I also get annoyed when people criticize when wealthy people support leftist causes. Like, yeah, Bernie Sanders (or whoever) has a lot of money, so the fact that he isn't blinded to injustice by his own privilege is a good thing.
"When I was poor and talked about greed and poverty, they said I was jealous, now that I'm rich and talk about greed and poverty, they call me a hypocrite... I'm starting to think they just don't want to talk about it."
Unfortunately he has gone full conspiracy grifter at this point, but he does have a way with words and he has used it to say some good things in the past.
Nobody wants to admit it, but the reality is it's natural to everyone, we all want both external freedom, the power to change the world with money, and internal freedom, to feel that ones conscience is in harmony with the universe
My landlord exactly. Dude hires people to spray the yard every year because God forbid ants try to approach the building. I've tried convincing him not to but he wasn't having it. I talked to my neighbor and it turns out the guy used to edge the lawn with scissors. Luckily my neighbor is way more agreeable and we're redoing his lawn more in line with the picture
A toxic moat around the house might be a better option than sterilizing all life in the garden. Also cool to look at if you color it green and install some lighting
More time and effort. Bottom one takes 30 minutes to mow every 2 weeks. Each and everyone of those plants need to be maintained, trimmed and kept with weekly so it doesn’t look like a disaster. So unless you have 1-2 free hours a day, no one will be actually able to do the top and maintain it so it doesn’t turn to garbage.
Personally I respect nature, but don't like it to be near me. So I prefer to live in places without lawns, like apartments. If I found myself by some miracle in possession of a house with a lawn (in this economy???), I would seek to destroy the lawn and replace it with more house. House is much more useful than lawn. Until I had accomplished that goal, it would just be a useless mass and I wouldn't waste any time on it except to keep the footpath clear.
The way white people are like "I want to be responsible for additional household chores so that I can have a useless biological dead zone that 'looks nice'" is nonsense to me.
Whiteness is a social construct invented to justify slavery. It's not a real race, it's a fake race. Insulting white people isn't a race thing. People who choose to identify meaningfully as white are all racists.
All races are social constructs, but the degree to which they're harmful social constructs to self-ID as is variable. There are few good reasons to be angry with someone for identifying as maori or Haudenosaunee, for example. And getting mad at someone for identifying as black would be big time victim blaming and unproductive. But white? It was invented 500 years ago, Europeans already had less bad cultural identities, and it was a direct justification for many of the worst atrocities in history. And white people have garbage culture like lawns anyway.
It’s not a real race, it’s a fake race. Insulting white people isn’t a race thing.
All races are social constructs
Uh oh
But white? It was invented 500 years ago, Europeans already had less bad cultural identities, and it was a direct justification for many of the worst atrocities in history
Isn't the whole concept of "race" fairly new and with it came bad shit?
I identify as white simply because I recognize I have privileges other races don't have as often.
You could be more specific and say I'm by coincidence a very large part Sami, but I'm not part of the culture, all my fully Sami relatives are really far back in the family tree and I've never known them, and people who look at me aren't going to see anything more than a white person, and thus I'm afforded the privileges of being white, so therefore, why call myself anything other than white?
Once you have flowers planted they’re pretty easy to maintain. I have a much larger garden area than what’s pictured. Yes, in the spring I give up a couple of weekends to get it all established but after that it’s just watering it once a day (if required) and then enjoy it for the rest of the season.
So, that was a long winded way of telling you that you are wrong.
Well you must live in a fair weather state, most flowers need to have their bulbs pulled in less hardy places so they don’t die.
You don’t just need to water, you need to de-weed the gardens, you need to deadhead some flowers, you need to fertilize some or amend it with compost or other nutrients.
It’s more than a few weekends at the start, and it’s far more than just watering if you don’t want it to look like garbage.
You are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but don’t lie to support it lmfao.
What’s with the insults for pointing out some people don’t have all that much free time? I also never brought up the difficulty, so why are you bringing it up like I did? Nice red herring…
It’s great you have the free time, but most people don’t lmfao. Either that or your yard is a disaster, but you don’t think it is. Proper maintenance is hours a week, not set it and forget it. Thats how yards looks like shit and neighbors hate you.
