Seems like a good comparison to me. Society is not post-scarcity. People in society must produce a surplus and contribute that surplus. Economics is how we measure how much contribution happened.

>Food and shelter are abundant.

Food prices are climbing and housing is in bubble territory. Abundance is complicated.

>I guess that's what people criticize about current capitalism.

Marx has many valid arguments against capitalism. It's very obvious today that socialism is dead. It officially died in 1989. Though that doesnt solve the problems with capitalism.

>In earlier times, in hunter gatherer societies, food was scarce and work was important. But today, you cannot tell people that working in fast food or in customer support is mandatory to eat and have a roof on your head.

Nobody is saying they must work the mcjob. Many many other jobs out there. Entrepreneurship is important to capitalism.

However we absolutely are saying you must contribute something to society in order to eat and have a roof over their head. If you don't, that's your decision, you deal with the consequences. Our society is not at the point where work is optional. Perhaps getting people out of the mcjobs and building a fully automated factory where food just comes out at no cost. Where housing can be 3d printed in a weekend anywhere in the world. We get to the point where maslow heirarchy of needs is solved and you can decide to not-work as much as you like.

I've been in your position many times. The big problem arrives is when incompetent and useless coworkers start unloading their work onto you. I have been in this situation many times as well. The best advice here is to never lie. Never 'cover'/lie for said coworkers.

Oh another rule, never let any coworkers know how much work you do. You arent just avoiding bragging, tons of benefits down this line. Could be the case of what's happening here.

I dont see this as the answer. If it's really power, march to Kyiv and take it all. They could do it. Crimea is more or less the only annexation because that's all they want.

Even the syrian conflict and russia is the same story. They are really just preserving their military base.

So just on the other side of Turkey they have military base as well they are preserving. You also have: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Russian_Sukhoi_Su-24_shoo...

Then also look at Turkey's financial woes and it sure does look like Russia doing it.

Turkey seems to understand this and has been making diplomatic efforts to repair relations. The irony is that it seems they are coming back together more recently because they hate the USA.

This is what this is all about. It's not so much the money but also militaristic strategic assets. Moldova and Georgia doesnt have Russian war to deal with.

Which really comes down to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevastopol_Naval_Base

Russia has lots of land all over the black sea. They could build a gigantic base near rostov-on-don. So why dont they? To strike from and base at Rostov would be foolish. So many tight bottlenecks to get in and out. Maybe Novorossiysk instead? but no crimea is obviously important to them. Except novo is happening. They are building a naval base there. It will take time. In probably about 10-15 years crimea will go back to ukraine and this will be all over.

What's unsaid here. Why is it so important for russia to maintain such a huge naval presence in the black sea? This fleet isn't going past istanbul. Navy isn't even useful in war anymore really. An F35 from 40,000ft is practically untouchable by the russian navy and could probably sink their entire fleet from 300km away.

So what is it? Romania? Bulgaria? Turkey? Who on the black sea is Russia so afraid of?

Covid response has been entirely 100% political. Medicine/Science was never involved.

The division of lockdown or not to lockdown, wearing masks, etc. These have all came down nearly perfectly along political lines in many countries. It shouldn't be like that at all. There should be lots of right-wingers who gladly wear a mask and get locked down. There should be lots of left-wingers who would not.

It was also not risk assessment. If you are under 50, the risk of covid was always known to be far less than the flu. Meanwhile people who were scared shitless of covid are also the cigar smoking, drunk driving, 100km/h in a 30km/h school zone type people.

I'm pretty sure it has everything to do with yellow journalism. The yellow journalists have convinced their filter bubble group that covid is far worse than it ever was considered to be.

https://news.gallup.com/opinion/gallup/354938/adults-estimat...

For unvaccinated hospitalization risk, 2% of Democrats responded correctly, compared with 16% of Republicans. In fact, 41% of Democrats replied that at least 50% of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized due to COVID-19.

Let's put it more accurately. 98% of democrats answered wrong with higher risk than is in reality. There is a <1% chance of hospitalization with covid if you're unvaccinated.

It's all political and the political divide in the USA has never been wider.

no, not prime focus yet. If hockey is a fresh pleasure, the fighting or violence isn't important. The end goal however is that you must have this violence or the pleasure seeker moves to the next thing which will have it.

>Violence might be a part of it, but it's clearly not the main part of any of it, otherwise violence would be increasing rather than decreasing in every single one of those, and more people would just turn to the simpler sources of violence.

That's my point and why i picked my choices. Violence isn't the prime focus. Afterall go watch boxing or MMA. Which some people have gotten their pleasure seek onto this for sure.

