Are there any occupations you uniquely oppose the existence of?
I did retirement home training and used to think it was a sweet job. Then I got in the business and underestimated how demoralizing it was as they give you the easy elders in training while the others make you, or at least me, really think of the fact the job just amounts to an unkarmic freebie.
140
Comments173
Search engine optimizer -- The entire industry, intentionally and with malice aforethought, exists purely to make it more difficult for search engines to provide quality output to search users.
Kinda, but there’s also an implicit assumption here that search engines are unbiased, which they’re not.
Yeah? Well they also used to work, so idgaf.
And maintains the monoplies of big pharma
Politicians. Don't get me wrong, we do need them, but I strongly oppose the existance of people who never did anything else.
I believe we'd be better off with a new set of randomly chosen citizen every so often. Kinda like jury duty.
The process of choosing government officials at random is called sortition. It's certainly not the worst method.
Its called Sortition and I agree
Oh hell no. You know how braindead most people are at something relatively simple like driving a car, managing finances, or logical decision making? And then you want to roll the dice and let potentially 'the average' citizen to partake in government? This also means you have to be fine with the dumbest motherfucker you have ever come across, making policy decisions.
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell naw. Fuck, we have some dense pieces of shit in govt/politics here in the states, but I know that we can do way, way, way fucking worse. Hell. No.
Well maybe braindead is still better than professional selfish corrupt assholes bending the system towards them across many decades.
The random dumb people would still be bribed.
We had one guy (Ricky Muir) in Aus who kind of got in accidentally, due to a weird quirk of the voting system that has since been fixed. He was an uneducated bogan, who was mostly just interested in hotted up cars. But he actually took the position seriously and reached out to experts for advice on topics he didn't know much about. I didn't agree with his take on a few things (from memory, this was a decade or so ago, I'm an anti-car lefty), but he honestly seemed like he was doing a pretty good job. Way better than 90% of the rest of the more career politicians.
Most people aren't that dumb, given the resources...
But at least wouldn't have decades to build up their networks.... But those may grow up regardless... Eh, no easy solutions.
If you cannot trust in a randomly selected group of people making good decisions, can you trust in any kind of democracy? I, for one, prefer 'dumb' people being directly involved instead of having a lying contest every so often to see which actively evil person can get the most 'dumb' people behind him.
While I can't argue with your point, it does at least require a small amount of effort to get elected, vs just picking names out of a hat or whatever.
Any role at those finance firms that just buy up other companies to eat their profits. What do you provide? Nothing, you take already baked potatoes and make sure all the shredded cheese is scraped off into your gullet and thats it.
Vulture Capitalists?
Marketing. Anything having to do with marketing.
I'm a big fan of Bill Hicks' philosophy in regards to those people.
Not aware of Bill Hicks' take, but marketing effectively amounts to manipulating people into buying things that they otherwise would not.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9h9wStdPkQY
There's only 3 kinds of advertising that work on me.
"My business supports [thing I like] financially!" Ok, that's fair. You donate to them, I purchase from you over competitors.
"Hello, I run [business]. I make sure to patronize [other business] to support [business] because [other business] does quality work. Check them out!" For some reason, this resonates with me. It sounds way more honest.
"Here is a picture of tasty food". FOOOOOOOD 🤤
There is exactly one ad that worked on me. It was a poster for a bottle of Oasis that said "you're thirsty, we have quotas, let's help each other out."
The only advertising I want is a list of specs for the product and maybe a video demonstration of it's capabilities (not a highly edited misleading video like most advertising we see today).
I wouldn't class that as advertising.. That's just product info, so you know what you're buying.
Yea. That's what advertising should be. What it is is worthless nonsense which is why everyone blocks as much of it as they possibly can.
Rebuttal/fact check:
Don't trust anyone who needs to advertise. If they were actually good products/services, they wouldn't need to advertise, as word of mouth and reputation does that for you. You don't see any Rolls-Royce ads on primetime television...
If you find yourself interested because of advertising, always, always be skeptical of all claims. Don't just believe, but research, verify.
How do they get their first customers without advertising?
Friends and family, others who know you and your skills, etc
Jesus Christ dude, get some therapy. Not everything is bullshit all the time.