You’re spreading misinformation. There is enough of that on the internet already. I called you out for that. Then you said I’m a liar. Now you’re saying my yard is a disaster because I don’t spend 1-2 hours of maintenance on it every day.
You have no idea what you’re talking about and should not speak as if you do. I’m tired of people like you.
I said it’s more time and effort. You’ve only described how it’s more time effort than 30 minutes of mowing. Oh and the top still needs a mow as well… so it’s the same + more. I really don’t see how your points apply here….
So you agreed with me first, than went on a bloviated rant.
Look in the mirror lmfao. Also, there’s more than one user who said the same as me, why haven’t you responded to them if that’s your entire issue and point here…?
Heres a great resource so you can educate yourself instead of repeating marketing verbatim.
Great point right here for you
Because native plants are uniquely suited to their geography, they are able to grow with little need for human inputs. Natives require less water, fertilizer or pesticides. They simply need to get established and then you barely need to do anything. Apparently non-natives are the exact opposite. They constantly need watered and fertilized. They are always plagued by insects and need sprayed all of the time. If you see a sick or diseased plant in your neighborhood, rest assured, it's definitely a non-native. 🙄
And another on why just native means shit
Just because a plant is native, that doesn't mean it's problem-free. Poison ivy is native to many areas in the US. But it can cause extremely harmful effects to humans who are exposed to the urushiol in its plant parts. The plant can be so toxic that humans have died after inhaling the smoke produced while burning it. Some overly righteous conservationists will promote its "benefits" to wildlife. But let's be real. If it was a non-native plant, it would be listed as a Class A noxious weed both federally and at every state level. Fortunately some localities like New York City require the eradication of poison ivy. But too many government agencies give it a free pass because of its status as an untouchable native (pun intended).
Way to eat into the marketing without putting a little thought or education into it yourself lmfao. Some people are ridiculous.
It's not true for one simple reason: we need to plan NATIVE plants! They require near no maintainence and do extremely well.
All the shit you can buy from a garden store is almost always non natives that weve all been tricked into thinking is somehow better. They aren't. They suck for the ecosystem and they suck to take care of.
There is no care with native plants. There is only beautiful growth and a healthy ecosystem.
lol must be great living in a fair weather state where stuff doesn’t die every frost.
That I’m works for places that can leave bulbs in the ground, lots of people need to remove even native bulbs since the frosts get too hard and will kill most of them.
Native doesn’t mean zero maintenance, who told you that lmfao? It still requires maintenance if you don’t want it looking like garbage. Beauty is subjective, but yeah lack of maintenance is just laziness and claiming it’s beautiful is justifying the not wanting to deal with it.
Native yards still need maintenance, flowers need to be deadheaded weekly while blooming for example.
No one talks about the finer details, just glosses over how “simple” it is. Yeah if you let turn to shit it’s easy lmfao.
Dunno what "natives" you're planting, but if you have a true native landscape, there's very little maintenance. You just have to work with the right people (i.e. - not landscapers) to help select a true low-maintenance, lawn. If you plant the right mix, you can have a really nice looking lawn that has different native flowering plants throughout the growing season and will look really nice.
If you're spending hours a day, or even hours a week, you probably want a very specific, manicured look. Or you didn't do the right planting mix.
Native plants still need to be deadheaded, still need to be pruned and trimmed.
Native plants still require maintenance, they just have better synthesis with the other plants.
The time is for the amount of plants. Yeah having 4 plants in a small yard is easy work, but 4 plants in a large yard would look barren and empty… so more plants, more work. If 4 plants are 5 minutes of work a week, 40 plants is 50 minutes. For a similar yard of turf it would be 30 minutes of mowing. Now you have to maintain your grass, can’t mow since it’s not all turf, and still need to deal with the additional plants. It’s x+y, not x or y….
People who buy into this “native is easier” is being sold a bridge that requires more work down the road if they don’t want it to look like shit. For a few years it’s fine, and why every rants about it, because it hasn’t reached the issue point yet. Native plants thrive more, or should, meaning they require more work since they you know, grow and spread easier….
You're uneducated on the topic and talking like you have all the facts. I have a large property that looks like the top image, and it's extremely low maintenance compared to a manicured lawn. I don't have to dead-head flowers, because they're incorporated into a larger planting, so it looks perfectly natural to have a few flowers in multiple stages of their lifecycle along side the rest of the property. NORMAL nature looks beautiful and not messy.
