A cancer doesn't plan
this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
230 points (97.5% liked)
Showerthoughts
41669 readers
705 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The owners of other robots.
We kinda have two choices:
Some flavour of socialism where people get what they need for free
Or
Turbo-rio-de-janiro style inequality where we all live in slums
Now the 2nd one is what the ultra rich want and they have a lot of power, so it's kinda on the rest of us to make the first happen instead
Didn't the French have an option three?
It's an uphill battle, but it's better to start early than late.
Unlike before, the rich now have private armies, lobbying groups, and mass surveillance networks while we peasants own nothing. Plus, the pot is slowly boiled.
The rich have always had private armies and spy networks. The technology may have changed, but same old same old.
I disagree. My opinion is that the technology did change. It just became more efficient at doing its job (killing people, surveillance, and mass propaganda).
The internet was supposed to be a gateway of information, but now it's the largest propaganda network. Free speech is censored by closed source algorithms and the entire internet infrastructure is controlled and owned by the 1%.
We are more isolated compared to before, class solidarity is almost nonexistent, and its easier to identify people now vs before due to being interconnected real time.
I can go more on and on but the tldr is that technology has made it easier and faster to crush dissent
Data centres notoriously don't have heads, but I love the enthusiasm
If Louis so-and-so hadn't had a head my ancestors would have blown him to bits, that's also an option for datacenters, just look at Iran !
load more comments
(2 replies)
The french fucked up cause they didn't have option 1 as the follow-up to option 3.
load more comments
(1 replies)
"maybe the clothes are made of paper. The food is just nutrient paste...."
Or something like that from the Expanse. Sure, your needs are met, but living life on basic assistance seems like a nightmare.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The economy is already morphing to serve the needs of the upper levels of worth. Look at the trend with airlines shrinking economy sections and expanding first class and business class. Pretty much all consumer offerings are moving to the luxury tier.
Vegas is a good example. Increasingly caters to the top 1%.
I have a suspicion they are focusing on short-term goals, because that is what those people usually do. For example, it's probably hard to explain who should watch all the ads and buy all the advertised products when Facebook replaces their content and interactions with bot slop. They didn't think this through. This isn't some kind of visionary 4D chess. But it does not matter to them. When wasting 80 billion on a VR project that was doomed to fail from the beginning does not matter, nothing does.
For example, it’s probably hard to explain who should watch all the ads and buy all the advertised products when Facebook replaces their content and interactions with bot slop.
Sam Altman owns a company that provides ‘human verification’
I purposely "watch" ads because I think it's funny that me doing it causes company's to think they work and therefore spend more money, I cannot think of a single thing I bought because of an ad, sure some things I have learned about because of ads but if I bought the product it is because I researched the product and it fit with my expectations, most of the time I buy competitive products because my assessment process asigns negative points for ads that annoy me.
What you’re describing is exactly how most ads work. It’s to inundate you with a brand so you want to search it up and likely purchase it. You never bought directly from an ad, but an ad sure as fuck worked on you.
I’m a former digital marketer. Many ads are meant for brand reach. They’re basically there to ear (mind?) worm you so you’re thinking about the brand. Digital ads can be cheap in niche markets when bidding isn’t forcing up prices due to competition for market share.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Yeah, the "elite" aren't actually smart enough to figure that out. Elite is kind of an oxymoron.
No one asked you to use that word to describe them, why are you perpetuating it?
They're not elite, they're just rich fuckers who attained massive riches by exploiting the workers' need for survival.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Thats not very “shareholder value” of you. /s
Either we all die, or our owners will give us a few bucks to make a living (UBI style), but not enough to do more. We're fucked anyway.
It's okay. Elon said we'd all be rich thanks to UBI once the robots have taken over all the jobs. And Elon wouldn't lie.
/s
load more comments
(2 replies)
It's not that hard
Wealth caps. Worldwide. Start at something reasonable, say 10 million
Anything over that goes 100% tot axes. Nobody has a "right" to more than that, nobody needs more than that. No, you don't NEED three Lamborghini's, you don't need 20 houses.
Keep everything else the same, just a single rule to make a huge difference
Governments now will have enough income to fund a huge social net with free education, free healthcare, universal income so that people can spend money to keep the economy running
People now can choose to do some of the little work left.
On a side note: fuck these AI clowns for focussing on AI on exactly those tasks that make life worth living instead of focussing on the mundane shit tasks that nobody wants to do. Garbage collection still requires humans yet these shit stains claim that art andusic is now covered. Yay! Now we have shitty AI art and shitty jobs!
you don't even need that. If you have more brackets and keep going up in percentages and tax every type of income including investments in progressive way then you will get to a point where its just to hard to make more than say 10 million. We basically had this. When we had tax brackets that went up to 95% and only 40% for investment and that limited wealth quite a bit. Rates need to be the same regardless of source be it inheritance, lottery winnings, wages, or investments. Heck im fine with not paying taxes on things if you legally lock it up so it can't be sold. still have to pay any income it creates year to year but can't sell it or transfer it in any way. combine this with a 1% tax on all buying and selling which would be a massive reduction for most purchases but would be a vast increase for stock and bond trading. would completely clear out short term trading.
load more comments
(14 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
Thats assuming that complete transition goes unchallenged. I might be misanthropic, but history has shown humans can be fark'n stubborn
It's just gonna be the same 8 companies passing money between each other. Kinda like the Nvidia/openAI circle jerk. Us peasants will live in company towns, and be paid in company dollars that we can spend to buy food and water, from the company. Don't worry, they'll deduct rent straight from our checks.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Rich people mostly. But you can save your camp currency/scrip for a few years and buy some approved shoes or whatever at the work camp store.
People should consider reading Iron Heel by Jack London. Written in 1908 it is considered a social sci-fi, reading it now it feels like he came back from the future to write it.
load more comments
(1 replies)
This is pretty much what the empires in the world war era were asking. They found the answer and it was poor, developing countries.
who cares? that's not this year's problem let alone this quarter. this year, profits go up
It's illegal to look at next year
No one, hopefully, we've been buying far too much useless plastic garbage, replacing our electronics and appliances far more often than should be necessary, etc. etc. The whole economy is a sham.
Rich will give robots money to spend on them to make the feel better
They will push the hard problems they create off to an unfunded government as usual. The only way I can see this working is by nationalizing the AI companies. The billionaires will balk, but millions of people with pitchforks can be a great motivator. The main issue will be if we allow these people to build robot armies, in which case this whole transformation becomes a lot harder.
load more comments
(1 replies)
As long as corporations make products they create value where shareholders make money to buy products
That's not how things work. If people have to work to buy things, then people not being able to work can't buy things and the share value drops to $0.
The only way this works is with UBI
load more comments
(7 replies)
you will own nothing
Hmm 🧐
Politically the system of work in return for pay will have to change. Maybe a small amount of people may still work but most will probably get basic universal income. Thats the only politically feasible outcome
People and land become "the stuff" and are abused and traded as they wish.
view more: next ›