> It's almost like there's something cultural happening in America
Everyone can fill in their pet theory here, but mine is that so much of being American these days is disempowering. Corporations have so much power that not only do they not care about us, but we can't even avoid using them.
Get sick? Good luck fighting your giant health insurance provider or hospital conglomeration.
Looking for an entry-level job? Navigate a Kafka-esque application system only to (if you're lucky) work for a miserable low-level manager who also has no power and transfers that anger onto you.
Want to spend time with friends? Their preferred communication medium is now one of a couple of huge social media companies with horrific privacy policies and a history of emotionally damaging its users.
Want to go to a show? Have fun buying overpriced tickets from one of the two or three ticket monopolies and then pay an exhorbitant, insulting "convenience" fee.
So everyday, in many of our basic daily rituals, we are reminded of how little agency we have in our own lives and how much we both depend on and are subject to the whims of billionaires (who, meanwhile, are busy destroying the Earth).
Agree. I've had this experience far too many times where I call tech support and explain the problem to me and they're like "sorry there is no button for me to enter that into the computer" or when I need some report/export and people are like "sorry my computer cannot do that".
You're talking to a human, but they behave like a broken robot.
Also there's the 30 minutes waiting music that repeats every 1 minute a cheerful recording of someone saying "your call is important to us". It's obvious that it isn't, or else they'd hire more people so that they can pick up the phone more quickly.
I've mostly found the humans pretty helpful actually, at least at the places I've called. What drives me nuts with most phone support is that it makes you spend 20 minutes wading through a phone tree offering the same automated options as the website. If I'm calling, it's always for some weird thing that isn't handled automatically, if I wanted to do one of the easily automated things, I would have already done it on the website.
I'm willing to bet there are huge sections of the population who will insist on talking to a real person, no matter how mundane or trivially automated their request. The 20 minute hazing ritual exists to deter them, not you. The more of a pain in the ass it is, the lower the call volume they have to deal with.
>Also there's the 30 minutes waiting music that repeats every 1 minute a cheerful recording of someone saying "your call is important to us"
Even these manage to be dehumanizing to the employees some times. W*lgreen's has one that interrupts every minute to say "our staff is busy answering other calls", and the singular "our staff is" annoys me every time, like they view the front-line humans as just a possession to be exploited for every possible cent. Human Resources, if you will.
I don't care what kind of nonsense their recording says, what bothers me about this is they are stopping the music every minute! Can't get any work done while they make you wait half an hour.
Part of the cost cutting culture is embracing incompetence and using IT systems to provide a consistent, albeit shitty experience.
Everyone aspires to make their customer facing business like McDonalds because it’s cheaper to measure outputs from a broken system than to effectively lead humans.
None of those are exclusive to America. Not even the first one. Get sick in Europe? Best hope overpriced Ibuprofen works or you're gonna do a hell of a lot of waiting. Just to get some dipshit who tells you to take a paracetamol and chill.
Try to get a fucking job in Europe. No one is hiring because you're a tax burden. "But you're protected". Just not for the first 6 months. Or anytime they decide to fire you for bullshit reasons and you get told to move the fuck out of your decent apartment and drain your bank accounts if you want any benefits.
> Best hope overpriced Ibuprofen works or you're gonna do a hell of a lot of waiting. Just to get some dipshit who tells you to take a paracetamol and chill.
I live in the Netherlands, and this is the most frustrating thing about the healthcare system. I’ve had innumerable instances where the local GP recommends Paracetamol and my family doctor actually diagnoses the real problem.
To be fair, medicine is most just theater making people feel cared for while their body heals itself. They could make the theater more elaborate and expensive, but to what end?
> To be fair, medicine is most just theater making people feel cared for while their body heals itself.
I already take the placebo effect directly; if I'm going the trouble of dealing with your travesty of a medical system, it's because that wasn't sufficient.
On the health side, as someone with a chronic disease, I must say that I’m really grateful for the French healthcare system. I had a lot of quality care for basically zero euro.
However I see it falling apart everywhere day after day with not any political will to stop this (and i can even feel the will to let it fall voluntarily).
I know it’s still top notch compared to most of the world. But I’m so sad to see that governments of the last decades just didn’t care about fixing the issues while they were still manageable.
> Get sick in Europe? Best hope overpriced Ibuprofen works...