Sure, if you have a row of "native" flowers in a bed of mulch, they take maintenance. In that case, don't have a native lawn, you have a few native plants in an unnatural ecosystem.
Natives are easier, much lower maintenance, better for the environment, and look much better unless you're used to flat, green, golf courses.
What’s so magical about native plants that you think they don’t require the same regular maintenance of any other plants?
If you don’t dead head, those seeds will blow all over your yard, meaning you need to weed them, or your yard is a mess since it’s all over the place. Or the plants get so dense are competing with each other chocking each other out. I’m sorry this was never properly explained to you.
People sell “native” yards to people who think they can neglect their yards. Theres a reason why they don’t show established yards in their marketing lmfao.
You are talking about a native patch in a non-native yard. That's not how this works. You make a native YARD. The fact that they spread seeds is a GOOD THING. It's not a weed, because it belongs there.
It's self-seeding, it's self-maintaining. It's not magic, it's evolution. The plants are supposed to be there, they want to be there, the ground wants them to be there, nature wants it to be there. You're building a house in nature, not putting a tiny spot of non-natural nature in your lawn.
The maintenance is less, but you still have some. You just need to make sure that invasives stay out, but past that, it's mostly self-maintaining.
Heres a great resource so you can educate yourself instead of repeating marketing verbatim.
Great point right here for you
Because native plants are uniquely suited to their geography, they are able to grow with little need for human inputs. Natives require less water, fertilizer or pesticides. They simply need to get established and then you barely need to do anything. Apparently non-natives are the exact opposite. They constantly need watered and fertilized. They are always plagued by insects and need sprayed all of the time. If you see a sick or diseased plant in your neighborhood, rest assured, it's definitely a non-native. 🙄
I very much live in a cold climate with a deep frost, it's totally not a problem. Because the native plants are used to it! For many ifs part of their lifecycle: the seeds require the cold cycle before they will germinate. Very cool stuff.
You don't need to deadhead your flowers: only if you're looking to extend the flowering time. Otherwise just let them do their thing. They'll flowers, then make seeds, and those seeds will contribute to the ecosystem.
If you like, you can give me a rough region you're in (like a state and part of the state) and the conditions of the yard you're struggling with (dry/wet, sun conditions) and I'll try and dig up some resources!
Lol, plants don't need to be kept with weekly. Maintaining a xeriscape or native landscape is less time and effort than a lawn. I've been slowly converting my lawn to larger and more native beds. I don't have to water, even during exceptional drought. I have to top the mulch up once a year. I weed (usually just grass) just whenever I spot a weed. Depending on the plant, I trim or cut it back to the ground once or twice a year.
Flowers need to be deadheaded, trees and bushes need to be shaped so they don’t look like a mess or grow causing issues.
Yeah neglecting the yard and letting it do its thing is simple, maintaining it properly so it doesn’t look like a mess and doesn’t turn to shit requires a decent of time and effort.
Beauty is subjective and most people who claim the top is easier have yards that don’t looks remotely that good.
Meh, depends on the plants. I don't really have any plants the bloom profusely for long seasons (perhaps only Echinacea, but those don't really need to be deadheaded either). Nothing I have self-seeds aggressively in my mulch beds. I can't even grow most traditional types of flowers because deer will just eat them, lol. I very much dislike the look of meticulously shaped shrubs, and many plants have attractive natural growth habits, IMO.
You're forgetting that Americans have been brainwashed to think that large tracts of unproductive land with zero biological diversity is a flex. And no one wants to be seen as some poor with bugs in their yard.
large tracts of unproductive land with zero biological diversity is a flex.
You're right. It was absolutely a flex hundreds of years ago, for places like freaking Versailles. And we're all living like little kings out here, complete with turning a blind eye to disastrous effect.
Meanwhile my Chinese neighbors are hard at work cultivating every last scrap of land they own. It's kind of amazing.
b) They conveniently left out spiders, all those other bugs will attract a shit ton of spiders and I hate spiders. I like ladybugs, dragonflies, butterflies and such, but not so much that I'm willing to deal with spiders and wasps.
