Thank you. I have been saying this for years (more than a decade now).

Feminism fought for the independence of women from abusive husbands/partners, by making them earn their own money, so they can be free. I would not say that the majority of the population feels particularly free today, because the economic situation strangles them. There is a new dependency created in stead of the old one: The dependency from the employer. Especially with at-will employment, a manager or higher-up can fire you at any moment, which can cause homelessness and despair. These are not good things that we want to have.

The logical consequence of fighting for freedom and equality is to fight for economic equality: People should be able to eat and sleep in peace, without having to worry about their circumstances tomorrow. “Equality” does not mean that everybody has the same amount, but that everybody has the chances they need to succeed in life.

We need a universal basic income, or any equivalent of it such as handouts in various forms.

Doing public education is an uphill battle. My voice will always be overshadowed by whatever bot army of companies that have an incentive to shift public discourse in a certain way.

There is excessive climate action being taken. Consider this graph: Source

Solar power generation is rapidly growing and displacing more and more fossil fuel power generation that way.

Sooo many people just want to see somebody bleed. It’s like in that one My Chemical Romance song.

Then same with water to get the paper thin skin and vascularity.

Not drinking enough water is like one of the worst things you can possibly do to your health, closely followed by smoking.

yeah you’re right

yeah i’ve been thinking the same thing

ultimately trump is just a populist. he doesn’t care what he does, as long as it makes him popular and stay in power. that can be seen as a good thing, because it might trump to actually move more on the affordability topic.

where are you from, if i may ask?

i think their entitlement largely comes from the fact that they were one of the few generation who actually had very prosperous lifes (things getting better after the war but still no shitty wages we see today) so obviously (to them) they must have done something right. And that’s why they try to share their great way of life (and doing things the right way) with everyone else, so everyone else can live a prosperous life too.

Problem is, their life wasn’t good because of what they did. It was good because they met exceptional circumstances in the world’s development where there was a lot of growth and innovation that actually improved people’s lifes. they just happened to live through it; it’s not their personal achievement.

IMO she lost because her entire platform was:

• i’m a woman
• i’m non-white
• support trans rights

none of that tackles the cost-of-living crisis, none of that gives people an economic future.

unless most switch to electric vehicles

yeah that’s what i meant

tbf the cost of energy is pretty important because it’s a part of basically every product.

that’s actually precisely why i think the whole world should install more solar panels. it would make energy cheaper overall, and interestingly enough it would also make oil cheaper, since oil consumption would be lowered (because people can use electricity as a cheaper replacement) and that would mean there’s lower demand for oil while supply stays the same, so oil becomes cheaper too. solar panels help literally everyone, including the gas-guzzlers.

the paradoxy of tariffs:

they’re at the same time high enough that the people suffer paying them,

but at the same time, if people got the money back they paid previously, suddenly everybody complains it’s so minisculely little that it doesn’t help anyone and nobody can buy anything with it.

It’s actually a bit more assuming wealthy people spend more on consumption than poorer people, and therefore also pay more import tariffs. If the tax credit is distributed to everyone equally, then poorer people get more than they spent.

Problem is, i really really doubt Trump is ever gonna help the people at all. He’s probably gonna say it a thousand times so his republican voters can say “he’s the good guy”, then he’s gonna deliver the thinnest of excuses for why he can’t actually do it and blame somebody else for it.

the exercise:

I’m thinking that the US needs to go back to A/B testing. The “christians” in the midwest think social safety nets and “free handouts” should be illegal? They can get that. The countries who want them handouts, however, get them. And in 30 years we compare how’s everyone doing.

I’m very not sure about how to evaluate the end of the shutdown.

On the one side, they didn’t pull through with playing hardball, on the other hand, I’m not sure whether people would have gotten better results if the shutdown would have gone on for longer.

oh ok i didn’t parse it that way because nonprofits are typically nonprofits so they don’t actually have a financial incentive to keep the problem existing.

thanks, that’s an interesting article indeed

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” ‘The federal budget is an expression – perhaps the most concrete and measurable expression – of the values and priorities of the United States. What the federal budget expresses today is an insult to human dignity.

What a great quote.

no?

Yeah, the soviet system was bullshit. I’ve never lived in it and only read about it, but from i can tell, it wasn’t good.

I believe that in soviet times, less wealth flowed to the top, but that’s mostly because there was less wealth to start with. People suffered and lived in poverty, and according to communist propaganda, it’s more important to ensure that the “people at the top” don’t have too much instead of assuring that the people at the bottom don’t have too little. I see it exactly the other way around.

Also i think that the “top-down” approach of making a very strong central government that controls all aspects of life through surveillance is exactly the wrong way to approach the problem of how to live a good life. Power over other people always leads to problems, because people group A will say how people group B shall live, while also not understanding the situation of group B or lacking context. Only the people themselves can meaningfully rule themselves.