Have you been to the USA?
They have some really nice mountains! (The one they haven't carved the to off)
I got a postcard in the mail for Granta, a literary journal. On one side it said "Just subscribe, you know you want to." On the other side it said "We promise, no poetry. Ever!"
(sigh) Subscribed.
Discovered one of my favorite books and authors that way:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/118585.Into_the_Heart_of_Borneo
You’re just going for that anti-marketing dollar
Anti-advertising advertising. Genius.
Marketing itself can be good, sadly the whole industry has gone off so far into the dark path that it's irredeemable at this point.
Disagree with the first part. Agree with the second.
When I’m dictator they’ll be among the first up against the wall.
Fortunately for them, my lack of ambition and crippling video game addiction ensure I’ll never be dictator over anything more than my two cats.
Dictator over cats? You are so delusional.
Going after that anger dollar, I see. Big market.
Bad marketing makes me want to ship my pants.
Any position in the for profit medical payment processing profession, it should be single payer through taxes instead.
Any investment position that exists to leech money out of successful companies instead of providing cash to improve the business. Basically any part of.a vulture capital firm.
Any pseudo pretend medical profession that has decades without evidence it works like chiropractors. I'm fine with mediums and other charlatans that at least put up a 'for entertainment purposes only' sign and don't have a history of causing injuries to their clientel.
Anything involving targeted advertising since it relies on scooping up personal data.
Debt collectors. The businesses took the risk when they loaned money or provided some kind of service on credit. Selling debt to collectors who maliciously lie and guilt people into paying money they don't really owe or tricking them into paying debt that would disappear after a period of time is horrible. There are no respectable debt collection companies.
This is pretty much my list. Middlemen. I wouldn't say absolutely without value but it's gotten out of hand.
There are some middlemen positions that add value, like many distributors who smooth out the transportation between manufacturing and retail, but there sure are a lot that insert themselves into the supply chain to suck money out without adding anything.
I don't use debt collectors any more, but I have a construction company and a few times a year people just decide not to pay for their work. If someone really truly refuses to pay I could take them to small claims court, and I have, but it's a ton of work and lawyers won't bother with anything under 10k. I've literally had a judge say "so petty" about me taking someone through small claims for a $1200 they'd been dodging for years So some jerk can stiff me for $1500 and I have basically no recourse. I'm not talking about some impoverished person who I took advantage of, these are people with nice homes who make a habit of not paying bills. I'll work with people who are short on cash and honest.
Even though debt collectors are 0/3 in the times I've used them, it's at least something to fire off a final 'fuck you and your credit'
What a glowing recommendation!
Influencers. Just ad extensions.
Telephone sanitizers are a completely useless occupation IMHO.
That's what the Golgafrinchiam people thought and they are no more! Let their fate be a lesson to all who would overlook the importance of telephone hygiene!
I thought it was a giant space goat?
Don't be ridiculous.
Though, it may have been the 12 foot piranha bees.
Found the Golgafrincham.
"influencers" should not exist in their form today. If you are to peddle a brand, you get to be responsible (as in legally liable) for the claims made
my feeling is, is if you are going to be selling a product and you use certain words or phrases like "scientifically proven" or "research shows..." that you need to reference your claim.
That's not enough... not just because nobody would read it but because there is a LONG tradition of marketing funded junk science so they could very easily come up with some shitty paper that backs whatever they are saying.
The tobacco industry was famous for this and for years they produced studies that showed smoking was good for you
The tobacco industry still actively does this. For example, they published papers promoting vaping as a public health initiative--tobacco cessation or harm reduction, they called it. One of the doctors, for example, was a sex therapist. Another got his medical degree in the Virgin Islands. All published under the guise of a legitimate "think-tank" with the basic premise of, "how do we address the public health impact of smoking?"
See? Literally, this behaviour is why we can't have nice things
Bathroom attendants - since people got all the high value stuff.
I don't mean people that clean the bathroom etc.
I mean the guy that stands at the sink and makes awkward small talk before handing you a towel you could have got yourself and expects a tip.