If someone has a way to solve both those problems I'm all for it lmao
I'm well aware, that's why I don't advocate for their total extermination like I do mosquitoes lmao
But they can do it away from me, those assholes don't need to hang out above my door or inside my car or under my outdoor seating to be part of the ecosystem...
I have lots of trees and shrubs in my yard with lots of spiders, but no spiders in the spots you describe. When they have better natural homes they're less likely to try to live in your spaces.
You don't understand. That protest provoked an emotional reaction in me and I didn't like it. Responsible protests don't hurt people's feelings. They went too far.
I'm sure all the equal rights protests MLK orchestrated were highly accepted by the moderates and racists across the country and didnt hurt their feelings at all
Oh wait, protest arent about your feelings but instead are about making critical changes in infrastructure and society
Hatred and violence are not things protests are meant to inspire. But changing how you feel about an issue is exactly what they are meant to do
How naive. True change doesn't come from offending moderates - true change comes from making moderates comfortable, so they feel secure and confident that the change you won't harm them. Any protest that makes people uncomfortable about society or their own actions is counterproductive and just makes things worse.
Take Colin Kaepernick. Taking a knee during the national anthem before a football game was exactly the wrong way to protest racism, because it angered people who loved football and loved America, who should have been his natural allies. What Colin should have done was been even more patriotic and sung the anthem even louder, to express how much he loved America and how he wanted to see it become better. That would have inspired people who supported his cause, without offending people who disagreed with him, and there would have been no controversy.
That's the way white moderates want to see people protest. Being conformist and forgettable is how we make change.
Colin should have done was been even more patriotic and sung the anthem even louder, to express how much he loved America and how he wanted to see it become better. That would have inspired people who supported his cause
I know you’re being sarcastic, but you’re actually partially right.
A successful protest reaches people outside of a cause, compelling them to learn more, in hopes that they ultimately become a supporter.
Performative radicalized protests are only compelling to those already behind the cause, and immediately discredited by those you need to reach. It may actually drive resentment for the cause in the people who were planning to see Stonehenge that day.
A successful protest reaches people outside of a cause, compelling them to learn more, in hopes that they ultimately become a supporter.
Performative radicalized protests are only compelling to those already behind the cause, and immediately discredited by those you need to reach.
That's not how any of this works.
A protests' success is judged by how much publicity it receives, and the disproportionate scale of the reaction from antagonists to the movement. Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem was a successful protest because he was a public figure and had a national stage, and the reaction of conservatives throwing fits over a symbolic gesture highlighted the racism typically hidden in polite white society. The police riot in Selma got national attention because of the graphic scenes of white police beating black folks in Sunday dress, and the scale of the police response to people engaging in peaceful protest revealed the violence inherent in Jim Crow apartheid.
Likewise, the Stonehenge protest was extremely successful because it received international attention, and the disproportionate outrage over harmless dust compared to the real threat of climate change puts a spotlight to the widespread apathy of society to the threat.
You think protests are supposed to reach you specifically, because you're sympathetic to the protests old enough to read about in history books. But your opinion of those protests is mediated by the society that those protests have already successfully altered. The moderate of the past would have considered those historical protests 'performative' and 'radicalized' as well. They would also be on the wrong side of history.
You’re welcome to do it in their stead. I’ll happily wait for confirmation that you’ve done the thing you want others to do but aren’t willing to do yourself.
Not these ones. They're automatically generated so the computer that creates them will already know what the string is meant to be. You don't need human annotations to use these kinds of capcha as training data.
This is just a road block. They're designed to inconvenience spammers so you get less spam to delete.
it used to be two screenshots of books, one of which was blurred as fuck, and one of which was usually pretty easy
the easy one was to verify that you were a human, and the blurry one was to train ai
now that they've moved on to "select all the fire hydrants" or whatever, you can still see a distinction between the ones the system knows and the ones the system doesn't know, and if you get good enough at spotting it, you can pass the captcha while feeding it deliberately incorrect information
similarly, the audio test will normally be a short phrase, the first half of which is harder to understand; if you get the second part of it right, you can basically write whatever you want for the first part
also, i'm not sure security theater really exists as a concept in cybersecurity, because the psychology isn't really the same
bad actors will always be able to just hire people in meatspace to solve whatever shibboleth you throw at them, which is pennies per solve
however, pennies per request is still a cost orders of magnitude higher than what each request would cost otherwise, so the hope is it pushes whatever scam or whatever you're running into the territory of unprofitability
GDP is just a statistic, economies of all types have it and that won't change unless people all together stop interacting with each other. It's flaw is that it's often the only measure of stength for a country's economy, but that's not a problem with capitalism. Nicola Sturgeon has a wholeass TED talk on this and why she had Scotland use other ways to measure their economic strength.
