Am I the only one bothered by this?
(midwest.social)
Programmer Humorcross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/36883936
While I do hate seeing it, if I decided not to shop there just because of that, there would barely be anywhere to shop.
- Not about programming.
- There are 4 top level comments, all casting small business owners negatively.
The fediverse is as artificially manipulated as reddit.
- I don't like it.
- I don't agree with it.
Clearly this is the result of artificial manipulation.
Yawn
I think fediverse is just full of retards rather than manipulated tbh
The frediverse is more of an echo chamber then reddit ever was. It's awful sometimes.
There’s not enough users for an echo, it’s just bias, and a group of users control most of the “dialogue”.
Remember: Just because a business is small doesn't mean it's automatically better. For example, if Bezos ran a corner shop with only three employees, he'd still try and stop them from taking toilet breaks.
There have been many studies showing that money changes people, specifically affecting empathy and pro-social behavior. I'm having trouble finding non-paywalled papers atm but this article seems like a decent overview: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_money_changes_the_way_you_think_and_feel
Jeff Bezos did at one time run a small business (Amazon started as an online bookshop operated from home). I've never heard of him doing evil shit like that back then.
I don't believe anyone is born evil. Jeff Bezos became evil. And that probably could have been prevented if we just, like, had better tax laws.
Evil is largely circumstantial. If you somehow became a billionaire, you'd probably be evil too.
That said, yes, there are plenty of small business owners who are raging shitbags, too.
Robert Caro disagrees. Power does not corrupt, it reveals. If you somehow became a billionaire, you'd be able to do whatever you wanted, which means we'd be able to see what you wanted to do. If you start acting evil once you get money, it means you were evil but unable to act on it until you had money.
Specifically about Amazon, Bezos made it because he wanted to cash in on the early internet with his own startup, leaving a Wall Street firm to do so. And, yes, we was a dick to his only employee, which is why the man quit after only 5 years.
sure. Because he has his whole Amazon Empire to fallback on so has room to be such an ass to his tiny corner store.
If Bezos was just a guy living in a Suburban Home and the Corner Store was his only source of living being a jerk is still possible, but not to the level he is IRL as locals will know how bad of a boss he is and not go to his store or employe with him.
It's not like they even have to break the bank to do better. Simplicity and low production value looks can make ads stick out more now than ever.
Related tweet: https://bsky.app/profile/komaniecki.bsky.social/post/3mtgzfnapbc2q
https://www.404media.co/we-are-living-in-a-chatgpt-flyer-pandemic/
Also:
local business ->
just a franchise store <-
Business owners are (generally) not your allies in the class war, no matter how small or large their business is.
So running a craft studio and selling your art direct to people in your area makes you a class traitor now?
Man, I'm having trouble keeping up with who we're supposed to hate guys.
No. Owning a business (as in, means of production) makes you a different class — bourgeois — not a class traitor. Belonging to a different class naturally changes what benefits you.
And yeah you shouldn't automatically hate some petite bourgeois guy, they may be closer to lumpenproletariat than they are to haute bourgeois. But, as long as they own the business, they have a fundamentally different set of goals under capitalism compared to you, a worker.
It's not about hating small business owners. It's about them belonging to the owning class with those class interests. Something like raising the minimum wage can put their interests at odds with many people they share an income bracket with. It would actually be a good thing if they were a class traitor, because that would mean they were siding with us proles.
You hit a false dichotomy. "Not your allies" does not automatically mean "class traitors". They might be neutral.
Stop strawmanning it. You're arguing in bad faith when you use an example nobody is talking about.
Obviously, they mean that small business people are generally (remember that word?) still owner class capitalists, which are generally not your friend if you're a wagey.
They did say generally. They also said "no matter how small their business is."
You can judge it pretty succinctly: if they are controlling a resource that others depend on in order to live (such as deriving a wage), then they are the bourgeoisie. What you’re referring to is closer to lumpenproletariat — someone who works for themselves
Okay, so if they employ someone part time to help with the bookkeeping, then I'm supposed to hate them, but not before? Just trying to understand.
God I can feel your sneering condescension through this post.
I can almost hear the subtle lisp rasping through your teeth as you read your own posts back to yourself.
I don't know what you look like, but I know the people who bullied me in highschool would have bullied you twice as hard.
The fuck kind of insult is that? "You look like a bullying victim"? Be better.
then I’m supposed to hate them, but not before?
No! Hate them if they're different!! Any kind of identifiable difference!!! If they're not with you they are obviously against you!! !! Don't just sit around bitching about it on the internet, take real action!! !!! The elections are rigged and useless anyway, direct action is the only thing that makes a difference!!! !!! If you don't do it now, THEY will only make things WORSE for you!!! ! !!!
/s !!! !! !!!
having trouble keeping up with who we’re supposed to hate
Everyone. The bots are going for maximal conflict and strife - spend more time online, find more outrageous reasons to hate more people.
i think this ignores the material demographic reality that whereas when that quote was said most of the world was the proletariat, now most of the world is middle class (at least, the world that Lemmy users live in)
"Most of the world" is definitely not petite bourgeois (which is what "middle class" is supposed to mean), neither in the west nor elsewhere. There are only ~36E6 small businesses in the US, many of which share owners and some of which are just shell companies. Even if we assume that every small business was owned by a single person, it's still only around 10% of the population, in the "most entrepreneurial" country in the west.
