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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • I’m self-hosting my own music as of recently. I’m paying for every song. I don’t have as much music as I did on Spotify, but I’m also A) owning the music B) slowly acquiring more and C) actually paying the artists. For me this is a good step in the right direction.

    I’m seeing a lot of comments about music discovery being the reason to not stop paying Spotify. Idk if that’s something I’d agree with. First of all, I personally listen to singles and not albums but I’ve been buying albums simply because that’s easiest for a lot of sites (or cause I’m getting them on vinyl). So swapping over has led me to listening to full albums and thus a bit of discovery. That may not apply to everyone though. Several of those albums or artists have had collabs that have turned me on to other artists, again, maybe the music discovery people think this is child’s play but it’s led to a noticable increase in my collection.

    Second, can’t you just use Spotify free version to discover music? That’s what I plan to do if I’m feeling like my current collection is getting stale. But between friends, other web services for discovery, various platforms like YouTube that happen to unveil a song here and there, indie concerts that show off new openers to me, or what have you I feel like my discovery is more than sufficient to grow the list of music I need to pick up faster than I’m burning it down or becoming bored with it.

    Also, I don’t understand how discovery can represent a majority of a person’s listening habits. Like isn’t the point of collecting favorites songs and making large playlists to listen to those things. I’ve got playlists with like 48 hours of music on them which cause me to not hear a repeat idk, more than once a month if I’m not seeking them out. That’s partially because I have 3 playlists or so I rotate through but like… Is music discovery so critical and so exclusive to Spotify that it’s worth the subscription. More me it’s not.

    Not to yuck anyone’s yum or anything. Just trying to add an alternative perspective to these pro-spotify comments.




  • You are either misunderstanding me or misunderstanding the conceptual differences between debt, money, and wealth.

    A nation can absolutely be debt free and wealthy - there’s a world where a country owns many things (wealth) and owes no money to anyone (debt free). “Creating money” as you put it is accomplished by the government creating money and then spending money on things. Debt does not have to come into the picture for money (literal currency) to be created and spent. Loans (I think the most common form is bonds for the government but I’m actually not sure) are a way for the government to spend money they don’t have by borrowing it (debt). This is good if you use that money to grow the governments revenue, the nations revenue, or the nations productivity (building schools, funding healthcare, building public transit, etc). It’s sometimes bad when you use it to buy temporary services or fund inefficient projects or when the money leaves the nation entirely (sending money to a corporation based in the US that spends little to no money here, for instance. A military contract for instance fully built in another country gives us an expensive product we may not use and which no money recirculates in our nation).

    So no, I am not for zero debt at the government level - I very plainly think government debt is a good thing in reasonable quantities and when that money is spent on the improvement of the nation and its people. I think too much debt becomes a noose around the annual budget and slowly errodes the governments ability to do its job. I also think any debt spent poorly is as foolish as it would be for anyone to spend money poorly - except in this case it’s everyone’s money being wasted and it’s a gateway to corruption and the further enrichment of the wealthy.

    So I believe what Merz is doing is bad for the country because they’re spending money we don’t have inefficiently on companies that are not wholly based in Germany and will not produce efficiency or quality of life gains for the German populace. Furthermore, doing this entirely through debt when there is a way to generate sufficient income AND benefit the average German is incompetent at best and evil at worst. We could tax the wealthy such that we could do this stupid deal AND not go into further debt, which is obviously more ideal than this stupid deal and debt. Just like doing a good deal and going into further debt would be better than both of those.

    Yes, we should focus on improving the lives of Germans and accumulating wealth in the form of education, public housing, public infrastructure, clinics and Apothekes and energy farms, and strengthening our farming infrastructure, etc. All the things a good government would be doing, instead of selling off bits and pieces of itself while cutting services to their citizens while spending money on foreign contracts for a war the rich want because it means more inefficient spending in companies they have stocks in.