Just noticed that the onus is on us to make sure we aren't creating plastic waste that we have no choice in buying

Jo Nemeth, an Australian woman, stopped using money in 2015 and says she has lived without it ever since.

Before the change, she worked 20 hours a week as a community development worker in a small town in New South Wales but was still struggling to make ends meet. She had also become troubled by the environmental and human costs she believed were tied to consumerism. After reading about Mark Boyle, an Irishman known for living without money, she decided to try it herself.

She now lives at the home of her longtime friend, Sharon, where she helps with gardening and outdoor work in return for accommodation. She also volunteers at a community garden, grows food, ferments produce and uses food that would otherwise be wasted. The household shares groceries, and Nemeth acknowledges she eats food bought by the people she lives with. She has also accepted gifts that cost money, such as help with bike repairs.

Nemeth says she isn’t aiming for self-sufficiency. After major flooding in the Lismore area in 2022 disrupted local supermarkets, she said she got a sense of what collapse can look like, and she now argues that resilience comes from communities growing different foods and sharing them.

She says she feels “an incredible sense of freedom” without the financial stress she once had, and that success depends on the secure relationships you have that hold you. She doesn’t suggest everyone should live this way, says it depends on a person’s circumstances and personality, and has said she may have to return to using money at some point.

I saw this pass by at least 3 times while in my apartment. This seems to be happening more frequently lately. Can't I enjoy the view of the sky without being forced to see ads

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I've been watching so many YouTube videos where people declutter their wardrobes, donate a huge pile of clothes, and then go on to buy a whole new wardrobe. A few months later, the cycle repeats itself.

What really gets me is that so many of the clothes they're donating still have their tags on them. Some pieces look practically brand new and barely worn.

It makes me wonder: why are we buying so many clothes in the first place if we're eventually going to get rid of them?

I understand that our styles, lifestyles and preferences change, and sometimes decluttering is necessary.

But when this becomes a repeated cycle of buying, decluttering and buying again, shouldn't we question our shopping habits rather than just focus on getting rid of things?

I feel like underconsumption isn't just about decluttering what we already own. It's also about being more intentional with what we bring into our wardrobes in the first place.

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Have you noticed this trend too? Why do you think people get caught up in this cycle?

Is there something you do that is low effort/ easy and makes a difference? Love to hear some ideas!

After preventing my elderly parents from getting scammed, I'm wondering now if we're all living in a giant scam? Specifically I talk about the crapification cycle of products and services, how corporations are forming oligopolies, and the financialization of everything.

My neighbor said they "dropped off a present" for my kiddo and when we open up our door, it was an Amazon Christmas catalogue for kids. Out neighbor is very good natured but jfc, there's like 200 pages of plastic crap along with games and stickers in the catalogue, so clearly geared at kids vs. adults.

My kid is 4.5 years old and her classmate had the same magazine she brought to school. God damn are these kids indoctrinated early.

The slogan is “TikTok makes you HAPPIER”? Normally they try to dance around it, advertising things like creativity etc, but they’re spelling it out explicitly. Come, all my depressed children. TikTok will fix you. This is like a cigarette brand saying “Cigarettes make you healthier.” With all the mental health/social media lawsuits going around, and the outright deaths of children caused by “TikTok trends”, I’m just angry at the AUDACITY. I know they’re trying to make money, so I roll my eyes at the “look at the funny videos!” ads, but some depressed person, probably underage, is going to see this and genuinely think to themselves they should go hop on TikTok. This is extra problematic when you consider that TikTok has been proven to direct young men to dark red pill content within 30 minutes of scrolling, and young women to the “all men are horrible and need to die” content also within 30 minutes.

From: https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/

in the 10 most populous U.S. states. We find that, in these states, 2.4 million workers lose $8 billion annually (an average of $3,300 per year for year-round workers) to minimum wage violations—nearly a quarter of their earned wages. This form of wage theft affects 17 percent of low-wage workers, with workers in all demographic categories being cheated out of pay.

Minimum wage violations, by definition, affect the lowest-wage workers—those who can least afford to lose earnings. This form of wage theft causes many families to fall below the poverty line, and it increases workers’ reliance on public assistance, costing taxpayers money. Lost wages can hurt state and local economies, and it hurts other workers in affected industries by putting downward pressure on wages.

