>The return of the proceeds of labor to the people who performed the labor.
It's funny you bring that up, given the statistics on this shows that it's been trending down, but nowhere close to the amount you'd expect from the popular discourse.
For one thing, people to divest themselves of the notion "leaving money on the table" is a bad thing. It's part of the affordability crisis and why two income households are the default. It's already priced in as they say. Until that Ethic gets revised, and all the ethical arbitagers are found and eliminated with extreme prejudice, that vision cannot come to fruition. Because the price you pay will be adjusted to reflect your maximum actuarial capacity to earn. Fun bit is, you on the bottom don't get to make the decisions that effect that change. The people at the top/in the .001% do, because if everyone else made the change first without dealing with them, they're sitting on enough assets to buyout everyone else adopting the new paradigm. Then again, there's also the question of "just let em do it, then ignore their claim." Long as everyone else is in alignment, and we just ignore those people, a second system ought to be able to stabilize to which the .001% can either sync to, or remain ostracized. It does require full solidarity from the 99.99% though. That means literally treating the horded wealth and businesses of these people as no good. Destabilizing in the short term; probably gonna hurt like a sumabitch. A theoretical offramp to the vision, however, it is.
> For one thing, people to divest themselves of the notion "leaving money on the table" is a bad thing.
Unfortunately people will never divest themselves of this notion.
The only reason people "left money on the table" prior to the recent-ish past was incomplete information and a slow feedback loop, but with modern tech they have all the information they need to squeeze out every last dollar.
Algorithmic large database systems (like RealPage for apartments) were already causing this problem pre-AI and now it is going to get supercharged.
The only thing that would stop it is government regulation, and... good luck with that, at least in the US. The government here is well and fully captured by the same people vacuuming up all the wealth.
A lot, because no system or crisis has an "easy solution". That said, a few highlights I've chewed on:
* From the social angle, we have got to address this notion of gender roles being a prerequisite for such a societal outcome. It's not a "women are homemakers and men are breadwinners" type bullshit, and it's not penalizing the homemaker by robbing them of personal growth. It's acknowledging that some of us - for whatever reason at all - may prefer contributing to the success of the home and community rather than the success of a business, and that's a perfectly valid path to follow in life with its own societal rewards and benefits that cannot be directly captured in terms of GDP or wealth. If a woman wants to have a high-growth career while the husband stays at home to raise the kids, we shouldn't be shaming or humiliating either participant for their decisions since both are valid not just to themselves, but to society as a whole.
* From a business perspective, we also need to figure out the right balance of regulations and reforms that prohibit (and meaningfully punish) discrimination based on these sorts of choices. Women shouldn't be penalized for having kids, men shouldn't be penalized for choosing to be a homemaker (full or part-time), and vice versa. It's acknowledging that gaps are normal because life is chaos, and rebuilding work around the flexibility to adapt to life rather than jamming everything into fixed blocks of time or location. COVID showed us this is possible, but the whiplash after shows that those in power refuse to change willingly; changes must come from external actors and forces because power refuses to acquiesce otherwise.
* From a government point of view, it's a lot of social safety nets and reforms. It's fixing healthcare, it's making childcare affordable, it's raising minimum wages; it's also raising taxes on multi-income households proportionate to earned income (higher taxes on higher incomes), expanding affordability programs into higher income tiers (such that unorthodox households aren't punished - this mainly targets immigrant and queer multi-family households), prioritizing "right-size" homeownership (taxing 2nd+ homes at higher rates, or large homes/land plots in dense urban areas at higher rates than multi-family or smaller-plot homes), expanding transit options to reduce costs of vehicle ownership and improve job opportunities, the list goes on for miles. The overarching goal is one of intentional vision rather than piecemeal band-aids: building the legal structures and safety nets needed to not merely "promote" this outcome, but all but mandate it via incentives and punishments. It's as much about reassuring people that their choice is valid and will result in a long and prosperous life as much as it is handcuffing Capital from squeezing blood from stones for shareholder value.
* EDIT: One thing Government could be doing to improve things now, that seems incredibly counter-intuitive on its face, is to stop means-testing benefits. We need to stop caring who is acceptable enough to get social benefits, and instead focus on ensuring benefits are used effectively regardless of who gets them - directly paying landlords instead of handing out vouchers, for instance, or curtailing SNAP/EBT uses away from ultra-processed foods, or just extending Medicare to everybody. Yes, there's a lot of questions around sustainability of these programs, but that's all the more reason to maximize their pool of users, cut out middlemen, and raise taxes to specifically cover costs of services instead of printing money to cover deficits. Patrick Boyle's latest video actually touches on this in the UK, where even high earners aren't motivated to do more work or earn more pay because losing means-tested benefits will cost them more than they would earn.
And that's just the high-level stuff. It's a lot to think about because it requires us to collectively fight for an intended future instead of just one-offing problems individually. That's a lot of work that not a lot of folks have ever had to do outside of minority spaces, and those muscles are going to need to be trained back into use over time. It's not impossible, but it is incredibly hard.
Obsidian has become almost an operating system for working with markdown. Its Live View / Edit mode is excellent (WYSIWYG) and its ability to accept pasted content and handle it appropriately is good and getting better. Its plugin/extension ecosystem is robust (and has a low barrier to entry), and now that it has a CLI I expect to see an acceleration of clever workflows and integrations.
No affiliation, just a very happy ~early adopter and daily user.
Wow, that's a strong opinion and harsh words that come across as really entitled, and probably unfair. From my PoV, they're a tiny, scrappy, transparent and likeable company who built and maintain a fantastic software application that radically improved ~everything about my daily workflow and PKM. I get more value out of Obsidian in a day than most other apps in their entire lifespan. The core app is free! They have to eat. I'd probably throw $ at them even if they didn't charge a few bucks / month for Sync. (Which works flawlessly.) Sure it'd be cool if you could self-host their Sync module -- but many Obsidian users use other DIY approaches for sync; in the end it's markdown files on a local disk, do with it what you will.
I recommend keeping it simple. The Obsidian "Bases" feature is a good fit for this if you don't want to go deep w plugins and DIY (which is also viable but has more learning curve and overhead).
IME this is the consensus view. Google's search quality is abysmal. DDG was the 1st popular alternative, but it's been supplanted by Kagi. Kagi costs a few $ /mo but that's part of its appeal, it's a great deal and a game-changer for the service (vs the user) to be the product.
"obsidian shows them as markdown" = try editor settings ("Live Preview")
in terms of embedded vaults, I agree there should be better native support -- but I was also delighted to discover Relay (https://relay.md) which supports directory-level (not just vault-level) sync.
relay looks kind of like what I was hoping for, I think...
except it's ANOTHER charge then. I have more than 2 devices...
I'm confused as well, does this wind up hijacking / using its own syncing? It's not just a "skin" on top of Obsidian itself, to get the benefits of it you have to use their "sync client" ?
This feels like it's something that should be part of the core product or at least Obsidian's own Sync product
Yes, our sync engine is home-grown. We use CRDTs to provide real-time google-docs-like collaboration which is not something Obsidian supports (yet... i think they are working on it).
Note that you can self-host a Relay server and join it to our network. This gives you complete control over your data and unmetered storage. We do still charge for seats if you have more than 3 collaborators.
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