jensen123

Do you have any examples of Western governments doing this?

In the Western world, there seem to be this prevalent ideal that the people should control the government and not the other way around. If a Western government hired people to influence politics like this, wouldn't there be a backlash?

Interesting. This makes me wonder about how many blog/forum posts in the Western world that are written by PR agencies. Not working for governments, of course, but for corporations and NGOs.

Freedom is very important to me. Keeping animals locked up makes me uncomfortable. Of course, the fact that I enjoy being free, does not necessarily mean that freedom is important to animals as well. Perhaps animals are too dumb to appreciate freedom.

I have tried eating a vegan diet a couple times. I was surprised by how much delicious vegan food there is. I actually didn't miss the eating of meat much. However, my energy levels were really low, so I went back to eating meat.

> Isn't it interesting that calls for animal rights are strongest among those who don't interact with any animals except pets?

That's an interesting observation. My impression is that the most intelligent humans typically move to large cities, whereas the dumbest ones remain in the rural areas. Most farmers don't seem terribly bright (there are of course exceptions). Could this have something to do with it?

> Yes, in tech it's pretty safe to take English as the lingua franca here.

Another thing, that was not mentioned in the article, is that the government of Estonia seems to be doing a better job of managing the country than the governments of most other European countries. Estonia seems to have relatively little bureaucracy and relatively low taxes.

For example, I currently live in Norway. If I wanted to start a new company, it seems that it would be better for me to move to Estonia and start it there, rather than do it here in Norway. I wonder how feasible that would be to do, though, without me speaking Estonian? Other than talking to tech people, can you live in Estonia and get by with only English?

Yes, perhaps in the future, movie and computer game studios will lobby hardware manufacturers like Intel, AMD and ARM for locked-down hardware (non-free BIOS etc.) in order to protect their DRM.

I think general purpose computers and entertainment computers really need to be separate. Movies and AAA computer games cost a lot of money to produce, so I understand that the studios want to protect their investments with DRM. However, locked-down computers that users don't control themselves are fundamentally incompatible with a free society.

The only solution I can see for people to both preserve their freedom and enjoy some AAA content is to own 2 computers: 1 for AAA entertainment and another for everything else. Fortunately, computers are getting cheap and tiny.

Good point. I admit that I'm not very good at getting laid myself. However, if you eat healthily, you will look much better than if you eat unhealthily. We know that men are attracted to good looking women. However, women seem to be attracted to high-status men, and put less value good looks.

I wish there were some studies that compared how much success healthy and good looking but relatively poor men would have with women, compared to unhealthy and bad looking but relatively rich ones.

I hope I did not get too off topic here, but I think maybe it's possible that this is part of the explanation. That people want status symbols in order to get laid, and thus have less time for health. So maybe I was wrong about the Average Joe having a low intelligence...

If you read a few books on nutrition, you will learn that refined sugar is unhealthy. This is not hard for anybody with half a brain to figure out.

As for working two part-time jobs etc., many of the people doing this buy status symbols like SUVs, iPhones, big houses etc. If they didn't buy so much unnecessary stuff, they wouldn't need to work so much.

The other day I went to buy some canned refried beans. When I read the label, I noticed that it contained refined sugar. WTF?!? There should be no need for sugar in refried beans! After recovering from the shock, I went to another grocery store, where I found refried beans without sugar.

Why does this happen? Obviously, sugar tastes good. That has to be why companies add it to all sorts of things. However, if most people were like me, they would read the label and refuse to buy anything that unnecessarily contained sugar. The companies doing this would lose money, and soon stop doing it. But the opposite has happened. Why?

There can only be one explanation: most consumers are dumb. However, when you read about stuff like this in the mainstream media, it's always framed as if "big evil corporations" is the whole problem. That "average Joe" has a low intelligence is never mentioned. Of course, the media wants as many consumers as possible, too, so calling most of their potential readers/viewers stupid is probably a bad strategy, even though it's the truth.

I'm actually not familiar with criminal background checks, but they work like this right: if you get caught for some crime, and spend time in prison, then you will have a criminal record, and be discriminated against for the rest of your life?

This seems very unreasonable to me. Perhaps some very narrow/limited discrimination would make sense. Like if someone gets caught several times for drunk driving, then perhaps that person should not be allowed to have a drivers license for a long time afterwards. But if someone gets caught for smuggling drugs, then that person should never be allowed to drive a taxi for the rest of their life? That seems unreasonable.

Some groups, such as people with criminal records, sex workers, the mentally ill, people who enjoy other drugs than alcohol and until recently homosexuals, are treated very badly in some democracies. However, it's interesting that the mainstream press never makes much fuss about such human rights violations in democracies. In a democracy the majority has the power. Also, it's the goal of the mainstream press to sell as many newspapers as possible, get as many page views as possible etc. in order to make as much money as possible. Thus, they need to appeal to the majority. Pointing out that the majority is behaving in an unreasonable way will not endear them to said majority so they don't do that much.

I wonder if Universal Basic Income would also solve the copyright problem? You know, in the old analog world (with printing presses etc.), copyright worked pretty well, but in a digital world, it has many problems.

Personally, I'm not terribly keen on living in a world where every single book I read (and how much time I spend on each page, where I stop reading etc.), every single song I listen to, every single movie I watch, every single computer game I play (and how long I play etc.) are stored forever in some central database.

However, with Universal Basic Income, people would be able to write books, create art etc. and simply release it for free.

Wouldn't you be able to maintain a home in Prague PLUS another home in southern Europe somewhere for less money than it would take to maintain one home in the Bay Area? Of course, that depends on you being able to work in a location-independent way...