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Patrick Willems @patrickhwillems.bsky.social ⋅ 1m
The Verge @theverge.com ⋅ 2d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 2d
Josiah Hawthorne @josiahhawthorne.bsky.social ⋅ 2d
Transformers Wiki @tfwiki.net ⋅ 2d
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️𝓝𝓪𝓷𝓲 
LAKE YELLOWWOOD SLAUGHTER on Kickstarter now
Carla: “Curses! I’ve been outCarla’d!”
Booster: “Do you mean outsmarted?”
Carla: “I changed the word to Carla to be more accurate and descriptive. ”
Booster: “…I take it back. I don’t want you to marry my sister because that’s the plot of What About Bob, and it doesn’t end well for the psychologist.”
*gasp* you beat Ana!
“this hill I’m dying on sure is expensive”
her folks can afford it
it seems to be emotionally more taxing on her than, well, financial lol.
Don’t say tax around Carla or her family, it makes them break out in hives
Is it a burial mound? Is it going to be a burial mound?
A monument to her mistakes for sure
That gravatar is perfect for having been beaten as first one to post.
You smartarse
well, carla would have to recalculate associating with booster if she does wanna even be friends with charlie, let alone datemates/partners/etc.
booster: i’m not stuck with you you’re stuck with me lol
Carla: M U R D E R
More for the Hacked Muzak:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=5L1n_6Exiy4
Fuck yeah Booster!!!
Operation: Undermine Nepotism is a go!!!!!
*plays “Pa$$ the Time” from Inside Job on hacked muzak*
Nepotism? In what sense?
The alt-text of the last comic.
Oh, dunno how I missed that. I’ve been super busy the last couple days. Must not have read the alt-text 🫠
i adore boosters talent for tricking people into character development
They are Replacement Mike, after all,
Truly they is everything peeps liked about Mike, but with different garbage attached.
They can do all the same sort of psycho-analysis and hard truth stuff but they’re less of an deliberately offensive jackass.
Are you trying to say Booster isn’t being an offensive jackass on purpose? I feel like they’d take offense to the implication. They seem very content in their ability to piss people off.
I’m saying they’re not a tenth as unpleasant as their predecessor
They’re unpleasant in a more polite way
booster takes offense at the idea that they’re a bad therapist. i feel like they don’t so much wanna piss people off as they wanna help people and have a very limited toolset that they can only wield in highly specific and sometimes not especially competent ways (not terribly different from dorothy, jennifer, and sarah, honestly)
This!
“Replacement Mike” is such a misnomer. Mike moved stuff along because he disliked stagnation – whether the outcome was a positive or a bad one, it was more about being done with other people’s bullshit. Babythem genuinely wants to help /o/ They just have limited tools because they’re a first year with a vocabulary too large not to wield.
Booster is replacement Mike in the sense that they are filling a similar function in the ensemble, not that they’re literally the same character.
I’ve seen it thrown about in a more literal sense, that’s all ^^
I think people were mostly joking about Mike being Booster in disguise as part of having gone into witness protection…
Mostly.
Booster is rude and abrasive and doesn’t hold back, but I never got the feeling that their top priority is making people angry or upset.
At this point, the main difference is that Booster smiles when they vivisect your wants and needs. Also they have a sister.
So, love at first ignoration?
Fucking ouch, Booster.
Aaand this round goes to Booster.
Only on a technicality … where is their actual proof of Carla’s parents’ conduct?
Sounds more to me like ol’ Booster is prejudging the parents and using it as a shaky foundation to support a shaky position.
If they fail at psychology, they have a grand future in politics.
I think the “round” was actually more about getting Carla to just be honest with her feelings/what she wants. And to have a little fun trolling.
Given Carla’s parents are fictional it’s always possible they’re Good Billionaires (TM) But with any verisimilitude to the world we live in, all billionaires got to be billionaires by exploiting people. It is mechanically impossible by the economic system we live in to become a billionaire without both luck and the willingness to step on the livelihoods of the “peons” beneath you. Under this theorem, Booster isn’t prejudging Carla’s parents to come to the conclusion they did.
Seeing as they’re very wealthy owners of a very well-known tech company, it seems quite likely there is a lot of genuine proof of their conduct. The fact that Booster didn’t start reading from a list of citations doesn’t mean they’re basing it on nothing.
They’ve probably been fellated by the Wall Street Journal at some point, and data on their company’s average wages wouldn’t be hard to find either. Billionaires and corporations both cry poor to the government, but can’t help but brag to the rest of the world about how successful they actually are.
Booster is having fun with this, good for them
I think it was pointed out at one point that her parents have fought to advance trans rights, the big question is would they have done so if Carla wasn’t a factor in their lives?
i mean, i guess we wait to find out whether they’ve paid into causes they aren’t a de facto part of in this timeline and extrapolate from there
They were probably liberal types to start, so I’d say yes in the broad sense of backing candidates who are opposed to people who are anti-trans, but probably not in the singlehandedly financing a legal battle to overturn anti-trans legisliation sense
Has it been explained somewhere why Carla’s in the same school as all these poors in the first place?
same reason jennifer, joe, jason, and ruth are
the plot requires it
I hope we get to know it! ^^
… I wonder if it’s because she doesn’t wanna go too far away from her parents, actually. Indiana is the one place she feels safe? Considering their lobbying powers but also because yeaaah, she loves them.
It’s close to home and I wouldn’t be shocked if her parents went to school here, and I doubt Carla would want to go to a super fancy school anyways
Perhaps her parents said they wouldn’t pay for a brand name diploma on principal.
jen might be upper class rich but probably nowhere near the same level as carla tho i wouldn’t be surprised if there were like millionaire parents/families that send their kids to ‘normal’ schools or so to adapt and blend in with society or so
Not every super-rich person is down to bribe school officials. One of my friends in college turned out to be from a very wealthy old-money family, and my college wasn’t exactly prestigious.
Trans rights to toil in wage slavery, lol.
A lot of trans women gravitated towards tech (both producing and consuming) because it’s something you can get good at without having to talk to people. So tech companies adopted “pro-trans policies” in terms of not actively discriminating against trans people pretty early on, as a general pattern. But at the same time they’re always involved in undermining all the rights of all their employees, trans or not. So it’s kind of like saying Nike is a Bangladeshi rights group.
