MonkeMischief
If it isn’t AI (geeze have to question everything now), I would hazard a guess that it could be various injuries from textile machines or something.
It could also be just standard “major ouchies incurred as children” but grew back oddly due to lack of access to medical care.
They tried this with firefighters before way back when, and then realized that fire doesn’t seem to care who’s subscribed or not lol. Can you imagine? “The fire and EMS lobby” would be powerfully pushing for reduced safety and maybe even starting fires themselves LOL.
Edit while looking up the first thing: Oh my word… mercenary firefighters are a thing for the rich and we’re living in clown world.
EDIT: Link went to NYT because it was top result, but screw that lol. Fixed.
I can see it now though…
Privatized emergency services be like:
“Thank you for calling 9-1-1, this is Janeanniesomebody, can I have your 14-digit emergency insurance number, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name please. Okay thank you, one moment while I verify that…” (Click)
"Your call is very important to us. Want to skip the line when it matters most? Did you know, for only $49.97 a month, you can get Emergency-Services-Plus+! Whether you want help fast, or to regret being covered for the rest of your life, we have a plan right for YOU!
“Remember, emergency insurance means you can have peace of mind that, when you’re in mortal danger, we’re only a phone call and 45-minutes-to-1-business-day away! Not signed up yet? Press 1, and we can help!”
((Trendy upbeat hold music))
“Did you know? We’re always hiring!”
(Receiver pickup) “Thank you for calling this is Devaidengregjimmothy, dispatch specialist, how can I help you today? Hello?..Hello?..”
But also, as I’m learning, not engaging with social media basically makes you invisible to a majority of social circles.
I tell people I’m an artist and they’re shocked I don’t have Instagram. “Yeah it sucks my attention away and traps me in doomscrolling. I’m on like, Signal and Discord tho!”
Awkward look annnd ghosted. Lol.
Being on predatory platforms sucks away your time and soul. (I remember twitter loved showing me stuff it knew would bother me.)
…but that’s where all the people are. What a concept.
All sound advice, but coming across the extra capital to invest, much less in your 20’s, is a harder prospect than it sounds for most people these days.
I’m not sure if you can get fractionals of SPY or VTI, but $300-500 a paycheck or even a month of money you can’t use on the moment is a hard ask for much of the working class.
It’s less like “Stop the avocado toast and lattés and netflix” and more “If you stopped buying a new graphics card every month you could afford stonks that will be mature when you are elderly.”
Lol like, we aren’t living in luxury and frivolous with our money in the first place, it usually poofs away into food and rent these days. (And gas and the car, if you aren’t in one of VERY few places that are walk and bike friendly.)
But for people who have it. This is a sound strategy. On that note, I have a relative who’s got very few expenses, often broke…and they’re constantly buying new full-priced releases on Steam. This degree of resource mismanagement vexes me so. Lol
Omg you knocked it out of the park with this one. Everything is such a race to the bottom in this system.
It’s always about competitive undercutting, and what’s the most ruthless cold-blooded calculations one can get away with, and this Type A disease of being obsessed with zero-sum conflict to reveal who’s the absolute best of everything.
“Why can’t we just chill and it’ll get there when it gets there?”
“What?! Look at (for example) China! Do you see them chilling? No! They normalized 12 hour shift burnout before us, this will increase their production 3%, and then undercut us by 12% and steal all our business and we’re screwed! So we need to squeeze our people harder to beat them!”
“…And then they’ll squeeze their people harder…so…?”
“…”
“…”
“This might be a good time to inform you we expect you to train the new overseas team before we’ll surprise ambush-fire your entire department.”
…Repeat the above but for undocumented immigrant labor…then maybe child labor…then probably right back around to slavery again…
“Oh no we all agreed this would be so bad for humanity, but gee, the competition did it and we wanna stay competitive so…”
Man seriously why can’t we all just be doing our own thing lol…
Fantastic thought-provoking points here. You’re right, that’s something I had kinda forgotten about when I wrote before:
Helping-professionals are (ideally) in those professions to help people, so their employers essentially hold patients/clients/students up as shields.
You’re right, to change things would require a cultural shift that sees providers as “people” rather than “services.” But generally it would be an extremely difficult PR war to sell to the people who require such services.
The soulless bosses are basically comic book villains: They know heroes will put themselves at considerable risk for the greater good, but won’t risk the harming of innocents…
…so the greedy ownership class hides behind those innocents and, what’s worse, trains them to accept such a low standard that any action that would drop that standard would turn the peoples’ anger against the heroes who already sacrifice so much to help them.
I hate not knowing what to do past understanding what’s so wrong. :(
