It’s not insanity, it’s planned. If people can’t afford to stop working, they can’t afford to strike. You want to keep people just on the side of solvency. So they keep their (rented) home, their (liened) car, etc. But they never save up enough to feel truly secure. Bad things happen, take on some more debt (credit cards, loans, etc) to compensate and then spend years paying those debts instead of saving. So you can do it all again.

It’s all planned.

It’s why governments crack down hard on community outreach and organization. People growing their own food will be less dependent on the grocery stores that are increasingly owned by only a handful of companies. If your community can at least partially feed itself, it removes one potential barrier from striking. If people in the community own their homes, they can shelter others. This removes another potential barrier. And on and on.

Capital lives in mortal terror of organized labor and thus spends gobsmacking amounts of money doing everything it can to prevent it from happening.

Easy - they’re never punished for failure. If execs lost their jobs and didn’t get a cent for being fired due to incompetence, they’d be more cautious.

Golden parachutes mean that you have no serious incentive to do a good job.

Ahhh, okay. Yeah 3 grand would get you a beast. Or, you know, like a car or something.

I think people willing to pay that much are idiots that don’t deserve the money they have, though. Somehow I don’t think that’s a mom or dad wanting to get a Nintendo for their kids or whatever.

Not by much less. I’d say you’d need at least $800 to be sure to run most games at at least 1080p60. I’ve been playing with pcpp lately, using Belmont’s Curse as an upcoming game with fairly tame recommended specs (10th gen Intel and a 3060), and I couldn’t really come in under $800 after case, reliable PSU, etc were all factored in. Maybe if you went for specifically used/secondhand parts but I limited my choices to just new or manufacturer refurbished since used inventory will vary widely in availability and price from area to area.

Of course, the minimum requirements are like an 8th gen Intel and a 1650. So you can probably hit 1080p60 with a lot less than the recommended.

I’m curious how low we could go, requiring all parts be new or manufacturer refurbished. I tried for $500 but couldn’t get anywhere close.

Even as grim as things are getting there’s still a lot of people with far more money than they deserve.