I’m confused. Are you pro or con the right of a trans person to toil in wage slavery?
I’m con the right of a small handful of people to enslave the entire population, and to manipulate acceptance or rejection of certain groups within that demographic for strategic purposes, such as saving money on labour in the long run, and being treated like humanitarians for doing it.
New source of joy found: Carla’s annoyed face. Thank you Booster, truly.
Booster’s really making a case for themselves lately.
Well those last three panels feel pretty unambiguous.
I’ll be honest the only thing that makes sense is that Carla is interested romantically, perhaps also with strong feelings for booster inexplicably. There’s no other real reason she wouldn’t have blown this off a while back, and for her to emotionally let this rock her so close. Like, she was less immediately emotionally raw when she heard about a ‘suicide attempt’, this ‘has’ to be some kind of crush.
Charlie (and now Booster) are the first people she’s dealt with that she can’t browbeat with her obnoxious self centered persona, it makes sense that there would be some kind of interest there
That has not happened at all.
I mostly agree with you, but I also think it might just be having her parents, who are actually incredibly great to her, and like, notedly less shitty than most (any?) other billionaires by not trying to reverse human rights, they are still hella unethical billionaires that are certainly doing a lot of wrong in the world, and I don’t know that Carla has considered that fully before. Booster might be the first person (at least IRL) who she didn’t manage to shut up (or ditch) before it got that far.
like I’m picturing someone being like “your parents are evil billionaires!” in high school or some shit, and Carla being like “my parents are advancing trans rights, and your dad is trying to vote in a literal nazi! and then roller blading off flipping the double bird
Honestly I’m kind of excited to explore this, in a series full of awful parents it’s interesting to see how Willis handles parents that are good parents but awful in other ways unrelated to their parenting
I mean we don’t know about their stance on unions or labour exploitation but given the things they make I’m sure it’s not great.
I feel like the only thing we actually know about them right now is that they’re rich. Maybe I missed some information, though.
I definitely could be misremembering something. let’s amend that to **even IF they are less shitty than most billionaires
I know Booster likes Amber but I sort of ship them with Carla now. At the very least I’d like to see the two of them on screen more, because this has been excellent.
I’m nursing a headcanon in which Carla WASN’T romantically interested in Charlie, but now she is out of spite.
Kisses Booster i will always love what a cheeky babe u are <3
You’re a Rich Girl/And you’ve gone too far
But you know it don’t matter anyway…
Booster is such a little shit and I love them so much, like they’re probably my favorite character after the time skip (them and Asher which is A Thing). I don’t have anything more specific about the comic today to say, I just gotta give them my appreciation because I know they’re sometimes pretty divisive.
It’s really nice seeing all this appreciation! I was immediately attached, and it seems last night strip’s was somewhat of a turning point with people’s opinion on them.
(Really loving Asher too btw, excellent taste)
i’d like to think that they’ve been on some kinda bluetooth call with charlie who’s been listening in the whole time lol, or a livestream/call but booster’s reading a book and not on a laptop
Phones and earbuds are a thing even in the Dmbingverse.
That would be so damn epic, istg
Carla’s dilemma could be solved earlier, if she just waited for a minute for Charlie to notice her and bypass Booster entirely. Charlie has tried to say hello to Carla, but Carla desire for instant gratification caused her to miss it.
Also I don’t like Booster sort of gatekeepers their sister let her decide for herself if Carla is worth her time. That or Booster is just being an arse to be an arse. Possibly both
Oh I should also mention Carla shouldn’t have to goto Booster in the first place if she just was juzt a tad more patient
Well to be fair, Charlie seemed to be ignoring Carla (at least from Carla’s view). Yes, we (as outside observers) recognize that it was because Charlie is distracted, but standing around (for however many seconds it would take to respond) would be seen as creepy/stalkerish if Charlie didn’t want to talk to Carla for some reason.
i mean, booster isn’t saying they’re gonna take active efforts to prevent charlie and carla from hooking up, just that they’re not gonna do anything to enable it
Fair but we don’t know if Booster will take an active effort to prevent them from hooking up. Booster could have just lied and let her be on her merry way wayess effort.
They actually are saying exactly that. Just last strip they were all “I’m going to internet 4channer troll every family meeting with your parents if we wind up actually hooked up”. That’s pretty active efforts.
No. That’s passive. Regarding how often we seen Booster and Charlie together, there’s neither reason nor obligation to get the relative’s relative at any table. Plus there is no reason to have your parent’s and your SO at the same table if they don’t get along or if you don’t want to. So there are at least two actions that have to take place before Booster can say anything and none is in their power to make.
Also 4chan trolling is far from telling honestly what you think to people who protected themselves from consequences of their acts.
“Consequences”, even going fully into the anarcho commie populist swing, would be them having to see some people actually in bad health or dying that they could have prevented, stories or talking to grieving families. Booster giving them the Capitalism Bad rant over dinner is just that one crazy relative yammering on about some dumb philosophical take they know and care little about when they probably don’t even know how to vote Biden in 2020 because they presumed Both Sides The Same Because Greed.
Also a threat to take an active action should preconditions be met is active. Drawing an example, “I will murder your parents if we meet at dinner” would be passive under your definition, and calling that a passive action is patently absurd.
Jeez, rocket. What did socialism ever do to you? Have you considered maybe not jumping to extremes?
Although I must say it is extremely funny to see these aggressively pro-capitalism takes come from a Daisy gravatar (forgive me if I incorrectly assumed this was pro-capitalism).
In all honesty though, it sounds like you’ve been interacting with a lot of extremists from both sides. If you’re open to advice I would consider maybe skipping social media for a while? Meet some real people, take care of yourself and others? When I find myself disillusioned by we/them-discourse that usually helps ground me a lot. Take care.
Depends on what “aggressively pro capitalism” means. I’m a moderate Democrat. If “I don’t think capitalism is inherently evil” qualifies, then sure? But Capitalism has a lot (and I mean a LOT) of flaws, especially on things like providing a populace with Health Care and getting society to deal with Climate Change. But really it’s everyone, everywhere. Sure you can avoid politics and that works well, even the wildest, most insane people are pretty chill, but every person is at least one of: clueless beyond belief, or completely delusional in some way(s), and you need to avoid political topics like the plague lest you set people the fuck off.