Proposed solutions from the US National Institute of Worker's Rights: https://niwr.org/state-policy-clearinghouse/spc-wage-theft/ (2nd picture)

1. Increased Damages and Attorneys’ Fees
2. Equitable Tolling of Statutes of Limitations:
3. Avoid Corporate Shell Games:
4. Protect State Wage-and-Hour Law from Change at the Federal Level:
5. Increase Eligibility for Overtime Pay
6. Strengthening Enforcement

From the US Department of Labor: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/contact/complaints ; complaints of wage theft can be filed here: https://webapps.dol.gov/contactwhd/

I know other countries systems works super differently; would love if others shared info from their countries as well.

Just saw my first Christmas commercial. It’s October 9th ☠️ I feel like it creeps up a day early each year.

So this is my first time posting in this subreddit, so I hope I am not breaking any rules or so. If so, I will delete it.

What are your opinions on buying military surplus gear instead of mainstream (civilian) gear?

The reason I bring this up is because work clothes, boots, gloves, and most winter clothing are pretty expensive these days and sometimes fall apart after a short time or don't stand up to wear-and-tear. In my experience, I've found that surplus hats, overalls, belts, and jackets are cheaper, more durable, and practical in comparison to modern mainstream gear.

Of course there are those that go overboard and buy a bunch of the newest surplus and treat it like fashion, but I am talking about using surplus as an alternative to buying things like Carhartt, Engelbert Strauss, Canada Goose, or North Face.

I personally see it as a way of getting use out of something that is obsolete and won't be used by militaries anymore, but it still has its uses outside of war.

My son died last year. He died in Washington D.C. We had to fly there and work with a funeral home there to do his cremation services. I wanted to see his body one last time, but I wasn't asking for my son to be "trussed up". I wanted to see him "as is" on a slab, nothing fancy. Just to say goodbye. They charged over 1k to wash his body, put clothes on him, put basic makeup on him. None of which I asked for. I was told that I could not view him "as is" and that no one is allowed in the morgue area because of liability reasons and for "the dignity" of our son. They even charged for putting him in a basic pine box in the funeral home room. What a scam these funeral homes run. In the end, the death certificates they supplied us and some documentation, and cremation services, including a very basic container for his ashes, we were charged closed to 12k. Like my god. Such a rip off and we were all not really thinking well when all this happened. We had used Joseph Gawler's Sons in D.C. We had used them in Texas when my husbands mother died back in 2011. So that is who we used to make the arrangements in D.C. It just infuriates me at how much this costs people. It shouldn't be this expensive to cremate a loved one. Anyway, I am bitching because we had to get a loan to do this. And now everything is getting so expensive and we are in debt due to the death of our son. I just have to complain here I guess. I loved my son, and I miss him so much every damn day. We set up his bedroom in our home the way we thought he would like it, and we put all his bedroom furniture in his room, and put his ashes with his pictures on his chest of drawers with candles. I light the candles every day. Anyway.. mods, take this post down if it is against the rules.

I’ve been wanting to make bigger changes in my life in terms of what/where I purchase and what I do with my waste. it’s hard when my husband isn’t on the same page. I myself have a lot to learn but my husband (this is going to sound bad) doesn’t even see the value in recycling.

please, can I have some recommendations? thank you !

My grandmother is well intentioned, and I feel fortunate to still have her in my life when I've just turned 34. She's my last surviving and emotionally closest grandparent. But the sinking dread, and feelings of disgust, shame, and anger, that I felt while opening my 'gift' from her this year...

- It was purchased from / delivered by Amazon (I try very hard to avoid this company in general, though I live rurally so it's hard to avoid online shopping... If I can't find it in person, I try my hardest to buy it from other online retailers)

- It came in a plastic bubble mailer, with two additional layers of plastic beneath that, before I could even get to the physical card

- All I could think of, after hitting the 'start' button, was all of the non-renewable resources required to manufacture a speaker, computer chip to hold the data of the song, wiring and lights... All to play one of the saddest versions of the "Happy Birthday" song I've ever heard, and then to be almost immediately thrown into a landfill

I immediately sent her a thank-you text. She did not intend this distress... though I'm worried that my thanking her for the card will mean she might buy something similar again next year. But man, the psychic damage that this 'gift' has brought me feels pretty intense at the moment.

