That all depends on the specifics of “good pay”. I guarantee there is some amount of money that I’ll accept to do practicaly any job. That may be far more than “good” though.

It’s a comforting thought, to believe destroying the world is their goal.

But no. In truth they simply don’t think about it. Their path to the power and resources that would save them and theirs from the world’s destruction might hasten that destruction. But that doesn’t matter. It’s easier for them to simply not think about it. They’re going to have everything they need to live a comfortable life, no matter the environment it brings about. They’re going to be fine.

What happens to the rest of us? It’s not even that they don’t care. We don’t matter enough for them to not care about us. We matter so little, our future doesn’t even occur to them.

It’s not evil. It’s apathy.
I’m not sure which is worse.

Not really. They’ll just raise their rates.

Or subscription, or freemium, or merch, or raffles. Lots of options beyond that even.

Advertisements distort the market arrangement. When one uses advertisements to generate revenue, it inherently creates a situation where the advertisers are the actual customers. This incentivizes the site toward the needs of the advertisers instead of the users in any situation where those needs don’t align.

So yes, eventually it would be the end of the world. Within a decade or two the site would go to hell. We’re seeing it already with most ad based sites. People are complaining Google is getting bad. We already know that Reddit is. That’s why most of us are here. News sites go to shit, when they distort themselves for advertisers. Example after example of advertising, making site after site worse over time.

The advertising model, is the original sin of the internet.
We need to find another way.

My default is Top6Hours

I usually just ask them, when I wan to see what my favorite people are up to.

Mastodon is organized around individuals. Lemmy is organized around topics.

The Lemmy way is far superior.

I’m not sure it’ll change much. We already know confessions, lineups, and nearly all “forensic sciences” are unreliable at best; frequently outright false. But they’re all still used, and wrongfully ruin peoples lives.

All they need is an “expert” to testify that, “by their judgment” a video is real.

It’s a freemium model.

There is a feature limited free version. Then a full featured version people pay for.

In this case, there’s also a business version with per-user billing.

What it describes isn’t a “Wealth Tax” at all!

I get the feeling people are using the term wealth tax for anything that makes the wealthy pay more taxes.

It bugs me when clear specific terms get turned into uselessly ambiguous terms.

Meaningless? Sure. But you can’t say they’re pointless!

When people say there are no stupid questions. My go to question is:

Is this question I’m currently asking, a stupid question?

Reality can be (and often is) very sad indeed.

It’s a team effort.

That was me in the early 80s. It’s why I took first grade twice.

I was lucky though. My mother just happened to be a remedial reading teacher. So after she tried every other option, she broke down and finally tried phonics. That was the missing piece. it suddenly all made sense to me.

Turns out memorization is my biggest learning disability. It would be impossible for me to memorize thousands of words. But with some work, I could memorize the sounds of a couple dozen letters.

After that I was a reading machine.

Still can’t spell for shit though. Been relying on spell check since the 3rd grade.

The modern Neoliberal capitalist philosophy of shareholders being the only priority, isn’t the only capitalist philosophy.

The Imbeded liberalism after the new deal, worked quite well. Since the employees are making the products, and management is making the decisions, while the shareholders don’t directly make anything for the company; People understood that the shareholders were the last priority, in getting profits. It’s why worker wages scaled with productivity until the 80s.

That’s when the Neoliberal capitalist philosophy took hold and gained power. First the Republicans with Regan, then Democrats with Clinton, then the global economy, since so much of it is driven by the US.