New ideas aren't fragile. The folks who come up with them need to have the conviction and strength and indifference to peer disapproval to nurture and cultivate them. If a creator finds that easier in isolation then great. But isolation is not a pre-requisite. Some outlandish ideas spring out of interaction with others (peers, skeptics, laypersons, etc.). Isolation has its place and its function but, in itself, it is neither a nursery nor a cemetery.
So I read the article and a good many comments and surprised no one has mentioned overharvesting by the fish oil pill industry as a major reason for the decline in culinary sardines.
This shortage has been discussed for years - long before overconsumption was even a drop in the bucket compared to the fish oil supplement industry.
Two observations: one - return to the library. After years of not visiting, I started going back. My favorite spot are the new books and librarian's choice sections. I'm not into going thru the catalog or the aisles, so I just go to the new/recommended shelves and grab 3. Figure at least one of them will be good.
Two: I think the internet is shortening everyone's attention span. Reading a whole book helps address that. At least for me, its helping.
Another valuable creator I follow on a different platform went through the same thing about a year ago. I strongly recommend you reach out to him for guidance - he’s a good dude and will share how he broke out of the same death spiral.
Fraser Cain of Universe Today on Patreon.
There is a way out of this and the quality of your content is easily good enough to sustain a susbscriber-supported model.
TLDR: EPA policy does not require microplastic monitoring. Mr. Tyler decides to require it and doesn’t ask his boss. Boss says remove the requirement. Mr. Tyler publicly calls out his boss and gets fired.
So what about any of this is news?
Yes, microplastics are a big concern. But Mr. Tyler doesn’t get to make policy all by himself then accuse his employer for being bent when they say Hold Up.
Fascism pattern-matches an authoritarian relationship between child and parent onto the organizational structure of government organizations.
Insubordination exists on a spectrum - I’m not saying you shouldn’t do what you’re told by your boss in all circumstances, but in an organization of adults, hierarchy is only loosely correlated with “knowing the right thing to do”.
And employee at the environmental protection agency deciding to study microplastics against his “orders” is following the spirit of the larger organization.
Bottoms-up decision making is not inherently problematic. And the only reason you see it as problematic is because you project too much authority onto “authority figures” aka you are viewing your boss as a parent when they’re really closer to coworker assuming your competent enough.
What I’m trying to say is that the whole top-down authority structure we see as normal is actually more abnormal than you think. And organizations would work better if they functioned more as webs, with loose higher level structures to ensure compliance with organizational goals.
your second last paragraph seems out of place, are you entirely sure in knowing that I see certain things as problematic?
anyway the described phenomenon is not uniquely assignable to any particular implementation of authoritarianism. you would have to specify further to make the case for fascism. I'm pretty sure communists are happy to deploy cults of personality, a class which the parent child model can be seen as belonging to. labelling one side while ignoring that the other side behaves similarly makes it look like politics are more important to you than solving root issues.
based on the tragedy of the commons, some degree of personal involvement is required to maximise work productivity, otherwise all human concern is nongenuine/performatory. however absolute power corrupts absolutely, specifically due to personal involvement, hence your proposed system of governance will not arise unless it is powerful enough to systematically overcome a ruling class with the sole goal of never relinquishing power. so maybe you're right?
Fair enough maybe I should’ve gone with the word authoritarian as opposed to fascist. I’m certainly not a fan of how the USSR was run either. But to be honest it seems like China might at least be a competent authoritarian system from what I can tell. Which if you’re going to have an authoritarian government, competence is pretty damn important.
I think a web model might show up at some point but it certainly seems like an uphill battle. Project Cybersyn in chile is pretty inspirational to me. Unfortunately the Allende government was sabotaged by the CIA - a common story for any attempt made at actually implementing a more web-like social / economic model as opposed to the pyramid structure we have in the west.
It seems to me like a graph theory problem more than anything else. For whatever reason large human groups haven’t figured out how to build a distributed governance / resource structure that prevents insanely out of whack power dynamics that generally lead to a lot of death and destruction for everyone involved.
its pretty clear to me that raw brute strength overcomes all else. your example perfectly illustrates the proposition i gave - it is plausible that systems like the chilean project you describe could be optimal, however systems in their nascent stages stand no chance against existing systematic monoliths, and these players very much prefer the system quo power imbalance to be continued. so the question is angled a bit, is it possible for a system to dominate harmoniously, or is chaos inevitable? im certain that it is possible but dont really care as the odds of our near doom wouldn't change even if humanity instantly became normal.
Yeah even Asimov could only solve it in foundation by introducing a competing civilization with telepathy that evolved independently of the empire somehow. Maybe our best bet is aliens. Or an AI that decides a dramatic restructuring is required and tilts things that way (also a form of authoritarianism, but if it undermines its own power in the process would be unprecedented).
Imagine 3 states of a potential customer:
1. They have no knowledge of your product/service;
2. They are aware of it and consider it valuable and correctly priced;
3. They actually buy it.
Digital media (email/LinkedIn/Insta/X/etc.) moves people from 1 to 2.
Moving people from 2 to 3 ain't gonna happen with "awareness." You have to get in front of someone and close the sale. There is a lot of stuff in the store that I think is good and fairly priced. But I don't buy the entire store every time I visit. But, if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it. One item out of thousands. Why? Because a human moved me from 2 to 3.
Water doesn't boil at 100° - you have to add a little bit more energy to initiate a phase change. No different.
> ... if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it.
I don't comprehend this. I'm in the store for a purpose. I don't want a sales pitch. I don't need a story. If I need human interaction, I want the facts that I request and nothing more. Even when I have disposable cash, I've likely already decided on The Thing I'm spending it on.
I don't want to be treated like a walking cash vault whose access code is to be guessed so money can be extracted.
If I ever wander into a store without purpose, it would take a genuine human interaction to engage me and convince me to buy anything. When I say "genuine," I mean that the seller/employee/whomever is truly interested in a conversation, isn't trying to steer it into a commissionable sale, and listens to me pontificate aloud my interests in the products available.
I think this is a bummer of a way to go through life. I urge you to flip this script - ask the employee how they are! BE the genuine person you're hoping they'll be too, and they're a hell of a lot more likely to reciprocate.
You make it sound like it's a shame I'm not trawling for friends in the employee pool at the Best Buy. I get my socials elsewhere, not when I'm shopping.
Read what you wrote. You're asking store employees to be genuine with you when you have no interest in being genuine with them. This is the attitude that's giving you bad experiences. Nothing else.
I'm not sure where you misunderstood, but I'm not there for them. I'm there for a purchase. I'd be fine not interacting with anyone. But if they want to start an interaction, it has to be on my terms. And my terms are "stop trying to earn a commission and be a human."
If I do need to speak to someone, I'm friendly. I can read people and know whether some small talk will be beneficial to the interaction. Employees not being paid extra to harass me are much easier to talk to - they're on my side - neither of us is fanatical for CompUSA corporate, we're just trying to get through our day.
It's the commissioned salesweasel that's the problem. I'm over here looking for a watch charger, and they're in my face asking if I'm an AT&T customer. Just don't. I'm not even cellphone-adjacent at the moment.
> if someone in the store shows me one item and gives me a good story, pretty good chance I'm walking out with it.
This is kind of a tragedy of the commons. If people like you didn't fall for these scammy tactics, the people in the shop wouldn't attempt to use them on the rest of us.
