The issue is how do you “meassure” merit? How do you decide who has earned what they have and who hasn’t?

If you are a conservative it’s very easy, the status quo defines merit. Those who have are those who deserve because the system is working as expected. So rich people ruling is meritocracy for them.

If you are a racist/xenophobe/etc then it’s also very easy, those who are in the “good” (read white in the USA) group are the ones with merit, so they are the ones that should rule.

A few years back, when college degrees where just for rich people with connections, merit was having a college degree because that proved you where educated and hard working jajajaja. Now that a lot more people can get college degrees it no longer means that for some reason jajajaja.

Etc, etc. In general, people use meritocracy to justify their own biases and the decisions they make based on those biases. The USA is of course the current poster child of this, but by no means it’s exclusive to them.

The reality is that when you think about it there is no such thing as merit in the general sense. For example, I get paid well by working as a programmer. And I’m the first one to say that I’m very good at it and deserve my pay. Yet, if my toilet is broken I need to call a plumber and defer to them. So, who says I deserve to earn more than a plumber? I do say so because it greatly benefits me of course jajajaja. But if push come to shove I would absolutely prefer to have a society without programmers than a society without plumbers. So who has more merit?

The simple truth is that we are all valuable in our own context and we should try to build a society where we all can participate and contribute as needed. Ideas like meritocracy are used by right wing people to justify the existence of hierarchies and social classes. If there are better people (with more merit) then of course they should be in charge and everyone else must obey. But the more you dig into the idea, the less it makes sense. Meritocracy is just a very easy trap to fall into because it’s the kind of idea that sounds good to people until you really think about it, but in practice it’s just a useless idea if you want to make rational decisions.

https://cepr.net/data-from-bolivias-election-add-more-evidence-that-oas-fabricated-last-years-fraud-claims/

The USA, through the OAS, fabricated a bogus statistics report acussing Evo of stealing the elections. This was the time when the Elon rat tweeted that “they would coup whoever the wanted”. Even at the time, a lot of staticians were reporting that the analysis was bogus. The awful woman they put in charge ordered at least 2 massacres against people protesting the coup. And as soon as she let the country had elections, Evo’s party won by more than 50% of the vote. Keep in mind that unlike the USA, there are more than 2 parties in Bolivia, so they had more than 20% lead in the vote. It’s very obvious that Bolivians want Evo and his party in power. The OAS and USA are full of shit as usual.

The coup at least resulted in 2 term limits being implemented in Bolivia so Evo can’t stay in power forever, so not all bad. But the USA can’t stop fucking in latin america.

Nah, we don’t do both. Carbon capture projects are bullshit for the most part, see https://time.com/6264772/study-most-carbon-credits-are-bogus/ for example. Some are actually generating more carbon, not less overall. Instead, companies have been using this as a way to “buy” their target metrics, except they are buying offsets that don’t really exist. And they use this to market their products as green/net zero products, which incentivizes even more consumption.

So overall this whole thing is most likely a net negative, as in we would be better without them. And honestly is not surprising at all, technology is not magic. It’s just people want perfect solutions so we don’t have to do anything and the problem goes away, so they keep falling for this bullshit. Case in point, your comment lol.

Look at this guy posts people. He’s just one of the many Milei shills being paid by his fucking government. Lemmy is getting pretty bad with this kind of shit, there are a lot of these single issue accounts with a few “random” posts and comments to give them legitimacy. Sometimes is very hard to know, but this account is pretty blatant. Like most of his posts and comments are pro Milei bullshit “news”. This is going to break this platform, and it’s worrying seeing this so fast in a platform this small.

And Apple has earned any trust? Jesus christ people, like less than 2 months ago they were caught restoring “deleted” photos from iCloud to user devices hahahahaha. Of course fans were excusing them talking about disk sectors like that has anything to do with cloud storage being available accidentally hahahaha.

But yeah, Apple cult followers will find a way to justify surrendering even more freedom to Apple with this BS for sure. And they will be paying top dollar for the pleasure hahahaha.

I get that. But then I don’t go to car forums to complain about my car and then get mad when they suggest my car is shit and I need to change it hahahaha. My point is, these people only want to complain instead of fixing things, and it’s very annoying. Don’t get me wrong, they can complain as much as they want as far as I care. But I wish they would complain somewhere else, it’s just noise if they are not willing to do anything.

To be fair, the conversations I have seen usually start with people complaining about whatever the latest Windows shitfuckery is. Some well intendend, but clearly naive, linux user suggests to just switch to linux. After all, the OPs usually complain in a linux community, what else do they expect?

Then they, or sometimes a different user than the first one, say something like “but switching to linux is work and I have to learn a new thing” like a dumbass. After that it’s almost impossible, IMO, to have a constructive conversation. Other people from the community get so mad that the conversation becomes a religious argument hahaha. After all, how do you help people that want to fix their problems while at the same time they refuse to change or learn anything? And on top of that they get so self rigtheous when people dare to suggest literally anything. The only solution they want is for Microsoft to magically stop being Microsoft and fix Windows hahaha, I hope they get comfortable while they wait hahaha.

Honestly I don’t even try. Yes, Microsoft is the one fucking people over. But people are proud of their lack of knowledge when it comes to computers and refuse to even learn the little bit that will actually fix their problems. And that’s on people, not on Microsoft. I just let them enjoy Windows, they deserve it.

Or maybe you could actually read the comment you are replying to instead of being so confrontational? They are literally making the same point you are making, except somehow you sound dismissive, like we just need to take it.

In case you missed it they were literally saying that the fact that the real cost of running software (like the AI recall bullshit) is externalized to consumers makes companies don’t give a shit about fixing this. Like literally the same you are saying. And this means that we all, as a society, are just wasting a fuck ton of resources. But capitalism is so eficient hahaha.

But come on man, you really think that the only option is for us to run corporate machines in our homes? I don’t know if I should feel sorry about your lack of imagination, or if you are trying to strawman us here. I’m going to assume lack of imagination, don’t assume malice and all that.

For example, that’s what simple legislation could do. For example, lets say I buy an cellphone/computer, then buy an app/program for that device, and the device has the required specifications to run the software. The company that sold me that software should be obligated by law to give me a version of the software that runs in my machine forever. This is not a lot to ask for, this is literally how software worked before the internet.

But now, behind the cover of security and convenience, this is all out of the window. Each new windows/macos/ios/android/adobe/fucking anything update asks for more and more hardware and little to no meaningful new functionality. So we need to keep upgrading and upgrading, and spending and spending.

But this is not a given, we can do better with very little sacrifices.