If anything, there's a lot more info that should be captured by GDP like home chores, growing your own food, maintenance you do yourself, etc. This is one of the benefits of UBI.
There's a lot of unexpressed demand due to people just being too poor to afford things. Imagine everyone gets a steady check, and this distributes income more equally. It can make society more efficient.
Imagine a food delivery person who can pick up and drop off food more efficiently than each customer picking up the food themselves. If customers have less money, they will just use their own cars to pickup the food. If they have a few extra bucks, they will just pay for delivery. Delivery is better for the environment and uses fewer people to do the same work. Overall, it's cheaper.
Grocery stores all used to deliver your groceries and had "credit" before credit cards were invented. It was more efficient to just send the delivery boy to your house and settle the bill at the end of the week/month.
and this is basically what a planned economy is, instead of letting the market stumble around and hoping to god the solutions people arrive at are good, we just sit down and think through how we want things to be done and then organize people to implement it.
Planned economies don't necessarily kill everyone one, but they are bad because they disguise the price signals even more. Meaning that, GDP is bad because it only includes certain things and excludes others ( household labor). Planned economies have no price signals, so you don't know if what you're doing works.
Planned economies only measure quantities of goods, not quality. So you will see statistics like tons of wheat or steel produced. What quality wheat? What quality steel? That's what prices tell you.
This is just asserting things as fact with no reasoning behind it, why would you need prices to determine if things are working? Do you use prices to determine if your food tastes good?
You're not going to read this, but I might as well explain it.
You are asking me to give a reason for the sky being blue, without looking outside. Just think about it for a minute. In general, higher quality things are more expensive. This isn't about "taste" but higher quality products that the average buyer would agree on:
A price signal is information conveyed to consumers and producers, via the prices offered or requested for, and the amount requested or offered of a product or service, which provides a signal to increase or decrease quantity supplied or quantity demanded.
What you think tastes good doesn't matter. Imagine there's a shortage of something (oranges for example) due to a poor crop harvest. The price of oranges will rise when the market learns this information. This helps compensate farmers who lost part of their crop and signals to the average consumer that they should buy fewer oranges.
In a normal competitive market, these prices decrease when supply increases to normal. The price signal tells the consumer they can buy more oranges again without them needing to consult a crop report.
It also tells the producers and the government what people think about purchasing that product. If they like it, they pay for it. These signals can be distorted by lack of competition or market access issues, but are better than asking everyone "does the food taste good?"
Yes, planning is a tool governments can use to influence the economy. Similarly, markets and monetary policies are tools as well. The trick is using the right tool for the right job, not creating religions out of hammers or chainsaws.
there's a lot more info that should be captured by GDP like home chores, growing your own food, maintenance you do yourself, etc. This is one of the benefits of UBI.
That's an excellent point. Another argument in my arsenal in favor of UBI! Thank you.
As for grocery on credit, it wasn't that long ago lol. There was a local grocer that did that in my town up until the 70s iirc. Of course they were run out of business by a chain who now have a local monopoly. Fuck you Safeway/Albertsons. Reminder to everyone that there's a possible merger with them and Kroger's that would make grocers in the US a big fucking joke.
That's the thing about capitalism. It always claims to be voluntary. You don't "have" to work at starvation wages. You don't "have" to take whatever work you're given. You don't "have" to endure abuse from your bosses.
And your bosses don't have to pay you, and your landlord doesn't have to rent to you, and the grocery store doesn't have to feed you, and the police don't have to protect you. So you either work "voluntarily" under whatever conditions "the market" sets, and earn enough money to afford food and housing and security, or you starve and die.
But the point of the joke is the bullshit metrics capitalism invents to pretend capitalist nations are prosperous, not all the other ways capitalism abuses people, society, and common sense.