Hell as recently as last comic strip I got borderline death threats for suggesting that rich people weren’t literal demons in human flesh. At the end of the day, I live in the world of [If you say it, you mean it.], and we’d be a lot better off if more people lived that way.
The “borderline death threat” looks like it was along the lines of “capitalism and Capital is sociopathic and is killing us, and I want to be clear that I am not advocating killing capitalists”.
“anarcho commie” when you definitely have an argument and aren’t just using phrases as a pejorative without caring what the meanings are.
I’m using the phrase because the populist far left is a very, very wide spread of similar-but-not-same ideologies, and it serves well as a catch-all.
In any case, lets remove the “I Like This Person So Its Okay Because” filter from this situation.
As a trans person, I have to deal with another group of people, the “Trans people are pedophiles and want to come rape your kids” group of propagandists. They’ll spread such lies that, if true, would justify hunting people down like animals for sport. They too will say ‘oh I’m not advocating for the killing of Other Group’, but it’s not because of some ethical consideration for the value of life. It’s more in the “ahahaha! Just kidding! ….. unless?” manner that’s really hoping somebody else will pick up the torch to rid the world of this turbulent priest.
Hey, hi! I’m a trans person too, and an anarchist-communist on top of it :3 I don’t wanna fight, promise. I understand why you’ve got a lot of pressure and fear, living in the US.
The main thing with anarchism and communism, combined, is about guidelines rather than hard rules. Things like forming communities based on horizontal democracy and mutual aid matter a lot. Unionization, too! Also, staying aware of one’s own tendencies to authoritarianism to avoid the pitfalls of the. Like, yes I do want the Glorious Revolution, ngl! But… It starts today. Through direct action, and not all of it is about dismantling the system, but also constructing something in its stead, y’know? It’s the kind of ideology that jives pretty nicely with the survival (and thriving!) of the queer community.
I’m sorry to hear you’ve had such bad experiences with people more to the left of you. I promise there’s a lot to explore you might find interesting, if you can find the spoons amidst the legit horrifying stuff y’all are going through; and I know radical hope is really fucking hard as a practice. There’s zero condescension here.
Tolerance is a social contract, not a right; and violence can absolutely be a tool to wield when it comes to survival against those who under their institutions and economical system commit violence upon us, to the point they want to eradicate us. I think that’s the point that shocks people more to the center the most. And believe me, I wish it didn’t have to be a thing too – yet here we are.
The saddest thing is, if the oppressors just let change happen? This better world we could build would be for them, too.
*avoid the pitfalls of the past.
I apologize if this thesis-length comment if too out of place here, and send you solidarity on dealing with the far right’s dangerous bullshit over there
Well I *am* something like an anarcho communist.
They do have real consequences, like exploiting people and slavery in many lands (not even speaking of pollution). We do have some responsibilities, me like any tech mogul, on what happens by keeping consuming and producing. Until there, nothing I wrote is related to being an ancom, it’s just describing how tech is made.
The usual answer is: yes but if “correct”/”integer” people don’t do it, worse people would do it, just look at X (pun intended). And it’s partially true, but it’s not enough, because if USA and France don’t produce and sell weapons, Russia will, sure, but would it mean we should keep producing weapon and selling them to tyrants? Tech may or may not be related to military industry, but the comparison is essentially valid, it’s a matter of morality scale.
Where as an ancom, I have some different analyze, it’s that *it doesn’t matter who does it since it’s a system*. I’ve nothing against Ruttech’s leaders as persons, but as capitalism they are what keeps making trash happening, even if they do it reluctantly. Regarding any rights they defend, it’s nothing but a personal attempt at redemption: charity. I prefer it to be directed toward progressist stances, but in the end, it’s always charity and not systems change, systems that are interpenetrated and result in the same time at exploiting people in factories, women at homes, gay and trans people in the streets/homes (it’s not an opposition between “people”, “women”, and LGBT, but a gradation of cumulating oppressions). It’s always charity if you keep people from the means to free themselves. and it’s not bad that Ruttech people are told precisely by people they can’t avoid (well I *do* think they would find a way) how it is, they are buying indulgence (even if I do believe they really care about Ruth and every cause related to her in their vision).
About being aggressive, giving an argumented piece of mind, possibly quietly (I don’t see Booster making a scene) is like a death treat, sure. I may be wrong about how passive it is, but please don’t make me sound like I endorse killing people.
Well, they do share a class together so there’s plenty more opportunities for carla to interact with charlie even if she’s still oblivious/not receptive to it, unless some classmates crowd around her and tell her to back off charlie, but i don’t know if charlie would approach her first for whatever reason
…Cue leslie making a group project and they get put into the same one lol.
Well, it’s not really gatekeeping, is it? They’re not intervening and saying who their sister should and shouldn’t see.
This is Carla saying “MAKE YOU SISTER NOTICE THE GREATNESS THAT IS ME!” and Booster going “I see no reason I should do this”.
I don’t think that’s really gatekeeping, that’s just refusing to play matchmaker.
Let’s take this to first principles:
1: It is impossible to interact with society in meaningful ways without running into colonialism, exploitation, graft, etc. Both to your benefit and/or detriment depending on the situation. But you can’t meaningfully avoid it, and you can’t meaningfully change it, and someone always is suffering because of it.
2: Billionaires, as they are owners and themselves multiple international conglomerates of money and power, interact with society a lot MORE than the average person.
3: Almost all of this interaction is to the benefit of the billionaire, who is large enough to make money selling you water, charging you to take a piss, and then selling your piss.
4: Billionaires have the scale and power to challenge the exploitation, unlike everyone else.
5: But they haven’t, because they’re still billionaires. Any business that chooses to pay it’s employees more than they have to, that doesn’t exploit 3rd world resources, that listens to regulations instead of paying a fine for breaking them…that business will be destroyed by the competition that’s less moral and more profitable.
Does anyone disagree with any of those points? Because if not, then yeah, billionaires are evil.
The real fun question: Where do we need to push to fix that mess?