The middle class has been shrinking my entire adult life. The gap between people who start with nothing and work their way up and the people who start with a massive boost and accelerate in wealth accumulation faster than the bootstrappers ever could has grown by an astounding multiple in the past 50 years.
you're right, but "Business owners are (generally) not your allies in the class war, no matter how small or large their business is." is a mentality from 120 years ago. (to borrow an expression now co-opted by (sigh) LLMs, the backsliding in the past 50 years is just a drop in the bucket when compared to the improvements that absorbing the Soviet Union's social policies brought the world.)
the difference between then and now is enough to require radical change to that quote. back then, the middle class was opposed to the proletariat. now, you are the middle class and you agree with uniting with the proletariat to oppose the hyperbourgeois. if you are not blue-collar nor an "unskilled" laborer, you are middle-class.
Standards of living (in "the West") have improved such that even the poor of today would be considered to be enjoying "upper middle class" comforts from 100 years ago, and the old saw about kings of 400 years ago being unable to buy the luxuries and comforts of the poor today is very true. But that doesn't change the skew of the distribution. We're headed back to kings and peasants, and ultimately that will bring down the kings' absolute standards of living - even as they continue to dominate the peasants ever more decisively in wealth and power.
The part that bothers me the most comes from my experience living in the City of Miami, where the wealthy lived along Biscayne Bay and the working poor staffed the shopping along Biscayne Boulevard. I could afford a house between the two, so that's what I bought. With the poor and disenfranchised in such close proximity, the rich had to be hypervigilant about security. You would worry about being mugged, burgled in the night, vandalized while not present, etc. etc. etc. worried because you saw examples of it. We had a car stolen, apparently as part of a gang initiation. When the poor have more opportunity for advancement, they do actually spend less time making trouble, have less of a pissed off attitude when working in the shops, etc. For an extreme extension, Key Biscayne was a popular community for rich Colombians to buy into, they literally were relieved that their children could play in the streets without worry of kidnapping and ransom - back home where they were so rich relative to their fellow citizens, those kidnapping and ransom situations were common.
So, sure, we should "work hard to get ahead" - not game the system so that a select few who get ahead have multiples of thousands of times the wealth of the median and leave no realistic avenues for the rest to follow them.
Best to just give it all to the same billionaire, then.
Best to not spend any money on anything at all if you can possibly avoid it.
Best protest you can make is to limit your participation in the economy as much as possible. They want your money. Don't give it to them.
Don't get too wrapped up in a bunch of numbers in the computer system that represent... nothing. The only thing money does is manipulate the behavior of people, it's not edible, it won't keep you warm and dry at night, it's not even a good way to get around town - all that money does is convince other people to do these things for you in exchange for money - until it doesn't.
So, yeah, it's the social game - but it's also obviously rigged - so unless you're a player at the higher levels, just collect as much as you need - earn faster than you spend - and don't stress too much about fair, there's no such thing as fair in the adult world.
Who said that was the alternative? You fucking clowns...
"oh so other capitalists might still be capitalists? That must mean you want to suck Bezos' dick!"
Again. Clown. That's you.
You never gave any alternative, and still haven't. It's starting to look like you don't have one.
They made one comment. It's a bit early to start drawing conclusions.
If you want an alternative, how about not giving it all to anyone? How about judging the company on their values and practices rather than their size?
I beg to differ. People who start with that level of aggression combined with that lack of actual content rarely bring solutions to the table.
I'm all for reducing consumption (pretty easy for me, because I hate buying things), but people still need things from time to time. I'm also all for judging a company by their values, but I would like to point out that you're the first one to mention size.
The original post was talking about preferring local business, which is often correlated with size but sometimes not. The comment I responded to was suggesting local business be rejected by virtue of being a business, which I didn't find particularly helpful without a suggestion for alternatives.
No, all I'm saying is that small business owners are on the same side of the class divide as billionaires, so it's not surprising they resort to the cheapest sloppies solutions and are trying to replace creative people with soulless automation.
They have to reduce cost to stay competitive. I can relate tho. Because some people who decide these things are blind for how AI-y their shit looks and that it screams incredibly low quality/seriousness/professionality/legitimacy and low effort/dedication.
It's free to take a photo with a phone, or forgo pictures. The question is, how many potential customers are put off by their slop?
Yeah I don't care about small business to feel bad about casting judgement like this.
It's certainly annoying and difficult to disagree, but it's the "trendy new thing". It'll disappear in it's current state then become something new. Whether for or against, I feel that it's going to improve beyond the detectable stage soon, and what comes then is the conversation I feel is inevitable.
TLDR: It's everywhere because it's a trend, there will be pushback, then the tech will move into a new phase. What is the next phase?
No it's not a trend but the tools will get better to the point where people won't notice. Truth is design is expensive and difficult for many small businesses - so having all that for free is a great deal
Yeah also this thread is funny to me because it suffers from a thing I see on lemmy frequently, which is thinking that small business owners care at all what such a tiny microcosm of people like lemmy users care about. The vast majority of small business foot traffic is going off of word of mouth (in person or digital), advertising, or good reviews on aggregators like yelp or google maps, very little of their foot traffic comes from people just walking by and going "ew, AI ad, no thanks"
Agreed.
I'm living in Thailand right now and the AI menus are everywhere which are disliked by many but not "leave business" levels of dislike, it's just tacky but more importantly it's functional as design is expensive and people don't necessarily have the english and design skills available to express their business. In ideal world we'd want all venues to be personally crafted art expressions but until we reach post resource scarcity we need to recognize that function > form, especially for people who don't have resource security.
To me this sentiment feels like punching down: "oh you don't have the privilege of hand crafting your business - fuck you!" which frankly is a disgusting rich people privilege. Free markets will sort it out at commercial scale but leave small businesses out of this shit.
