Until then, the choice is being made by the entities funding all of this.

If you send your neighbour nudes then they have your nudes. You can put in as many contracts as you want, maybe they never digitised it but their friend is over for a drink and walks out of the door with the shoebox of film. Do not pass GO, do not collect.

Conceivably we can try to control things like e.g. is your cellphone microphone on at all times, but once someone else, particularly an arbitrary entity (e.g. not a trusted family member or something) has the data, it is silly to treat it as anything other than gone.

There is a difference between not being interested or disliking something, and wanting it to literally be illegal.

Basically, generally, live and let live.

If almost half of the population disagree with something then it’s probably a stupid restriction to begin with.

In my experience (UK), people are usually more pleasant in smaller towns, and I ascribe that to, well, the cost of living is lower relative to their wage, they probably have a decent flat or a small house at least, maybe a car, etc.

In London if you work in a coffee shop then you either have a well off partner or you are in some shoebox counting your pennies to make the bus fare, your life is just stressful and you don't feel like an equal to the person on the other side of the counter.

I think that most people, especially above the age of say, 30, should be aiming to spend a percentage of their income, lowering over time.

At the end of the day, the cars get you where you want to go, the roof gives you a safe space, the hiking trip to the local park/reserve gets you relaxation. Over that, it’s novel but you’re always chasing.

A good market helps you become a bog standard boring wage slave, maybe get a mortgage, etc.

The outsized success folks will go out and get what they need regardless, they aren’t waiting for it to come to them.

People like walking to work and like taking the tube after a night out, but ultimately, the car is just vastly more convenient and comfortable for such a large amount of stuff.

You may as well ask me to give up running water because technically I could just carry it from the well.

Realistically if public transport advocates want progress they need to demonstrate that they also understand the utility of cars because otherwise they come across as simply being wilfully ignorant.

I live in London, we have tons of public transport.

In the middle of the day, outside of rush hour, I use it a lot and it can be really pleasant, particularly suburban rail, you can stretch out a bit, there is often air conditioning, a nice view from the window, etc.

When it's busy I will drive even if it takes longer because my car is guaranteed to have personal space and is clean.

Wages and hours for low level jobs feel like a distraction, barely anyone needs more toys, the issue is that the necessary items for life are monopolised.

So from my perspective the only thing that labour regulation can achieve is to basically just compress that experience, we still won't build more housing or make it easier to do so etc.

I don't care that much about "labour issues" because it seems like a logically flawed avenue to explore to begin with.

To be financially successful under any market system I can think of requires you, in a mathematical sense, to be close enough to the top within a company that you get a greater proportion of the profit than simply 1/employees.

In simple terms - I can't employ a maid unless I earn more than a maid, a maid can never be paid enough that I would want to be a maid (being the maid's employer, or at least having that optionality, is strictly superior).

Some jobs have comparative advantage, e.g. I might enjoy working on my car but know that a mechanic can do the same job in 1/10th the time. But a lot of stuff is just straight - I earn more than you, you do it for me, so I can get more things done.

I just leave it in the shed in the bottle until I have enough other stuff to get rid of and do it all at once.

Two years and I was bigger than anyone I knew unless they also trained hard.

If I just remember the source code of a 100 line program and then reproduce it verbatim a week later that doesn’t suddenly make it a new work.

Basically, some of the following:

For poor kids;

Don't train or focus on a career that doesn't pay well; don't even consider it, you can't afford it. That's someone else's problem. Maybe you can do it later when you 'make it'.

(for example - low end - nursing, teaching, etc, high end - fashion, art, photography. do these after you make money)

Yes, you can make it, just because your neighbours are poor doesn't mean that you have to be

You will lose friends if you are ambitious, this is normal

etc.

Some people seem to intuitively have this understanding (personality traits that are a bit more individual, I guess), others don't.

The problem of course is that the state school system basically can't do this, because there's a conflict of interest, someone needs to do the jobs that don't make sense for an individual to pursue.

The externalities associated with driving are probably -1 utility points for me whereas driving is +20 or even more.

I think that basically what you are saying only makes sense if society includes a bunch of people who do not benefit, when in reality that’s usually a fairly small group (e.g. in the US or UK the small number of homeless).