Vraxx

I don't personally, it conflates boomers with capitalists, and there are plenty of boomers who aren't a part of the capitalist class by any stretch of the imagination. Just because some of them benefited from it, doesn't mean they had any part in its construction, execution, or intention.

This story just obfuscates the fact that this tension between capital and labor existed long before this generation and pretends like the entire generation was in on it, when it was really just the boomer capitalist class, not all boomers.

But that might also price out plenty of much better uses for helium as well if they are less funded than those with recreational demand. A market is not always a good way to allocate resources, especially in cases like this where the use cases are so wildly different in utility

doesn't seem nearly as malicious. Part of the problem with regulation is constant cuts and never expansion in budget despite the workload usually being expanded, it's very easy to believe that a poor job being done in this situation is just the only way they could get it to still work given the constraints. Actively cutting corners to try to beat competition is much more of a deliberate decision that bears more responsibility.

I feel as though that ire ought to be directed at the companies who knowingly walk in the gray areas to make profits where simpler laws might suffice for common sense. It's the same arms race that plays out in many other instances, if abuses didn't happen then we wouldn't need to codify into the law that those things are indeed abuses.

With every round of this game we play, it gets harder for smaller businesses to step around the collateral damage, but it's not as though the right answer is to give up on worker protections. The worst part of it all in my opinion is that after a gray area is ruled on after years of extracting profits, there's literally no consequences for a business forcing that gray area to get codified into law. Of course these vague in-between areas will be exploited and eventually refined into more and more meticulous law, there's a bounty on every one of these areas. The system we have will trend towards this unless we give up on worker protections (obviously not good) or reorganize this system so the winning move isn't to force more legislation

it seems you're not considering the effects that the climate crisis is expected to have on the conditions that our food production infrastructure is based upon. Water/soil/temperature are all pretty big components of this process that will (and already are to some extent) impact our ability to grow food.

not quite. OP described how the world "is" (according to their particular worldview, which is subject to their biases as everyone's worldview is) and then prescribing what one ought to do in the world. The person responding is cautioning readers to consider what fitting in really means if the thing you're fitting into is profoundly malformed.

Also, that comparison is made specifically because companies have no morality and so if we want them to behave in any sort of way approximating our morals, they must be regulated to do so. Those comments are advocating a change in the way companies are treated in order to get them to behave in a more expected manner.

part of this is because of an ongoing disinformation campaign by the companies and individuals who benefit the most from not addressing the climate crisis. People aren't willing to pay $100 more a year to stop climate change because from all the information they've been fed, it's not a big deal. There's very good reason to believe that if people understood the current and future effects better there would be a much more drastic response.

Just look at similar failures in the past where corporate interest spread disinformation to continue making money (cigarettes, lead in gasoline, health insurance companies today, sugar industry, etc.). When people learn the actual facts the prevailing opinion tends to change pretty heavily. Sure suppliers must cater to demand, but that ignores the fact that often suppliers play a large role in cultivating that demand regardless of the moral value of that demand.

The US supports plenty of undemocratic regimes and has toppled democratic ones. US global policy rewards subservience to the US economy more than anything (which I'd hardly call "free" trade).

Why does any percentage need to be withheld?

This is true and explains some of it, but it doesn't change the fact that currently wanting to live in a desirable area and wanting to live in an area because of a job are conflated with no options that could effectively separate or distinguish between the two sources of demand. It's not like everybody would get up and leave the Bay Area, but it would allow those who only want the job to leave the market for housing in the Bay Area and lowering demand overall. At worst, the drop in demand would be supplanted with people who wouldn't move to the Bay Area at the current price (and thus the price wouldn't see much of a drop), but at least you wouldn't be crowded out by people who would leave the Bay Area given the choice.

In the interest of being fair and balanced, I often account for the imbalance of power, or else we wouldn't be seeing any conflict at all. Often the threat of violence is enough to coerce, and that doesn't get coverage. So when there is violent protests, I'm going to give more lenience to the group with far less power and force.

I agree with KozmoNau7 here, so many notions of constructing some system that will somehow weed out the "bad" ideas seems misguided in my opinion. The reason is that these systems necessarily treat all ideas as equal valid inputs by requiring anything be allowed. This is done when we have bountiful evidence to the contrary, evidence that fascism and racism lead to horrendous consequences if left to spread through disingenuous tactics and deception.

In fact, we humans already form a decent system for weeding out bad ideas/opinions, we just don't listen to our own past experiences on the matter. We found out that fascism is putrid and yet now we try to come up with a new system that will weed it out instead of just chucking it into the garbage bin and moving on.

It's not paternalistic or a dismal view of humanity or that "humanity cannot be trusted with such a dangerous idea", it's because the people advocating for it constantly lie about it and intentionally trick/indoctrinate others into following. Under the right circumstances of me growing up, I fully believe someone could have deceived me into believing it, so I don't think I'm better than anybody who got sucked in. We can trust in democracy as long as we take proper precaution against things that prey on the freedom of expression and association in order to remove those rights from others.

Put another way, what real benefit is there to "freedom of speech, except for advocating fascism" as opposed to "freedom of speech, no exceptions"? The US already doesn't have pure unrestricted free speech because there are exceptions made for outlier situations where free speech is not protected in efforts to secure the safety of others. That hasn't led to total collapse or censorship.

I agree that it's important to have lawyers defend people accused of horrible things because they could be innocent of those charges. The thing I think I disagree on is that when it is a single lawyer or a group of lawyers constantly defending a group of connected (through power and money) people, it tends to become a lot less clear that they're doing the moral duty of defending all accused instead of defending the accused that will line their pockets the most. The problem here is the one observed in the justice system as a whole, which is that routinely people with less money are disadvantaged in the system due to the lack of money to "convince" these lawyers that shield their actions behind the high-minded moral of defending all accused individuals.

In theory: All accused get representation regardless of accusation In practice: Only the rich who are accused of vile things get a proper defense.

Definitely this needs to be pointed out more. My wife used to get upset if I suggested something might be a placebo because she thought I was telling her that she was fabricating the observed effects on her.

I think the placebo effect still working even if the person is told it is a placebo is a factor of whether or not you consider placebo to be "bad" or "ineffective". To me it just suggests a difference in the actual mechanism of how the placebo is effective. I'm curious to know if there are ways to increase the effectiveness of placebo by having a strong/pleasant smell or taste associated with it or some other sensory effect that is immediately noticeable.