I would disagree with most of this, actually. A billion dollars is honestly less than you realize. Like, for all that Bill Gates puts into doing stuff, he hasn’t actually had that much effect. You can argue that he’s doing the wrong stuff (which is a claim I’d make), but you can’t argue he’s not doing stuff.
That’s not to say this excuses them from trying. Billionaire philanthropy is basically a cottage industry in its own right. But the impact a billionaire can make is a lot smaller than people think it is. Like, now that Mackenzie Bezos divorced Jeffy boy and started donating her billions with fewer strings than most do, she’s had… uh, *checks notes* no discernible effect at scale.
Like, a billion dollars will change your life, but it’s not going to fix the world. It would dent a state economy for like… a year, after which it’s just gone.
I’m not saying billionaires are good. A billion dollars basically means you get to be a tyrant over a few thousand people, no questions asked, even if you’re bad at managing the money. That’s not healthy, and I think the slide into evil is somewhat inevitable. But it’s not because they haven’t fixed the world. That’s where your argument eats itself, after all: you’re blaming capitalism, not the billionaires.
(Also, this is me being optimistic. There are plenty of billionaires who aren’t even trying, and they’re definitely evil. And, I guess, hiding from Chinese assassins, if you’re Jack Ma, but who’s counting.)
You have no understanding of money in any meaningful sense. 1 billion dollars is enough to give 50,000 people 200k dollars a year. Multi-billionaires, i.e. people with 2 or more Billion, can thus assist a minimum of 100,000 people a year.
But the thing is that if you have a billion dollars and its not from something really lacking in sustainable exploitation, like the pyramid schemes that are crypto, you are going to have multiple billions. And the people at the very top don’t just have one billion, they have hundreds of billions. Jeff Bezos PERSONALLY makes enough to solve poverty in America.
You really, really need to learn how to math better before you try and argue it.
Having a billion dollars means you control tens if not hundreds of thousands of peoples lives, and can fix or ruin that many. Having the multi-billions that many of the richest have means they can solve almost all problems that first world countries face. It just means they can’t also go to space ontop of it, so they choose to ignore that.
And that’s not even getting into the affect that billions of dollars being consolidated like that has on the economy or the active harm that it takes to build that fortune. That’s just talking about the pure monetary amount alone.
If you’re disagreeing, you’re just ignorant man. The math doesn’t lie, but billionaires do. And Bill gates has never donated a significant or meaningful portion of his wealth to any cause. How do we know this? He’s still a billionaire.
Do you know what happens if you tax a billionaire 90% of their money? They still have $100,000,000.00 dollars. They could spend a million dollars a year and have money for 100 years if they never made another dime. But that same $100,000,000.00 could also lift 5,000 people out of poverty. So if we taxed every billion dollars by 90%, we could lift 45,000 people out of poverty and just give them money to live better lives, and that billionaire would still be a 100 millionaire.
Minor correct to my own math at the beginning, 20k a year, not 200K.
Yeah, personally I think it would do very much good if there were a mandated ceiling and floor to personal wealth. If history tells us anything, it’s that concentrations of wealth serve not but to bring the worse out of everyone, to allow for supreme concentrations of power (including money power) and just praying that it won’t eventually be abused is a fool’s gambit. We should create scenarios where everybody genuinely wins, instead of bourgeois billionaires shuffling words around to make their interests look like universal interests.
The question then becomes how is such a ceiling managed? Should Carla’s parents been forced to sell stock in Zoomer once its market cap went over a certain amount, for example?
Why, democracy of course. Ideally direct democracy, which is more possible than ever thanks to modern technology.
That’s not really a policy, that’s just a process for making policies. What should the policy be?
Direct democracy sounds appealing in theory, but to what degree of direct democracy are we talking about? In the US ballot initative problems can be problematic. Because there is often little transparency in the initiative-writing process, citizens with no legal expertise are able to draft poorly written laws, which sometimes come with unintended consequences.
Even with modern technology direct democracy is still prone to large information costs. In order policy to be effective the people voting need to be informed on said policy. Even to be slightly informed on all policy takes effort and incurs a significant cost. Representative democracy reduces these costs.
Direct democracy also exacerbates collective action problems and free riding.
Direct democracy is less prone to intrest group lobbying but you will still see the rise of factions in this system its intlvetiable. Also you can’t expect people to informed all times, or even a great many issues as they have to live their lives.
Representative democracy is prone to principal agent problems but it doesn’t require the citizenry to be informed on all issues and reduces information costs.
I am not saying that all forms of direct democracy is bad but i prefer repersative democracy.
Specifically I meant direct democracy determining an appropriate floor and ceiling to personal wealth. I mean, it’s not gonna be that high, considering that 1% of the country owns 90% of its wealth.
To illustrate: A million seconds is 11 days, 34 hours, 27 minutes. A billion seconds is 31 years, 251 days, 7 hours, and 47 minutes. There is literally half a lifetime of difference. Look up the game called Spend Bill Gates’ Money and see what a billion dollars can do, especially if there’s no need to make other people into millionaires.
And price would adjust to make the situation exactly the same as before.
Hear, I’m not against taxation, but there are a few problematic effects:
– taxes are perceived mostly where money is put to the bank, and countries where people are the oppressed won’t get more than a cent of it.
– in the end, how they are used is the choice of millionaires
– It won’t change a dime in work relations, colonialism, and even exploitation. It’s just deplaced charity, and won’t get people to get the hang over their lives.
“Jeff Bezos PERSONALLY makes enough to solve poverty in America”
Let’s look at that: Bezos has $150 Billion, which is a lot, obviously. The US has about 40 Million people in poverty. If we were to liquidate everything Bezos has (and cleanly, without e.g. causing the price of Amazon stock to drop, making it only $100 Billion), that comes to about $4k a person. Which isn’t nothing. For some people, it could be life-changing.
But it isn’t the society-changing amount of money you’re saying it is. By comparison, the expansded, fully refundable, and paid-out-monthly child tax credit of 2021 from the American Rescue Plan would have cost $50-100B a year if made permanent (estimates vary). It cut child poverty in half. So Bezo’s money could reduce child poverty for two or three years. But not eliminate it. Much less eliminate US poverty over all.
