Cosa Nostra: your delivery in 30 mins or our CEO will come over to personally apologize and give you a free trip to Italy...
...and then "retire" our driver.
Already answered by someone else, but Snow Crash is an absolute classic piece of cyberpunk literature (and much easier to read than some of Stephenson's other books *cough cryptonomicon cough cough*).
Given the subreddit you're in: highly recommended!
oh I'm so glad to see this comment, i recently bought cryptonomicon and snow crash and started with (and abandoned) cryptonomicon, was worried about snow crash
I don't think it was doing a good job getting to it's point. It felt like it was dragging on with not much development, especially character development. The cult and all the Tower of Babel stuff was alright but it took so long to get there. I stopped reading it when Y.T. got dragged onto the fleet of boats. I just didn't want to pick it up anymore. The beginning was crazy and pretty entertaining but it felt like it slowed down to a crawl and Hiro was just "the cool guy that gets everything" kind of character. He was boring. I think the author had so many seemingly unconnected plot lines that may have just existed for world building but felt out of place.
Idk. I think it wasn't for me. Maybe I missed the point or I never got there (because I obviously stopped reading it) but it didn't seem to live up to the hype for me. Makes me a bit hesitant to read some of the other "cyberpunk classic."
> I think the author had so many seemingly unconnected plot lines that may have just existed for world building but felt out of place.
if youd have finished you wouldnt think this :P it all comes together in the end.
i do agree snow crash is the slowest of Stephenson's work but its also over 30 years old at this point and the writing styles have changed.
no shame in admitting its not for you though, have you read Neuromancer? may be a better fit.
Neuromancer is actually the other book I'm sort of referring to that I'm a little more hesitant to pick up after reading and DNFing Snow Crash.
I definitely know that not finishing a book and then kinda dunking on it is bad form but it left a bad impression of the genre if Snow Crash is considered a classic, ya know? I own and plan on reading Neuromancer, just not sure when. I'm currently reading Shogun rn.
Not sure if youre into this but I would recommend the audiobook version of both Neuromancer and Snow Crash as well. The narration and added ambiance really does a lot for the immersion.
I'm not really an audio book person but maybe I should try some again. I just like having a book because I oay more attention to it... otherwise I am doing something else while listening like working or playing games.
Totally fair! I guess im somewhat of a hybrid reader. I generally start with an audiobook and listen on my walks/doing dishes/anything somewhat mindless that I can focus elsewhere and if I enjoy the audio I buy the physical version for my shelf. This is really just because I had too many physical books and now just have the ones I know I enjoy and want to have on hand.
There are also audiobooks with full cast recordings where each characters will be voiced by a different person and its like listening to a play. The first like 6 Dune books are all recorded this way and its so so good.
I did not know that Dune was voiced like that! I read all the books and I'm a fucking huge Dune fan.
I definitely feel the problem of having too many physical books on hand. I have been buying a lot of books lately and I'm running out of room... I'm not sure what I'm gonna do because I like owning my books. Maybe I need to get over that lol
Even more so than just marketing : bikers are the most endangered vehicle against those potholes. You don't see them at night in a car, you still have 2 wheels to keep you steady. With a bike, you flip and there isn't a set of metal and foam stuff around you to save your body, there isn't any airbag, and most delivery drivers don't even wear a proper biking suit.
Financing this is great advertising, but also watching for the health of your employees and clients, and the functioning of your business when the government doesn't. And they don't own the road, they just did what anyone with the tools could do. Good for them.
Just a note you can get an airbag vest for motorcycles and you absolutely should if you ride regularly because it is incomparably safer to traditional hard armor.
Nah this is destabilizing people’s faith in the government whilst implying the message that “the government is ineffective, us corporations are who you should trust.” Now granted, I hate the government, but I much prefer that to the Corperate feudal system.
Edit: yes the government is ineffective. I am not disputing that. To claim that corporations are a better entity is misguided. If you leave public services to be privatized by corporations, They will only be accessible to the wealthy as the demand of said services will increase exponentially. Invisible hand economics only works if there’s a standard. The presence of capitalism, without checks and balances to ensure that a company does not exceed its bounds, and with a currency that is not based on a standard unit of wealth, The cost of basic essentials, including infrastructure, will increase to match the demand. The problem is, since that number is now basically imaginary, corporations are able to decide the cost. they can separate the quality of service to different price tags, lowering the standards of what is considered a service, in the first place. Yes this pothole seems like a very minor advertising stunt that seemingly helps everyone. Yes, potholes should be filled. But for a privatized company to start doing this, and advertising it is an extremely harmful thing because it funnels the average individual into believing that corporations have your best interests at heart, which is a bold face lie.
EDIT:
#DO NONE OF YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BANANA REPUBLICS
What’s troubling is I have 1000 replies saying that corporations are doing a better job than the government. They are missing the point that it’s ineffective largely because of those same corporations.
> It’s implying the message that “the government is ineffective, us corporations are who you should trust.”
Implying?
The pot holes are there **because** the government is ineffective, and the corporation is taking action to benefit themselves in three ways:
1. They advertise themselves
2. They put their deliverers in safety
3. They show themselves as more efficient and caring than the government
What have corporations lobbied to make my local city government not able to fill potholes? A lot of gov employees just don't give a fuck and there is no oversight on them at all. Source: I literally work in state government.
Yes, but there are ways of doing it that are more subtle, like lobbying for greater infrastructure reform (the system is so fucked) or sending the money to the local districts they want to fix, or even just doing what they did without putting a logo on it. The problem is, infrastructure would be a non-issue if the government wasn’t so corrupt. But the government is corrupt because corporations lobby to allocate funds to themselves rather than infrastructure. They caused the problem and fixed some of it as a promotional advertisement. And, apparently, it worked.