EDIT: Y'all I'm pretty sure no one's having sex or shooting up in the bathroom at the fucking Eiffel Tower restaurant in Las Vegas ... Coke - probably. I don't know where anyone else has seen a bathroom attendant, but every place I've seen one at I've been wearing a suit...
Bathroom attendants are there to discourage drug use and bathroom sex. That’s literally their primary purpose. The fact that they have towels and mints is secondary to the fact that they’re just a walking overdose deterrent.
That’s why they’re commonly seen in clubs and bars where people would be inclined to do drugs or have bathroom sex.
It’s usually an old woman, and that keeps drunk bros from getting out of hand, assholes from littering paper towels, and you can just get your own damn towel.
I think it’s mainly higher end places thinking actual towels would be a nice touch but not willing to pay for them to be lost or stolen
Wait, what? What kind of crazy place do you live? I take it that everyone who applies to such a job is just a pervert who likes listening to everyone using the toilet. (or do you have separate toilet and sink rooms?)
Also, why are you paying them rather than the owner of the bathroom? I'm guessing this is American based on that detail haha
Apparently it's not just an American thing, but maybe other countries have more sense not to do it anymore.
They're usually in "high end" restaurants in big cities like Las Vegas. The ones I recall usually have the sinks somewhat separated from the stalls with a partition or turn, but they're not wholly separate rooms. The motivations are probably more needing money, access to a fancy place, and being an extrovert than perversion - more windshield wiper gig than peeping Tom.
I think it's a combination of a holdover from another time that maybe was useful when they had an expanded role - they probably actually used to keep the bathroom clean, and some guys will shine shoes etc. - and tip-based service jobs they gave to poor people. I think they do get an hourly rate, but it's probably below minimum wage for the same reasons waiting tables is.
No splash: no gash, no armani: no punani, no dolce and gabanna: no sucking your banana
Bathroom attendants play a key role in maintaining cleanliness and providing a touch of personalized service, especially in high-end establishments. Their primary responsibility is to ensure the restroom remains clean, sanitary, and fully stocked with supplies. However, their role goes beyond just cleaning. At upscale locations, bathroom attendants offer a variety of helpful services, such as providing guests with towels, cologne, gum, or mouthwash. They also discreetly help you leave the restroom looking your best—whether that means making sure your shirt is tucked in properly, your tie and gig-line is straight, or there’s no toilet paper stuck to your shoe.
Most of their cleaning duties are performed between guests. While you’re washing your hands, they might simply offer you a towel or a spritz of cologne. But when the restroom is empty, attendants are hard at work, wiping down surfaces, checking stalls, and restocking supplies to ensure everything remains in top shape. This constant attention prevents the need for the restroom to be closed for cleaning by some sweaty guy in filthy coveralls swearing and muttering randomly, instead keeping the space clean and functional seamlessly throughout the night.
Bathroom attendants also provide a subtle layer of security, monitoring restroom usage to prevent smoking, drug use, or other inappropriate activities. In some cases, particularly at nightclubs, this may even be their primary responsibility. While lower-end venues may employ bathroom attendants to create a more VIP atmosphere, the attendants in these settings are often more like an extension of front-door security and are there to keep things safe and orderly, rather than to provide the full range of services seen in higher-end locales.
Next time you encounter a bathroom attendant, ask them how you look before leaving the restroom. They’ll likely be happy to offer a quick adjustment or a friendly compliment, ensuring you leave looking sharp. In a way, they’re like an underappreciated wingman, helping you make the best impression possible. They're also usually wired into the rest of the house, so if you'd like the bartender to come by your table with something special or have some other special request, they can help take care of it.
Advertisers. For-profit advertisers mostly. They intentionally skew people's understanding of the world for the benefit (usually) of the rich.
Paparazzi, insurance companies (and I work in insurance), pay day loan companies/positions, and whoever cooks the chicken at cane's cause that shit be dry as hell.
Their sauce too, omfg I like chicken but it's like dipping the thing in liquid shit. How the fuck do they think this is the ideal sauce? Did they hire yes-men with no functional taste buds to decide on their sauce? When they were popping up around me a few years ago, family and friends tried them a couple times each. Everyone thought that, while the chicken is fine, the sauce kills it. Nobody I know has been back in... 7 years?
