• the_doktor
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    7 months ago

    I cannot imagine such a dystopian, nightmarish place where you can only pay with something that personally identifies you. Congrats for living in a nightmare. I’d leave.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Yeah, sure, where to? I live in the Netherlands, one of the wealthiest countries. I’ve seen many parts of the world in my time in the navy. There aren’t many places better then here, honestly. Only Norway scores higher, they have a lot of things worked out much better then the rest of us. But paying with plastic is very common there too. Also, digitalization doesn’t have to be bad. Look at Estonia, I think many countries can benefit from their system. See here a video on it by Kraut. There’s a difference between digitalization and a system like China has. But my expenses should be private at least, so cash would be best. They just make it harder every day. We used to be able to say “I’m not interesting, no one cares what I do, no one is going to check me”. But now we have AI, now every one of us indeed IS interesting. And everyone is being checked to teach the algorithm. Countries with few laws to protect privacy and welfare of it’s inhabitants, like the US for example, can turn to a totalitarian control state in no time with just one crazy idiot as a leader. At least the US never had idiots as president 👀. At least the US doesn’t have a history of wanting to collect everyone’s data 👀. At least they are not actively doing anything with the data, like China or Russia does 👀.

      But on your point of living in a dystopian world: Yeah, we fucking do. But it doesn’t matter where we live. It’s dystopian everywhere. We live in World War III while we have to fight to get the bare minimum of privacy, we must work our ass off for the bare minimum of living standards and we buy products we do not own. Difference between the rich and poor has never been as high as now and the military strongest countries are run by idiots and dictators. Mass amount of people see Elon Musk as our savior for a better future, the biggest narcissistic hypocritical scam artist our there. At least Trump isn’t president anymore. Oh wait… Seriously, the movie Idiocracy isn’t a comedy, it’s a documentary. I seriously think the US would benefit if it had Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho as president over Trump.

      While the rest of the world turns more extremist every day (especially right wing) with rising world tensions.

      So if I plan on moving it will be out of the world of the living at best.

      • the_doktor
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        7 months ago

        It’s funny how in our dystopian America (and I agree, it is), at least we can still pay for things anonymously.

        What a concept.

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          In Berlin people will hate you if you’d draw your card. But to get cash is hard, not many ATM’s. Also in many countries the limit of what you can withdraw and deposit is being lowered more and more. But at least it helps against criminality. But it’s not like they care about that in the US seeing the corrupt judiciary system, privatized incarceration system (including slavery), corrupt and racist police, organized crime with tight connections to government officials, the insane amount of guns widely available (including military guns), the massive drug use, etc etc.

          But at least they have their freedom. Or well, except for the insane amount of incarcerated people. Oh and if you’ve got a really weird and twisted idea of freedom. Like, free to grab a gun if you want to shoot around at your school, but not free to feel safe anywhere anytime. No safety you won’t become homeless if you have a medical issue. But you’re free to do forced free labor when you get wrongfully incarcerated for being black, or because the incompetent jury fell for the charmes of the prosecuter or didn’t like the face of your lawyer.

          Talking about dystopian, the US really ticks all the boxes. They could do a great dystopian TV show. Every season a different dystopian world. US, China, North Korea, Russia, Turkmenistan, South Africa, Venezuela, etc. I’d watch that.