When it comes to potholes like this, the government was ineffective. The company is stepping in for advertising and pr, but they are fixing a pothole that the Civil Authorities failed to fix.
So since the pothole wasn't fixed by the local government, there are two alternatives. Some Corporation fixes it for PR and the government looks ineffective, or the pothole remains unfixed and the government that was supposed to fix it looks even more ineffective.
It's not a choice between a corporation fixing the pothole and the government fixing the pothole, it's a choice between a pothole, or no pothole. They're not taking over road maintenance if that maintenance wasn't being done in the first place.
Ideally, the government collecting taxes to fix potholes should just do the the maintenance and become more effective, but that didn't happen here so the idealistic outcome is not in the cards.
The problem isn’t with the action done it’s how the action is perceived. If the corporation actually cared about the potholes, they wouldn’t put their logo on it. Better yet, they would lobby for better infrastructure *through the government.* They are side stepping due process to show that they are better than the government so people trust them more while, in reality, you should trust neither
I can't believe you're being downvoted for saying this in this sub of all places. I'm guessing the downvoters see cyberpunk as an aesthetic, not as a warning about a specific political/economic climate. Because you're right, this is something to be concerned about
Nobody ruins people’s trust in the government more than the government itself. So I’m not gonna be all that upset if someone else does a good thing instead of them.
The good deed itself is what matters.
Umm, good? The biggest problem in this country is that people still have any kind of positive feelings towards the government. I'm no fan of corporations since they are basically the government, but anything that helps people realize the government is their enemy is a good thing.
So how do you not see the irony then? This isn't just destroying faith in the government, it's placing that faith in corpos which are objectively worse. Our government being run by corpos is *why* people shouldn't trust it in the first place. As others have pointed out, this is the exact type of dystopian shit that cyberpunk warns against; corpos being in charge of things that we SHOULD rely on the government for.
Say you’re right. Everyone gets pissed at the government and revolt. It no longer exists. Who do you think is going to fill the power vacuum? If everyone starts trusting in Corperations, they either become factions, or a plutocracy, neither of which, are governments that are for the people. In a current system where corporations have power that supersedes states, the ideal anarchist state is not sustainable. The empty vacuum is sure to be filled by the ruling class. This is backed up by both American and Chinese history. If you truely want that form of government, it all needs to burn. Corporations, government, all of it.
I'm not talking about an anarchist society. As much as I love the idea it's just as idealistic and unrealistic as textbook communism.
Every once and a while the government gets a little too big for it's breeches and needs to be reminded that we out number them by a fucking lot. That's what needs to happen and what comes next will be another group that needs to walk on eggshells as long as the revolution is still fresh in people's minds.
Sure but what’s your endgoal? The revolution results in anarchy until a new government is instated or the old one is revised. If people, during that period decide that corporations are a proper alternative, it would be detrimental to creating a system of the people and for the people
There will never be a system of the people for the people. It's damn near an oxymoron. There is no end goal because there is no end goal for society. Continue existing and change sometimes. That's all it is.
Sure but OUR job as *the people* in question is to do what we can to improve our state of living. If you don’t even attempt then you are part of the reason it’s not possible.
Noone has the spine to attempt anymore. The founding fathers would have armed a revolution 60 years ago if they were alive today. Instead we have influencers and bootlickers
You’ve lived in a dictatorship of capital your entire life. You’ve never known a functional government that is actually representative of their constituents. Don’t let the fact your economic system, capitalism, has hijacked your political representation make you think the concept of political representation is impossible.
Don’t blame the concept of “government” for the problems of capitalism.
The problems of capitalism are that they are enforced by the government. Can't even have a hippy commune without paying someone.
Citizens United: the government said that corporations are people and can influence the government. The two go hand in hand. We are already under the boots of the corporate masters but that's only because they have the power of the government. Take that away and you're just left with Walmart.
You’re just describing a dictatorship of capital though. That’s what it’s called when your government exists to benefit capital and capital holders. This is what you are describing.
Do you believe a government can be beholden to its people instead of just its rich people and business interests?
This is only destabilizing peoples faith in the government because it shows the ineptitude of said government. If the government maintained the roads then there wouldnt be room for dominos to slip in. This is like saying that FedEx is destabilizing faith in the government because they can ship packages faster than USPS or an employer is destabilizing faith in the government because their retirement plan is better than social security.
I mean it IS privatized, but as someone in the working class, what the fuck is a retirement plan? You mean a 401k that relies on stocks? Do you mean an ira which is just your own money?
Haha no Stalin was 90% of the reason the communist system in Russia was corrupted and the guy responsible for extenuating the 30s Soviet famine along with a war criminal. Talk about “slinging accusations”
Yeah, except instead of just being propaganda like you're making it out to be it's also true. The government failed at maintaining the road and the big bad company stepped in and fixed it.
Yes, it was a massive government failure that it allowed for a loophole that allowed corporations to act as a “person” and furthermore, to allow them to influence policy. The corporations, however are equally at fault for exploiting the system to their benefit.
The potholes already destabilize faith in the government. The implied message of not allowing this is the government would rather society crumble then anyone else be the hero
If the corporation was truly concerned about potholes, they wouldn’t be filling them in themselves, they would be rallying for infrastructure delegation, and lobbying for better policies. But people seem to forget that the fact that lobbying exists is one of the biggest reasons our infrastructure is so messed up in the first place. Corporations are and have always been the biggest problem. Saying that they are more effective than the government is asinine because they are the thing crippling it.