>Why would anybody watch Hockey for the fights when many games don't have any fights at all? Nobody who really just wants to see car crashes is going to sit through hours of cars driving in circles for the chance to occasionally see a car hit a wall and spin out.

Fighting is but 1 violence. Checking is another. Elbowing and slashing are others.

>Looking up "Nascar highlights" on YouTube, I can see that it's not all about crashes, it seems to be all about turnarounds, where somebody suddenly overtakes somebody else, or somebody loses their position quickly, so crashes are a part of that, but it doesn't seem to be "about crashes", but rather about changes in the standings of a race in progress.

Lets not even go into derbies where the goal is to literally crash into each other until you're the last working car.

Or monster trucks which crush other cars.

This is all about pleasure seeking and constantly need to increase which leads into sadism.

To be fair I havent watched in quite some time but as the saying goes... I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out!

This is very simple to evaluate. What would happen to the NHL is fighting and checking was banned. Any physical violence is an immediate contract break and players thrown out of the league? Dont get another $.

Obviously violence would go away but how'd the sport work out? I'm thinking hockey would suck pretty hardcore. NHL viewership would be at all-time lows without question.

Also yes, street fighting videos are ridiculously popular but also why they were banned on so many platforms.

>It's way easier to find videos of car crashes than it is to watch hours of cars driving in circles. I don't understand the appeal of NASCAR, but it's clearly not about the crashes.

I mean no offence against nascar. F1 has nothing but crashes as well. Every highlight reel is about the crashes. So it is about nascar. Nascar highlights are all about crashes.

>Why not? You might find that long-term players of games are more interested in good gameplay than bloody effects or the violence itself. I've noticed that games in general are tending toward less violence and blood than a decade or so ago.

The violence is the point being made. Pleasure is fleeting. Violent video games are fantastic because it lets you chop someone's head off when you cant do it in person. When you have gone so far as to needing that level of pleasure, the next step in solving boredom will be more extreme.

>I think you are being unfairly judgemental about things that you don't understand.

Not judgmental at all. I've got my TF2 and skyrim installed. I watch violent sports. Im not judging people who do these things. I can see that's how people took my post by the heavy downvotes.

The point being made isnt about NHL being bad or good or that fights are or arent part of it. Its that this pleasure seeking constantly increases.

Inevitably the search for pleasure will require variety and inevitably that variety brings you to inflicting pain on others.

We do it publicly. The romans fed people to the lions. We have lots of violent sports. Nascar isn't about driving left. It's about the crashes. Hockey is about the fights and checking. Lets not even evaluate violent videogames.

The real trick is understanding what's happening in your brain and controlling this before it gets to the need to inflict pain.

Before covid we knew masks were effective. Doctors obviously wear them during surgery. masks are important when dealing with HIV and such.

So when Fauci and others came out and said masks didn't work. They were knowingly lying. Worse yet, there were instructions on how to turn a tshirts in masks as well as how to produce hand santizers. They took these down.

The correct decision would have been to say exactly the fear, 'we have supply issues, we recommend cutting up old tshirts.' Not only does it prevent spread, it solves all problems.

Then we went a week later and they talked about 'new normal' and '2 weeks to flatten the curve'. Their lying didn't stop. They lost any smidgen of trust they had. Then they came out with emergency approvals to use experimental medicine for something that clearly isn't a vaccine and they are lying and calling it a vaccine? Sorry but this amount of lying should make literally everyone question their motives.

Yes, been seeing these predictions for a long time.

>It is at the same time perfectly possible it was engineered.

Occams razor clearly indicates it was engineered at this point. We have had years to prove it was zoonotic, it's not.

>It is a plain stupid move, politically, to outwardly entertain the idea that COVID was engineered - unless you've got proof so damning not even China could ignore it. Unlikely to exist. And even then it is only going to score you a few feel-good points with the plebeians at home.

Not sure I agree with this point. There's a wide gap at this point between 'engineered to release and attack the world' and 'lab leak because they were incompetent.' Which is exactly what was already established. Many sources clearly indicated they werent following basic safety procedures at that lab.

>Either possibility has no impact at all on shorter term decision making. It is stupid to burden people whose immediate goal it is to save lives with even more political minefields they have to navigate.

On the contrary. They cannot do their job effectively without doing exactly this. If we ignored reality like we did, they now will react inappropriately. Which is what happened.

Boomers are retiring or getting damn close. They are moving their investments to 'safe' options like bonds. In reverse the system has to match up those bonds with someone issuing a bond. This is typically cars and houses. So for a boomer to invest in a bond, someone had to have bought a house. If interest rates were high, then people wouldnt be buying houses. So interest rates must drop so that the investments can happen.