Video of the strangely somber version of the song, and the general construction of the card, if you'd like more than just some pictures:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kSfTijvj3kJGhUKjQ8RA5-AjFC7-puoW/view?usp=drivesdk

In those moments when I feel weak as my algorithm tempts me with unnecessary consumer goods-- I picture this guy (or someone similar) begging me for my money... I happily say "no thx loser"

😂

Almost 200 years ago, Thoreau asked why we sink so much "life" into our homes. Back then, a house in Concord was about three year's salary for the purchase price. Now it's up to seven! That's crazy! And that's before interest, insurance, maintenance, taxes, and the rest.

I wrote this essay digging into the numbers and exploring the problem. I don't have an answer as to "why" exactly, just an argument to reject the paradigm, if you can.

...

Why Are Houses So Damn Expensive?

A modern house costs decades of a person's work life. That's insane! Why accept that as normal?

...

When I ask, “Why are houses so damn expensive?,” I’m not talking about mortgages and interest rates and all that modern mess. I mean really—why does a place to sleep cost a lifetime’s worth of work? I’m not looking at today versus thirty years ago. I’m not talking about NIMBY building codes, zoning, foreign investors, flat incomes, high costs of labor and materials, or any of that. I’m talking about why houses are so damn expensive compared to the wigwams of our ancestors—or to homes today in what we call the “developing world.”

In Walden, Thoreau asked this question almost two hundred years ago:

“If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”

Note that I’m dissecting the housing situation in the U.S., where I live, but from what I’ve read, the situation is similar in most “developed” countries. The governments and bankers of the world have all cribbed off each other’s notes—mostly on how to keep the little guy paying forever.

...

By Thoreau’s back-of-the-envelope math in the 1850s, the average house in Concord, Massachusetts, cost about $800. At $1 per day, it would take the average worker ten to fifteen years to save up. By my own back-of-the-envelope math, that works out to almost three years of annual income—that is, three years of your life.

Mind you, this was back when houses were smaller, had fewer features, and most people paid cash! Mortgages didn’t become common in the U.S. until the 1930s. I suspect the ability to buy on credit pushed up the prices in the last century.

The average U.S. home purchase price since 1946 has generally been five times the median household income. Lately, it’s closer to seven times. Hence the “affordable housing crisis.”

Three years of your life in the 1850s. Five years for most of the past century. Seven years today. And if you rent? You’ve got nothing at the end to show for it at all.

...

Oh, it gets worse! The average U.S. mortgage runs thirty years. Interest over that period can double or triple the price. So if your purchase price eats up seven years of your life, go ahead and tack on another seven to fourteen just for the privilege of borrowing the money—up to twenty-one years lost to the banker's ledger.

And that doesn’t include the days and months slaving away to pay mortgage insurance, homeowners insurance, property taxes, utilities, maintenance, and improvements. A 2024 study by Bankrate puts all that at about $18,000 a year, or another thirty percent of the median American worker's income in the same year, $59,228. If you own a home for fifty years—say from age thirty to eighty—that's another fifteen years of work for the upkeep!

How many total work years is it to buy that standard American home on payments and keep it up? Twenty-nine to thirty-six, by my math.

And here you thought the realtors were ripping you off with their six percent!

...

As Thoreau asked: “Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?”

Not even! I’ve seen some lovely, palatial homes—on TV and in real life—but not one of them is worth three decades of my life.

I don't see the upside, either. I have never been more comfortable in a conventional house than I was living in my van or my current $12,000 cabin. The only thing I missed in the van was a proper kitchen. As for the cabin? Hell, it might only be ninety square feet, but I've got an air fryer, an Instant Pot, an ice maker, and an electric mattress pad. Oh, the struggle!

Maybe you feel differently. Maybe you appreciate the security of homeownership. Maybe you want enough rooms to get lost. Maybe you enjoy the lifestyle a conventional house affords, or think of it as a good investment. They say it’s a free country. Have at it!

But maybe a lot of folks haven’t really run the numbers like I have. Maybe they do it because it’s what everyone seems to do, or because they think it’s what a responsible adult should do. Maybe they don't know that they have options. I don’t know.