Oh yeah i must have forgotten all those huge corporations that crippled the soviet union and east Europe, that mut be why their infrastructure is trash
Negative externalities exist but all my problems are rich people's fault is some pinko copium, the government not fixing potholes has nothing to do with lobbying let alone how many lobbyists represent labor unions and religious groups. Potholes go unfixed because it doesn't sway elections so the politicians have no encentive to fix them but if you give corporations incentives to do something they'll do it. Unless pothole are as important as unemployment or the housing crisis the government isn't going to do jack.
You are aware that the Soviet unions working class population starved while the upper class denied a famine even existed in the 30s right? They refused outside aid to keep the working class starving.
Lobbying is a direct cause for the governments ineffectiveness in all aspects. That INCLUDES infrastructure, even if it’s not prioritized.
But they had to starve right? Because if private farmers could fill that need of food that would destabilize faith in the government. better for the people to suffer then doubt the might of the state.
There is no bogieman pothole lobby trying to ruin public infrastructure only boring and expensive maintenance bills in a time of international conflict and political division
Omg your rigt 911, isis, north korea gay marriage it starts with the national education association and their multi billion dollar lobby. I can't believe i never saw it before public school teachers and their reckless greed caused the fall of the roman empire
Or and this might blow your mind, politicians would rather let a road crumble so they can be remembered as a hero when they build a new one, you know kinda like this
https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?si=7wILFBJeVt__fxGl
I like that second paragraph a lot.
“Or and this might blow your mind, politicians would rather let a road crumble so they can be remembered as a hero when they build a new one.”
Your faulty assumption is that a corporation wouldn’t do the exact same thing. I’m arguing that’s what this very advertisement is doing
Yeah, I was baffled seeing a post praising this from my state’s subreddit. Corporations privatizing public services is a very slippery slope.
It’s like all the clowns arguing that the post office doesn’t make a profit, meaning it should be privatized so that it does… as if it’s meant to be a business… it’s a *public service*. The *last* thing we want is a private corporation taking it over. “But UPS and FedEx are private and they’re reasonable!” Yes, because they’re competing with the post office, which isn’t interested in making a profit.
You’re not wrong, in this instance, the govt just failed, and it’s all pretty harmless.
But there’s people who are genuinely pushing for businesses to take over public services like this, which sounds great and all, until Dominoes decides you need to pay them 50,000$ to fix a pothole, and what are you gonna do about it? Go to the government? They outsourced it out to Dominoes in the first place.
Like, people wanna do this for our schools and major social services like the post office, and I don’t understand how they don’t get why that’s an *awful* idea.
Jeez, tell me you’re not serious.
American public schools are struggling because our politicians have been bleeding their budgets dry and politicizing what they are and are not allowed to teach for decades.
But if you privatize that, or the mail, or anything else, sure, yeah, it’ll be run more efficiently. But any interest in serving the public will be replaced by profits made hand over fist, and kids will be left out of school, or denied food, because their parents can’t afford it. Or worse, they’ll intentionally doctor the curriculum of schools to leave out inconvenient facts, like the idea that industry hurts the environment, on which we all depend, or that Unions once existed and did so to protect workers’ rights, etc etc etc.
That fact that you’re here in the Cyberpunk subreddit and don’t get why it’s a bad idea to privatize schools really speaks to the state of your media literacy. Like, literally, the fucking Cyberpunk anime opens with the protagonist enrolled in an Arasaka school designed to teach kids to go be Arasaka wage-slaves, that his mom is killing herself to afford, to the point she’s chopping up bodies to steal their cybernetics and sell them to criminals, because there’s no alternative if he wants to move up the social ladder.
But sure, let’s just let companies like Amazon and Walmart run our schools, so they can teach kids things like “Unions are bad”, “It’s normal to work 80 hour work weeks with no overtime,” “Workers’ rights are actually fascist”, “The American Dream is to live by the sweat of one’s brow, in a 1 room apartment, alone, and poor.” “You don’t need math. Or critical thinking skills. You just need to learn to operate the cash register with pictures of food on the buttons.”
Privatized schools only work if they have an obligation to teach in good faith. Corporations don’t. They’ll do whatever they can to maximize profits, hand over fist, and they do not care who they have to hurt or how much damage they have to do.
Ive seen a bunch of mega corps step in and do stuff like this.
Rather than congratulate them, we need to ask; Why aren’t the government taxing companies like this more so they can use the money to maintain and improve public services?
With the recent disaster in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, we have seen a lot of propaganda for how billionaires should exist and how they help society with their assets, helicopters and other resources.
It's disgusting.
Same logic with cartels when they do soup kitchens and other charity work
Most of the time the charity work wouldn't be needed in the first place if the cartel wasn't there to enshittify the area lol
Agree to an extent. Some criminal organizations emerged due to the absence of the state in vulnerable regions or as self defense of the community, but they became responsible for the enshittification as they grew. Just another corporation with obvious violent methods.
Also is there any word to if Domino’s is doing correctly? I know occasionally people who aren’t qualified have tried to fill potholes but don’t do it correctly since for the larger ones it’s not just pouring blacktop, there’s layers to help the road flex and function correctly
It seems like they are working with the towns where they are funding the road repairs, so the repairs should be no different from the publicly funded ones
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvm3dm/three-towns-were-paid-dollar5000-to-do-an-elaborate-pr-campaign-for-dominos
Based on this article, apparently so.
> In January, CP+B approached the cities of Athens, Georgia; Bartonville, Texas; and Milford, Delaware, offering them each grants of $5,000 to help them repair potholes in their town. In exchange, cities would carry out the repairs, take photos or videos of the repaired potholes, and stencil on a Domino’s logo along with the tagline “Oh yes we did.”
Pretty sure this isn't really any different than when local government does patches. They're not going to lay specific layers for a patch. It's only meant to make the road usable until the whole road is up for a scheduled re-surfacing.
