I get what you're saying but I don't think the "manager telling someone not to quit" is correct as an analogy. We're all here because we wanted to be a part of a different community than reddit. That to me is the fixed interest. We want to build an online space that we all enjoy being part of.
To build that space us early adopters who have an interest in seeing it succeed unfortunately need to bear the brunt of the painful startup process. Any small online community formed by people leaving a previous space (that doesn't have central control) will initially have a large number of assholes. The amount of "I've been banned from reddit X times" comments is way too high. Those people will eventually be drowned out by a larger population of nice people if the nice people stick around. Only by trying to build the space we want to see will it get built.
It's either that or we all ditch federated spaces and go back to reddit. Leaving the tankies and other toxic people to Lemmy.
We found billions and billions for daft tax cuts and juicy contracts to Tory donors for dodgy services and contacts. No one asks "how can we afford this?" when it's tax cuts for corporations or selling off profitable public owned assets. I think we can afford to spend a little more on helping people survive. The money spent on welfare also doesn't just disappear, it goes straight back into the economy. The very poorest people can't afford to have savings, it all gets spent on essentials.
Growing the economy is very difficult when people don't have any money to spend. It's a giant weight around the economy's neck. If the Tories hadn't been burning the country down for the last 14 years we wouldn't have as many people struggling in poverty and wouldn't have to spend as much. Unfortunately they have so we do.
How about we raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and reinvest that money into supporting the people of the nation and trying to grow the economy?
It's also not one third of the NHS budget. The total "cost of harm" to the NHS Inc legal costs was £6.6bn in 2022-2023, the total budget was £180bn. That's around 3.5%. Just use some common sense and think about what one third of the budget would imply. Is one third of the NHS made up of lawyers? Do you know just as many NHS lawyers as you do nurses and doctors? Double check "facts" that sound unbelievable and via outrageous before spewing them out for others to be misled by.