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Comment on What is an average person living in the US supposed to do about corporations raising prices?

pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Start being an actual adult and start making your own shit.

The only way to free yourself from the slave racket is to stop being dependent on it to survive.

Easy mode: Learn how to cook, and cook clean whole foods. Stop buying processed junk garbage.

Hard mode: Get tools and equipment and learn how to build and fix your own shit. Difficult and will take time, but 100% worthwhile.

Both methods allow you to produce goods and offer services you can sell to other people, too. That way, those that actually can’t make or do for themselves can turn to you and not shitty corporations for survival.

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inb4_FoundTheVegan@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I actively enjoy cooking, but it’s shocking and shameful how little a classic education does for one of the most fundamental aspects of living your life. Home ec should be a mandatory class because every single one of us needs to eat and should be able to provide a solid meal for ourselves. I don’t put the fault on any individual person for not knowing, but it is a skill that EVERYONE should foster.

Check in to the American test kitchen YouTube for all sorts of advice, or go to the library and check out their extensive catalog. You’d be suprised how easy obtainable restaurant quality food is from your own kitchen.

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- kalpol@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This book absolutely changed my life, especially after I learned some of the easy shortcuts you can take to save time.
  
  www.amazon.com/…/1933615419
  
  Absolutely changed my life, I’m not even joking.
  
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USSEthernet@startrek.website ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I agree with you, but you can’t do it for everything.

I see so many people just throwing money away it’s crazy.

Like you said, cooking for yourself and your family. Don’t eat out. Bring packed lunches to work. My family might get fast food once or twice a month max, the rest is all from the grocery store. Eating out is stupid expensive now.

When it comes to your cars. Learn to change your own oil, battery, and air filter. Dealers and repair shops charge stupid prices for this stuff and it’s easy enough to do that you can do it in 15-30 minutes yourself. Remember to properly dispose of your fluids.

Learn to fix your own tech, tech jobs pay a lot which means that you as the customer will pay a lot to get your shit fixed.

Learn how to fix simple plumbing in your house, repair drywall, install/repair simple electrical stuff. When I see people in my local area paying handymen $500 to install a ceiling fan (not the electrical part like running wires, just hanging the damn thing), I about lose it.

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- lamabop@lemmings.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Here it is illegal for anyone who isn’t a licensed electrician to install anything permanent and electrical, such as a ceiling fan
  
  My father was a freakin electrician and I helped him with many jobs over the years, but I’m not allowed to install a ceiling fan, even if there’s existing wiring…
  
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  - markon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    But who will know? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡° ) Seriously though this is an example of how they do regulatory capture, and this sucks. At minimum, doing it without a license could make the property harder to sell, and that’s nuts!
    
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Allero@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I don’t think that’s the initial point of OP.

The point is that quality of life and real income are in strong decline, and it doesn’t seem like it will get better.

Sure, there are easy methods to cut expenses or even make some beer money, but a)many have already implemented it, and b)everyone already could.

The question can be formulated as “how can we improve the living situation for everybody?”. So that you wouldn’t need to figure out how to live cheaper or get some side hustle as you see your income shrinks.

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- DadVolante@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yeah, lots of people in here saying “stop supporting corporations” as if it is not only easy, but simple to do.
  
  Wanna cook whole foods? You growing your own or buying them from the Amish?
  
  Wanna fix your own house (something I am currently doing), good luck finding a hardware/lumber supply that isn’t owned by one.
  
  Want to use the internet?
  
  It isn’t so simple. I think doing what you can with what you have is all anyone in the working class can really do. For some people it’s more, others less.
  
  In the end, it seems like human history is a series of people with wealth and resources screwing over others, with brief bursts of progress.
  
  Ugj.
  
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  - Allero@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The point is, the change needs to be systemic, not just us choosing not to use corpo’s products. It’s impractical and often outright impossible, and personal choice never was the solution.
    
    Guess why there are all those financial gurus and politicians blaming people for “dumb spending”, “lazy working” or “not supporting the causes with their dollar”? Because they know full well it isn’t really feasible, but know this keeps us in the rat race while taking full blame upon ourselves rather than true villains.
    
    Corporations (and in my personal opinion, capitalism itself, because it’ll always try to find a loophole) should legally die or face very strong taxation and pushback. Stop supporting corporations on governmental level, and then we’ll have a bet.
    
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- pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Honestly, if we all grew and shared our own food, that alone would be enough to turn the tide and improve our lives.
  
  We could use the money we save from groceries and use it to buy land, and with that land take back economic power from corporations, politicians and the ruling class.
  
  We could organize and pick representatives amongst us that aren’t part of either party to take local offices and use their powers to change zoning laws to enable more housing to be built, and to allocate funding for such, and to pass laws banning anyone other than primary residents from buying the properties.
  
  Assuming you want to do it legally. Arguably one individual could accomplish a lot more with the proper use of a .50 cal.
  
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  - Allero@lemmy.today ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’d argue you can’t outplay corporations in their own game. If you start saving on groceries and make it a trend, they’ll just find a way to cut your income once more. Because why paying so much if you can now get on with less?
    
    Besides, the sum saved from sharing food is not nearly enough to buy any significant amount of land anyway, and you also need all the machinery and equipment to make it work, and even then this entire thing should be set at an enormous scale to combat the scale benefit of existing corpos (which would be very tough considering such scaling will cause immense oversaturation of the market and fierce price wars, to which independent businesses are not ready due to lack of reserves, i.e. corpos will just dump the price, see your community die off without money, and raise prices back up again the minute it happens.
    
    Local representatives could work, but first something needs to be done with human perception of independent parties.
    
    Honestly, .50 cal seems to be the most risky, violent, but most workable option. No wonder most such big changes were accompanied by bloody revolutions.
    
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    pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s not true, people have been making their own stuff for thousands of years before these corpos came up and we can do it again.
    
    And we can collectively set up our own we all own and that actually serve us, too.
    
    You just have to believe it’s possible, which it is. And you have to believe in yourself. If you think those are lies, your worldview is just negatively skewed. People can and do make change all of the fucking time. It’s time for our generation to be among them.
    
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SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Hard mode: Get tools and equipment and learn how to build and fix your own shit. Difficult and will take time, but 100% worthwhile.

Buy the tools and equipment and you only have to triple the amount of stuff you buy so you can fix stuff or make it to sell it!

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- pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You can get tools cheap at flea markets, garage sales or Facebook Marketplace though. And they last for years.
  
  Though remember I label it Hard Mode for a reason
  
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  - SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    What about the materials?
    
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    pinkdrunkenelephants@lemmy.cafe ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The same. You can even get wood for free sometimes if someone in your area cuts down a tree in their yard and curbsides the refuse.
    
    It’s not difficult. You just want to make it seem difficult to justify not having to put thought and effort into solving problems. You can’t just buy your way out of everything.
    
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