Whilst you can argue that services may have improved in some respects, the action towards resolution to problems is carefully monitored to help as least as possible and insulate accountability within a blanket of 'help' agents.

I assume this is a case of I live in a part of the world where it was different to how it was where you live... Or we value different things.

> Are you old enough to remember the bad old days?

I'm old enough to remember them. I very much preferred the "bad old days" over bad new days of ride-sharing services.

Well, those are political decisions, and WE (not the nebulous "they") are who make those decisions.

Like, I lost literally everything when I got sick. I think I probably understand "hovering about the knife edge" better than most people on this site. I lost my career, my sense of identity, and more than most can imagine. When you have faced explaining to your son how you might not make it through treatment and how he'll be responsible for a lot of things I am responsible for going forward, you kind of look at these people whining about AI codegen and sigh. This freaking technological miracle that might make their jobs obsolete so they're afraid of it, those people are as children who cannot see that it could literally free them from stupid bullshit... You people are not your jobs, you're not your salary and your job at ServiceNow or SalesForce or whatever can never love you back. The robot isn't a threat to you, the system that values the robot more than you is. It's basic root cause analysis.

But I bounced back. I fought through it. I kept on slogging through the stress and catastrophe. This whole thing feels like the meme to me, "oh, fist time?"

You know what I learned though? That we are not always powerless to act. We can get up and go. We can create! We can just do stuff. People need to realize that they have agency! Your life can get better if you get to continue it (hopefully). You are allowed to live how you want to live, you can do things! You don't have to accept being fed dog shit every day. How many of these people bitching and moaning about AI have even thought to try to form a union? How many of these people vote? How many of these people get off their assess and go and participate in some direct action? How many?

Dammit, why don't I see anyone in the street protesting the war? Why don't I see anyone protesting the lack of social safety nets? Why don't I see anyone doing anything. You know why? Because doing things is hard. Because most people want things to change without putting in any of the work (sometimes dangerous, sometimes stressful) to change things. And meanwhile, I see AI - which could literally be a tool we use to fix the injustices of the world, the disaster of tying people's right to exist to their pay check - that NONSENSE that we mostly all hate, and the response is "oh my god what if it takes my job?" or so-called "leftists" bending over backwards to defend copyright law.

These people complaining don't want the system to change, they just want to maintain a privileged position within it. But if the system has always been harming people at the margins, is it ok if we go back? "Oh, thank goodness we made AI illegal so I can still have to fill out my manual TPS reports and report to Bob on my progress for the week! How great is that!" The lack of imagination of a better world is astounding and disheartening. The whiners and perpetual malcontents shouting about AI secretly want to be the billionaire, not overthrow a system that allows them in the first place. They want their previously privileged status as a "knowledge worker" to remain special.

Man, am I the only one in here who read Marx? Bell Hooks? Kropotkin? Dream bigger people!

Dude, I'm building an off grid cabin in the woods. I already live pretty "freely." Dream bigger. We can change and make the world awesome! We have to want to though.

> Electricity promised to eliminate toil and bring us a life of leisure. It did not. Perhaps all technologies have this potential, AI included. That potential will never be realized because relentless and perpetual growth is a necessary precondition and justification for the development and expansion of such technologies, and that growth demands and consumes whatever excess human capacity that the technology freed up.

Also, this speaks to me as someone who has never used used a screw driver to turn a screw into a board. The drill driver has made it amazingly better.

EDIT to add:

Also, I've lived a subsistence lifestyle before, I'm fairly close to doing it again though I'll still need some money to roll through the household? Dream bigger buddy. It's not all doom and gloom.