https://sfba.social/@drahardja/117344931893000589
the other day a tanky said a sentence constructed like that to me too, while literally arguing for me to join his authoritarian group
“This is not a perfect solution, and therefore it is not a solution” is called the nirvana fallacy, and is poor reasoning. Somehow people are really susceptible to it.
The argument “this solution only partially solves the problem, and further entrenches us into a system that makes the problem it aims to solve much, much worse in the long run, and as such the costs do not outweight the benefits” is a different argument, but it is often mistaken for the former argument because people are incapable of long term thinking.
Interesting, now I know that type of argument has a name. I think many rationalizations are a veneer for laziness. Taking the stance that doing something is useless means you don’t have to feel guilty about not doing it. Likewise, when there’s a widespread delusion that simple, ineffective actions make us heroes, people will do those actions and nothing else, because giving themselves a gold star is all they really want. It’s important not to confuse spending hours in social media circlejerks with “spreading awareness”.
for all the good tankies might do in a moment at the end they just create new issues, which if they are successful will be quite bad again. so not worth it since it’s completely unnecessary
There’s a good chance that anyone making this argument doesn’t see it as a problem in the first place.
That’s correct. Dismissal of the effort and disgust for the goal seem to go hand-in-hand.
Digital privacy? They’ve got you anyway AND I don’t care about privacy Environmentalism? Nothing is 100% green anyway AND I don’t care about the environment
Lots of examples like that.
They want to beat down both your goal and effort, because admitting even one of those being reasonable threatens their worldview.
Also there is crossover. Even if you managed 100% green, maybe some engineer who worked on it accidentally hit some Palestinian with their car, so now the entire project is just a secret genocide.
Yes, but this message gives them the chance to expand their view. The chance.
A monkey is gonna monk. No matter what you tellem.
Perfect is the enemy of good (or good enough).
Or slightly less terrible
I was once explaining the upsides of UBI and someone replied “no, this would fix too many issues with capitalism, this would delay the revolution!” Like… Dude.
Haha I kind of see both your points, it kind of does the liberal thing of extending the umbrella of protection from exploitation while pushing exploitation farther to the sidelines. The worst case outcome is that you now have more defenders of the status quo, because they’ve got it good. Meanwhile the entire economy is still based on war and exploitation, especially of poor workers in other countries.
But then maybe if us workers here had some more breathing room (perhaps not the best choice of words…) we might also have more capacity for solidarity with those exploited workers. Who knows, but it would remedy a lot of immediate problems here anyway.
And all the trials have been very positive, so I’m inclined to give it a shot yeah.
‘Let them get a taste of how terrible those guys are, and then they’ll vote us in and our system will rise!’ is what the Weimar Republic said about the Nazis.
Never, ever assume making things worse will end up causing a few tiny problems and then everything gets better. Humans are, by and large, shockingly tolerant of rather terrible things. If you let things get worse, they will get very, very worse, and a lot of innocent people will die.
Right but you see the analogy of like union negotiations, like when management makes a sweet deal for a certain class of worker like full-timers, or people over a certain “grade”, then leaves everyone else out to dry.
I’ve seen it happen first hand. Things get better for us inside the new circle of privilege, but it’s only because most of us voted for self interest.
I don’t want to be like letting the 💯 be the enemy of the 👌🏻, but I also think we should talk about how we plan on keeping from being the 1% to someone else.
Does that make sense? I’m not against UBI, but it can’t be the end of the discussion.
I always think of this post whenever I hear someone dead-set on nothing less than massive, systemic change.
True that. Do I agree modern society has gone crazy in many fundamental ways? Hell yeah. Will I reject an opportunity to do something small that will affect only a handful of lives for just a few days based solely on that? Nope
I’ve reached a point where I think if both the left and right tell you are wrong, you might just as well have arrived at the correct idea (usually, not always).
Yeah, but this post won’t stop everyone from saying that /s
I see way too much of this on the internet, here on Lemmy included. Thanks for posting this. I have this thought a lot but haven’t see this good of a way to put it before.
Its state sponsored propaganda using companies as proxies to bypass those pesky human rights laws and is vastly on the Republican side but you do have aipac dems and similar issues in other first world countries.
The rise of right wing extremist politicians and the world also going to shit is no coincidence.