Cane's mystified me. They will have lines around the block in my area and I just don't get it.
War profiteers. If you work for a company like Raytheon or Lockheed Martin then you are doing an incredible amount of harm to the world and I have even less respect than I have for people in the military. These companies are constantly looking to fuel conflicts, destabilize, and pump all sorts of weapons into every corner of the globe. These people are the true scum of the earth, they are among the worst people who have ever lived.
CEOs
I'm okay with Chief executive officers. I'm not okay with publicly traded companies.
If I were to start a business I would like to be allowed to run that business. But I think any business that goes public and starts trading on the stock market has sold out completely and totally and no longer has any intrinsic value.
They always do it for a temporary injection of money and they always end up enshittifying as they inevitably have to satisfy the investors who gave them the money.
Publicly traded companies blow my mind a little bit.
It's not enough to make steady, consistent profits. Give out reliable quarterly dividends and make it so your investors make their money back plus a little extra over time. Free money is not enough for the ownership class.
Growth isn't enough either. Buying something for X and selling it for 1.1X so you make money even without a dividend isn't enough for the investor class.
You have to grow infinitely. You have to grow faster than everyone else. You have to beat the projections. Make your product smaller and shittier & sell it for the same price. Lay off 10% of your workforce after record profits to cut costs. Force ads and subscriptions and data mining into every possible space. Undercut your smaller competitors until they fold, then jack up your prices. Break the law, fuck over your workers, buy out politicians, move your production lines to countries with no labor laws.
Being publicly traded actively rewards evil and anti-human behavior.
https://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate-accountability-history-corporations-us/
TL;DR: the entire point of incorporation was supposed to be for public benefit, and it's been perverted into a sociopathic entitlement instead. Perhaps even worse, the notion of "corporate personhood" wasn't even the legitimate decision of legislators or judges, but a fucking clerical error that subsequently got treated as gospel!
CEOs are fine, you need someone to steer the ship.
However don't pay them a bazzilion bucks while eveyone else gets pennies.
Gated housing security/executives, HOA
Religious bureaucracy, barker
Pimps
Union busters
Search engine manipulators
Tanning salons
Deodorant advertisers
Smoking industry
Subprime mortgage brokers
Gambling industry
"And just like that, he left."
"He what?!... Did he say anything?"
"Nothing at all. He plopped the list on the ground and promptly walked out."
"What a bloke."
Why deodorant advertisers specifically?
Their history of shaming body image stinks.
"Influencers", advertisers, and just about every Wall Street job.
"the job just amounts to an unkarmic freebie."
sorry, something about this phrase is not clicking in my mind, what do you mean?
Influencers. And more broadly, almost anything to do with marketing.
Middle-men of any kind. Facilitators, landlords, middle-management positions... They're all worthless and contribute nothing to society but bullshit.
People think this without a hint of irony, and yet have never worked in a place without management. Good management improves productivity and efficiency, while also shielding workers from executives. Bad/no management almost always leads to chaos.
It's like the whole idea of not having leaders; it's a great theory, but it assumes that everyone is capable of working together perfectly towards the same goal, when the reality is that not everyone has the same goal.
Middlemen, etc., are trading in knowledge. They know who can do what, and decrease duplication of effort.
Being a middle manager (and therefore biased), I view my role as the person who serves the team by:
This allows them to do their jobs as best they can. Could they get by without me? Probably. But they would have a worse time and not be able to work as effectively.
Honestly, I feel like many problems with the modern workplace stem from executives' insulation from the workforce.
My experience has been that executives don't usually have a solid grasp of how things work at ground level. They're good for vision and overall direction, but can have... peculiar ideas about how to get there. Good management makes sure things go in the direction that executives want, without the executives interfering in actual processes.
This does assume that executives aren't actually malicious though, and same with management.
Flippers. Any kind of flippers
I just assume anyone who works at a juvenile prison either molests or beats children.
Had to check myself cause my brain wanted to say "maybe some of them got in there for the right reasons", which, idk maybe but the incarceration system is garbage and ACAB in the end.
