Very curious what makes a man who said he believes he’d prefer suicide to prison show up in Texas on a private jet and turn himself in

Oh absolutely, it’s such a good one. You put it perfectly, one of my favorite things was listening to it while driving these twisty country roads near my grandparents house when I was younger ( a little faster than I should :P )

Edit: spelling

Fun fact, spirit in the sky was made by a Jewish man who just liked the sound of gospel music and didn’t believe any of it. White Christmas is similar, Irving Berlin was also Jewish.

Sometimes creative people just want to make good art and in largely religious societies they can make their art more relatable or consumable by incorporating that religion

Edit to add: Michelangelo never even wanted to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He … made it clear from the start that he resented the commission, which had been imposed upon him by the imperious and demanding “warrior pope”, Julius II.

Some absolutely beautiful things have been made in the name of religion, but underneath that I believe you see the beauty and creativity that the human spirit is capable of shine through, and those amazing people deserve credit much more than an invisible sky man or hierarchical power structure for supposedly inspiring it

Here’s a paywall free link for the lazy https://archive.is/0TM1d

Sorry that an already painful time was made worse

Thanks for taking the time to explain :)

I’ve never heard of using capitalized pronouns, would You mind sharing a bit more about why You use them?

No pressure at all, You obviously don’t have to explain or justify Yourself or Your identity to me or anyone, but I’ve done a bit of googling and the only references I can find are to deities and i genuinely would love to know more

Or just aim for the fucking chest

Thanks for posting, fascinating read. I haven’t used coinbase in years but useful to know they’re shitheads

Potentially irreversible damage, we have extremely little time to take meaningful action on climate change and if trump gets to appoint judges for the next 4 years the situation very easily could be unrecoverable

The house is an asset to Laura because she values it and it acts as an investment because it has value to others and their evaluation may change. If she buys it then she is assuming the risk from Bob that people’s valuation of it may go down or that something might happen to it. If she buys it primarily because she needs a place to live then that risk vs reward is likely less important to her than having a home.

Not involving Bob would be very beneficial in many ways for both Laura and Frank if that can be arranged, any middle man will add cost and without him Laura will pay less and Frank will earn more. The problem is Laura may be busy and not have time to find Frank, buy all the building supplies, and wait for the house to be built. She also avoids the risks involved with the building of the house (e.g. it turns out different than the plan and she hates it, it takes longer/ requires more parts and the cost goes way up, etc.) By having Bob involved her experience becomes vastly smoother, she gets to show up, see the finished product, say “I like it and I’m willing to spend this much on it”, and start moving in the next day.

If you can manufacture a lightbulb that lasts 100 years and price it reasonably you can absolutely start competing with light bulb companies. You may not make as much per customer over 100 years time, but if you convince enough of their customers they’ll save money with you then you’ll make a killing. Some types of investors are very willing to gamble on potentially disruptive ideas like that. The existing lightbulbs companies and their shareholders do have the exact lack of incentive to innovate you talked about but that doesn’t necessarily stop a new actor.

I completely agree that an unregulated market will tend towards greed and cause immense suffering. Ideally that’s one of the primary purposes of government, (unfortunately mine hasn’t functioned that way at all for my whole lifetime) but an entity that is “for the people by the people” which can intervene when greed could cause harm, ensure human rights and needs are provided for, and pull the correct levers to ensure the economy has both enough investment and healthy labor compensation to keep generating value (and to ensure the value generated actually ends up in the hands of the people) is absolutely critical.

I also totally agree with the fact that it’s critical to have other value systems besides money. In a small way I believe what we as individuals place value on and encourage in our communities has an impact. Obviously it won’t solve the issue or make society pivot in a dime, but it’s important nonetheless. Glorifying wealth and those who have it, entertainment factor, and fame/ infamy and losing sight of concepts like civic duty and an obligation to your community, society, or polis has consequences. I understand feelings on patriotism being complex as it’s been co-opted as a hateful concept by nationalists in many places but embracing more collectivist and less individualist attitudes at all levels of society help reinforce other value systems besides late stage capitalism

Investors do provide an important role by taking on risk and enabling growth that otherwise wouldn’t occur. The concept of an economy that constantly grows is that, through investment and work, value greater than the sum of the parts put in can be generated.

If Bob pays Frank to build a house and buys all the supplies, Frank does the actual labor, and Laura buys it then Bob and Frank are left with more money than they started with and Laura is left with an asset worth to her what she paid for it. Her net worth is unchanged and she can borrow against the house or sell it some day. All three people have gained from the situation.

If Bob and Frank can’t sell the house though or the price of houses drops while it’s being built Frank still gets his salary, Laura’s life is unchanged or she got a good deal, but Bob just lost everything he put in.

The problem is our society is wildly imbalanced towards Bob, so Frank is going to earn pennies for actually doing the work to build a house and Bob is going to rake in most of the profits. Taking the risk and enabling something to be built is obviously important and a valuable service, but it’s deeply overvalued in our current system as compared to actual labor

That’s how an economy can be doing well (generating lots of value) but for regular humans almost none of the value gets passed to us and instead gets concentrated in the hands of Bobs and Lauras who contribute money instead of labor.

Ensuring us Franks have enough money to spend is critical because, as you pointed out, a far larger share of my money is recirculating into the economy than a billionaire who spends tiny percentages of their net worth. Conversely, someone living paycheck to paycheck is by definition recirculating essentially 100% of their net worth back into the economy every pay cycle.

Lastly being poor is expensive, and has large costs associated. Not having savings to cover unexpected expenses often leads to debt, not being able to afford a large one time purchase often leads to many smaller expenses that add up much higher in total, etc. Enabling people to break out of those cycles is massively beneficial to economies and obviously (and more importantly imo) to individuals and communities

The United States is one of the best examples of a democratic republic, it is absolutely both a democracy and a republic.

Eugene Volokh of the UCLA School of Law observes that the United States exemplifies the varied nature of a constitutional republic—a country where some decisions (often local) are made by direct democratic processes, while others (often federal) are made by democratically elected representatives

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_republic

The lack of high school civics education in this country has done untold damage

I think it’s a valid concern in that we need real laws around data and what you’re allowed to do with it or China/ whoever can just buy the data from an american company without needing to do anything themselves. Similarly forcing a sale of TikTok is meaningless if China can buy data from them or compromise their security ala solar winds. There’s a reason Saudi Arabia is so deeply invested in Uber, Reddit, lucid, etc.

And we didn’t abolish slavery for 89 years after declaring independence. We can absolutely agree change is usually painfully, unnecessarily, terribly slow but it does happen, requiring time, work, and sacrifice

our lives are worse than four, eight, twelve, sixteen, or however many four years you want to go back our lives get worse every election no matter who wins

Is what I was replying to and it’s objectively false.

An important caveat is that positive societal change is absolutely not inevitable, generations have fought to improve the injustices of their times and we must carry on their legacy lest we allow their sacrifices to be in vain

I bet they looked a lot more like the constellations before light pollution and fossil fuels became widespread

Tell that to my friends who’s parents weren’t allowed to get married until our lifetimes or who’s great grandparents were classified as 3/5ths of a person

Slava

I’m confused at how they spent 2.1 million dollars or close to a quarter of what they raised on fundraising and delivery. If there were aid workers working with people that would make sense but there were just 3 surveys over the course of the year and if you didn’t fill it out you still got paid. This seems like a relatively minimal amount of work: establish direct deposits, create a survey, and analyze a bit of data when you’re done

Also maybe I’m misinterpreting but the graphs seem to show the control group having much more similar outcomes to those getting larger sums and payments having much less of an effect than I’d expect

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