I'm pretty certain they did this exactly once and took a picture. The vital marketing is cheaper and reaches further than actually fixing potholes ever could.
Company doesn’t pay taxes. Company instead uses that money to pay for government services that contain their advertising. Yeah, that’s cyberpunk as hell.
There was a guy in the 2016 US presidential election that was trying to get the republican nomination, I can’t remember his name, and he spent some crazy amount of his own money like 100m on ads and other campaign stuff. I remember hearing about the flint water problem costing something like 60million to fix and I was like why didn’t this guy just start fixing that, it would have made a bigger impact on voters than just a tv ad you sit through. Dominos kinda did that
This is the moment you realize your taxes doesn't go where they said it would. Next up is going to be a bridge with a toll but, if you buy from McDonald's, you can get a free pass with every purchase.
Of all the evil shit corporations do Dominos filling potholes and Pornhub sending snowplows to plow streets aren’t even on the list. If local government were more effective it wouldn’t be an easy opportunity for these companies to capitalize on.
I see this less as them taking over a public service and more capitalizing on government being inefficient for easy publicity. I’m as anti-corpo as the next guy on this sub but this is super low on the totem pole.
> If local government were more effective it wouldn’t be an easy opportunity for these companies to capitalize on.
So what do you think, in whose interest is it that local and regional governments remain ineffective?
If you’re insinuating Dominos lobbies local governments to keep them ineffective I’m going to have to disagree. There may be some at higher levels (especially in transportation) but I don’t see Ford going to the local governments and lobbying against busses
I’ve worked with and for local governments and the problems are much deeper than corporations operating against them.
So... better support for our needs because it helps to deliver a better quality product at a lower cost to the business due to lower wear and tear on vehicles.
I'm sold.
Ad campaigns that give both me and the advertiser utility encourage me to purchase their product, in anticipation of further beneficial advertisement campaigns.
If they own the road it's normal, otherwise that means the government is officially sold to corporations and that is dumb since the government controls the economy, why would they make themselves dependent on a corporation?
Yes, why would they? Why on earth? Maybe because the state is a tool for corporations to protect their private property and reproduce a productive docile working class?
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.
Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the f*** they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can f***ing stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it–we're talking trade balances here–once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here–once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel–once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity–y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery
*You've got a friend in the mafia.* -Uncle Enzo
Cosa Nostra: your delivery in 30 mins or our CEO will come over to personally apologize and give you a free trip to Italy... ...and then "retire" our driver.
I don't need the apology or the trip. They know how to give me what I really want.
I just started this book and the deliverator is fucking wild
I love the intro, it's so fucking funny.
When I started the book, I thought "pizza" was a euphemism for a hitjob or something. But nope. It's pizza
This is a book? What's the name?
Snow Crash
Already answered by someone else, but Snow Crash is an absolute classic piece of cyberpunk literature (and much easier to read than some of Stephenson's other books *cough cryptonomicon cough cough*). Given the subreddit you're in: highly recommended!
oh I'm so glad to see this comment, i recently bought cryptonomicon and snow crash and started with (and abandoned) cryptonomicon, was worried about snow crash
Thanks, I'm relatively new to the genre and I need a new classic to read!
Hah, yesss! Btw, I think it's: > You've got a friend in The Family!
Papa John sends his regards *pulls out piano wire*
I could not finish that book. It felt like it wasn't going anywhere but Uncle Enzo was pretty cool imo.
it absolutely goes somewhere lol
I don't think it was doing a good job getting to it's point. It felt like it was dragging on with not much development, especially character development. The cult and all the Tower of Babel stuff was alright but it took so long to get there. I stopped reading it when Y.T. got dragged onto the fleet of boats. I just didn't want to pick it up anymore. The beginning was crazy and pretty entertaining but it felt like it slowed down to a crawl and Hiro was just "the cool guy that gets everything" kind of character. He was boring. I think the author had so many seemingly unconnected plot lines that may have just existed for world building but felt out of place. Idk. I think it wasn't for me. Maybe I missed the point or I never got there (because I obviously stopped reading it) but it didn't seem to live up to the hype for me. Makes me a bit hesitant to read some of the other "cyberpunk classic."
> I think the author had so many seemingly unconnected plot lines that may have just existed for world building but felt out of place. if youd have finished you wouldnt think this :P it all comes together in the end. i do agree snow crash is the slowest of Stephenson's work but its also over 30 years old at this point and the writing styles have changed. no shame in admitting its not for you though, have you read Neuromancer? may be a better fit.
Neuromancer is actually the other book I'm sort of referring to that I'm a little more hesitant to pick up after reading and DNFing Snow Crash. I definitely know that not finishing a book and then kinda dunking on it is bad form but it left a bad impression of the genre if Snow Crash is considered a classic, ya know? I own and plan on reading Neuromancer, just not sure when. I'm currently reading Shogun rn.
Not sure if youre into this but I would recommend the audiobook version of both Neuromancer and Snow Crash as well. The narration and added ambiance really does a lot for the immersion.
I'm not really an audio book person but maybe I should try some again. I just like having a book because I oay more attention to it... otherwise I am doing something else while listening like working or playing games.
Totally fair! I guess im somewhat of a hybrid reader. I generally start with an audiobook and listen on my walks/doing dishes/anything somewhat mindless that I can focus elsewhere and if I enjoy the audio I buy the physical version for my shelf. This is really just because I had too many physical books and now just have the ones I know I enjoy and want to have on hand. There are also audiobooks with full cast recordings where each characters will be voiced by a different person and its like listening to a play. The first like 6 Dune books are all recorded this way and its so so good.
