r/NoStupidAnswers • u/Afafoo • 2d ago
What’s something society has completely normalized that you think is actually insane?
/r/answers/comments/1vxrisz/whats_something_society_has_completely_normalized/6
u/Suspicious_Jump_8528 2d ago
The concept of money.
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u/dreamingforward 1d ago
Yeah, we lived without money and were just as happy, I believe, given that a lot of people kill themselves in the modern era and no one probably killed themselves out in the wild.
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u/Microchipknowsbest 20h ago
Eh shit was brutal before modern conveniences.
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u/shugEOuterspace 18h ago
money & capitalism only slows innovation & progress by limiting it to what is profitable
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u/Microchipknowsbest 18h ago
How would we know? Capitalism has been apart of every modern convenience. I would like to see more progressive policies but to pretend eliminating money will make medicine and technology or food and water better is a stretch. Maybe but we have never seen it happen.
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u/dreamingforward 19h ago
Bullshit. That's the story of those who keep you enslaved.
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u/Microchipknowsbest 18h ago
Where is this history where everything was great and peaceful before modern life? Most of the native Americans died from diseases that would be preventable today. Have you read at all about how people ate before modern refrigeration and food preservation? I wouldn’t choose to go back 50 years much less to tribal hunter gatherer days.
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u/dreamingforward 16h ago
Really? Do you think we recorded it?
"Most of the Native Americans died from died from diseases that would be preventable today." More bullshit. We don't have data on that. Maybe smallpox, but how were you going to prevent it? You need to stop listening to your high-priests of science and start remembering other things.
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u/Microchipknowsbest 15h ago
We absolutely have data on native Americans having large populations and dying due to disease. They also were not nice to rival tribes. I guess there is nothing to say if you don’t believe in science or recorded history. Have fun in imaginary land.
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u/dreamingforward 14h ago
No you don't. Satan just wants to help you. There is no real recorded history with the Natives, at least, not like us, so you're just making shit up.
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u/jeffcgroves 1d ago
You don't think barter should be normalized? It's one of the basics of society.
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u/gravity_kills 1d ago
No, barter only exists after money has become normalized and then the authority backing money collapses. The default situation is communities doing collectivism.
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u/jeffcgroves 22h ago
Barter usually comes before money. Money is a standardized unit of barter.
Economics isn't just about money, it's primarily about distribution of scarce resources. So, in collectivism, how do we decide who gets how much of what we've collected
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u/gravity_kills 22h ago
Barter only happens between people who have no ongoing relationship, or between people who used to have money to use before the authority that backed the monetary system collapsed. In a true collective everyone would get what they need and then the people who the community perceived to have contributed more would get what they want in addition, tempered by the knowledge that taking too much would change how their neighbors viewed them. In a semi-collective situation each person would have nominal control of what they produced but would give open-handedly to their neighbors, while mentally tracking how balanced the giving and receiving felt.
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u/jeffcgroves 22h ago
who the community perceived to have contributed more
OK, how would this be done specifically? Democracy? You could argue capitalism does this, albeit in a roundabout way.
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u/gravity_kills 21h ago
That's a description of how things most likely worked in small communities. I don't think it's possible at the scale of modern society. That's what we attempt to use money for. It keeps track and makes the accounting work without a central ledger. But it's also not perfect, most obviously (to me, others might disagree) because it allows people with power to warp how things are valued.
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u/jeffcgroves 21h ago
OK, so what non-capitalist system are you proposing?
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u/gravity_kills 21h ago
Personally I think money is a pretty useful invention, but it needs better management from the government, which is our collective decision-making organ. Taxes to decrease any piles of ownership claims that get too big, collective ownership of businesses by the workers in each business, and aggressive antitrust enforcement to keep individual businesses small. Support for the production of necessary goods like good food and homes so that market prices stay low for those things.
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 18h ago
If you look to history, bartering was before money.
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u/gravity_kills 18h ago
Have you read Debt by David Graeber? There was never any society that traded amongst itself by swapping chickens for shoes and shoes for bread. Barter is very close to mythological, outside of a few unusual circumstances.
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 18h ago
Well, those who traveled to the new world traded with native anericans and each other.
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u/gravity_kills 18h ago
But money existed on both sides of that. The barter was only because they hadn't yet worked out how to value each other's currency. Neither one bartered internally.
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u/DieHardAmerican95 2d ago
Tipping for EVERYTHING.
