modo_mario

>and turned a profit for the US government

Accounting for inflation and opportunity costs?

Do you define have as own or as in can afford to utilise momentarily?

>Where did I suggest that he should pay less taxes?

You went on about his saintly works disregarding that for those billionaires it's quite relevant that they're structured as tax deductions and quite in tune with their wealth gain contrary to stated aims.

>I just think the sneering at him because of MS’s business practices decades ago is pathetic.

Oh the business practices are consistent and present. People just pay less attention or get a more clear view looking back. That said he has a 0.9% to 1.4% stake now.

What i consider pathetic is attributing some grand benevolence to his veiled purchase of farmland trough loads of shell companies. Are we also to take it Alex Karp just really really cares about forest preservation? You know it's somewhere in the sidelines of Cladonia Skog AB's aims.

A similar thing is said here in europe but an important caveat is that they typically had no way of drawing most support. No commonly accepted way of regularisation. Buying property. Etc.

One can easily go back but will more easily go back if there's no point in staying beyond the momentary moneymaking and essentially just no future.

It's imo how china manages to have roughly as much migration as Berlin despite sharing a border with pakistan, afghanistan, etc and without large militarised force to kick people out. Simply don't give to incentive.

>A nation is literally defined as an entity that has control over its borders.

A state*

A nation is a people with common identity, culture, language, history, etc (see first nations, stateless nations, etc)

>Farms still need the crops picked and the work is difficult and the pay is only good relative to the opportunities in other countries so there's no replacement domestic workforce.

"for that wage."

This is wage suppresion you're supporting.

Then I guess billionaires really should pay less taxes unlike us plebs since they're so much better at picking out and solving the wrongs of the world. It is good that Microsoft was bribing some african governments because clearly they could use the money so much better saving them from themselves by redirecting that income to the global fund (and tax credits) Perhaps we should incentivise his veiled land purchases for the common good since on thing obviously absolves of another.

BTW just since you use it for the rethoric. Can I also point out how that major role in 120 million children (by their own estimation and 40mil since 2000 on some other own estimation) includes the work of everyone else donating to, remotely involved with or working in line with his organisation. You know including my tax money going to the the vaccination drives of Gavi, the WHO, UNICEF, etc It seems to miss the bit where bill himself attributed the vast majority of such global health and development funding to donor nations.

You think we could get a tax credit for our major role in that?

Just to be sure. Are you being sarcastic?

Yes and yields have gone up, etc.

I'm not going to point at bill gates buying and leasing out loads farmland and attribute to it new corn strains, better pesticides and higher feed conversion chicken breeds.

You may as well be calling for soviet style state controll the way consolidation, top down ownership is and competition mechanics are dismissed or praised depending on the standpoint.

>Bill Gates buys huge amounts of land precisely for ecology

Yes and he was gonna give a vast share of his wealth away for the good of the many over 5 years and then tripled it. woops. Let us not pretend farmland has not been a good investment in those parts. Let us be honest. Almost every such good thing he does is a tax credit which polishes his image and legacy. He was a pretty cutroath businessman and there's no reason for me to now paint him with some saintly image.

>Beef meat causes global warming in a disproportionate way compared to chicken or even disproportionate per euros or per gram of protein compared to lentils.

I can get behind the idea that beef has a bigger carbon footprint due to the fossil fuel fertilisers used to grow their feed as compared to the conversion ratio freaks that modern meat chicken breeds are. The fact that the methane from their farts is somehow the long term issue I however reject. And I'd like to point out that without much of both that excrement and fossil fuel based fertiliser we have a famine on our hands so 'overcrowd the Earth with more equal people' doesn't seem like such a fine goal.

>I find a lot of consistency of his audience in hating him for the very reason that he implements his audience's wishes. To this audience, there is no redeeming oneself

Explain to me why do you presume I am "his audience".

>The point is a rising standard of life.

You or the farmer you buy food from competes for farmland with Bil Gates. You or the one providing your house builder with wood competes for lumber forest with Alex Karp.

The list goes on and on.

It appears trough technological innovation the standards of life rise in many ways but trough innequality it can affect the standards/ affordability of our basic needs.

Wouldn't it be more environmentally friendly to reuse/recycle most of the steel?