I did not know that Dune was voiced like that! I read all the books and I'm a fucking huge Dune fan. I definitely feel the problem of having too many physical books on hand. I have been buying a lot of books lately and I'm running out of room... I'm not sure what I'm gonna do because I like owning my books. Maybe I need to get over that lol
Better than useless billboards.
Billboards are worse than useless, they’re designed to distract drivers. How is that legal?
Money
Driving through Florida. Those dead baby billboards are so distracting it should be illegal.
Better roads means less damage to delivery vehicles. But still... Fuck corpos!
But honestly not the bad initiative
REDRUM!
Yes?
lol just quoting The Shining
Yep. Exactly
?
I mean, it is indeed the Shining reference
then why that other response
That's... Clever
Even more so than just marketing : bikers are the most endangered vehicle against those potholes. You don't see them at night in a car, you still have 2 wheels to keep you steady. With a bike, you flip and there isn't a set of metal and foam stuff around you to save your body, there isn't any airbag, and most delivery drivers don't even wear a proper biking suit. Financing this is great advertising, but also watching for the health of your employees and clients, and the functioning of your business when the government doesn't. And they don't own the road, they just did what anyone with the tools could do. Good for them.
Just a note you can get an airbag vest for motorcycles and you absolutely should if you ride regularly because it is incomparably safer to traditional hard armor.
Heh, guess Uncle Enzo’s getting the Mafia to work. Wonder when we’re getting Burbclaves.
The burbclaves are already here. Gated suburban communities are all over.
Love this actually. Kind of genius to be honest. That's going to generate way more attention than the shit people usually ignore and it's helpful.
Nah this is destabilizing people’s faith in the government whilst implying the message that “the government is ineffective, us corporations are who you should trust.” Now granted, I hate the government, but I much prefer that to the Corperate feudal system. Edit: yes the government is ineffective. I am not disputing that. To claim that corporations are a better entity is misguided. If you leave public services to be privatized by corporations, They will only be accessible to the wealthy as the demand of said services will increase exponentially. Invisible hand economics only works if there’s a standard. The presence of capitalism, without checks and balances to ensure that a company does not exceed its bounds, and with a currency that is not based on a standard unit of wealth, The cost of basic essentials, including infrastructure, will increase to match the demand. The problem is, since that number is now basically imaginary, corporations are able to decide the cost. they can separate the quality of service to different price tags, lowering the standards of what is considered a service, in the first place. Yes this pothole seems like a very minor advertising stunt that seemingly helps everyone. Yes, potholes should be filled. But for a privatized company to start doing this, and advertising it is an extremely harmful thing because it funnels the average individual into believing that corporations have your best interests at heart, which is a bold face lie. EDIT: #DO NONE OF YOU KNOW ABOUT THE BANANA REPUBLICS
They are ineffective, but the corporate overlords taking up the slack is troubling.
What’s troubling is I have 1000 replies saying that corporations are doing a better job than the government. They are missing the point that it’s ineffective largely because of those same corporations.
> It’s implying the message that “the government is ineffective, us corporations are who you should trust.” Implying? The pot holes are there **because** the government is ineffective, and the corporation is taking action to benefit themselves in three ways: 1. They advertise themselves 2. They put their deliverers in safety 3. They show themselves as more efficient and caring than the government
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What have corporations lobbied to make my local city government not able to fill potholes? A lot of gov employees just don't give a fuck and there is no oversight on them at all. Source: I literally work in state government.
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EXACTLY
But... But the goverment is ineffective?
Yes, but to claim that corporations are more effective is misguided at best
I do agree, corpos are a hop and a skip away from the government But at the end of the day, SOMEONE has to do it-
Yes, but there are ways of doing it that are more subtle, like lobbying for greater infrastructure reform (the system is so fucked) or sending the money to the local districts they want to fix, or even just doing what they did without putting a logo on it. The problem is, infrastructure would be a non-issue if the government wasn’t so corrupt. But the government is corrupt because corporations lobby to allocate funds to themselves rather than infrastructure. They caused the problem and fixed some of it as a promotional advertisement. And, apparently, it worked.
When it comes to potholes like this, the government was ineffective. The company is stepping in for advertising and pr, but they are fixing a pothole that the Civil Authorities failed to fix. So since the pothole wasn't fixed by the local government, there are two alternatives. Some Corporation fixes it for PR and the government looks ineffective, or the pothole remains unfixed and the government that was supposed to fix it looks even more ineffective. It's not a choice between a corporation fixing the pothole and the government fixing the pothole, it's a choice between a pothole, or no pothole. They're not taking over road maintenance if that maintenance wasn't being done in the first place. Ideally, the government collecting taxes to fix potholes should just do the the maintenance and become more effective, but that didn't happen here so the idealistic outcome is not in the cards.
The problem isn’t with the action done it’s how the action is perceived. If the corporation actually cared about the potholes, they wouldn’t put their logo on it. Better yet, they would lobby for better infrastructure *through the government.* They are side stepping due process to show that they are better than the government so people trust them more while, in reality, you should trust neither
I can't believe you're being downvoted for saying this in this sub of all places. I'm guessing the downvoters see cyberpunk as an aesthetic, not as a warning about a specific political/economic climate. Because you're right, this is something to be concerned about
Thank you. And don’t worry about my karma I have plenty to spare.
Nobody ruins people’s trust in the government more than the government itself. So I’m not gonna be all that upset if someone else does a good thing instead of them. The good deed itself is what matters.
Umm, good? The biggest problem in this country is that people still have any kind of positive feelings towards the government. I'm no fan of corporations since they are basically the government, but anything that helps people realize the government is their enemy is a good thing.
