this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
823 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
86860 readers
4051 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's always been a shithole. The good part was the freedom, you used to be able to be exhasperated and complain to your friends. But we decided instead of improving society that some of us would rather give a bunch of facists cameras and microphones and turns out, those facists are the evil kind of facists, not this mythical "only here to protect us" kind.
Except for the slaves, which as you know, are explicitly allowed in the constitution.
Slavery is outlawed
Except for prisoners
Invent a bunch of laws targeting the lower class, those in poverty, and those with substance habits
Enforce the laws selectively against those with the least agency and socioeconomic means
Make incarceration so dangerous that prisoners feel the need to commit further crimes on the inside to survive
Game the system so that if you don't want someone out, they don't get out
Enjoy your slaves in an emancipated country
You forgot a step, privatize prisons for profits.
Oh snap, the essential step! 🤦
Sure, let's whataboutism the discussion, love that.
The freedom was always kind of dicey. Sedition act of 1798, for example.
Women also historically had a bad time of it. And the native peoples. Queer folks, too. Religious freedom is hit or miss.
It's been pretty good for wealthy people, historically. They've been pretty free.
I don't know when it was but realising the American dream was garbage, and I don't want to travel to the USA was strange.
It wasn't like a big hit to the face, it was just a slow crumbling of the idea from media.
When you watched friends and saw people in these massive apartments, or huge mcmansions in other shows, it was always something to strive towards, now I actively dislike it. I would hate to live somewhere like that.
There are(were at least, who knows how much longer they will last) some incredible and beautiful places in America, but I also don't want to risk my life flying there (and it isn't the planes).
For me at least I feel like it was when the American dream turned from "anyone can do it with hard work and dedication" to "anyone can do it if they exploit others, get lucky, or come from money".
The dream used to be "work hard and this will be yours" and it seems to have been turned to "work hard and dream about it someday, and maybe you can get close". And it definitely changed over time. People often forget when the "American dream" came about it wasn't "get a degree, and be a white collar worker for a chance" like it was with people my age. It was "go to work, wherever, with whatever skill set/background, contribute and you get a piece of the American apple pie". Over decades though those goal posts have been shifted further and further.
Earning the American dream used to be a given for everyone if you worked hard and contributed, but over time it has devolved with a bunch of extra conditionals of "well that doesn't count either" until we are left with "the dream exists, but only for a few who can actually get it."
People these days are turning to betting, day trading, side hustles, and extreme budgeting to even be comfortable in some cases. That's not how it used to be. You could work any job, minimum wage or not, and the benefits were supposed to be for everyone. That's not the case anymore, and the American dream has faded along with it
The "american dream" has always had a problematic contradiction. You should work hard. Working hard is good. You should work hard so you don't have to work anymore. Working sucks and you don't want to do it. You want to be the guy on a golf course getting money while those hard working people assemble widgets for you.
Well, which is it then?
I always took it as "if you do your best you'll never be without what you need" but that could still have a lot of broad interpretations
If freedom is the ability to complain, lots of countries with stringer regulations have that. They have it but better, even, because they have a much greater ability to stop it going away.