But at the same time, you have no idea of the scale either. Sure a billion dollars “is enough to give 50,000 people 200k dollars a year”, which actually tracks pretty well with Jamie’s “It would dent a state economy for like… a year, after which it’s just gone.”
As Nedlum says various government welfare programs spend 100s of billions and we’re still dealing with all of this.
you just made the argument that Billionaires use a false narrative to justify their hording of wealth. The disagreement we have is I think that’s bad, and you think it’s good.
If Bezos had safe working conditions and paid his employees appropriately, he would not have as high a score in the “collect all the money” game. go galt yourself with “a billion isn’t a lot of money it wouldn’t fix anything”.
No? Wealth hoarding is bad for literally everyone.
5) I do really disagree with this point. It’s commonly stated, oddly by both ardent capitalists and their opponents, to claim that businesses force optimization. That whatever is done by business must be the most efficient way because otherwise they’d be beaten out by more efficient businesses. I’ve seen it used like this to attack companies, but also to do things like claim they couldn’t discriminate against minorities because then they wouldn’t get the best employees and would be less competitive.
In reality we see companies do completely dumb shit all the time and survive and thrive perfectly well. We also see companies who are forced to pay better wages and treat their employees better by unions thrive. There’s a pretty decent argument that low pay and poor conditions are at best short term optimizations and that better pay and treatment make a company more profitable, not less over the long run.
Which implies that a successful company is not, in itself evidence of bad practices.
At the megacorp level or at the local business level either, since the same theory applies.
If we lived in a world of perfect competition then racism would be competed out so long as one non racist company existed. We don’t.
There’s also lots of market failure in the system and markets actually function best with fetters.
>There’s a pretty decent argument that low pay and poor conditions are at best short term optimizations and that better pay and treatment make a company more profitable, not less over the long run.
Indeed, but in many jurisdictions, shareholders can collectively force a company to increase their short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability, so in a lot of ways this entire situation is artificial and not a result of market forces.
In some circumstances, but it’s probably more common for management to piously intone “we must do this to maximize shareholder value” than for shareholders to actually organize en masse to do anything.
No one seems to be talking about taxing the companies themselves, maybe everyone is implying it, but Bezos is worth 150 million Amazon is worth over a trillion. If companies didn’t have tax loopholes alot more money could be collected. Also the OECD introduced a 15% minimum on corporate tax rates of which 130 countries have accepted its not alot but its a start to prevent companies from switching their operations to countries with less stringent corporate taxes.
Also raising taxes on Billionaires would help to combat systemic poverty and create a robust social saftey net income taxes need to be raised across the board ( I prefer a progressive tax system).
Also taxes taken from Billionaires does not necessarily mean that capital acquired will directly benefit lower income status, taxes are used to fund the government no a transfer of funds from one income bracket to another. The government must make the decision to reallocate funds.
The government also needs to fund the bureaucracy, education system prexisting programs the infrastructure and the military(how much of what should allocated to defense is whole other disscusion) so these tax dollars won’t all go to combating poverty.
Taxing Billionaires more is a great idea but it won’t solve all systemic problems or even most of them if institutions are not in place to so and also if your not properly taxing the source of Billionaires incomes.
I am sure that’s self evident to you folks I just wanted to say this.
Oh dear, seems we finally found someone who can get Carla’s goat.
The thing that bugs me with this is whether Booster is speaking from specifics (where the Rutten’s are known in this universe to pay unfair wages / not pay full taxes), or from generalities (billionaires must be evil, because they don’t need all that wealth, and could just redistribute all of it to the poor).
I’m not a fan of sweeping generalisations such as this however I am a big fan of Carla getting push back and getting a much-needed reality check
1. How the hell is stating that billionaires don’t pay taxes or fair wages a sweeping generalization? 2. See number 1.
It’s a fact. You need to think about that, like really a lot, because it’s really weird that you don’t understand that. Sweeping ‘generalizations’ aren’t even inherently a bad thing, but when you’re talking about an objective fact that covers a few hundred people it’s not even an appropriate term.
It’s a sweeping generalisation because some do and just because you’ve gotten all emotional about it doesn’t make it a fact
Billionaires don’t pay enough taxes. It can’t possibly happen.
And a fair wage doesn’t exist: a fair wage results of property of production tools, but also of distribution, exchange and international solidarity means – no more a wage.
It is true that the super-wealthy could (and should) probably be taxed more. However, I don’t think there is a mechanism for an individual tax payer to say “I personally want to pay more taxes”.
The best that they can do is:
– Political Donations to candidates who support higher taxes/social spending (probably democrats). Or at least publicly support higher taxes
– Donate to charitable causes that the government could/should be funding but are not, hopefully at a rate that matches what a ‘fair’ tax rate should be (and hopefully with no strings attached)
Write a cheque to the IRS, or in my case HMRC, and they will happily accept it
Should you care to make a donation to reduce the national debt, they try to make it as easy as possible. https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/23779454
It’s not really a sweeping generalization. It… okay.
Even one billion dollars is a truly absurd quantity of money, so stupidly large that it’s honestly hard to even comprehend.
Let’s put it in terms of hourly pay.
Let’s say you got paid a truly ludicrous hourly pay. $3600 per hour. More money per hour than a lot of people make in a *month*.
Let’s make it even sillier. You’re getting paid that money every hour, of every day, 24/365. Whatever you are doing. Waking, sleeping, vacation? Still getting paid.
It would take you… oh. About 12 or so days to make $1M.
But do you know how long, even at that absurd rate, even being paid while you sleep, to reach $1B?
Over 32 Years.
And you wouldn’t even HAVE $1B at the end of that unless you also incurred 0 costs during that time span.
And there are people out there with MULTIPLE billions of dollars. I believe hard work deserves reward! I believe good ideas deserve rewards!
NO ONE works THAT hard.
can you name a billionaire who pays fair wages and full taxes
This kind of belief about billionaires is pretty common among leftists, and a lot of trans people are leftists. Apparently Carla’s parents support her being trans, so I don’t think they’re just outright evil.
They can be great parents and still have destroyed tens of thousands of families with unfair wages while perpetuating a society that they could probably, honestly, just fix (if they’re making Bezos money, which given the delivery service this comic is implying).