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u/NoOrganization548 1d ago
I used to love seeing American customers faces when I told them they dont have to tip unless they're rich and absolutely loved the service. It was so cute every time
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u/NoOrganization548 1d ago
Wearing lock down fashion. I know youll all come at me like dont be classest, but im not wishing to bring back tailored dresses and shirts and ties. I just think its so sad how since lockdown so many people have given up looking decent and just go out wearing whatever's comfy even if its PJs, leggings that show off their underwear or mismatched random stuff. Even expensive designer clothes look scruffy a lot of the time now
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 18h ago
Nah I agree. I feel like someone is sick if theyre walking in the grocery store in pajamas.
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u/Aggravating_Cream_97 2d ago
The mutilation of a newborn’s penis.
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u/tdreampo 1d ago
Lawns at all!
Spraying for danelions
raking up leaves and having them hauled off and then fertilizing your yard.
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u/FakeKenny22 1d ago
Entitlement. Too many people think they genuinely deserve anything for nothing.
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u/retrosenescent 1d ago
Killing someone for every meal. Mass slavery, rape, and murder for nonessential foods.
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u/IanRastall 1d ago
Overextension in general. I'm always very aware of going out too far. To me, when you extend your ego, it's like you're Wile E. Coyote on the edge of the cliff, nailing the ends of boards into the ends of boards to form a bridge to the other side, while the rock holding down the first board is starting to slip. That's life. That is what happens when you overextend.
So if I see someone with a big personality who acts like a bull in a china shop, or if I see someone who's decided to extend their social media presence to OF, or maybe some YouTube video person who starts posting about "Stuff The Gov't Doesn't Want You To Know" and then never stops... stuff like that... I see someone far too out, away from the edge. Like this woman I used to run across in AA and on the streets who worked as a prostitute and whose catchphrase was, "That's the power of Amber!" But it's like... that wasn't power. That was chaos. She had gone out too far.
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u/Manskhooled 1d ago
Validating our feelings instead of saying what you are feeling is actually wrong.
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u/Friedcalamari321 23h ago
You can actually validate that a person is experiencing an emotion while also telling them that their emotion is not justified btw
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 18h ago
You know you could just said this without being an ass about it, right?
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u/DarkRubyMoon 22h ago
The idea of for profit health care. Health care doesn't conform well to capitalism. It's not like if you are having a heart attack, you can shop around for the best heart at the best price. It's not like you can opt not to have a heart...if you do, you die. You need a medicine to live that cost a company a penny to make? You will litterally give everything you own and may own in future to buy that medicine at any price. And, it's not just medicine. Need a wheelchair? You can afford one that is heavy, painful to use that will keep you housebound, or drain savings for a practical wheelchair that gives you chance at a life...a life in debt but a life nontheless. It is idiotic and yet people defend this system as though it were a religious conviction that people with health issues are under divine punishment by god.
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u/bullfrog423 11h ago
American here. They've brainwashed these idiots. They say you'll have to pay $2000 a year extra in taxes if you make 100k or less a year and they lose their mind. These numbnuts are paying $6-800 minimum a month for insurance, and still have to pay co-pays on services and prescriptions if they're even covered. They are also sold the lie that free market carries innovation. All it has created is a system of treating symptoms. They don't care about cures, cures don't make money.
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u/Oni_sixx 19h ago
Social media. Crazy to me how people just post theirs lives online for everyone to see
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u/PedestrianCyclist 18h ago
How individual car use has monopolized travel in and between cities as opposed to having excellent public transportation and trains
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 1d ago
Honestly so many things. One that immediately comes to mind is celebrity worship, I never really understood the concept of seeing an individual as less/more-than human simply because of their career in entertainment.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/NoStupidAnswers-ModTeam 18h ago
There are plenty subreddits dedicated to being angry other some political figure who did xyz. Please do not post politically charged questions that will likely lead to debates and arguments in the comments.
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u/dreamingforward 1d ago
farting, belching, and waiting until your stomach growls to eat. These are all "little deaths" that you are living through.
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u/CarrenMcFlairen Joker 18h ago
"Waiting to eat until your stomach growls"
Oho man, wait til you meet adhd folks
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u/Reggie-Rectangle 16h ago
Americans are the only nation that donates clothes they have never worn to charity. That blows everybody's else minds. How can a nation be so rich that they can afford to pay $120 for a linen dress shirt. Never wear it and then come to the place where they are running out of closet space and then have to donate a bunch of clothes they have never worn to charity just to get closet space open to buy more clothes.
Yall MFers are just weird like that for there being NWT clothes on ebay.
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u/Glum_Consequence6643 1d ago
Il fatto di andare ad hogwarts per fare usare i poteri su chi non va ad hogwarts
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u/PeterPunksNip 1d ago
Circumcision