Unions getting too big and voting in blocks

Yes, a voting bloc is typically needed for a change of law to pass. That bloc represents the people who have an interest in that change.

Laws need to be passed to protect the workers

Yet you object to workers organising for group representation, and voting as a bloc? Without a workers' representative voting bloc that is large enough to pressure the lawmakers, how exactly do you think worker protection laws are passed?

The trouble is that, currently, the main link of this post (“URL”) is not to the article, but to the graphic image.

(The image for the post should be entered at the “Thumbnail URL”; or you can leave that blank and Lemmy will fetch the image served from the article).

What's important is to put the URL that you want us to visit in the “URL” field of your post. Could you edit now to do that?

anyone running vanilla debian for desktop?

Yes. With more cult-of-the-new OSen, I got quickly tired of unwanted churn and the resulting breakages.

Standardising all my (user-facing) devices on Debian means I can choose how rapidly I want it to change, but everything about how to use and configure the system applies to them all.

Devices I never want to think about except to patch security vulnerabilities? Debian “stable”, which makes that a promise.

Devices I want software that's had a good period of shaking out already? Debian “testing” runs on my desktop and notebook devices.

Devices I want the instability of changing packages, to whatever has recently released by package maintainers? Debian “unstable”. Though this latter has for the past decade been entirely in temporary virtual machines, that get created on demand and then discarded as soon as whatever I'm futzing around with has succeeded or failed.

Seen a while ago on the Fediverse:

Oh, are they sharing it with me, with all their workers, with the rest of us? Yeah that's what I expected. So tell me again why should I give a shit about “shareholder value”?

If anyone knows of above board methods to establish a crowd funded piggy bank for something like this, I’m all ears.

For crowd funding, I'm a fan of Liberapay and fund a lot of my favourite people and projects that way.

Seconding the recommendation for Firefox, which is the only mainstream browser that will allow an ad blocker that isn't compromised.

Google Chrome cripples effective ad blockers (like uBlock Origin, which I also recommend), unsurprisingly because Google is one of the major forces wanting to push adverts. So it's inherently insecure by comparison.

Instead of ignorant (as in, we don't have the relevant information) speculation, please leave time and space for those charged with investigating the matter, to do their job and report what they find.

Wild speculation only fuels exactly the kind of madness that leads to this violence. Please stop.

Good news.

I don't care what combination it is, but we need both direct progressive taxation and closing of wealth-hiding loopholes. Leave the ultra wealthy nowhere to hide.

“This wind farm alone will provide enough renewable energy to power 1.2 million homes – it’s a great example of why we need to press ahead with transmission infrastructure to distribute renewable energy across the state,” said Kat Lucas-Healey, Environment Victoria’s senior climate and energy advisor.

“The two battery energy storage systems included as part of the project will ensure power keeps flowing even when winds are light – keeping the lights on in Western Victoria and across the state.”

This is one reason why the LibNat coalition is deperate to block projects like this: They demonstrate the lies about reliability. It's renewables plus battery that is far more reliable than coal-fired power, and the more of these come online the more obvious that will be.

things have to change

Yeah, your platform is sociopathic and your policies suck. Improve those to match reality, and maybe we can talk then.

Betteridge's law of headlines applies here also: The answer is “no”.

The LLMs and diffusion models (that are what that author clearly means by the vague “AI” marketing term) have no mind, have no intention, have no understanding of any part of reality, have no experience, have no sensations or suffering, and have no way of ever gaining any of those things.

They are (unreliable) guessing machines, that never know anything or experience anything or intend anything or want anything.

They are not moral agents, they have no capacity to ever become moral agents or any kind of life. Please, everyone in the media, learn to tell the difference between a marketing lie versus the reality of what these things are.

Whatever the future holds for artificial minds or artificial life, these things are fundamentally not that, by design.

No1 out here creating a critischism

Having the Government run ~200 stores isn’t going to drastically cut prices to make things more affordable, not without underpaying staff or suppliers?

As a government-run business, they have no need to pursue profit; they provide a service to people. The point of state-run grocery stores is to spend government money providing for people's needs, there is no justification to underpay workers nor suppliers, nor to overcharge for the groceries.

Pay the suppliers a fair rate for their goods; this might be above what the duopolists pay, and that's no problem. Charge a retail price low enough that people can afford groceries. Pay the workers enough to decently remunerate their work; this might be above what other grocery workers are paid, and that's no problem.

The Australian government can always pay whatever Australian dollars are needed for this. By legislating they will pay the money they thereby create the money to pay for it. We should demand they pay for whatever is needed to provide what we need, without any condition on the business to return any profit.

Perhaps that results in a business that returns no profit. Perhaps as a business even ends up spending more money than it brings in. This is fine, so long as it does what we need it to do for that money spent.

(For those concerned with the risk of inflation by spending government money: that's a valid concern! But paying decent prices to farmers for food, paying decent wages to workers in the grocery stores, is not what drives inflation. Let's reduce inflation by taxing away the super-wealth of billionaires.)

All of these valid goals are compatible simultaneously, because there is no need for the state-run grocery business to be profitable. Government is meant to provide for its people, it is irrelevant whether the business returns a profit.

So you say that Australians

need to start taking the medicine

yet when asked how that will improve the situation, you say

I am not saying it will improve, i think its inevitable a lot of people will get hurt, those without likely.

So, I'm not seeing why those without “need to start taking the medicine”. If it's inevitable they will get hurt whether or not they “take the medicine”, I think they'd be right to say: no we don't and bugger off for saying we need to.

I think it's not inevitable (as in: cannot be avoided) that a lot of disadvantaged people will get hurt. That can be avoided, because it will happen only by the choices the powerful make. It can be avoided, if we collectively choose to avoid it.

Aus is an affluent country used to having a high disposable income.

There is significant wealth inequality in Australia. Many, many people do not have a high disposable income. Should they “take the medicine” of job precarity, housing unaffordability, and price hikes? How would that improve the situation?

If anyone needs another sign that today's ABC has no regard for ordinary people: a reduction in housing prices is framed uncritically as “worse”.

I, too, want a government that protects and provides for its people, and stops pretending it cannot.

Some goals are too important to compromise; many of those are in the Greens party platform.

Do you have important poltical goals you think should be open to compromise?

Stop the nonsense about “shrinking tax base”. Australia's government spends as much as it wants any time it wants; Australian government spending does not come from taxation.

People aren't going to be moved to commit to the huge life change of raising a child, by a measly one-time “bonus”. They need a robust system of social support, good wages for reasonable working hours in fair conditions, an end to private monopolies on essentials, housing security. And, as NigelFrobisher points out, meaningful and demonstrated progress to a livable future in the world.

All things that are needed prior to the commitment to raising children. All things our federal government is empowered to do, that it doesn't need to wait for any “tax base” to fund, that will work much better than a “baby bonus”.

Does Australia need our government to use its unilateral power to spend, to meaningfully fight the causes of climate change, to fund universal social services and stop being scared of a fiscal deficit?

I'm glad Assange is back. His voice and ideas remain relevant.

I'm not glad he's on Xitter. The sooner everyone everywhere stops doing anything there, stops posting or paying any undue attention to it, the better.

So, live your life with joy and principle

Sure thing, just need to remove a primary barrier to that which is a massive wealth disparity which screws the policies ruling our lives and which keeps a decent life financially out of reach.

We must end billionaires so that we can all have a chance at a life of joy and principle.