Tldr: They can be good to someone they love and still absolute horrid monsters that have the blood of countless people on their hands.
OP was asking if Booster just believes this about all billionaires or if the Rutechs are known to be particularly unethical in-universe, and I think it’s the former.
Even outright evil people can love their children
An understanding of economics that ain’t from PragerU
I have been surprised by the number of temporarily embarrassed billionaires in the comments section that seem bewildered that not everyone loves robber barons.
“The genius of capitalism is that it requires businesses to do good things for society to make a profit”.
Actual PragerU rhetoric.
And they’re trying to weasel their way into textbooks via Texas…
They are already in FL.
That capitalism requires businesses to do good things for society to make a profit, is patently false. That capitalism requires businesses to produce things that people want, is patently true.
There are lot of things that I want.
I think booster is just being intentionally difficult, even if carla didn’t have ‘billionaire parents’ i’m sure he would’ve used something else as a pretext
There are no “good” billionaires. Literally everyone with that ridiculous amount of money got it from exploiting a lot of workers, or inheriting it from their parents, who got it from exploiting lots of workers.
tfw no mate
No maidens?
Maidenless, even
I mean, if dating someone meant having to deal with Booster all the time, I might have to reconsider it too.
makes me wonder what kinda partner booster would have, if at all, assuming they don’t accidentally self sabotage. or somehow ‘improve’ someone else and ending the relationship and the next person they both move onto will be better for it
Same if your sister dating someone meant you have to deal with Carla all the time, though.
Carla: Why do *I* have to disown my parents? It’s everyone else’s who suck! The least evil parents here besides mine are Walky’s, and they’re white fucking supremacists!
Except Dina… and Amber if you exclude dead parents.
let’s be fair, the walkertons aren’t white supremacists, they’re just slightly above average amounts of racist for middle class boomers
Carla has famously never exaggerated anything.
Honestly they might be slightly better than average, which is a sad thought
i assume lucy’s parents would be fairly decent, tho we’ve only seen her bro, but any issues she might have probably doesn’t stem as much from her parents, well, no more than the average person
Yeaaaaah, absolutely no romantic interest here.
gotta say that I love it when billionaires don’t get what they want
I had way too much fun last night and this afternoon here, y’all – I mean it. Today I’m exhausted so I’ll just add: I fucking love Booster and I’m glad people are enjoying them too.
Honestly none of this would’ve happened if Carla had gone to Charlie directly and had been patient. It’s just that, like billionaires are won’t to do, she feels entitled to her attention and wants to bypass a normal-er kind of interaction.
So of course Booster’s having fun with this (and I’m convinced it’s something they ideologically believe in, too). They aren’t going to forbid Charlie to see Carla if Charlie wants – It’s more of a “give me a good reason to help you!” and so far… Carla has given them none.
well, i assume carla’s going to booster as an option because she hasn’t had an opportunity to talk to her again, versus not being able to track her down/assumed that ‘directly approaching’ didn’t work because she didn’t stick around long enough for her reaction
unless it’s been a while til their next class together
Well, it is true Booster is in her same building, while Charlie is in… I think it’s the Clark wing?
I wonder, actually, if we’re going to be told why in the world she came to ask for help. Like, in the next strips Carla could go “YOU KNOW WHAT, FORGET I SAID ANYTHING”, and skate away – They have been making difficult questions.
I see it less as a “give me a good opportunity to help you” vibe and more of a “you have given me an opportunity to mess with you and By God I will not pass that up for any reason!”
“Give me a reason to help you” isn’t the same than “you’ve given me an opportunity to help you”. The first one is like, conditional? Because Carla messed up that first interaction. It became an opportunity to mess with her only afterwards.
I do think Booster is trying to get Carla to stop it with her 24/7 performance on how awesome she is, and get past her armor. She couldn’t even admit she’s doing this because she likes Charlie! That they’re achieving this by Doing A Class War is a bonus.
“You might know every obnoxious thing I’m going to do, but that won’t help you, because I know every obnoxious thing *YOU’RE* going to do!! *STRANGE*, isn’t it!?!?”
“There is only one Carla”
Carla in the last panel: bloody peasant!
I reiterate my thesis that Carla finally found someone who refused to put up with her bullshit and it jammed the needle from “Attention source” to “I must have her”
i mean, charlie was just ‘oblivious’ tho i feel like she’d be indifferent at most as opposed to someone that actively ignores her/’refusing to put up with her’ because charlie didnt even know carla was obnoxious or had any commentary afterwards besides “oh, i’m charlie–and they’re gone”
but it would be amusing if she somehow crushed on both of them as a twist (that said i imagine most ppl who are siblings, even twins, would ever date the same person)
+1
She likes them mean, and the meanest thing you can do to Carla is ignore her.
Oh damn, Carla’s showing emotional vulnerability?
Booster got past her narcissistic shell and wounded her!?
I
I am impressed
Do you remember when she asked them to analyze her, to her have gotten a NO?
“Taxed properly” – yeah, Carla, c’mon, the government really needs that money for bombing cities and imprisoning drug users. Selllllfiiiiiish
You’re not wrong about where the money would go in this current society. But just to make sure you are aware, it’s a bit redundant to think that.
In a world where billionaires get fairly taxed 90-99% of their money (i.e. a world with real change affected upon the government) that money has a lot better places to go.
To be fair all that cash is currently going to Stopping the bombing of cities. As a neighbour of Russia I am deeply grateful to the American War Industry XD
There’s almost no connection in the US between amount of money taxed and amount of money spent. As far as that goes, we could stop taxing billionaires entirely and still bomb the same number of cities and imprison the same number of drug users.
Taxing billionaires is itself a public good though. The point is preventing the concentration of wealth, not funding government.
I agree about the disconnect between revenue and spending, but in order to prevent the concentration of wealth, spending on people on the lower end of the wealth distribution needs to increase too (if it’s just spent on DoD and Medicare, billionaires owning shares of military contractors or the health/pharmacare industry will just get it back in the end).
Unfortunately it’s what little spending there is on people on the low-end of the wealth spectrum is often what gets targeted for cuts. SNAP cuts, work-requirements for various programs, eventual Social Security cuts, etc..