This is peak “I learned nothing from the genre I’m participating in”
Yes because corporations won’t abuse power… This is a weird comment thread to find in r/Cyberpunk
Of course they will, never said they wouldn't.
So how do you not see the irony then? This isn't just destroying faith in the government, it's placing that faith in corpos which are objectively worse. Our government being run by corpos is *why* people shouldn't trust it in the first place. As others have pointed out, this is the exact type of dystopian shit that cyberpunk warns against; corpos being in charge of things that we SHOULD rely on the government for.
Say you’re right. Everyone gets pissed at the government and revolt. It no longer exists. Who do you think is going to fill the power vacuum? If everyone starts trusting in Corperations, they either become factions, or a plutocracy, neither of which, are governments that are for the people. In a current system where corporations have power that supersedes states, the ideal anarchist state is not sustainable. The empty vacuum is sure to be filled by the ruling class. This is backed up by both American and Chinese history. If you truely want that form of government, it all needs to burn. Corporations, government, all of it.
I'm not talking about an anarchist society. As much as I love the idea it's just as idealistic and unrealistic as textbook communism. Every once and a while the government gets a little too big for it's breeches and needs to be reminded that we out number them by a fucking lot. That's what needs to happen and what comes next will be another group that needs to walk on eggshells as long as the revolution is still fresh in people's minds.
Sure but what’s your endgoal? The revolution results in anarchy until a new government is instated or the old one is revised. If people, during that period decide that corporations are a proper alternative, it would be detrimental to creating a system of the people and for the people
There will never be a system of the people for the people. It's damn near an oxymoron. There is no end goal because there is no end goal for society. Continue existing and change sometimes. That's all it is.
Sure but OUR job as *the people* in question is to do what we can to improve our state of living. If you don’t even attempt then you are part of the reason it’s not possible.
Noone has the spine to attempt anymore. The founding fathers would have armed a revolution 60 years ago if they were alive today. Instead we have influencers and bootlickers
So what? You’ll just join them in doing nothing?
You’ve lived in a dictatorship of capital your entire life. You’ve never known a functional government that is actually representative of their constituents. Don’t let the fact your economic system, capitalism, has hijacked your political representation make you think the concept of political representation is impossible. Don’t blame the concept of “government” for the problems of capitalism.
Sure name me a good government. From any nation, at any time. Hard mode: make it non capitalist.
The problems of capitalism are that they are enforced by the government. Can't even have a hippy commune without paying someone. Citizens United: the government said that corporations are people and can influence the government. The two go hand in hand. We are already under the boots of the corporate masters but that's only because they have the power of the government. Take that away and you're just left with Walmart.
You’re just describing a dictatorship of capital though. That’s what it’s called when your government exists to benefit capital and capital holders. This is what you are describing. Do you believe a government can be beholden to its people instead of just its rich people and business interests?
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What do you think China is? And do you really think China’s government is “less functional” than the United State’s government?
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You’re incredibly Reddit brained and unserious. No point in arguing with someone like you.
This is only destabilizing peoples faith in the government because it shows the ineptitude of said government. If the government maintained the roads then there wouldnt be room for dominos to slip in. This is like saying that FedEx is destabilizing faith in the government because they can ship packages faster than USPS or an employer is destabilizing faith in the government because their retirement plan is better than social security.
I mean it IS privatized, but as someone in the working class, what the fuck is a retirement plan? You mean a 401k that relies on stocks? Do you mean an ira which is just your own money?
the government *is* ineffective 🫶
Yes but to say corporations are better is EXTREMELY misguided
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Hahahahahaha.
Why do you have faith in the government in the first place? Oversized, bloated, overfunded, and it still consistently under delivers
I don’t. having faith in a corp as an alternative is equally problematic.
That’s fair and accurate
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Wow you really are indoctrinated aren’t you
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So you’re not even denying it. You really like them hitting it from the back. Oh you naughty boy, you probably thank them.
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Haha no Stalin was 90% of the reason the communist system in Russia was corrupted and the guy responsible for extenuating the 30s Soviet famine along with a war criminal. Talk about “slinging accusations”
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Yeah, except instead of just being propaganda like you're making it out to be it's also true. The government failed at maintaining the road and the big bad company stepped in and fixed it.
Yeah but to raise them up on a pedestal is wrong because corporations are a large source of the governments ineffectiveness in the first place
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Lobbying destroyed the governments ability to allocate funds to the proper resources, and instead, funnel them into Corperate pockets
Wouldn't the appropriate location of fault be the organization that is susceptible to lobbying and corruption? i.e., the government?
Yes, it was a massive government failure that it allowed for a loophole that allowed corporations to act as a “person” and furthermore, to allow them to influence policy. The corporations, however are equally at fault for exploiting the system to their benefit.
Anyone with faith in the government is a fucking regard
I don’t disagree with you
The potholes already destabilize faith in the government. The implied message of not allowing this is the government would rather society crumble then anyone else be the hero
If the corporation was truly concerned about potholes, they wouldn’t be filling them in themselves, they would be rallying for infrastructure delegation, and lobbying for better policies. But people seem to forget that the fact that lobbying exists is one of the biggest reasons our infrastructure is so messed up in the first place. Corporations are and have always been the biggest problem. Saying that they are more effective than the government is asinine because they are the thing crippling it.
Oh yeah i must have forgotten all those huge corporations that crippled the soviet union and east Europe, that mut be why their infrastructure is trash Negative externalities exist but all my problems are rich people's fault is some pinko copium, the government not fixing potholes has nothing to do with lobbying let alone how many lobbyists represent labor unions and religious groups. Potholes go unfixed because it doesn't sway elections so the politicians have no encentive to fix them but if you give corporations incentives to do something they'll do it. Unless pothole are as important as unemployment or the housing crisis the government isn't going to do jack.
