I know they’re supposed to be good for the environment. But… Holy smokes they drive me up the wall. They really do!
I had no trouble adapting when aluminum can pull-tabs got replaced by push-tabs, because it was pretty much the same movement, and I could see the immediate advantage of not getting cut by a pull-tab.
But the tethered cap is fighting decades of muscle memory in me: I’m used to taking the cap off with one hand and keeping it there while taking a swig with the other. Now I unscrew the cap with one hand, but I still have to hold the cap so it’s out of the way. It feels like drinking in handcuffs each and every time…
So unlike the pull-tab, the tethered plastic bottle cap is one of those compulsory eco solutions that constantly make you feel ever-so-slightly more miserable all the time, and I hate that because ecology only works when it brings something of value both to people and to the environment.
But life isn’t declining due to capitalism. Life is declining due to government interference in the free market.
Take the housing crisis for example. Do you realize how constantly and continually government suppresses new housing construction? It’s ongoing, it’s everywhere. And it’s making all our lives harder, every day.
Can’t afford your insulin injections? Gee it’s too bad we don’t have a free market for insulin, given how easy it is to make a profit on it. Nope, we control that with an iron fist and ensure the supply is tiny.
Is your boss treating you like shit, giving you no respect, and piling new responsibilities on you like there’s no tomorrow? Maybe that has to do with thousands of small businesses being forcibly closed a couple years ago. Just destroyed by the government. Wantonly. For our safety of course. But without any democratic feedback whatsoever, the government just forced these businesses to close.
Now there’s less competition between employers, reducing the degree to which companies have to provide an attractive working environment.
Where capitalism actually operates unhindered, people flourish. The suffering we’re all subjected to is the result of poison injected into our market by the government.
The fuck???
Buddy. No. Just no.
The resistance to building multi-unit housing comes from the neighborhoods themselves. Zoning commissions aren’t made up of wealthy politicians. They’re local. They’re usually also heavily tied to developers who know they can make more money selling single family, detached, housing. Federal regulation banning single family detached housing in densely populated areas would actually increase housing supply.
Then there’s the problem of nobody regulating corporate housing purchases as investments. Or large rental companies colluding on pricing to drive up rates.
All of that is a lack of regulation, not a surplus.
Insulin is not hard to manufacture and the basic generic stuff is very cheap. It’s the designer insulin that’s expensive, and the government is trying to reduce the cost in it’s pro capitalism way.
Small businesses have been getting slaughtered by Walmart for decades. And now you care? Now? No. There’s just no credibility for this. Capitalism is very happy to create monopolies with no oversight. That’s Econ 101, unless you’re at Liberty University.
This reads like a libertarian rant. And all you need to know about libertarianism is it’s backed by the ultra wealthy. They aren’t backing it because they care about you.