Some of them certainly did. My younger brother, for instance. He's quite literally a psychopath. There's no cure for him, no rehabilitation that would fix him. The best that can be done is keeping him out of society for as long as possible. He was in and out of juvie starting at about 11.
Lobbyists
Senior Bribery Logistic Engineers*
What about a lobbyist who works for say the Electronic Frontier Foundation? Or a nurses union. Or who works for the Sierra Club, or some organization trying to protect the environment?
"Lobbying" is just talking to a politician on behalf of a person or group. If the Hollywood studios all hire lobbyists to talk to representatives about why copyright terms should be longer and DRM should be mandatory, doesn't it make sense that there should be people telling the other side?
I get that too often lobbyists overstep ethical boundaries. Often, they either effectively bribe politicians, or they write up laws allowing the politician to just rubber-stamp them. But, you could shore up and/or enforce laws restricting that kind of thing, while still allowing a representative of a group to meet with a politician and explain their point of view.
Yeah, I mean the bribery kind. We need to overturn Citizens United
Are there still places that legally mandate car refueling operators? That seemed like a job that literally only existed to give some people a job.
Yes. And it’s really dumb.
Not just in the states either. They do it in Mexico and some of the operators use their job to rip off tourists. You have to make sure they reset the meter before they start pumping your gas.
Mexico, Peru, and New Jersey, USA are 3 places I know still do this.
Oregon does, or did if they stopped.
If you've never seen the disaster some morons have caused at pumps...
I’ve read this response online and have seen online videos, but never met anyone who actually saw any such disaster. I’m not convinced this is at all common
Not necessarily common, but probably common enough.
Looking at you NJ, you ridiculous grift if a state.
That is exactly what it's for, and it prevents a lot of worse problems just by existing. It significantly reduces crime rates by allowing people who otherwise couldn't earn income, and provides a way for ex-cons to successfully reintegrate into society and not relapse, as well as providing low/no skill labor. It gives some a sense of purpose - retirees who physically can't do any other work for example and need something to do.
It is literally there to give people jobs and its a good thing.
Let’s whip out the spoons and replace our excavators!
If you want convicts to have jobs, fix how society views them so that they’re not pariahs.
Right, this is much more important. We don’t need to require unnecessary jobs for ex-cons to find work, we need to do a better job of reintegrating them into society after they’ve done 5heir time
This is why I'm in favor of mandating everyone use horse-drawn carriages. Can't let those carmen be out of work, spreading hooliganism
People downvoting you are very self-centered, they don't understand the importance of a job for lots of people. Until we have UBI, jobs like these will always be necessary.
That money would be better spent sending them to school to learn something useful.
You missed the low/no skill part, didn't you? There is a need for those.
Or are you the kind of scum that believes we all need to "earn" a living. As if every being isn't entitled to exist unless in servitude to the economy. Fuck right off.
There are necessary jobs that are low skill.
Are there enough to satisfy your ghoulish need to make sure everyone is working?
... So you send them to school to learn a skill?
Or to mop the floor. There’s a low skill job that is actually necessary
The rest of the world proves there's no need for people to pump your gas for you. Just about anyone can do that themselves. My point was that if this is the only way these people can be employed then we should instead take the money would they'd be paid for this and pay them to go to school instead so they can acquire the skills the need to get other jobs, whatever those jobs may be. Having them stand by a pump to put gas in people's cars is just a waste of everyone's time and resources. If this is somehow the only job they are capable of doing even with training available then just pay them to stay home. If there aren't enough low skill jobs to go around this is a better solution then making up busy work for people to do.
There are undoubtedly people beginning to say the same thing about supermarket checkout attendants now. That doesn't seem like a good thing to me.
Cops
Lemmy users that post the same thing in multiple Ask Lemmy communities
They get paid for that?
Whatever job MBAs have
Managers without empathy.
Sounds a bit like doctors without borders now when I think about it, it's maybe already a clan.
Anyone who is trying to sell me something
Boy, you don't know what you're missin'!
If only it were possible to maintain this state indefinitely
Telemarketer.
