pochamago

There's no rational reason to care about non-human lives at all. When we talk about pragmatic, secular ethics, we do so for the purpose of creating a stable and happy society. We know that by training other humans not to harm humans we reduce the likelihood that we will face hardship. There is no reason to include animals in this system other than that some people feel more sympathy for them. But animals can't engage in ethics with us, treating lab rats better will not make the rat species less likely to cause damage to us. Animal rights are a purely emotional impulse

That sounds super interesting to me, do you have a link to something about where and when that happened?

That sounds extremely feasible to me. One of the companies i used to work for will definitely have a bunch of their training videos lost this way, and it's totally reasonable to believe that a new hire for the warehouse would not bother telling anyone that the video wouldn't play. I don't know that any real injury will result from this, but i wouldn't call the scenario absurd

I think it's good that taxes can solve problems a decentralized, and therefore disorganized, system will struggle with, but in the same way i don't think that a centralized economy will run as efficiently as a free market, I think philanthropy will make greater gains if a variety of parties are allowed to spend their money on what they think is important without needing collective approval.

The alternative is letting Congress decide how to spend it. Decentralized philanthropy seems to me like a better system

Yeah, it was weird to completely lock out anyone without an iphone.

I don't think you need to be too worried about that, young e-commerce competitors still pop up and seem to do well at taking a slice of the market. Shopify is larger than Amazon for my workplace, and Etsy is definitely getting bigger month by month.

There's a very common misconception that libertarians believe that what should be legal and what is beneficial are the same thing. It's not difficult to believe that YouTube should have the ability to remove these people from their platform, but also that they're wrong to do so. The libertarian preference for decentralization actively presumes that many actors will make poor choices, but that because it's not enforced top down it will be easier to persuade them to change those policies. New competitors are one way that you can create that pressure, but it's not the only one, simple dialogue is another viable avenue and the purpose of critiques like this one.

My dad actually switched doctors because his original one refused to prescribe metformin to anyone who wasn't fully diabetic

The only other legal tender in El Salvador is the US Dollar. If, for any reason, you have qualms about the US financial system, especially as someone foreign to the US with little priority in its decision making processes, it might be desirable to opt for a different currency. Is BTC the right currency for their government to bend to that purpose? I guess we'll find out.

There are other laws libertarians would like to circumvent. Occupational licensing, over scheduling of drugs, civil asset forfeiture spring to mind. Starting a new country on the ocean is a pretty drastic way to fight back, but i can't deny the impulse to opt out when change appears impossible.

The press freedom index places Burkina Faso, a country that bans journalists from visiting displacement camps, higher than the US, so I'm a little skeptical of its findings

The smaller countries who don't want to be beholden to either the US or China's fiscal policy. We seem to be building up a second cold war, and I imagine for many countries being able to back your economy with a currency that isn't controlled by either of the two major players is tempting. China may well end up regretting discouraging its miners from holding the majority stake, given the Sino power that could project. This is all very heavily speculative, though, I'm just spitballing an interesting potential chain of events

These seven countries have a lot of sway, but even if it's only these countries that implement it it will likely affect a number of corporations. There are benefits to being legally located in stable modern economies, so this at the very least minimizes shopping around for the lowest tax rate among them.