But MY POINT is that GDP, as a stat, is useful in many contexts and isn't just a propaganda piece just because it's what capitalists focus on. It's also been much easier to gather accurately compared to other stats.
We live in the 21st century. We have no reason to solely rely on GDP for developed nations because we have the ability to accurately gather the data for many different metrics. This doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bathwater and never touch GDP
The criticism of using transactions as a measurement is that at the end, neither has the $200 needed to buy a $200 Lego Millennium Falcon. If you can't buy $200 of goods, was anything really produced?
It's not even a joke. My friend worked for a pretty small construction firm. They employeed maybe 16 people. He always worked longer hours and helped out at his bosses house for free. After work i would sometimes go to his workplace to talk for a bit because he was overworked and underpaid. I was there a couple of times where his boss explained that they were on the brink of bankruptcy and everyone has to work extra hard. Dude had an old bentley that was collecting dust and his daily driver was an AMG. One day came in with a pretty new Lamborghini, showing it off proudly to his workers who were still tgere at like 8pm working for free. How did they react? "Woah, cool car" taking pictures and shit. That was the most surreal thing i have ever seen.
There's this local brew-pub restaurant, the kind of place that had its own brand of craft beer and a trendy local restaurant connected to the brewery. The sort of business that skyrocketed in popularity in the 2010s. Started in 2014, was doing great business, really popular night scene, etc. No dollar signs on the menus, if you know what I mean.
They recently just announced they're going out of business and closing down everything. I was sad and upset about it...until I read the interview the owner did where he explained why they had to close, and snuck in there between "I took loans out I can't pay back because interest rates went up", "business not recovering post-COVID", and "supply costs going up", he added "wage inflation".
I've never done a 180 on a small business owner faster.
Around the mid 2010s it became a very trendy thing for hip, new restaurants to not put the $ sign next to the prices for items on the menu, and no decimals either. If something is $11.00 they just put "11".
Oh, I thought you meant the price was literally not on the menu at all, but that didn't make sense with the context given. Since that just means "If you have to ask you can't afford it."
They're quietly pushing the fatalist idea that someone's always got to be poor, and giving them more money will magically cancel out. Like, exactly, to the cent. These people think doubling wages at McDonald's will instantly double the price of a burger, as if all of that money goes right into the cashier's pocket.
They are not just slandering when people get paid more. They are pretending that's what causes inflation. As if paying people more does not work. Quoting a living cartoon I argued with on the other site, "it will put us right back in the exact same situation."
And it's really insidious when you realize that having this many poor people is horrible for the economy as we have a system that is reliant on consumers with no one who can afford to consume....
Meaning, they don't give a shit about the economy, they just get off on suffering.
Administration costs have risen, food quality has gone down*
Everything has become market based, inflation is built in and required in modern market stability models
The very wealthy have learnt to extract more of the value share
Residential land in good places is now scarce and so expensive, where it was abundant and cheap back then (because population has increased)
They seem to think Bitcoin would fix it, but Bitcoin is in the market, and is more volatile than cash
They seem to think gold has stable and intrinsic value
Of course what happened then was computers, they are the biggest productivity multiplier since the wheel, and I wonder, do we the workers deserve that share of our productivity that was provided by our employers' computers?
*That's contentious, some people think food quality has gone up, despite obesity rates now vs 1972
Women joining the workforce in huge numbers increased the labor pool without significantly changing the demand for goods or services. Thats basic supply and demand.
Owner class played the long game on that movement. Boiling a frog.
Nothing wrong with women working. And I’m not saying women can’t work.
All I’m saying is that we’re all complaining about needing two working adults in a household to survive, while simultaneously renting two adult bodies per household to the owner class.
I’m not saying how to fix it. I have no idea how to fix it. A massive strike sounds adequate, at least 35-50% of the workforce. Never going to happen though, because most of them need two incomes. Pretty shitty.
Most of the 1% don’t have their value on cash or from wages. It’s all a giant scattered portfolio, funded largely by loans against stocks which make up most of their compensation. Most of the portfolio cannot be easily liquidated, at least not in large amounts, without serious rippling effects in the economy.