Furthermore, it's also those same boomers who are selling their large house to 'downsize' or whatever. They cant sell unless someone is buying.

The even crazier thing, the real yields on bonds are negative right now. Interest rate is 0.25% in Canada while inflation is at 4.7%.

So retirement funds are effectively losing the difference. The boomers thought they could retire because they have some nice big numbers but it's double edged. They might have a big number but it doesnt grow much at 0.25% and their costs to buy things is 4.7% higher. So in a few years many boomers who retired may find out they cant afford to be retired anymore.

How many corporations literally provide coffee to their workers. Even to the point of paying you to drink it on a break? This drug is clearly beneficial to these corps. The increase in focus and productivity is obvious. This boost to cognitive function is what created the age of enlightenment.

This is very complex and absolutely hilarious when American democrats think of Canada as a better solution.

>Literally could not believe some walk ins have paper files and use fax, plus finding a GP apparently is a months long quest.

We have very good laws in place protecting health information. $10,000 tort damages for leaking health infos and then much larger fines for more problematic issues.

Some hospitals try to do the right thing and will have high security maturity. The other hospitals basically do the opposite. They forcefully will not secure their systems and save the money and put it in a fund to pay out the inevitable breach.

>Visiting a specialist took ages, and I wouldn’t say it was the best / most modern infrastructure there either.

Canada's healthcare system is tiered. You have the public single payer which is trash at best. Virtually all employers pay for health benefits which bring you to the 2nd tier. This gets you into a ward and such. There's a 3rd tier where you get good service, private rooms, skip lines. If you work in public sector or a big union you most likely are on this 3rd tier. The final tier is for the people whose names are on the wards. The "Such and such family ward" because they donated significant money to the hospital. These people get immediate access to everything you might expect. Nicest rooms. everything.

>(And I went in downtown Toronto, must be so much worse for more remote places I guess).

85% of Canadians live in urban areas near to the US border. If you choose to live somewhere else, you know you're living far from civilization and already accept the lack of service.

>In the end we kind of shunned the public system and decided to go private healthcare instead. But (luckily) have not really had to take advantage of it)

dont get me wrong. I dont mind our tiered system. ohip covers the basics which everyone should get coverage for. Break your arm? taxpayers/rich pay to fix it. 2nd tier is plenty for most people. 3rd tier is nice but most people dont realize it exists. Ive had a lady talking to me about how she has to wait many months to get in to a specialist, the same specialist that I waited a whole 3 days for. Also yes, the billionaire folks are going to get the best treatment, it's no surprise.

>Already contracted Covid, have 2 vaccines, I'm down to get a booster every year or two, at my own leisure.

I will go get the flu shot. I don't know, nor care, what strains they are going for in the flu shot. I do know they tend to target different strains every year. They can mix match as much as they like. If coronavirus is the one they want to target this time, fine whatever.

>I'm OK with and to be honest, it feels a lot like the government trying to deflect from the fact healthcare isn't OK (at least in my home country, Canada).

2 weeks to flatten the curve was only to prevent healthcare system from collapsing. But for whatever reason they switched to 'lets eradicate all illness by staying home and wearing masks.

>There's always been risks to life and this feels more like governments are trying to convince people the risk should be zero so they can be the heroes while at the same time expanding their powers...

Makes me wonder. why in history did we never try to end the flu season? there's clear starts and ends to the flu season. Mandate wearing mask in public stores seems like it eliminated flu and cold.

Though you touch on an interesting thought. Has covid really been all about government expanding their power? I dont think covid was created for this purpose, but I certainly suspect they all jumped on board to using it as an excuse to expand their power.

Not sure I necessarily agree with this. I can understand how 1 might come to see it this way. Capitalism is about measuring ones contribution to society.

>What happens in practice is an accumulation of wealth == power in the hands of a small elite, which then no longer need to compete, cronyism or not, because they have the resources to defeat every competitor, even if the competing product is superior.

In our current system which is a regulated capitalist system this happens. It would be a strawman to assert this against capitalism and exclude any impact that government regulation may provide. I'm pretty most people could see government monopolies as abusing capitalism.

>Company A, having been dominant on the market for a long time, can simply tap into their savings and lower its prices, to the point where X is more attractive to consumers than X'. B, new to the market and wo. such substantial savings, cannot compete and goes bankrupt.

Lets evaluate.

Tesla: Market Cap of ~1,030 Billion $ off of ~$30 billion revenue.

Ford: Market Cap of ~100 billion $ off of $150 billion revenue.

GM: Market cap of ~100 billion $ off of $150 billion revenue.

Stellantis: Market cap of ~64 billon $ off of $100 billion revenue.