Lobbyist
Let's say you lose your job because a company lays you off without notice amid record profits. With your new found free time, you get so angry you go to your state senators and representatives and try to convince them to make a law limiting layoffs to a 6 month notice period for profitable companies. You are now a lobbyist. You are saying not to lobby the government full time. But for the sake of clarity let's say your coworkers also got laid off and pooled their money to send you to lobby on their behalf, you are now a paid lobbyist.
I feel like most people that complain about lobbyists are really just complaining about corporate lobbyists or lobbying groups paid by corporations. Lobbyists are a good and necessary part of any democracy.
Up voting for your last paragraph. Totally agree. Lobbyists only interested in corporate profit are evil.
i wish that people had as vivid of imagination when thinking of ways to build a mass movement to fix the problems with our deeply dysfunctional "democracy" designed by and for the benefit of the wealthy 1%, as they did when trying to find excuses as to why every single part of said political system is totally irreplaceable and in fact is functioning perfectly within the best system possible.
A better world is possible, but it is up to us to change it.
I think you're misattributing my intent. If you want to make corporate lobbying illegal or highly regulated I'm all for it. But lobbying overall is an inherently good and important part of politics. If you merely talk to a politician about a bill you want to pass you are lobbying. But you are likely very bad at it compared to a professional, so you pay an organization to do it on your behalf. Do you expect politicians to live in a black box completely disconnected from constituent issues as long as they are in office? Because that's how you get laws passed that have nothing to do with human need. If I donate to the ACLU, HRC, or an environmental group, I expect that some of my money will be spent on lobbying congress. That is not bad or evil.
I volunteer with a few (American) political organizations and have connections to politicians and organizations. we have people who we elect democratically who are highly educated, highly motivated, and politically plugged in who talk with politicians all over the world all the time! We are in coalition with an elected politician who is a member of the Irish Daìl, which is like their house of reps, every day we talk with him and ask him questions, and his organization and ours trade information, ideas, articles, book recommendations, you name it. We've sent delegates to Cuba to meet with the President, and groups who oppose his government. Weve sent peoole all over the country and the world for political work and ive gotten to have some amazing experiences participating just a little bit in this kind of work. If people won't talk to us we hold rallys and protests and make them talk to us. Similar to how you described, we pay dues, publish magazines and even participate in national and international debates. Our members have been on tv, podcasts, YouTube, and we are working toward creating our own. And that's just one of the orgs I'm in, another has members in congress, and its not the GOP or the Dems.
So sorry, no, you're wrong. Even if there are (purely hypothetical) cases where the system you are describing does work for people, there is no accountability to the people and it really only works to keep professional operators in Washington speaking on behalf of their own interests and the interests of the orgs that pay them. I know good people who are lobbyists, who lobby to do good things. But their position is in no way a political necessity. Grassroots bottom up politics is not only possible its the only way to have real democracy. The top down structures you advocate for only create and reproduce the conditions of exploitation, poverty, immiseration and war. Sorry friend, but I just dont buy it.
An alternate view for you, politicians can't possibly be expected to know about everything, care about every cause, meet with every person. One of lobbyists roles is to educate and motivate where otherwise politicians may be complacent. The reason that education is currently problematic is because powerful people control much of the "education". I think a well regulated lobbying system could remove some of the downsides while keeping the upsides. I've also worked in and around politics, that reality doesn't make either one of us more or less correct.
Yeah I can tell you have some experience in political spaces, most people online lose their cool talking politics, but you're just firmly stating your position. Which I disagree with, and that's okay! I disagree with people inside my own orgs all the time, sometimes loudly! The fact is its a very complicated system. And power is deeply entrenched. There's nothing to be gained for the org that's too "radical" to engage in mainstream politics, every city has a group or two like this. They can even have very good politics and analysis but you have to be able to build power, and frankly its just easier to talk a big game and collect dues payments or donations.
It seems to me that you're at least a progressive, as you are reform minded and that's great! That basically puts us on the same side of systematic injustice. There might be some issues we couldn't reconcile but in my experience it doesn't necessarily mean we couldn't work together or even end up on the same side of a protest. Despite my polemics, I'm a through and through humanist. But I'm deeply skeptical of parliamentary democracy, not to the degree where I discourage voting, but I'm more concerned with educating workers and regular people than the politicians. I'm proud of the educational work we've been able to accomplish in the last year alone; it wasn't long ago that democratic leaders were calling support for Palestinians a Russian misinformation campaign, now its one of the most pressing issues for the international working class. Not saying "we did that," but we did our part in boosting the signal and cutting through the noise.
