haizhung

What? Sure you can. Companies do it all the time, they call it RSUs.

You got it backwards. Bill Gates and Alex Karp don’t pay megamoney for lumber or farm land. They consume a bit more than the average person, but not by the same %age as they are richer.

But everyone else can’t afford basic necessities or furniture anymore. And so being a farmer or a woodworker or whatever becomes a less attractive job, less people will do it, and you will have a harder time finding someone fixing your plumbing. Or pay a premium.

Instead, the ultra-wealthy are demanding extreme luxury, and so a would-be farmer is now a hotel page boy carrying around some rich dudes’ luggage, hoping for a tip.

If unions were truly ineffective, companies wouldn’t spend millions on union busting firms.

Or, you know, solve this politically and implement an economy that redistributes wealth from the top back to ordinary people.

To be fair, this happened all across the western world. The US with Reagan, Germany with Kohl and Schröder, and many other countries followed the same path.

Prior to that, neoliberal think tanks have been working for almost decades to prepare the dismantling of the public institutions.

Well, color me surprised, but you’re right: in contrast to china, Malaysia, and other SE Asia states, India’s plastic trash is mostly (97%) self-made, with the largest contributor being single use packaging for consumers.

Just a reminder that the worse climate change gets, the larger the difference is that a single 0.1 degrees makes. 1.0->1.1 degree difference in global warming is barely noticeable, but 2.9->3.0 makes a huge difference.

So, paradoxically, the worse the situation gets, the larger our incentive should become to avoid yet another increase in global warming.

You do understand that they are suffering because of choices made for them, by the west? Its our plastic that flows through their rivers.

No?

> From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury

Please show me that moment, is it in the room with us right now?

On the contrary, giving money to the public would actually help the economy, but people continuously vote for politicians who are (ostensibly) “careful” with the money.

There is no need to fix it. A deficit in the governments’ budget is a surplus on someone’s private bank account.

If you wanted to “fix” the budget deficit, you’d have to collect all the money that the US has printed. At least that’s how I understand MMT.

> The house called 15 of your 113 scored numbers: 13%. Blind guessing would average about 12.6 of them (11%). The house called 1.2 times as many. Only 5 of the 206 people in a psychology study were more random than you. The house found you extremely hard to read.

I did a PhD in a stochastic-related field though, so I know about some “tricks” (in that most humans are too random and eg. dont sample long running sequences)

No it will not, propaganda and scapegoating will.

This is thrown around as some sort of truism that humans become animals at the smallest inconvenience; but there is simply no evidence for it. On the contrary, there is loads of evidence that humans work together and support each other especially well through hardship.

You could quite literally introduce a wealth tax and then set the (additionally) taxed money on fire; and it would improve living standards.

The point is to lower the economic power of single individuals that compete against the entire rest of the nation.

Not only that but they are actively moving into these countries, because, like everybody, they like a functioning government that provides infrastructure, housing and health care for their citizens. This makes for much more livable cities and a happy society.

Return of your capital is not important than return on your capital; and if you as a bond buyer are worried that the government can’t pay back your loan at all, you will increase the interest rate on it.

IMHO this is an effect of the exponentially increasing wealth inequality.

We are allowing a tiny elite to hold a larger and larger fraction of the overall wealth, while workers, middle class AND the government are losing more and more of the wealth.

Governments, until now, are refusing to tax the uberrich, and continue to squeeze out workers and middle class in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Since this is bound to not work (workers and middle class are rapidly losing their share as well); governments are forced to scrap public services like health care, housing, schools, etc.

Bond markets are now realizing that the governments are not taxing the only fraction of society who owns everything - and so it makes sense that the bond markets become increasingly worried that governments can pay their interest at all.

Tax the rich.

Hell im taking shortcuts now as a fully grown adult; just because it is so _so easy_, and I absolutely see my skills atrophy.

It’s terrible.

This assumes that people on a UBI just chill at home and play video games the entire day, which was disproven in about every experiment that was ever run on this.

It’s human to want to contribute to society; and people use UBI mostly to get their shit in order, and THEN to get a 2nd degree and rejoin the labor force.

So, yes, they would in fact become teachers, nurses or or constructors.

Since I didn’t see it on the page; here’s a shorter summary of the whole story that cuts to the point: https://rutgerbregman.substack.com/p/i-think-this-is-the-cra...

You could carbon tax it, and give people immediately back the equivalent of what they would lose (on average). Then they can keep their lifestyle - if they are truly diehard about it - or they can adopt a climate friendlier lifestyle and pocket the change.

Does the slowly landing rocket in any way improve live for ordinary people?

I’ve come to understand the inequality crisis (which manifests itself as a cost-of-living crisis for most people) as one of the root causes for the poly-crisis we are living through.

For climate change, I can totally understand how a household struggling to feed their kids will reject messaging of the form „oh and btw you also need to stop driving your car and heat your home lest the planet dies“. Of course they will revolt against that.

To me, fundamentally, the west MUST solve the inequality crisis first before we can ever hope of solving any of the other problems. People need slack to care about the environment, their neighbors, peace, etc.

And the other aspect of it is fairness - people rightfully look at the top, say „well the billionaires are jetting all around the globe and no one gives a fuck, why should I cut my holidays?“

We need to fix inequality first, and I project that most other issues we have today will magically resolve themselves.

I find the book humankind to be more fact based AND have a positive outlook than sapiens.

There are countless precedents where disaster strikes and humans have worked together to help each other; including people they don’t know at all.

„Common wisdom“ dictates that humans are wild animals, and the only thing keeping us from tearing ourselves apart is a thin layer of civilization. This is sometimes called the „veneer theory“.

That theory is wrong.

It’s also very important to powerful people that you believe that the theory is right; because why else would you allow eg. an autocracy to exist?

So, to answer your questions:

> Were the European colonialists nice to the people in Africa or South America or the settlers in North America to the natives?

No, but the natives were nice to the settlers.

> I can't understand why anyone expects things like civil rights, property, the rule of law, nuclear deterrence, democracy, etc to survive when human beings no longer need each other.

What’s your source on this? When humans have no obligations they usually turn around to be super nice to each other. Humans are social animals and they really really want everyone they know to do well.

I swear to god there is not one single thread on HN about Germany where nuclear reactors aren’t brought up.

Nuclear reactors are not solving this problem. Period. The technology is too expensive, building them is too slow, and no one wants them.

It’s a smoke screen (that I think is) set up by big oil to distract the focus from renewables, which are cheaper, scale better, and actually endanger their business model.

Have an EV in Germany, charging is a non-issue. The stations are everywhere to the point that it’s easier to get a parking spot with an EV than without.