Honestly, if we just increased taxes on the rich enough to cover the deficit with no increased spending on anything – then concentration of wealth drops. The rich also get most of the interest on the deficit.
Which isn’t to say that more money shouldn’t be spent on the lower end, even though any of that still tends to filter back up to the top, whether it’s Medicaid spending or direct cash used to buy things that usually profit large corporations in the end.
Well I’m rooting for you and charlie, Carla
Good Luck, Charlie. 🥰
I’m not…really excited to read any extended amount of “are Carla’s parents bad people for being rich” storyline.
I agree wholeheartedly with the premise, and I’m not here to defend billionaires. But what draws me to Dumbing of Age is the personal growth and discovery of its individual young people at a formative time of their lives. Carla grappling with her complicated privilege as a trans person with significant wealth is interesting…if it *stays personal.*
But if this camera pans out any further and the scene turns into Baby’s First Economics Debate between two smarmy college first-years…well, that just sounds obnoxious in the best of cases.
I kind of agree here. I also feel a little weird about the prospect of our first serious Carla storyline since her pranking Mary being about “humbling” her. I feel like we need to humanize her first. It’s been too long since we’ve seen sympathetic facets of her, and people forget things like “Carla freaking out over Ruth being suicidal” or “Carla struggling with loneliness”.
I think we might be going in a more sympathetic, personally-grounded direction here, and I’m all for it if that’s the case. Carla deserves to be criticized just as much as any other character, but a lot of the jokes lately have been at her expense anyways, so I’m not sure that’s really a priority.
What I worry that people don’t seem to get is that Carla can’t be easily “humbled” because her arrogance is itself a defense mechanism against humiliation.
Yeah, the tricky part is that for Carla to be more than a trope in a storyline, she needs to express vulnerability… and that’s not something that a lot of people other than Ruth are gonna be able to open her up to.
There could have been something with her and Malaya re: gender identity, but that seems to have been largely resolved during the time-skip and also that would have just been more Smug Carla rather than Vulnerable Carla.
I trust Willis to treat the subject with care. Carla is after all a character he loves! In DOA her traits mix two hardcore opposite demographics; and before Willis started going by he/they, I used to be consistently amazed by a straight cis man’s ability to write such excellent LGBTQ storylines, so rife with excellent female characters. (Allies this unwavering are a luxury, let’s admit it.)
What’s happening here is… Booster couldn’t go past Carla’s defenses in a more normal interaction. They’re high and mighty, Carla can’t stand to be seen as nice by other people most times! She’s better even than social conventions on niceness!! The thing is, no honest communication can happen with all that armor on, And through this angle, Booster found the first inkling on how to derail the 24/7 Performative Carla Show of Awesomess. they’ve just found the first inkling they might be able to stop the 24/7 Carla Performance Show of Awesomess and get to, well, Who is Carla. What does she want
to do with their sisterThat’s not for him to decide, but hey. Forewarned is forearmed and all.who knows, it could be a one-off scene even if carla contemplates it, i mean we’ll probably see more of charlie either way but i don’t think carla’s parents are just gonna invite themselves overnight and hangout with carla the same way walky’s have so far.
Eh, I’m reading this as being about Carla interacting with people (Booster and Charlie) in a new and different way; it’s a character development and relationship storyline, not a ‘dunk on Carla because her parents are rich’ storyline.
Also there is an interesting tension within her background which has such a dramatic mix of insane class privilege and very much the opposite to that due to her very public experience of being trans and I don’t think it’s a terrible choice to explore the way that affects her character and the way she relates to the world around her.
In much the same way that an earlier development wasn’t so much about “all Presidents are bad, actually” as forcing Dorothy to start examining some things she’d taken for granted, I believe this is mostly a way of piercing Carla’s performative awesomeness and dismissive denial(s) and making her, as they say, “get real.”
Notice that Carla’s responses aren’t anything to do with economics. She’s not pro-capitalism here, she just loves her parents. So I don’t see it turning into a big debate. I think it’s just a chance to see a new side of Carla.
I mean as a working person who played the whole damn game only to get crushed at every turn by rising costs, flat wages, zero worker protections/rights, the American health care access industry, underfunded social safety nets, and horrific global pollution, yes. Booster is correct and I enjoy hearing them be so.
I didn’t like Booster when they first appeared in DoA, but these last couple strips are starting to make me like them much more, especially if they actually mean what they’re saying about billionaires. Which I hope they do, because they’re correct.
It’s funny because, skimming these comments sections, you can really tell that the “Carla needs to be humbled, she’s had it easy for far too long” crew and the “Booster needs to be humbled, they’ve had it easy for far too long” crew were not ready to be put at odds like this, but they welcome the challenge.
their battle will be legendary
have a third party come by and humble them both
balance the world
I’m just here waiting for Dina to come in from the high rope with a steel chair.
No Dina would come from the high rope with a Utahraptor claw. Get the trope right.
Oh, that’s when the “Dina needs some actual flaws” crew comes in. also with steel chairs.
i love booster and carla and this storyline makes me happy because whoever loses, i win
I don’t like either of them, so if they must show up, I’m glad they’re annoying each other.
I see the potential in this storyline to challenge the tendency many people (who try to be socially and politically aware) have to paint everyone in terms of “good” vs “bad” or pick “sides” in character conflicts based on who is “right”. Most people are a complicated mix of positive and negative traits, and the characters in this comic reflect that. Both Booster and Carla are members of marginalized groups which deserve support, yet both also have some problematic/toxic traits, and Carla is in the complicated position of being marginalized in one way and privileged in another.
Neither character can be painted as 100% good or 100% toxic, and this is something I see many young activists today struggle with. They want easy boxes, easy black and white labels, but that’s not how the world works. Most people aren’t cartoonish archetypes, they’re just people, who make mistakes and while they hopefully learn and grow from them, no one is ever perfect, everyone will continue to make mistakes throughout their lives.
Though I do anticipate people trying to take sides in this battle anyway. But I look forward to what seems to be an exploration of “two people in a debate can each have good points and also be wrong in some ways at the same time.”
This should be the top comment. The characters have flaws and make mistakes because that’s what makes the comic realistic and entertaining.