Anyway I very strongly do not believe lobbyists are necessary to democracy and I work to try and create a world where they wouldn't be (although that's not exactly the highest on our list of priorities, god knows.) But in the world as it exists today, these structures exist and that's just a fact. I believe the work I contribute to is a necessary part of a healthy democracy, and you're a reasonable person who believes that lobbying work is an important part of the system.
Today, the system needs us both to work together and part of that is having lively discussions and educating one another. Maybe some piece of what you said will stay with me or serve as a reminder some time in the future, and maybe the reverse also. We don't have to be won over to each other's ideas for them to have an effect. And we got all these other people contributing to the discussion as well. That's pretty cool to me. So yeah we have a difference of opinion, but we are both coming from a place of education and experience, trying to solve the same problems from different ends of the same dynamic system. At least I hope that's what's going on here.
Thanks for the discussion, I appreciate you.
And, even if you do lobby the government full time, what if you're a lobbyist who works on behalf of environmental groups. If the Sierra Club wants to alert politicians about a secret clause snuck into a new bill regulating coal mines, they can hire you to talk to the right people. If a town like Flint, Michigan is having trouble with contamination of their water supply, they can hire you to find the right people to talk to.
Maybe in an ideal world every politician would have enough time and enough staff to fully investigate things on their own. But, in the real world, we're probably always going to need people to talk to the decision makers and advocate on our behalf.
What we really should have is good oversight and tight rules to ensure it's just talking and not doing favors, giving money, etc.
Yeah, hatred for lobbyists may realiy be hatred for corporate influence, but they don’t have to be the same thing. Limiting corporate money in politics, and adding some thirds rule would be go a long way
Yeah did you read the question? It asked what occupation. What's the point of your entire monologue it's irrelevant.
I absolutely read the question, accusing me of reading comprehension problems while having serious reading comprehension problems is some reddit level stupidity. Reread what I wrote, you read the first half and ignored the second half. I was merely illustrating that many paid lobbyist do very worthwhile things. From labor rights, to environmental justice, to human rights. The issue isn't lobbyists, the issue is corporate lobbyists...
People who evalulate and grade pop-culture collectables like baseball cards, video games, etc.
Imagine having a career based on turning people's collection hobbies into investment opportunities for rich people; making said hobbies unaffordable for the people who actually enjoy the subject matter in the process. You'd have to be a real fucking scumbag to do something like that.
That vaguely reminds of real estate business.
Papparazi. Fucking leeches
Off-topic: Lemmy really needs better crosspost functionality.
Lemmy is a small group of people, let's not divide it further by having the exact same conversation in two (or more) places.
Elected Republicans
Streamers
Steamers with like 10-30 people are fun to watch or hangout with, when it's 7,000 emojis and someone making $100k a month... Meh
How about the entertainment industry as a whole?
Some livestreamers (even big ones) are legitimately fun to watch, but I agree that there are a lot of livestreamers that just do "reaction content" which, while it can be fun (in the same way as Rifftrax/MST3K), isn't something most streamers put enough effort into to be considered good. Instead it ends up being a low-effort way of generating views.
If you want some good streamers, some of the big streamers I like are people like,
shoved an entire baseball up his ass, live on twitchput together two fictional baseball teams for a livestreamed baseball game), carnival stream (he had chat-controlled robots to let chat play the games),archeologygeology stream, Who Will Replace Me?, and so on.Even if it's not your thing, I'd highly recommend looking up the stream vods for Jerma's IRL stuff, it's brilliant and extremely high-effort.
Edit: I was just trying to make some suggestions, jeez.
I don't like to kink-shame but those all sound like horrible people.
Yeah, pretty much
Hell yea I didn't know Fredrick streamed.