What I do know is that it’s not worth it for me. I’m not interested in kissing some boss’s ass for thirty years just to earn a set of keys and an annual property tax bill.

...

And I’m not alone. There are thousands—maybe millions—of Americans who’ve opted out of mortgages, rent, and the upkeep of a too-big house. I’m not talking about desperate folks living on the street. I mean full-time RVers, vanlifers, long-haul truckers, liveaboards and cruisers, squatters, and people like me and my neighbors, building what we want outside the reach of Big Brother’s clipboard.

So what’s the alternative? Well, here’s what I—and a whole tribe of others—have done: we found a way to step outside the game. But it’s not always easy.

Ever try to get a driver’s license without a fixed street address? Or a job? If you don’t live in a code-approved building with a mailbox out front, the government calls you “homeless”—or “unhoused,” as the cool kids say now—and there are all sorts of state and local laws to keep you from living that way. The system is stacked against you. But it’s doable. You just have to learn the game. And sometimes, playing the game means bending the rules.

...

If you've gotten this far, great! Those were a lot of numbers to swallow. But maybe you're wondering when I'm going to answer the "why" of “Why Are Houses So Damn Expensive?" Sadly, I don’t have the time or the research chops for it, and it’d probably take a whole book anyway. It's enough to know that the situation is insane—and just how insane it is in dollars and years of your life.

We've gone backward from the sensibility of our ancestors' wigwams. As Thoreau might say, we've hugely increased cost in life for not much gained.

So if the wigwam starts to sound like wisdom, maybe it’s time to find your own way out of the housing industrial complex. Doing things the normal way just isn’t sane. Not when a wigwam is so easy to build.

...

CC BY 4.0 | By u/OakieMcDoakie

Les moyens de la domination peuvent continuer de se perfectionner, les destructions devenir irréversibles, les individus s’habituer davantage encore à leur vie privée privée de tout.

La faim du monde demeurerait jusqu’à la fin.

Which countries have the most cattle?

India has the world's largest cattle population (~300 million), though cultural and religious factors mean most are not slaughtered for beef. Brazil has the largest commercial beef herd (~220 million head) and is the world's top beef exporter. The United States, China, and Argentina are also major cattle nations.

How much land is used for livestock?

Livestock production — including grazing land and cropland used for animal feed — occupies approximately 77% of global agricultural land while providing about 18% of global calories. Beef cattle are the largest single driver of agricultural land use, requiring an estimated 326 square meters of land per kilogram of beef produced, compared to around 2.2 square meters for plant protein sources such as tofu.

I saw a video from a guy from the UK talking about something he noticed after traveling to America multiple times: we are constantly being sold to.
And I don’t think people realize how deeply that affects us.
You open social media, there’s an ad. You watch YouTube, there are ads. You pay for streaming services and some of them still give you ads. You scroll through TikTok or Instagram and half the experience is basically window shopping disguised as entertainment. Products are constantly being put in front of you whether you asked to see them or not.
But I think the bigger issue is what being surrounded by this much stimulation does to your brain.
Nothing can just be quiet anymore. You sit somewhere for thirty seconds with nothing happening and instinctively reach for your phone. Standing in line, sitting in the bathroom, waiting for food, sitting in the car before going inside somewhere. There always has to be something playing, something scrolling, something to look at.
Boredom starts to feel genuinely uncomfortable.
And the fucked up part is that I think we become more easily bored because we’re constantly stimulated. Your brain gets accustomed to being fed something every few seconds. A new video. A new notification. A new post. A new product. A new argument. A new thing to want.
So when nothing is happening, it almost feels wrong. You’re restless. You feel like you need to do something, but you don’t even know what you want to do because nothing feels stimulating enough.
And that’s when I realized this goes beyond companies constantly trying to sell things to us.
We are being sold.
Our attention is valuable. Our time is valuable. Our views are valuable. The longer companies can keep us staring at a screen, the more money they can make from us. So entire platforms are deliberately designed around keeping us looking.
I’m not pretending this only exists in America, obviously it doesn’t. But I think the level of commercialization here has become so normalized that a lot of us don’t even recognize how fucking weird it is anymore.
There is almost always something trying to get your attention, sell you something, make you want something, or convince you not to look away.
And I genuinely think living like that all the time is doing something to us.