Very clearly shows why Ford and GM are rushing to get EVs out to market. Stellantis who had good plans has basically not arrived to market with anything. This is one of the highest regulated industries and capitalism is working great here.

>Okay, but the consumers still get X' when A buys the patents from the now bankrupt B, right? Maybe.

Patents != capitalism. A true free market would not have any patents. If you build something new and unique, everyone would be able to come in and copy it. We could debate the merits of the patent system and perhaps from society's point of view it's a good thing. However, it the current subject, this isnt capitalism you're arguing against.

>They have eliminated their competition anyway, so why bother, when they can just continue printing money by making X, right? Remember, the maxime is maximize-your-profit not deliver-the-best-product.

I think this is a good spot to come back around. Capitalism is not competition. Yes it engenders competition but that's the wrong way to look at it. This is something business owners need to learn. Capitalism is about solving problems and contributing to society. Capitalism measures this in one of the most effective ways.

The problem is that helium scarcity is an issue: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.2020060...

If we suddenly built thousands of new helium blimps. We will be back to having lots of trouble. It's not really practical to goto scale.

Hydrogen blimps? Well that ended with the hindenburg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_129_Hindenburg#/media/File:...

The interesting thing. While hydrogen is dumb for cars. It is technically super brilliant for blimps. Not only is it for your lift, it's your fuel. Blimps are slow, instead of a few hour flight from nyc to la. it's like 2 days.

The thing is, we are going to see this resurgence. Materials science has greatly improved since 100 years ago. Hydrogen will almost certainly be safe to do. It'll be a huge cost though.

I wonder if this would be possible: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_airship

Maybe with modern tech we could make it happen. No risk suddenly of big fireballs. Could be a big deal and better yet maybe even solar panels all over the top of the blimp.

Universities are a place of learning. If someone is misunderstood in their worldview or something else. That's the place to learn where you're wrong. Therefore all viewpoints must be allowed.

This is called knowledge. This is a good thing, keep going.

>I go down a rabbit hole of brilliant relevations of one person after the other, and I come out tired and discouraged.

Compare yourself only with the person you were yesterday

Comparing yourself to others is completely fruitless, will generate desires, and will cause suffering for yourself.

When you are say 30 you might see someone driving the new Chevy Corvette C8. Such a beautiful car being driven by an old dude who is barely touching the accelerator. You desire to have a corvette as well, maybe something better? But you dont have it and cant afford it and you suffer. But did that old dude have a corvette at 30? Nope, he was looking at corvette c3 back in the day with astronauts driving it and had the same desires and suffering.

Instead you should plan, 'how do I get to the point where i can buy that Corvette C9 in some time. I'll have it decades earlier than that guy and I wont be blind and can use the throttle to its max.'

What does that plan look like? Maybe it means you need to save more or go learn Rust. I'd bet Rust will survive, you could go do that.

You have to figure out what the end point looks like; then reverse engineer. Go look at job postings, what are they asking for? Go get those things in the next year. Then you apply for the job. In the interview you explain this very process that brought you to them. You get hired and you are now on the way to getting that corvette. When preorders of the C9 open, you show up and have the cash.

Here's the clincher. Before you even get there, you'll find the interest in the C9 wanes. You saw a dude driving the F150 lightning and now you want that. You realize that these desires are the real problem. You learn to break the desires.

In my comment I touched on traditional gender roles vs egalitarianism. I too agree that we should absolutely not revert the changes. But one must admit that the traditional gender roles had an appropriate balance.

>or to throw our hands in the air and say "it's evolution!".

That's difficult to change though. The bell is ringing and there's no unringing.

>That way is to embrace and encourage sex work, to be open to non-monogamy and other non-traditional arrangements, deprogram ourselves from all of our subtle and not-so-subtle slut-shaming, stop pretending the naked body is illegal and sex is bad or dirty, stop dramatizing and fear-mongering over the impact of STDs, and just generally embrace a broader, vaster and more open perspective on sex and romance and intimacy.

Very long sentence lol. The majority of the world criminalizes sex work as well as even porn. Yet ironically those places are also far worse off. Japan is clearly a prime example.

STDs are certainly a complicated subject. Each individually represent a small percentage of risk but together isnt addition, it's multiplication of risk. It's compounding interest as it were.

I think we are looking at it incorrectly. This is outside real control, in fact efforts to control will always result in the opposite result as expected. This is kind of something jordan peterson goes over, in an attempt to fix gender inequality has resulted in greater gender inequality.

We likely can only measure and monitor what's happening. Where does this balance go now that the balance broke. Men are going to benefit greatly here. Is that what we want? Is that a good thing? I suspect not.