Hard agree on the data brokers, but what's bad about bug bounty programs? I'd say it's a good thing you get a reward if you help make a product more secure, and it helps discourage people from selling zero-days to black hats. Or do you mean black hat bug bounty systems? They are already super illegal
Bug bounties refer to specific programs that companies put in place to essentially reward white hat hackers for doing freelance offensive security audits.
I get what you're trying to say, but you're specifically referring to black hat hackers. Referencing bug bounties is muddying your meaning.
Looking at the replies, I realized I'm too much of a normie for this thread.
I don't think I understand what you mean. Do you agree with everything said here?
Cops, prison guards, landlords.
Cops, landlords, the entire advertising industry, anything to do with the stock exchange, PMCs, lobbyists (and by extension most career politicians)...
I'm just getting started
Some food jobs make me think we get carried away with what food is supposed to entail.
Elaborate please?
We could go our entire lives without the existence of a large majority of things which are taken for granted in the culinary sphere and still get the same appreciation out of food.
Police.
If you have to ask why at this stage you must also still believe the Spanish Inquisistion is necessary.
Yeah you're right, local neighborhood militia sounds much better /s
The police do a valuable job if you're living in a functional society.
I believe we can make security mutual aid. Everyone in the community has a role to play in the security and safety of the community. When we work together we can prevent a lot of issues
This is actually how things used to be done before we had police, at least in England.
“fucking stupid”
Your answer is fucking stupid
I know
Meat processing (for human consumption) because it’s unnecessary for our survival and I personally find it an abhorrent and morally wrong.
Hi! I'm going to pick your brain because this is on my mind tonight.
My family happily eats meat. I've never hunted anything but a few fish, rarely and not for decades. So, there's the background.
Noticed there are LOADS of squirrels around. In my yard, at my camp, in the woods. Thought about harvesting a few. (Turns out I'm too soft, what if I shoot someone's wife?!, but I thought about it.) My kids were horrified at the notion. "But you're happy killing chickens and cows for your McDonalds?!"
Kayaking tonight, I ran into a monstrous rookery in the swamp. Egrets I think? Great Herons? Anyway, they seem always in the same place, by the hundreds and hundreds. Thought, "How about bringing a 20-gauge and shooting down dinner?" My wife was horrified. "Birds are not food!" So I brought out a pack of chicken, "Chickens aren't birds!" (She's Filipino, something may have got lost in the translation...)
What are your thoughts? I dated a vegan once who couldn't admit that hunting your own food was morally superior to farm tortured meat. Uh... I don't get it. If you're going to eat meat, isn't harvesting your own the moral choice?
No because it is not ethical to murder an animal when it’s not necessary.
My philosophy is that I don’t want to mess with animals simply because I can. It’s that simple.
Just as an example, a lot of vegans will happily eat honey and it never occurred to me in my first year that it could be questionable. I decided on the spot never to consume it again simply because by my logic we’re having to hoard up a bunch of bees and make them produce it for us — only later did I read up on the topic and find all the arguments for/against it — but that didn’t matter to me because I try to keep it that simple.
Hunting is an area I haven’t given much thought. I grew up in a hunting family, shot a deer at five years of age, etc. but never got into it. I know there’s a big debate surrounding it but knowing I don’t want to hunt in the first place I haven’t really read up on it simply because it’s not relevant to me.
Honey is not vegan as it comes from an animal.
Hard agree, but I see vegans arguing that it is vegan all the time.
Personal trainers. Watching other people exercise is not a job.
You may as well be a corporate tax accountant, a ghost writer for the rich or an email scammer in terms of the value you create for society.
I would say many of them are there for a free paycheck yes, but personal trainers are also there to teach people who have never learned how to exercise how to exercise and to encourage them when their friends and family will not, and those are valuable if time limited resources.
It’s also motivation. Sometimes I ask for a few sessions as a birthday present because it’s the only reason I’ll actually go to the gym. Accountability.
Weight training can be super dangerous if you don't know what you're doing, you can easily do significant damage to your back or knees doing fairly basic exercises like a deadlift or squat incorrectly.
Especially as weight training is increasingly encouraged for the elderly, personal training seems a fairly reasonable job. Admittedly, like any other job, there are folks who provide little to no value (think of the teachers just waiting to collect their pensions) but that's not to say it can't be a super useful industry.