They’ll also tell you things such as “don’t trust the government” while also being the party in control. It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
It should be obvious to anyone who isn’t a cultist.
I love the ‘no true scot’ part here.
Nice argument
Actually it’s a logical fallacy. As in your previous comment makes no sense at all so it doesn’t need to be argued against. Just dismissed as the drivel that it is.
So you’re a maga/republican cultist? Or just support them? Seems like you’re just deflecting from the original point I was making since you have no argument with substance🤷♂️
Cool emoji use
Im saving this in high hopes that I will remember it when I could send it to somebody, butt (&titties): I have observed that older posts seize to exist after some time on lemmy (I’m saving it to my device)
Yeah I’ve had this kind of discussions with right wing folk. We were discussing socialist policies, which I was in favor of and they were against. They were pointing out there were people abusing current socialist policies and getting a free handout, so all of those policies should be cut to prevent the freeloaders from freeloading. I argued that any kind of policy, no matter what the policy is, is going to be abused by a small fraction of the population. It’s not possible to create something without loopholes and people exploiting them. We should try to prevent it in the design, but in the end we should accept that’s going to happen and instead focus on if the policy is also actually helping the people it was designed for.
Nothing is perfect, problems won’t be fully solved and / or new problems will be created. That isn’t failure, it’s life.
current capitalist approaches are being exploited RIGHT NOW to consolidate wealth and power (see: kushner buying the lakers, ellison buying warner bros and thats just los angeles alone). i’d much rather have a handful of everyman freeloaders than concentrated greed.
Also systems designed to prevent exploits require resources. For example checking that people getting unemployment benefits are actually unemployed is actually work. It is often cheaper to be imperfect, just because those checks are so expensive.
Often there’s a break even point at greater than zero auditing where the audits start costing more than the amount of fraud, but it’s surprisingly common that zero or very nearly zero auditing is actually the most efficient setup, because regular people just don’t commit fraud all that often. When dealing with corporations, on the other hand…
…add a few more special investigators for high tax evasion crimes to the IRS (or whatever your gov org is called) and you’ll reap more for the state than you’ll ever could with welfare fraud.
The head of the German tax union (DSTG) with 75000 members who advise German IRS employees, intervene for tax equality, fight tax evasion into tax havens and offshore companies says the yearly sum of high tax evasion fraud amounts to 200 billion, while welfare fraud amounts to 275 million. He advised the new government under the ex-Blackrock chancellor Merz at the start of their legislation to make this his priority.
What did the government do of course (in corporation with the so called workers party SPD) recently in a whimsy attempt to bring down state debt? Create a barrage of reforms all targeting the poor, especially those receiving welfare, but also working families, the health system and workers rights. Then he openly states at podium discussions the German workers are to lazy compared to Chinese workers. He actively pushed the far right AfD to record election results and his own parties to record negative results.
The corrupt finance minister Katharina Reiche (greedy POS ex fossil fuel manager) of the same party is actively working to eradicate the last chances of the country to get a foothold in green tech like wind power generation, heatpumps and green hydrogen for steel production (like she did 2012 in another gov for the solar industry) and pro fossil fuel industries.
This all lead to record level negative popularity for the conservative party, record level rates German Angst regarding economic downfall of citizens in recent public polls and record level popularity of the right wing AfD (whose level of economic profession and that of those electing them shows in a proposal to tax all income classes the same with a flat tax of 25%).
The only ray of hope is the left party who recently won the Berlin elections whose first priority there is to transfer flats in the hands of greedy flat corporations, working only for the share holder value, to state property.
The easiest way to avoid freeloaders and abusers is to make services available to anyone who wants them. Then the only abuse is trying to count one person as multiple people to get an unfair amount of benefits which isn’t even possible for things like universal healthcare.
But the rich abusing policies so they get pure bail out socialism is fine. Just dont want a poor brown person to have it heavens no.
Me sitting here drinking soda with a soggy paper straw made from recycled toilet paper rolls:
Overly classy french.jpg
I generally agree but not across the board. Bandaid solutions, half-assing things, etc often leads to worse problems down the road than you had to begin with.
Thing is, a bad solution is more likely to be fixed into a good one than that good solution is to be done in the first place.
