I’m not saying there aren’t downsides, just that it isn’t a totally crazy strategy.

Same. I write FOSS software in my free time and also paid.

You’re being sarcastic but even small fees immediately weed out a ton of cruft.

We really need to start redistributing how we spend money on health care. Public option, lower executive pay. More non-emergency long term facilities for patients with psych issues or rehabilitation, and chronic illness care. Better pay and shorter shifts for doctors and nurses. Subsidies for medical tech companies to offset end-user price. More government-funded research into medical tech.

Health care should realistically be our biggest industry akin to a military with the social status of being a soldier and the compensation of being a software developer. We have the wealth and technology to help most people live healthy lives. We need the government to incentivize allocating it correctly.

Even though things seem shitty now. I think that, on average, humanity’s story is one of self-improvement. This Good Place quote comes to mind:

What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is if they are trying to be better today than they were yesterday.

I think humanity is trying to be better today than it was yesterday. Human history is a story of more and more types of people being given more and more rights. Of slowly putting down our rocks and spears and guns and trying to live together. Of learning to care for nature while holding the power to destroy it. We’ve had backslides, but overall we’ve come a long way from the Apes we once were.

I think humanity deserves the chance to keep trying to better itself. I hope we get to the point where we are good enough to give ourselves that chance. As another scene from Good Place put it:

Come on dummy, faster.

This reminded me of an old joke:

Two economists are walking down the street with their friend when they come across a fresh, streaming pile of dog shit. The first economist jokingly tells the other “I’ll give you a million dollars if you eat that pile of dog shit”. To his surprise, the second economist grabs it off the ground and eats it without hesitation. A deal is a deal so the first economist hands over a million dollars.

A few minutes later they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist, wanting to give his peer a taste of his own medicine, says he’ll give the first economist a million dollars if he eats it. The first economist agrees and does so, winning him a million dollars.

Their friend, rather confused, asks what the point of all this was, the first economist gave the second economist a million dollars, and then the second economist gave it right back. All they’ve accomplished is to eat two piles of shit.

The two economists look rather taken aback. “Well sure,” they say, “but we’ve grown the economy by two million dollars!”

Yeah, I’ve been really disappointed in Lemmy’s response to sync. I thought this community was supposed to be technically minded but in every thread on Sync, the top comment is repeating disinformation about tracking and there’s tons of people tearing down the developer.

I get not wanting to use an App that has ads, but people are getting downright toxic over an App that no one is forcing them to use lol.

That’s very subjective. I have yet to find a Linux desktop I like as much as MacOS, especially when it comes to WACOM drivers. The stylus response time/curve almost always feels wrong.

Also, I’ve worked with designers who can get something that looks and feels fully professional on a first pass, so it’s not just newness for Lemmy.

IMO FOSS has really great offerings when it comes to libraries or other highly technical code.

But something about either the community or incentive structure results in sub-par UI/UX. Obviously not a rule, but definitely a trend I’ve noticed.