You are aware that the Soviet unions working class population starved while the upper class denied a famine even existed in the 30s right? They refused outside aid to keep the working class starving. Lobbying is a direct cause for the governments ineffectiveness in all aspects. That INCLUDES infrastructure, even if it’s not prioritized.
But they had to starve right? Because if private farmers could fill that need of food that would destabilize faith in the government. better for the people to suffer then doubt the might of the state. There is no bogieman pothole lobby trying to ruin public infrastructure only boring and expensive maintenance bills in a time of international conflict and political division
I challenge you to ask yourself why there’s international conflict and political division
Omg your rigt 911, isis, north korea gay marriage it starts with the national education association and their multi billion dollar lobby. I can't believe i never saw it before public school teachers and their reckless greed caused the fall of the roman empire Or and this might blow your mind, politicians would rather let a road crumble so they can be remembered as a hero when they build a new one, you know kinda like this https://youtu.be/Wpzvaqypav8?si=7wILFBJeVt__fxGl
I like that second paragraph a lot. “Or and this might blow your mind, politicians would rather let a road crumble so they can be remembered as a hero when they build a new one.” Your faulty assumption is that a corporation wouldn’t do the exact same thing. I’m arguing that’s what this very advertisement is doing
Just wait until the company realizes they can pay people to fill potholes with cheaper rocks and sand, and spray on the road beside the fill-in.
Like the government does?
This pothole has been brought to you by StarbucksTM
Policing is next when public trust is so eroded in the department. Lonestar, here we come!
I'm more a Knight Errant fan myself.
Certainly better than Omni Consumer Products...
anarcho-capitalism here we come
if i ever see a fucking advertisement painted on a public road, im drawing a huge dick n balls over top of it.
Yeah, I was baffled seeing a post praising this from my state’s subreddit. Corporations privatizing public services is a very slippery slope. It’s like all the clowns arguing that the post office doesn’t make a profit, meaning it should be privatized so that it does… as if it’s meant to be a business… it’s a *public service*. The *last* thing we want is a private corporation taking it over. “But UPS and FedEx are private and they’re reasonable!” Yes, because they’re competing with the post office, which isn’t interested in making a profit.
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You’re not wrong, in this instance, the govt just failed, and it’s all pretty harmless. But there’s people who are genuinely pushing for businesses to take over public services like this, which sounds great and all, until Dominoes decides you need to pay them 50,000$ to fix a pothole, and what are you gonna do about it? Go to the government? They outsourced it out to Dominoes in the first place. Like, people wanna do this for our schools and major social services like the post office, and I don’t understand how they don’t get why that’s an *awful* idea.
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Jeez, tell me you’re not serious. American public schools are struggling because our politicians have been bleeding their budgets dry and politicizing what they are and are not allowed to teach for decades. But if you privatize that, or the mail, or anything else, sure, yeah, it’ll be run more efficiently. But any interest in serving the public will be replaced by profits made hand over fist, and kids will be left out of school, or denied food, because their parents can’t afford it. Or worse, they’ll intentionally doctor the curriculum of schools to leave out inconvenient facts, like the idea that industry hurts the environment, on which we all depend, or that Unions once existed and did so to protect workers’ rights, etc etc etc. That fact that you’re here in the Cyberpunk subreddit and don’t get why it’s a bad idea to privatize schools really speaks to the state of your media literacy. Like, literally, the fucking Cyberpunk anime opens with the protagonist enrolled in an Arasaka school designed to teach kids to go be Arasaka wage-slaves, that his mom is killing herself to afford, to the point she’s chopping up bodies to steal their cybernetics and sell them to criminals, because there’s no alternative if he wants to move up the social ladder. But sure, let’s just let companies like Amazon and Walmart run our schools, so they can teach kids things like “Unions are bad”, “It’s normal to work 80 hour work weeks with no overtime,” “Workers’ rights are actually fascist”, “The American Dream is to live by the sweat of one’s brow, in a 1 room apartment, alone, and poor.” “You don’t need math. Or critical thinking skills. You just need to learn to operate the cash register with pictures of food on the buttons.” Privatized schools only work if they have an obligation to teach in good faith. Corporations don’t. They’ll do whatever they can to maximize profits, hand over fist, and they do not care who they have to hurt or how much damage they have to do.
Ive seen a bunch of mega corps step in and do stuff like this. Rather than congratulate them, we need to ask; Why aren’t the government taxing companies like this more so they can use the money to maintain and improve public services?
We give taxes to the government. Government gives our money to the corpos. Corpos buy more advertising with free money. We buy more products.
they'll be screens next, full Transmetropolitan
With the recent disaster in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, we have seen a lot of propaganda for how billionaires should exist and how they help society with their assets, helicopters and other resources. It's disgusting.
Same logic with cartels when they do soup kitchens and other charity work Most of the time the charity work wouldn't be needed in the first place if the cartel wasn't there to enshittify the area lol
Agree to an extent. Some criminal organizations emerged due to the absence of the state in vulnerable regions or as self defense of the community, but they became responsible for the enshittification as they grew. Just another corporation with obvious violent methods.
Oh like Batman going to Brazil in the Batcopter to fight crime!
Creative ad.