Gotta get that sunk cost working in your favor.
Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. If you wait until you feel great and have all the time in the world to ever go to the gym you might work out 1-2 days a year. If you wake up late and are tired but commit to at least going out and walking down the street and back at lunch and you do the latter more often then you’ll be way ahead of the former situation. Maybe different strokes for different folks. Perfectionism ruins a lot of dreams and ambitions of people that would accomplish a whole lot more if they just stopped overthinking about it and learned to leave well enough alone. Just ask any former ‘gifted and talented’ student.
What a person should do is pretty contingent on their agency… If someone doesn’t have leverage to organise a systemic solution, they should absolutely apply a bandaid solution. Ideally while keeping half an eye on the possibility of a better solution in the long run, but yeah… Depends on context and capacity.
Yeah but at some point you have to try knowing you’ll fail so you can make a better attempt next time. A lot of people are just sitting at like zero level of organization and refuse to even start trying ever.
I think the OOP describes situation where you did your best to chip at the big problem, but it wasn’t enough.
Half-assing is when you could act more, but you didn’t.
The difference is effort and intention.
Make a comment about the benefits of fully eliminating direct usage of fossil fuels from your life and inevitably you get replies like: I can’t do that because I rent. You are so privileged, most people can’t afford an EV.
I think many have this idea that removing fossil fuel usage has to be expensive. It can also be by just not buying them. Yes I know not 100% of people can remove 100% of their direct usage right now, but a lot of people could do more than they are doing but don’t. Some because they don’t care, but others may not realise options they have, and positivity posting can help spread that kind of message.
How I fully removed direct fossil fuel usage from my life: never learnt to drive because I couldn’t afford it, for years used the bike from my teens before getting a new bike in my late 20s. Once I bought a house I had the broken boiler replaced with a heat pump, due to how old the central heating system was it all needed replacing anyway do it didn’t really cost any more than staying on fossil fuels. Had the gas meter removed from the house after a long conversation with the provider that no I really don’t need or want it, get rid of it. The engineer said he would see me again when I need it turned back on, not seen him in a few years now. Still don’t want it.
Total electricity cost is under £1k a year and winter usage is 3-4x summer usage. Recently switched to working in office so I can adjust the heating timing and zone layout this winter which should save some energy too.
Conscious consumption! I like it. It’s a big part of what they advocate on the Frugal Friends podcast. Just need to figure out the “we have McDonalds at home” of fossil fuels. Hybrids & bikes can be a good first start.
Frugal/anti consumption. It used to be by necessity but now I continue by choice, to the point I don’t really know what to spend my money on since I started earning full time adult minimum wage. Now on £29k and continue to not really know what to spend it on! I do get nice things but most of them don’t really cost much. Like a cast iron pan I need once and doesn’t cost much.
This random stranger is really proud of you! Good on you, for real. :) Keep up the good work! <3
Same. When I was at a point where I was skipping a meal a day to save for rent, it was the boots problem. If I could get the nicer, more durable thing, it was always worth it in the long run but not usually affordable up front. But sometimes there are easy wins. I found my first and only cast iron skillet I’ve had in the last 15 years covered in grease & surface level rust next to a dumpster on the way home. Some oven cleaner and flaxseed oil and it has been good to me ever since.
It started then by saying no to eating out bc it’s unaffordable, now it’s saying no to eating out at a lot of places bc they have awful food, service, and management treats their workers like crap. Starbucks wasn’t worth it to me for a long time before the anti union stuff, now I have two reasons (actually more) never to go there again.
There’s like two kinds of proposals, and whichever kind you make you get criticized. You make a big proposal, people say “Well yeah but how does that work on the ground?” You make an on-the-ground proposal, and people say “Well how does that scale to the whole thing?” Alright fine, then let’s just die!
Sorry, can’t hear you over your failure to solve the entire problem. /s
Well, your negative comment made me spiral and transformed me into a speed bump on the road to progress. /s
Hiding behind vague hypotheticals because you voted for a union busting genocider with a staff full of Epstein patrons
Because people are fucking stupid, i deal with this shit at work everyday nothing to do with global politics or whatever. Sometimes our vendors fuck things up for us, so therefore there’s no point in us getting more organized at work – literally how my supervisors think.
