BraveSirZaphod

If something is possible, and this simply indeed is, someone is going to develop it regardless of how we feel about it, so it’s important for non-malicious actors to make people aware of the potential negative impacts so we can start to develop ways to handle them before actively malicious actors start deploying it.

Critical businesses and governments need to know that identity verification via video and voice is much less trustworthy than it used to be, and so if you’re currently doing that, you need to mitigate these risks. There are tools, namely public-private key cryptography, that can be used to verify identity in a much tighter way, and we’re probably going to need to start implementing them in more places.

That’s what’s always a bit maddening about these conversations. It’s not like companies are just shredding plastic into the atmosphere because they’re cartoon villains who love evil.

They’re making cheap plastic shit because we love cheap plastic shit. They’re making this stuff in response to explicit consumer prioritization of low costs above all other factors. If consumers broadly demanded soda in glass bottles and expressed a willingness to pay the extra cost that this entails, every soda company would use glass.

I’m not saying that you individually should be blamed for all environmental pollution, but we have to realize that companies are responding to the exact same incentives that we do. They’re obviously operating at a much larger scale, but they use cheap plastic shit for the exact same reason we do. If you’re looking for policy solutions, a great option would be to introduce an externality tax on plastic so that this environmental cost is actually factored into the production and end price and can fund remediate the damage, similar to carbon taxes. Of course though, the moment you say the word ‘tax’ people’s brains completely shut off, so this is probably a non-starter.

That is not at all what right to work means.

I get the frustration, but if you’re going to criticize a thing, it’s a lot more effective if you actually know what the thing is.

Jumping to “All Israelis deserve to die” is not helping you the way you think it is, but by all means, keep digging if you want.

So, yes, it’s “I think more civilian deaths would be good”.

I think I’ll just let that speak for itself. Cheers.

Are you suggesting that hundreds of dead Israeli citizens would be a better state of affairs?

If your position is that we should not support military action that blatantly violates standard rules of engagement, that would apply to the Iranian military just as much as it applies to the IDF. There’s no contradiction in criticizing IDF action in Gaza for not trying to minimize civilian casualties while also working to minimize civilian casualties in Israel as a result of Iranian action.

You’re never going to get an honest answer to this question, but props for asking it anyway.

Maybe you can run the servers and pay the engineers with good vibes or praxis?

This is just exposing that you don’t actually read the New York Times.

Here’s an article on the plight of Gazans in Rafah in the face of a potential Israeli invasion.

Here’s an overview on the gang situation in Haiti as the government is functionally collapsing.

And here’s an article discussing the increasingly common practice of restaurants charging significant cancellation fees.

Meanwhile, the NY Post has such great stories as:

• Kate Middleton officially hits rock bottom
• Rudy Giuliani’s ex engaged to Palm Beach energy exec after six months of dating in ‘whirlwind romance’ (Exclusive!)
• Unions want full control of schools and our kids — we can’t let Albany allow it
• Activists lobbying to ‘morally’ allow trans kids to change their bodies are only doing more harm

To be clear, what I’m not saying is that everyone should sell their car today and just walk or cycle ten miles every day. People are always going to do what’s most convenient for them, and attempting to blame individuals for that is moronic and counter-productive.

The energy should be squarely aimed at restoring other options so that people aren’t forced to buy a $20,000 object that depreciates to nearly nothing, plus gas and insurance, just to live their normal daily lives. There will always be some areas where cars are necessary to some degree; I myself grew up twenty miles outside of a town of 4000 people. You need a car there. But there are millions of people who live in areas that used to be perfectly livable without cars, well-serviced by local and regional transit, and filled with walkable local businesses until the infrastructure was literally ripped up. A lot of those bones are still there, and that’s where the focus should be.

The important element that needs to be, and now is, talked about more is that this state of affairs is not normal or natural. It was very deliberately created by car manufacturers in order to make life without a car be essentially impossible.

There’s been a big boom in interest in urbanism in recent years and increasing awareness of just how the US got so car dependent. Toss in a quick trip to Europe at some point, add in people explicitly saying “the reason you liked these old cities so much was because of transit and lack of cars”, and it’s an idea that spreads itself.

He literally does not have the legal power to do that.

Biden has pardoned a lot of federal marijuana charges, but a core part of the Constitution is that the federal government’s authority to interfere in state justice systems is very limited.

Because doctors have a financial incentive to order and perform/give expensive procedures and drugs that may not necessarily be medically necessary.

This is obviously a somewhat different situation, but I’d remind you that lots of doctors made a lot of money by unnecessarily prescribing Oxycontin that the spiraled into the opioid crisis.

It’s not unreasonable for there to be some kind of check, though to be clear, I’m not saying the current system is good. But, insurance just automatically paying for anything a doctor orders is open for abuse, and that needs to be addressed one way or another.

Very little ‘big structural changes’ can happen without Congressional support, and Biden at this point has an actively hostile Congress.

I can understand why people blame him anyway, but that doesn’t actually make much sense.

Have you ever seen an election year?

Revealing the bigotry is basically the point. Trump talked about immigrants poisoning the blood of the country and it made him more popular.

Not all homes are for sale every year. The vast majority are not.

If Wall Street buys 30% of all homes for sale this year, that does not mean that they now own 30% of all homes that exist, only 30% of those that happened to go on sale this year.

To answer the proximate question, about 70% of rental properties are owned by individuals.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/02/as-national-eviction-ban-expires-a-look-at-who-rents-and-who-owns-in-the-u-s/

This is ludicrously false.

The statistic you’re trying to say is that about 25% of homes sold in recent months have been bought by investors, which is a very different thing from saying that nearly one-fourth of all single family homes are owned by investors, which falls apart the moment you actually go outside and talk to people, since, for starters, about 65% of Americans own their home.

The homeownership rate of 66.0 percent was virtually the same as the rate in the third quarter 2022 (66.0 percent) and not statistically different from the rate in the second quarter 2023 (65.9 percent).

https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/current/index.html

They still have to be driven by basic math. You slim the margins a bit by not needing to generate profit, but the situation hasn’t fundamentally changed.

You’re absolutely right. This is a problem that requires some amount of direct government assistance. Beachfront housing is significantly more costly than people think it is and than it used to be, and it’s only going to get worse. If you can’t afford regular repairs after storms (or if a collectively relevant insurance pool can’t), you can’t afford to live there, and for people who are already there and can’t afford to easily get out, some government assistance is more than warranted.

I’m not talking about raw safety. I’m referring to the situation where the average costs a resident of the area will incur due to environmental damage surpasses the amount an average person is willing to pay in insurance premiums. In these kinds of areas, insurance in inherently unworkable, regardless of profit seeking or not (again, minus a minor adjustment in margins)

In these places, you can either add in external subsidies to make the numbers work, which is bound to be unpopular with the people having to pay extra money to support people choosing to incur unnecessary costs, or you can accept that there is no workable insurance scheme in the area that and residents must take account of their own risks. There’s no real way around this basic reality.