You are calling 'dipshits' to people that worked their asses to earn the right go be there. Six years of University, and then passing their Medical Internship Residency exams that typically takes another two or three to prepare, and then working other four years doing an internship, and then a few years more until earning a permanent place in another exam.
Any physician working in public healthcare in Europe is extremely qualified for the job.
>Best hope overpriced Ibuprofen works or you're gonna do a hell of a lot of waiting.
American healthcare is similar, except I have to pay $35 bucks up front just to talk to anyone, and can expect a couple hundred dollar bill to show up later if they actually do anything.
While you wait for your appointment, research your condition using any of the free, high quality medical knowledge bases on the web, and/or connect with a community of other internet users with similar afflictions to get advice/perspective.
> Looking for an entry-level job?
Learn to code and become an in-demand knowledge worker. In the mean time, perhaps monetize your existing skills and assets by becoming an AirBnB host or Uber driver or delivery driver.
> Want to spend time with friends?
Use a widely available asynchronous messaging service to organize an outing, perhaps using a money-transfer app so that one person can take care of booking etc. If you can't meet in person, maybe you can have a video conference on one of the various free platforms, or just have an extended group chat with your friends.
> Want to go to a show?
Browse the web for a vast selection of shows you would never hear about otherwise.
Not that these points negate your complaints, but I think you paint an unnecessarily miserable picture. I think that in itself is one of the big cultural problems of America and elsewhere.
Frustrated trying to just do normal human things because you're blocked by corporations and are powerless against them? Have you tried Just Don't Do That (TM)? Instead of doing what you wanted, try doing something we allow you to do. Powered By Technology Systems (R) will help you maximize what little agency you still have left, namely, to sit in your residence and consume the internet. The real world is no longer hospitable for humans, so just don't do anything!
Not to negate the issues presented, but the severity seems overblown. Since when is using social media to talk to friends or going to a show of the nature implied here a "normal human thing"? Pretty sure majority of the world's population are living their lives without these. Seems like first world problems. Maybe that's the real issue plaguing americans, and I say this as an american myself, they have too many "first world problems" and don't appriciate simpler things.
Try not using social media for friends, work, etc. and see how much you got left in a year. I did and there's no doubt many will struggle (lost friends, new job, not possible to have children (of you want them to gave a life or education). The only social media I ever use is HN. Society is broken up in those that use and those that don't.
> While you wait for your appointment, research your condition using any of the free, high quality medical knowledge bases on the web, and/or connect with a community of other internet users with similar afflictions to get advice/perspective.
And now not only your running nose is still there, but you are also very anguished and cannot sleep well, just because it might be the sign that you have a cancer and will die alone in terrible suffering in a few months while ruining your family with debts.
I cant tell if you are trolling or not. In case you aren't, all of your solutions involve a large amount of free time and money. Something a lot people don't have, I worked in the restaurant biz before moving to tech. It was brutal, even getting a day off to go to the doctor would cost me a large portion of my pay check. I was able to "escape" due to having a solid support system, a lot of my former coworkers did not have this.
I vouched for your comment because you have some good points. You were likely downvoted for your first sentence because it's a (couched) accusation that GP is trolling. Consider omitting that statement next time, it does not add to the discussion. See the HN comment guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Hmm I could be wrong but I suspect that people spend record amounts of time watching TV (or equivalent) and record numbers of people own devices like smartphones that facilitate all of the above activities. Doesn't seem like time and money is the barrier you make out. Also they were not meant as solutions but as options that didn't exist in the past.
Everyone can fill in their pet theory here, but mine is that so much of being American these days is disempowering. Corporations have so much power that not only do they not care about us, but we can't even avoid using them.
Get sick? Good luck fighting your giant health insurance provider or hospital conglomeration.
Looking for an entry-level job? Navigate a Kafka-esque application system only to (if you're lucky) work for a miserable low-level manager who also has no power and transfers that anger onto you.
Want to spend time with friends? Their preferred communication medium is now one of a couple of huge social media companies with horrific privacy policies and a history of emotionally damaging its users.
Want to go to a show? Have fun buying overpriced tickets from one of the two or three ticket monopolies and then pay an exhorbitant, insulting "convenience" fee.
So everyday, in many of our basic daily rituals, we are reminded of how little agency we have in our own lives and how much we both depend on and are subject to the whims of billionaires (who, meanwhile, are busy destroying the Earth).