A billionaire enters a gas station. Seeing the "Leave a penny, take a penny" dish on the counter, he scoops up all of the coins and pockets them.
"I'm a genius," he says to the protesting clerk. "I earned this money. Anybody could have taken it, but only I had the vision to see what was possible."
@maxleibman when I was a student, and you can tell from the prices of coffee how long ago that was, I used to buy a cup of coffee at the station every morning on the way in to university. A black coffee cost £1, a coffee with milk cost £1.20. You'd pay at the counter and everyone no matter what they ordered got handed a black coffee, then you added your own milk from a jug by the door on your way out on an honesty system.
One morning a guy in a fancy suit pushed into line in front of me, which annoyed me enough to make me pay attention to him. He ordered and paid for a black coffee then added milk to it. And this guy singlehandedly taught me a lot about the sort of people running the world.
@maxleibman The honesty system worked better for everyone. The people serving didn't have to worry about handing out different types of coffee so everything went faster and everyone got the amount of milk they wanted. I would never have dreamed of cheating like this, not just because it wouldn't be fair to the independent cafe owners but because if everyone did that they would have had to move away from the honestly system. But I bet this guy thought he was cleverer than everyone else for having figured out a way to save himself 20p, and in his mind the rest of us were clearly only following the rules because we were stupid enough to think they were enforced not because we realised they made things work better for everyone.
I think about that man a lot. He's probably running a company by now.
people like him are why there is CCTV everywhere nowadays and I bet his company has Hikvision AI cameras everywhere, even inside the offices - he's probably got them *inside* his own family house too.
This something which seems surprisingly common amongst middle class folk worldwide as you can even see it on "funny dog/cat videos" from the camera position and timestamps on the footage - these aren't the pet cameras you can get, but actual CCTV in the corner of the living areas..
you can build a catcam that doesn't send the data anywhere other than your own network which still has secure remote access (although takes a bit of tech skill and changing router settings), but in many of the videos what I'm clearly seeing is the output of a general CCTV system which has been put there for security reasons. (I occasionally install and maintain these as part of my job)
I can even understand having them outside to guard cars/bikes that may be in the garden, but why *inside* the living room?
That hints at someone who is *really* paranoid..
@zombiecide indeed, although some abusers have even been caught (and sent to jail) due to footage obtained from their *own* CCTV systems.
unfortunately its often only *after* they've murdered their partner and the CCTV (even if attempts have been made to erase footage or relocate internal cameras) still shows clues and evidence of their movements and activities - on many occasions it seems they still don't want to turn off outside cams that are guarding their vehicles/property. these of course show the movements of the vehicles in and out of the building!
A lot of other criminals such as hard drugs dealers have also been caught this way..
@afewbugs @maxleibman it was not my poor friends who stole stuff from sporting goods stores and thrift stores alike, it was our wealthy acquaintances who were not exactly invited but always managed to find out where we were hanging out.
It astonished me that they thought so little of just openly telling us they boosted all the camping gear they brought for bonfire nights.
And somebody could put in EXTRA if they felt like it, too. Imagine that sort of person.
(gets harder and harder to imagine, doesn't it, when the other guy already made sure everyone in the damn coffee shop is sleep-deprived and desperate)
@afewbugs @maxleibman but on the main point yeah. If you travel a lot you will notice these high trust societies do still exist. In the rural area of Germany where I'm from it's still pretty good. But my best experience was in villages in the andean mountains, not connected by road. Have never seen more trust or honesty.
As a bonus and some sneaky propaganda for the peruvian mountain jungle, a photo of our restaurant: (nice national park in walking distance)
I was drifting-off last night with a cartoon in my head to draw.
Trump's big empty loser desk with a 'Leave a Million - Take a Billion in Tax Dollars' tray on the front.
Next to a tip jar.
The miserable motherfucker.
@GGMcBG @maxleibman He doesn't even leave a million of his own money though. He won't even spend his own money for things like payoffs. (Remember when he illegally used campaign funds to pay the porn actress not to tell everyone he cheated on his wife with her? As a side note, he denied that it was his idea to use the campaign funds, but he didn't deny that he cheated on wife number 3 — or was she 4? Ah, MAGA and their high moral standards.)
All he does is take. Never ever give.
@maxleibman I know it's meant to be a metaphor, but every obtusely wealthy person I've ever known in my entire life, I have no doubt absolutely would (and does) take the money from the leave-a-penny dish.
Years ago I worked for one such nincompoop, who organized a staff train trip to Niagara Falls. On the way back we had tickets to the central station, but the stop before was my usual home stop. As I got my things together to get off there, the owner caught wind, and loudly announced that he expected me to request a refund for that portion of my ticket. I didn't.
I also worked in accounting, so I got to see that the gratuity he left on the $2,000-ish bill for the team's dinner was a big fat goose egg - he didn't leave it blank, he wrote in the zero.
it helps them forget the fact that they are much closer to being the poorest of the poor than becoming a billionaire
@maxleibman I'm reminded of all the people who argue with the cashiers "but this TV was sitting on a shelf that said $20!" I would say "someone could have just set it there" and certainly nothing says you can't pick it up and set it on a spot that says $20 Barbie, but most probably just lie about it. And they make a big stink until they get the boss over and get the $200 TV for $20.
And not once when I saw this was it someone who couldn't easily afford the TV at its regular price.
@maxleibman The thing that *truly* upsets me about this is this hurts everything.
In my example that goes into part of the store's overall operating costs. It's invisible so people don't even notice it, but it costs more to operate because of people like this, so prices all across the board are just that much higher as compensation. No one thing goes up noticeably. Everything does by pennies at a time. And we all pay more.
Ultimately they paid full price for that TV, but so did we all.
@nazokiyoubinbou @maxleibman I realized later that she might’ve been mentally preparing for me to become a problem by demanding an even bigger discount by citing the last keyboard and was grateful that I didn’t do that to her, which seemed nonsensical to me because if the issue was the keyboard, why would I buy the same one again?
Anyways it took decades for me to realize I was autistic lol
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