t-3

Wealth imbalances are bad largely because many assets have upper limits on available quantity, ie. the amount of land in most countries is relatively stable. If those assets are hoarded by a relatively small number of people, it's much harder for less wealthy people to become more wealthy. Our entire socioeconomic system is based on the premise that one can work hard and change their lot, so making sure that's actually possible is important for societal stability even if you don't have any religous/moral/ethical qualms about hoarding wealth.

That's representative democracy. There's not really any practical ways to delegate power without enabling corruption, so corruption is more or less inevitable without radical levels of transparency and public oversight.

Protest is almost always a criticism of the current government. Why would you expect a government to protect their enemies? People who aren't interested in using power don't try to obtain it.

Russia does have elections, but they are internally meddled with so outsiders don't see much point. Even places known for brutal authoritarian regimes like Israel and Iran have elections. Elections are a great tool for promoting social cohesion even in decidedly undemocratic countries. It's totally illogical, but people like to vote for the winner - and when everyone knows who the winner is going to be that's quite easy. Elections in illiberal countries are like a societal placebo that can ease the mental burden of the voters and give them a sense of participation and belonging without making any actual changes. Letting the controlled opposition vent regularly and then crushing them in a "fair" election keeps their popularity at a manageable level and helps governments gauge public opinion. Democracy is a system rather than a process, and confusing the trappings of democracy (elections) with the system of democracy (self-governance) is something that's been done by with purpose by antidemocratic forces.

Authoritarianism and corruption are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of professionals are corrupt and bribeable.

Israel and the US are also not part of the ICC. Yet they still call out "violations" of international law all the time. The ICC is just a colonialist tool used to beat down any trend towards sovereignty.

They are US vassal states. SK's military in particular is formally under US command since the Korean War and have participated in every US conflict since.

It's not even an "other epidemic" - a very large proportion of opiate/opiod "overdoses" are due to taking them with benzos. At least 3/4 of overdoses I've personally witnessed involved both opiods and benzos.

OpenBSD usually has far fewer hoops than Linux on laptops - IME, either it works or it doesn't. Pretty much any x86 machine that isn't bleeding edge is going to work.

As I understand it, the argument is about defending intellectual property. Not that strange to hear from the Free Software community, where many people have strong opinions about stuff like licensing. The "Free Imformation" (pirate) community does not fully overlap with the Free Software community.

People won't be left without AI/LLMs. They'll be left with less value in their investments. The tech is here to stay, the market discovering the actual commercial value of these products won't change that.