The problem comes in being able to place loans against stocks to fund future investments. In theory, it’s a high-risk, high-reward opportunity that’s available to all. It could be a great mechanism for middle-class stock owners to build a comfortable nest egg…but instead what’s left of the middle class has whatever stocks they own in their 401k and if they did have other stocks, the risk is far too great to be palatable to most of them. At the scale of billionaires, though, putting a few million worth of stocks as collateral for a loan to start a new company is practically Monopoly money.
CEO salary is interesting. Most of the big salaries that get people pissed off are in the S&P500. Those salaries are insanely high, far higher than they should be.
It is worth considering, though, that the S&P 500 are some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. It does deserve some sort of an exceptional wage to be responsible for steering those ships. Not hundreds of millions, probably not even tens of millions, but the CEOs are the figureheads of companies directly responsible for the livelihoods of millions of people, not just their employees but entire economies.
Thats an insane amount of pressure, and ought to be well compensated. And CEOs aren’t really there for leadership qualities or whatever they say they are (although some of the celebrity/prima donna CEOs certainly bring their own different breed of value to the companies they represent…people like Musk, Gates, Jobs, etc). They are there to be a person to point to when shit hits the fan. As they say, you don’t pay a hooker for sex, you pay a hooker to be quiet.
In my opinion, I think that a CEOs pay should, generally, be a significant salary proportional to the market-cap of the company, and a large percentage of stocks should not be able to be touched until 1 year following the CEOs departure from the companies.
It’s all a giant scattered portfolio, funded largely by loans against stocks which make up most of their compensation.
Yep. A solution is a tax on registered securities. Any individual holding more than $100 million in registered securities owes 5% on that excess value, per year.
Most of the portfolio cannot be easily liquidated, at least not in large amounts, without serious rippling effects in the economy.
Nah. They don't have to liquidate their holdings. We'll go ahead and do that for them. We'll take 5% of each of their positions each year. Transfer them to an IRS liquidator, who will sell them off over months, years, decades if needed, in small quantities, no more than 5% of traded volume per month.
Would be nice if we could unfuck the US, also if we could take a bit of money from the military to get heat pumps and induction stoves, and just skip the gas
I really want an outdoor wok burner, because my induction stove just doesn't get hot enough. I'm used to working with a professional stove that will go up to 700° F. The induction stove won't get my wok above 500° F.
They make a standalone induction burner specifically for a wok (mine came with a wok, but the one I already had works). It's nice because you don't have to use a flat bottom one, but it still maxes out at like 550°.
I have questions. They specifically say that once available it will run on a 120w or standard outlet, or low power 220w outlet. I don't know that it would be possible to hit 700° F without a high power 220 outlet.
It charges its internal battery from whatever supply you have over the course of a day, then when you are cooking it can operate off the battery alone. So it doesn’t really matter how good your supply is because most home users won’t be cooking all day, so it will charge its battery slowly.
It has a 3kwh battery, I’m not sure how powerful the inverter is and it depends on supply but it might take an hour or two to charge from flat.
But it probably couldn’t maintain 700F for an extended period of time. I guess most people won’t need that heat for a long time.
The hottest air temperature ever recorded in Death Valley (Furnace Creek) was 134°F (57°C) on July 10, 1913. During the heat wave that peaked with that record, five consecutive days reached 129° F (54°C) or above.
I think the dinosaur moment would be more of a global phenomenon, e.g., rising ocean temperature. My understanding is that Death Valley is obscenely hot with or without humans. The rising ocean temperature and melting ice caps, on the other hand...🦖🌎💥
Yeah, global warming was kind of a bad name for it. Because yes, it will get warmer globally on average, but also colder, drier and wetter at certain places. Northern Europe might get a lot colder when the Gulf Stream is gone for example.
The term "global warming" first appeared in print in a scientific journal article authored by an American geochemist in 1975. I think the mistake isn't the naming, as it's an accurate name that succinctly describes the issue. I think the mistake was not realizing how profoundly science illiterate the American public was at the time and still continues to be.
I'm not questioning the sad state of scientific literacy, then or now, but it really wouldn't have been all that difficult for the news media to properly explain the issue.
I graduated high school the year before that article was published.
While in high school, I wrote reports on the "greenhouse effect". I later found myself helping my parents and others grasp the actual effects of "global warming." Poles heating faster than the tropics. Shifting weather patterns that would cause some regions to at least temporarily see a period of cooling, etc.