I’m firmly in the “f**k both of them” group. Carla is a narcissistic a-hole, regardless of her personal or financial situation. “Replacement Mike” needs to be wrong once in a while, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards same as old Mike. The “feels whisperer” will just have a pinpoint read on everyone’s personality after a few conversations and they will say whatever is necessary bluntly and the epiphany that follows will justify it. Huzzah. I hope this scene means we won’t see either of them for a good while.
i just over here like popcorn.gif
Wild to see a Billionaire’s daughter at a public school
i mean, i’m sure there are rich parents who don’t care/let them go on their own as an adult
tho i mean it would be funny of someone indulged there kid like “i wanna go to 2-3 universities” and such and it being a drop in the bucket for them.
all the ethical and morality talk aside, it’d be interesting if there was some kinda eccentric millionaire/billionaire philantropist who picked a dozen ‘average’ kids and paid for them to have a full ride through college and see how they turn out
See: Kalamazoo promise
master fisher lol
hmmm.
My instinct is to say “DRAG HER, BOOSTER”, but I’m actually less satisfied that Carla’s getting called out for her parents’ behavior. I want her called out for her OWN shitty behavior, independent of the number of 0s in her trust fund.
I mean, they can be related, sure. The number of 0s in her trust fund can be on screen. I just also want some “hey actually you are, as a direct result of the actions you are taken, intensely unlikeable, maybe change your behavior if you’d like a different result”
It’s tough. I feel like the angle Booster grabbed was because Carla came to simultaneously demand their help while framing it as the world needing to give her the attention she’s entitled to… While being absolutely incapable of admitting it’s because she might like their sister.
Like. Look at how much it has taken only for Carla to not-deny that’s the reason.
I mean in some ways, her behavior is likely rooted in these facts about her parents. She’s the only child of very wealthy parents, and I have to imagine that her sense of entitlement when it comes to attention/getting her way is inescapably linked to that fact.
I think developing an awareness of one’s own privilege in the context of their parents’ wealth and the uncomfortable truths related to it is kind of an essential step in developing some humility/a better awareness of how their own behavior might be problematic.
Her behavior may also be linked to the fact that she’s not only trans, but was the very public face of a landmark trans rights case. As a child, very much in the public eye.
My theory has long been that her behavior is directly tied to being that much the center of attention, whether she liked it or not.
You and Autogatos both make good points, IMO.
Carla doesn’t get outmaneuvered often.
It must be the skates.
Booster must be rocking some rocket boots.
Disowning your family? No, not good enough. You’re going to need to murder them
Then fight in Middle East as a child soldier and eventually pilot a Gundam to stop all wars.
Carla + Charlie
=
A very difficult Slipshine to pull off
Is…is Carla on the verge of tears in that last panel?
This is all one big game of duck season – rabbit season, isn’t it? Booster is pulling a Bugs Bunny.
Brilliant gambit, Booster. Well done
“Jeff Bezos PERSONALLY makes enough to solve poverty in America”
Let’s look at that: Bezos has $150 Billion, which is a lot, obviously. The US has about 40 Million people in poverty. If we were to liquidate everything Bezos has (and cleanly, without e.g. causing the price of Amazon stock to drop, making it only $100 Billion), that comes to about $4k a person. Which isn’t nothing. For some people, it could be life-changing.
But it isn’t the society-changing amount of money you’re saying it is. By comparison, the expansded, fully refundable, and paid-out-monthly child tax credit of 2021 from the American Rescue Plan would have cost $50-100B a year if made permanent (estimates vary). It cut child poverty in half. So Bezo’s money could reduce child poverty for two or three years. But not eliminate it. Much less eliminate US poverty over all.
If I lived in that Hall, I would avoid the ground floor, so many uncomfortable truths delivered. Thursday Dorothy, Friday Lucy, Saturday Carla. On Sunday, Arnold will be told he doesn’t have enough character flaws to show up in the strip.
(not a reply)
(that one was though)
When people say “solve poverty” it usually refers to establishing services that would help people get out of poverty, not just giving them money.
It’s my headcanon that Carla’s father’s name is Bert because: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burt_Rutan
of the name similarity. Even though the real person is an Aeronautical Engineer and the fictional one is a computer engineer, there’s enough overlap between the two to make Burt the prototype for Bert.
I feel like if Carla wasn’t interested romantically before now she is out of spite.
If Carla’s vengeance for this humiliation involves pie, could Booster specify the flavor?
Lotta people not wanting to grapple with problems with their favorite rich people in the comments today.
The bourgeois successfully making their interests look like universal interests among those folk, in and of itself perfectly exemplifies the class struggle.
wait, i thought carla was ace/aro? is she just ace? (or just aro?) (or am i misreading this bc booster is just annoying her in general rather than the crux of her annoyance being that booster is revealing a secret crush)
As far as we know, she’s definitely ace. As for her romantic orientation, I guess we have yet to see?
She expressed some kind of attraction to Malaya, which I think could count as romantic. Specifically she wanted Malaya to stop on her; normally that’s a sexual thing but in Carla’s case, if she’s ace, then I think “romantic” is the best bin to sort it into.
“stop on her”? i do not know that earthling term, I’m afraid
Seems like a typo for “step on her”.
Which is a good thing to want, tbh
Back in the Shortpacked days, when Carla started her days as UltraCar, there was a storyline that highlighted how many queer people worked at that store.
Carla defined herself as a “trans-chassis homoromantic asexual woman”; which would translate (heh) in DOA almost word for word :3
It’s amazing how Carla entered this conversation with full obnoxiousness on display, and I’m *still* more annoyed by Booster. Not because of the points Booster is making, but because Booster is just too friggin smarmy to ever really be endearing.
In a way, Booster’s right-you don’t HAVE to take that Exemption, or apply for those waivers. Nobody held a gun to, say, Warren Buffett’s head to make him accept paying less taxes than his receptoinist. He could absolutely pay more..nobody would stop him..except him.
Ditto for Jeff Bezos, or Zuckerberg etc. and so on.
The major difference being, whether Carla’s rich parents do their bit avoiding paying taxes…while insisting on higher taxes for people who aren’t themselves.
The problem with this line is that paying more taxes is not a net good when the majority of them is going to the US military. He’s far more likely to pay for bombs than childrne’s education.