The owner also gets a wage and benefits while the process is running.

And much of the time, they’re spending VC money. Minimal personal risk.

And even so, that doesn’t justify the owner keeping almost all of the proceeds. I don’t care if they put their life savings into it. Labor built it.

But on the flipside, it’s hard for me to stay concentrated while at home.

While I believe that is true for you, I don’t believe it justifies the lost time, health, and environmental damage of mandating in-office for everyone.

The office is super distracting for many people.

The laid off workers also suffer the loss, typically.

Furthermore, I don’t think “he gambled” compellingly makes this system fair or good.

Oh, I read your thing backwards then.

I can’t imagine wanting to go into the office on the regular. The commute. The lost time (can math out to like a 20% pay cut, if you spend two hours a day traveling + getting ready). The sickness. The lack of control over environment (temperature, sound).

Can’t relate to it. And I’m a very social person that likes interacting with people.

Every day I’m a little surprised there’s no news story of some workers beating their “no, you have to come into the office” manager to death. They’ve got means, motive, and opportunity, and it’s extra funny because if they’d been allowed to work at home they wouldn’t have at least two of those.

But really we’re ruled by the worst of us. Cowards and fools.

Maybe unionizing is safer than hitting the decision makers with an office chair while screaming “you made this possible” until they can’t even cry anymore.

Working from home doesn’t appeal to the emotional needs of fragile managers.

Keep track of your spending. Find simple and cheap things you like. There’s hours of entertainment at the free public library. There’s free meetups all over.

I had a friend that ordered food delivery for every meal. That’s like $25k/year on food, in $35 chunks. Don’t do that. Don’t aspire to that.

Use thrift stores, buy nothing groups, freecycle, yard sales etc. I got most of the furniture for my first apartment for $230 (inflation adjusted) when I first moved out. Couch, table, chairs, dresser. The couch didn’t survive the next move, but everything else is solid.

You can probably salvage an old computer by putting Linux on it rather than shelling out for a new one. I saved my friend a lot of money reviving their ancient laptop like that.

Some people have this idea that spending money frivolously or conspicuously is cool. They’re assholes and fools.

Keep in touch with friends. Most of my jobs I got because I knew someone. The job process is broken, run by idiots and slop machines.

If living with your parents isn’t driving you crazy, don’t worry about it. Save the money.

That’s one of the core injustices of capitalism.

Rich person says “Build a thing”

Workers design, research, and build the thing.

Rich person keeps the profits.

No. Don’t think I was even invited to any.

I’m not close to anyone from high school. I haven’t talked to anyone from that era in years. I wasn’t my best self back then, and I don’t really want to relive it.

Other answers are good.

I expect there’s a lot of racism, too. A lot of people don’t want those people to have nice things, even if it means personally suffering.

If you build a nice train system, you might have to see those people on your day to day. In a car, you’re isolated and feel safe.

But mostly I expect it’s because of the massive highway system that was built without corresponding passenger rail.

I was outside the city a couple weeks ago and saw a lot of maga stuff. Maybe I should get like stickers or business cards for this site to leave places like that.

100%. I think a lot about one of my friends when trying to think about that kind of user. Smart lady. Advanced degree. Has her life together. Would absolutely not want to try to install an OS. Wouldn’t even know how to start.

But I’m confident if I handed her a Linux laptop, she’d use it just the same as a Mac or Windows machine.

Right. Inertia is the metaphor I used to express that idea.

I don’t think that’s actually very many people. Not for their personal computers. Most people don’t run much more than a web browser, if they don’t play games.

Good. Fuck Microsoft. No regrets about running Linux for the past few years.

It’s not the PC games keeping people so much. Proton solved a lot of that problem. It’s inertia.

Most people don’t care about things. They just don’t. Their brains just don’t have the juice.

My leading hypothesis is “management is stupid”. It explains a lot of this sort of thing.

Increasing traffic surveillance to automatically ticket scofflaws who block bus lanes, and deploying police officers to enforce rules on 20 daily routes, up from 14.

Good. Anti social assholes blocking bus lanes (and bike lanes) need to be stopped. They probably have a primitive moral reasoning framework, so maybe punishment is the only thing that understand.

I recently reopened Witcher 3, and was kind of surprised by how the graphics aren’t as lifelike as my memory. I remember being a lot more impressed by the bodies when it was new.

It’s all in-group pandering and shitty petro-masculinity. No conservatives should be in power. They are bad people.