Wrong. It's pretty much mandatory here and in much of Europe.

I disagree with it and a lot of other stuff but yeah...

I'll add somewhat of a counterpoint.

I've been somewhat of a nightowl my entire life. I thought that was just how i was and it was in my genetics. There's also some correlation with adhd there according to some studies.

However i managed to be a morning person without strain when i wasn't working for a while and decided to focus on not letting too much light in my eyes in the evening, didn't drink much coffee and went for morning jogs.

It felt like without strain i woke up automatically in the morning and was a real eyeopener.

Sadly it's still a modern society issues feels hard to avoid screens when i have to work and do so much else during the day. Also big seasonal light changes at this lattitude means morning jogs would be in the dark right now if they have to precede work.

Migration, outsourcing/deindustrialisation, automation, rising inequality (after an insanely cash printing bout during covid went mostly to the top) would be my guess.

I am curious if anyone here has experience with the best breeds of rabbit for meat that's are also the most easily self sufficient. (Reliable litters, surviving mostly on grass in rabbit tractors)

Essentially the best for self sufficient homesteading. I wouldn't want the cornish cross equivalent that strugles to propagate without care, needs bags of feed or dies if you look at it funny.

Searching those acronyms didn't help me and i'm not american. Can you enlighten me?

They're in proximity to people that run on a progressive threadmill. When it became socially opportune to so i've seen city folk elsewhere shift their animal rights stance to defend halal slaughter laws deeming it to be progressive because it's tied to a group lower on the proverbial ladder.

>Boris himself being in power while there was a lot of immigration but he remained popular with the base.

He actively caused a large part of that migration of the boris wave with policies which were recommended against by at least 2 reports which they had requested and fellow front line politician such as suella. This after running on a partially anti migration mandate. He gets plenty of shit for it and lost popularity with anyone that cares about the matter.

>Because most people don't have any actual understanding of immigration issues or look at any kind of data.

By which metrics that they should all care about has it been doing well for people of the existing nations in europe? I listed some examples of ones that aren't so great in an earlier comment in this comment tree.

Over here in Belgium the majority of our prison population, ludicrous unemployment/innactivity statistics, rising land/house prices (non linear), etc, etc

This gets pointed at here in Belgium as well....except the share that is a migrant, has it as a background, in a relationship with, etc more than accounts for difference in opposition to more endless migration. It's also like people are not mobile nowadays. I've worked and lived in Brussels and the like where I'm now a small minority.

It turns out if they have mind boggling unemployment and inactivity numbers (majroity non eu working age women are housewives), make up the majority of prisoners, cost a load of money and put pressure on certain groups of wages, housing/land prices, alongside a host of other issues then what's the point?

Because some of the worsening life conditions are caused by migration. On other fronts it may provide a benefit but people need to get their head out of their ass if they don't think some qualms are legitimate.

Depending on the phone they'd struggle to go in a low power state when the screen is off or can't access other power saving features because the manufacturers keep everything under wraps.

Which is of course after having met those requirements IOS is basically android with a different name and closed source and we only need one player that isn't even properly foss. Or why ChomeOS invalidates the need to keep working on kde/gnome/etc

Or that isn't the case and this is all just a silly comparison.

I don't think it's a dick move an don't think it's mission accomplished. We'd say that if they were still around or were the predominant ancestor.

We don't really talk like this about other animals or evolutionary sociology.

If we killed all the wolves to stop our sheep from getting killed we would not say "oh it's not that bad, they're still around, look at that chihuahua" even tho those are to my knowledge closer to eachother genetically. The loss of the dodos is not made up for by chickens to pick something further appart. Similarly we don't say certain cultures are still around because some difficult to define small part of them passed on.

My point is that you may not agree that it's not reasoning due to the underlying mechanics. But we can probably go back to an earlier point where both of us agree it isn't reasoning and we can then see what changed and with each step logically conclude we didn't make it reason.

I'm not in the US but in Belgium.

But as said the other guy said there's increasing legal hurdles.

