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Every ministry still has a team of people that are there based on their affiliation with the currently elected government. Of course I don't think they need to replace every clerk.

This is true, but doesn't contradict my statement. As I said, I am looking forward to this and am in fact not that pessimistic. But in the end you need actual people, and these need to be found.

You cannot setup a team of dozens of people to run an important sector of the whole country by having them apply for positions. Not even companies hire that way, most companies hire based on recommendations and contacts. You don't have time for this, they need to form a government in a month or so. Six months in people already get antsy if enough is getting done, you'd be going through the third round of interviews.

Since they are not a political party, the issue will be who will run the institutions. They have 250 people on the election list. Institutions are also made of people. I believe these people are smart and know what they are doing, but they cannot do all of it themselves. I support this "experiment", but it will be interesting to see where they will find hundreds if not thousands of people to run the country. An established party has members as a pool to pick from.

Sp500. It was at 6300-6400 at one point this year.

The market is still up 20% since May. Some of the stocks collapsing now were purely speculative, e.g. Intel. It was a crappy company a year ago and nothing changed dramatically for it to be a less crappy company, but AI and the stock went to the moon.

Very good news. I thought it was interesting how the EU was more cozy with Vucic. My guess would be that despite this new movement being closer in ideals with what the EU should stand for, they are nervous about the idea of people taking control into their own hands instead of delegating to established parties.

I am unsure what a dead grandfather then has to do with CO2 emissions.

This is a fallacy. People 100 years like your great grandfather ago solved problems they had 100 years ago. People today solve problems they have today.

I agree, but also the housing market is already pretty dead because current owners have very low rates on their mortgages.

We are still waiting for at least one time of the day.

I think social interactions are very tiring, especially today. The reason being, most people want to be impressed by someone somehow, but the comparison is no longer the person down the street, but some really really funny person that lives on a social media feed. Another reason is, people are getting less and less accustomed to any pushback, since they are not used to it anymore, any discussion above smalltalk is difficult.

It's probably true that some form of a satisfying social interaction is missing today, but I would say it's a trope any will do to make us happy. In general any type of party I've been to recently, I've enjoyed leaving as soon as possible.

Your argument was Jevons Paradox, that consumption goes up as use gets more efficient. My counter argument was that my fridge got more efficient, but it will be difficult to use it more often since it by design runs all the time. Your counter argument was that I will now have more computers and whatnot and will still use more electricity. I replied to you that even this anecdotal evidence falls on its face because I actually have the data and that my electricity use went down despite moving to full time work from home. I think this sums it up nicely.

I also stated previously that we have the data even on a large scale. Electricity use in the EU went down in the last 20 years and this even with millions of EVs now compared to then. Even Norway which now for years sells almost exclusively EVs has had just a mild bump in electricity use compared to a decade before. This implies that The efficiency savings made elsewhere held. My hypothesis would be it's because at a certain point it's impossible to use something more than you already are (see fridge, dishwasher, induction stove, computers, TVs etc) and thus efficiency gains there will hold. The same pattern is observed with American gasoline use -- as the gas guzzlers of the 70s died off during the oil crisis, per capita gas use fell and practically never recovered. This despite the fact that this use case is quite comparable to coal and you could easily argue that with better mileage people will drive more. And they probably do, but still the gasoline use fell.

You argued further that developed countries need to account for energy use of products they offshored, but I offered data that says otherwise. Additionally the argument can't be used for gasoline use which as stated did not follow Jevons Paradox.

So obviously, Jevons Paradox did not hold in these substantial cases and should not be viewed as law of nature. It's an interesting observation that makes sense, but obviously has its limits.