop making it.

    In other words, if you think Nintendo prices are bullshit price gouging, then vote with your wallet. With enough votes, the prices come down or the company goes under. You don’t have that luxury of choice when it comes to groceries or shelter, but you absolutely do when it comes to luxury entertainment expenses. Make them earn your money.


    1. They’re loud, but not necessarily many.

    2. They are passionate, and therefore will turn out to vote.

    3. American voter turnout is generally pretty low. The best year in over 100 years was 2020 with still only about 2/3 of eligible voters showing up to vote.

    These things combined make it seem impossible for Democrats or progressive independents to win almost anywhere. All it takes is candidates impressive enough to break through to the people who aren’t showing up to vote. Milquetoast weiners aren’t exciting enough for this, and neither is the strategy of trying to court the right.



  • I don’t live in The Netherlands, so I don’t pretend to have any sort of first-hand knowledge of what it’s like there, but this resource says that children under 13 can’t work unless they’re sentenced to community service due to an offense, or working as a performance like as an actor in a commercial or a play. It also looked like there’s no minimum wage for workers under 15?

    But I don’t doubt that Dutch workers have much higher labor standards. Current minimum wage for 21 and older there looks to be nearly double American federal minimum wage (€14.06 vs $7.25). I live in Virginia, which has a much higher minimum wage than the federal one, currently $12.41. The Northern counties and around Richmond are ludicrously expensive, however, so it’s not like people could reasonably get by on that in those areas. You won’t find a half decent house in those areas for under $500k, and actual nice houses start at like $750-900k. If you somehow got a 0% mortgage and somehow had zero expenses outside of paying off that $500k house, it would still take 20 years of working full time at that minimum wage job to pay that. More realistic mortgage rates and expenses would make that take closer to 70 years.

    Average life expectancy in the US is 77.5 years.








  • My job is 12 hour shifts plus an hour commute each way. This is a big part of why we haven’t already gotten a dog. Well that, and also until a few months ago we were in a pretty small apartment. My wife is home more than me, so we’re considering it, but I want to try to time it so that I’m off and there more early on for adjustment period and training.

    Humans don’t deserve dogs. I want to be the kind of human who can almost disprove that fact.