Like for the construction he mentions: My grandparents built everything themselves including pouring the reinforced concrete ceilings/floors. My dad did much of the house himself with more premade and delivered components, his own expertise in electrics and with some help from a tradesman family member. Now if I were to build i'd need even more tradesman help, I'd need to get the house very insulated and have it certified. That conservatory example is also a thing for people i know who moved abroad and this seems to be a trend across western europe. Should I want to renovate instead and recoup some of my tax money trough subsidies then the work needs to be done by a tradesman even if i can do it myself. The plumbing must be connected and must be certified. After the electrics are done and connected as is required I need to quickly add a heatpump and solar panel otherwise i'm getting my electricity setup certified 3 damn times. For me building a fireplace becomes impossible. Even if I'd want something much more efficient with external air intake I'll soon to get something by a big manufacturer with certifications (usually optimised for ease of installation) if i want to avoid high cost. (and it'll still give a major penalty to my epc insulation certification so idk if it'll remain possible.) This trough an EU law that first popped up in germany.

Alternative construction methods can be possible but again, there's more and more hurdles and limitations.

Then when it comes to the rest. Having farm animals beyond a certain small amount becomes an administration hell. I can no longer butcher anything myself for own use beyond poultry even tho i'd get a captive bolt pistol. My grandma tried to get rid of my uncles animals when he got paralysed and only got trough it after a government worker took pitty on her and went out of his way. I did software and sensors and whatnot for an abatoir at some point and i started to realise why a load of farmers don't own their own animals anymore and instead are farmers for hire.

The informal exchange my grandparents did with food and the like would not be legal anymore.

Family friends had a business selling heirloom tomato seeds. They needed to get each variety individually lab tested for plant/seed pasports which would cost such a huge sum that they'd have to close shop. The inspector seemed genuenly baffled that this was the domain of anyone but multi million euro operations.

Meanwhile most of those old farms you talk about go for more than a million here. Far out of my range. Our natality has been below replacement since the start of the 50's but we keep growing and cutting up the land.

And so our progressive folk who care for our society push for this stuff along with others. Because they want cleaner air, cleaner energy, no invasive species(of tomatoes i guess),couldn't imagine building their own home since they're largely white colar and have lost that knowledge or live in the city and think they're fending of crooked developers with this, want to embrace migration(endlessly),want to prevent animal suffering but push to factory style animal husbandry, etc, etc

It feels like society begets more society, leaves little room for escape and it's complexity and growth is in some aspects self-reinforcing ...so now I want away from it.

My grandparents that i grew up with more than anyone else lived less connected to society in a way that is sometimes described in homesteading or offgrid spaces. Not out of some choice but it was natural to them. The place and country has become very modern and densely populated but they are stuck a little bit. It is not without it's upsides either. They did quite well with their extreme ww2 frugality, wood cookstove, etc and saved a lot to help their children and grandchildren out and whilst i grow my own i could almost live on the food they offer me if i didn't refuse. They also must have a tiny ecological footprint compared to most people i know here. They weren't loners either. They were extremely connected to their (now mostly dying) neighbours and large extended family. I liked to joke my grandmother could describe everyone in the municipality by extended family and friend relations before society there too rapidly started changing.

I've thought about living like that and more remotely where land is actually affordable and have found that not only has society been making it less and less possible. It's made less and less posible mostly by people who are all about "improving it for not just yourself but for everyone else"

Everyone else includes endless migration till I feel like a weirdo for having retained cultural elements (which are seen with a bit of a double standard) and incapable of owning a bit of forest and land. Improving it includes pushing insulation standards that make it so you for example can't save glass from the landfill to build a small unheated conservatory due to insulation standards and making it so owning a few farm animals becomes increasingly impractical.

I can go on and on endlessly but I've come to feel like those (usually)well meaning society centric people are the hardest and most frustrated to argue with to work togheter to that aim. I've found many are so convinced of the moral highground, suprisingly unempathic to others contrasting lived experience if there's no ethnic element and such strong adherents of change with no endpoint that it feels useless. Pasolini was on to something.

Trough increasing migration and outsourcing we'll all chase the lowest common denominator.

Apparently there was this study where they looked at a few european countries where women joining the labour pool lagged but the drop in natality did not and they found a weird correlate in that their cost of childcare went up due to the dissapearance of....nuns.

No more super cheap teachers and kindergarten i guess.