If I could do it, getting it right was certainly within the capabilities of university trained journalists.
When I first heard about it in school in the 90s, the preferred term seemed to be "global greenhouse effect", which still implies warming but better describes the underlying physical principle.
But now we should really call it "global climate catastrophe" or "global climate extinction event" to communicate how dire the situation is.
Self reliance isn't feasible, way to many people and not enough arable land. Plus you lose all benefits of specialization, putting you to pre industrial levels.
I definitely enjoy learning to fix electronics and appliances things on my own, and I enjoy designing and 3d printing helpful parts. But I have no urge to learn how to grow my own food or make a house or furniture etc. I don't see a feasible situation where that would be helpful.
I definitely enjoy learning to fix electronics and appliances things on my own, and I enjoy designing and 3d printing helpful parts.
That's great! You're already cutting out middlemen and the necessity of shipping things across the globe.
But I have no urge to learn how to grow my own food or make a house or furniture etc.
And that's ok too. But the more you learn in those regards, the better. It cuts out that reliance on middlemen and international shipping.
I don’t see a feasible situation where that would be helpful.
I mean... Were you not affected in at least some way during Covid? That first year of lockdowns and massive shipping delays was eye-opening for lots of people. It's hard to imagine that you can't see at least some benefit to these ideas.
International shipping is absolutely fantastic. I'm not going to manufature electronics or injection mold stuff. I'm fine with middle men if they actually add value, like shipping and economies of scale do. I'd rather fix shipping rather than deindustrialize and revert 100 years.
I didn't really miss anything over covid, I don't usually buy much other than food, and that was still available. I luckily got my computer before the shortages, so wasn't effected there, but it's not like I could have manufactured my own.
Middlemen merchants and international shipping are things that regular folk have absolutely no control over. And if those things go away, whether that be due to a pandemic or a CEO deciding it's just not profitable, those who rely entirely on that are fucked.
Having at least a bit of knowledge on how to sustain yourself, even if it's not a 100% self-reliant, will only be a net positive
I think it's net negative because of the amount of time and money you'd need to invest for a very low probability event. It's like the preper mindset. I can add a lot of positive specializing in my field that I wouldn't be able to if I also trained myself in society collapse self sufficiency.
If it's not a monopoly, we (in aggregate) do have control over them, since they still need our money to operate. But that is one reason why monopolies need to be crushed or heavy regulated, so that they can't have life and death control like you are mentioning.
I have the desire but but the ability to grow my own food right now, so I've subscribed to a CSA in the meantime. A few hundred dollars upfront that stays in my community, and I've got an entire season of fresh produce when it's at its ripest.
I just don't think it's worth pursuing for it's own end. There are some things it makes sense to do yourself, but for most things it costs way to much time for the small amount of security it gives.
The post said it was necessary though. I'm fine with people working on self reliance if it makes them feel more secure, or just if they enjoy it or it gives them fulfillment. But I think relying on the social web of connections and commerce is fine.
I don't think OP was meaning you have to be 100% self sufficient. I interpreted it more that you need community but you also need to know how to take care of yourself. How are you going to help your community if you can't help yourself. How is your community going to help you if they don't know how to do things. Local supply chains doesn't mean you're producing everything, it means it's coming from your community. Thats exactly how an untold amount of people survived the depression, communities banding together and taking care of each other.
Most homesteaders help our their neighbors if it's needed, and will receive help when they need it. They're not 100% isolated on their own.
E: Why're y'all downvoting that guy. Not like they were being a dick or anything.
Arable just means it's possible to turn it into farmland, not that it would actually be useful to grow crops.
The largest problem is that the global population has exceeded the natural limitations of the nitrogen cycle. Meaning we are utilizing more nitrogen from the soil than it can naturally fixate.
Without petroleum based fertilizers we wouldn't be able to sustain the global population we have today. Without the Haber-Bosch process our population would likely be hovering around 4 billion instead of 8 billion.
That math makes it 1,489 people per mile of arable land.
Edit: don't forget that not everyone lives on arable land. We also have apartments and skyscrapers that house people, thus packing in many more people per mile than individual.
My math came out to one 41 meter square of land per person. 1.34b hectares/8b people*(100m*100m/hectare)=1675m^2/person which is a square of 41m per side.
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