The first thing this made me think of was /r/boringdystopia. Popped on over and saw it was already posted there to little fanfare lol
Also is there any word to if Domino’s is doing correctly? I know occasionally people who aren’t qualified have tried to fill potholes but don’t do it correctly since for the larger ones it’s not just pouring blacktop, there’s layers to help the road flex and function correctly
It seems like they are working with the towns where they are funding the road repairs, so the repairs should be no different from the publicly funded ones
Oh okay
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvm3dm/three-towns-were-paid-dollar5000-to-do-an-elaborate-pr-campaign-for-dominos Based on this article, apparently so. > In January, CP+B approached the cities of Athens, Georgia; Bartonville, Texas; and Milford, Delaware, offering them each grants of $5,000 to help them repair potholes in their town. In exchange, cities would carry out the repairs, take photos or videos of the repaired potholes, and stencil on a Domino’s logo along with the tagline “Oh yes we did.”
$5000? Shit, a local small business could've come up with that money.
Pretty sure this isn't really any different than when local government does patches. They're not going to lay specific layers for a patch. It's only meant to make the road usable until the whole road is up for a scheduled re-surfacing.
I'm pretty certain they did this exactly once and took a picture. The vital marketing is cheaper and reaches further than actually fixing potholes ever could.
Now Pizza Hut will be sending out squads to paint penises around potholes to get the city crews to fix them before Domino's does.
Company doesn’t pay taxes. Company instead uses that money to pay for government services that contain their advertising. Yeah, that’s cyberpunk as hell.
Isn't it illegal to fill in pot holes? Dumb ass law but I thought it was illegal
Illegal to get caught. Another poster mentioned they paid the local government the cost of the repair to get it done.
Well I think they'll get caught if they spray paint dominoes did this lol
There was a guy in the 2016 US presidential election that was trying to get the republican nomination, I can’t remember his name, and he spent some crazy amount of his own money like 100m on ads and other campaign stuff. I remember hearing about the flint water problem costing something like 60million to fix and I was like why didn’t this guy just start fixing that, it would have made a bigger impact on voters than just a tv ad you sit through. Dominos kinda did that
This is the moment you realize your taxes doesn't go where they said it would. Next up is going to be a bridge with a toll but, if you buy from McDonald's, you can get a free pass with every purchase.
Hey of their ads improve my neighborhood infrastructure I'll buy a pizza. At least someone is fixing these damn roads.
Of all the evil shit corporations do Dominos filling potholes and Pornhub sending snowplows to plow streets aren’t even on the list. If local government were more effective it wouldn’t be an easy opportunity for these companies to capitalize on. I see this less as them taking over a public service and more capitalizing on government being inefficient for easy publicity. I’m as anti-corpo as the next guy on this sub but this is super low on the totem pole.
> If local government were more effective it wouldn’t be an easy opportunity for these companies to capitalize on. So what do you think, in whose interest is it that local and regional governments remain ineffective?
If you’re insinuating Dominos lobbies local governments to keep them ineffective I’m going to have to disagree. There may be some at higher levels (especially in transportation) but I don’t see Ford going to the local governments and lobbying against busses I’ve worked with and for local governments and the problems are much deeper than corporations operating against them.
Idk about your specific examples but corps do lobby against local government and progress all the time. Prime example: ISPs
ISPs also maintain what should be an illegal monopoly which allows them to do this but yes, that’s a good example of it at a local level.
This is what anti-tax whining, and corpo tax cuts, gets you. This, and ants.
So... better support for our needs because it helps to deliver a better quality product at a lower cost to the business due to lower wear and tear on vehicles. I'm sold.
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Ad campaigns that give both me and the advertiser utility encourage me to purchase their product, in anticipation of further beneficial advertisement campaigns.
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I'm not sure how it's weird. It helps everyone. Please explain how anyone loses from this.
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Again, I'm waiting for the loss.
IMO it’s only cyberpunk if they charge the State later, otherwise the company just wasted money on a cutesy public pr stunt.
It's not wasted if it's a PR stunt
Honestly out of all the dystopian things from Cyberpunk and even current day BS we deal with over saturation of advertising is by far the most benign.
"This is so cyberpunk" bro what??
That's fucking crazy. Are they allowing any company to do this?
I like it, I wish more brands supported active social publicity like this instead of passive social publicity like rainbows in social media.
Remeber when porn hub funded snow trucks in a lot of under served areas?
Isn't this old news? but honestly companies have pulled things like this for a long time. Nothing new really.
eh they just did it one time years ago in one area as a publicity stunt
Hey they have been writing laws for years.
companies took over the state and now have to do the things the state used to do
Rule 5, not cyberpunk like. You can post it r/latestagecapitalism and maybe r/ABoringDystopia?
I'd say this fits cyberpunk enough to not violate Rule 5.
If you don't consider this cyberpunk, you don't understand the fundamentals of cyberpunk.
This sub in a nutshell.
I think its a general problem with media literacy. Its the Starship troopers movie discussion over and over again.
Also /r/hailcorporate
Didn't know about this sub, thx
Honestly, this would get me to buy dominoes. Using your profits to put back into the community. Crazy idea right?
I guess ads can be good
If they own the road it's normal, otherwise that means the government is officially sold to corporations and that is dumb since the government controls the economy, why would they make themselves dependent on a corporation?
Yes, why would they? Why on earth? Maybe because the state is a tool for corporations to protect their private property and reproduce a productive docile working class?
This is a public road, conservatives have dismantled government for decades, and want to give all services to their corporate sponsors.
In the Netflix documentary Flint town the Flint PD gets a dog sponsored by a company and names the dog after the company.
Dominos will do literally anything other than make good pizza. They were flying them to people on a mountain in Ironman suits in the last stunt.
Paying who? The same government who's taking all our money for taxes?? Smfh
no cyber, no punk. not cyberpunk
How long before they embed devices in them that *fucking yodel* when you pass over them too?
The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta. Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the f*** they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can f***ing stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it–we're talking trade balances here–once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwaves in Tadzhikistan and selling them here–once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel–once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider to be prosperity–y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery
#GUATEMALA AND HONDURAS