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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 23rd, 2023

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  • While I do try to buy direct on some items that I am confident I’ll keep. The return policy and ease of use are why I’m still with Amazon. I just don’t want to have to deal with thirty different companies and their return policies.

    But if I’m buying something like replacement parts or something that I’m not sure about if there isn’t significant savings, then I’m going with Amazon for piece of mind that I can return the item at no cost to me.









  • The pace of technological change and innovation was always going to slow down this decade. But Covid, Ukraine and a decoupling from Russia/China has further slowed it.

    You need three things in abundance to create tech. First an advanced economy, which narrows down most of the world. Second you need lots of capital to burn while you make said advances. Finally you need lots of 20 and thirty something’s who will invent and develop the tech.

    For the last 20 years we’ve had all of those conditions in the Western world. Boomers were at the height of their earnings potential and their kids were leaving home in droves letting them pour money into investments. Low interest rates abound because capital was looking for places to be utilized. China was the workshop of the world building low to mid range stuff allowing the West to focus its excess Millennials age workforce on value added and tech work.

    Now in the USA boomers are retiring and there aren’t enough GenX to make up the difference. Millennials and finally getting down to household creation or their oldest cohorts (Xennials) just now entering into their mid 40s and starting to move up in their careers but they probably still have kids to support. So it will be some time before capital becomes plentiful again. Gen Z is large but they aren’t enough to back fill the loss of Millennials.

    Ohh I made a point to highlight that this was a US demographic phenomena. Europe and Japan do not have a large Millennial or GenZ populations to replace their aging boomers. We have no modern economic model to map out what will happen to them.

    China is going through a demographic collapse worse than what you see in Europe or Japan. Only they aren’t rich to compensate add in the fact that they decided to antagonize their largest trading partners in the West causing the decoupling we are now seeing.

    The loss of their labor means the West has to reshore or find alternative low wage markets for production and expend a lot of capital to build out the plant in those markets to do so.

    Add on top geopolitical instability of the Ukraine and you have a recipe for slower tech growth.


  • Obviously city budgets are a whole other can of worms, but to be clear, shelter beds are almost always cheaper than jail beds. The cheapest option would be not to put people in jail.

    Sounds great, feel free to advocate for that solution within your community. Your keyboard warrior skills are sharp, I’m sure the community will rally around your idea of spending money on homeless over schools and other services!

    This isn’t a question of legality or ability! Obviously in the US it is now legal to fine and imprison people for sleeping in public spaces. This is a question of morality: is that law moral? Should we fine and imprison people for not being able to afford a roof over their heads?

    Moral? Yes, yes it is. We should not expect a handful of communities\states to bear the social and financial cost of housing homeless from other parts of the country just because they are attractive destinations. They have every right to dissuade further immigration of homeless to their community.

    If the majority that you respect gets together and votes to, idk, enslave a group of people and have them work on sugar plantations. That doesn’t mean their laws aren’t violating basic human rights, just because it’s legal.

    Classic example of a false equivalency fallacy. No one is violating the constitution or advocating for enslavement. Comparing the two is the same as when people start comparing modern groups in the US to WW2 Nazis. Sorry there is no comparison.

    As stated before the community has a right to regulate the public commons. You don’t have a right to sleep, eat, litter and shit on the street in front of a families house for years on end. It is a public health and safety hazard.

    What are you talking about? Unhoused people aren’t tourists. We’re talking about citizens of a country, the vast majority of whom were born and raised there.

    You seemed to have missed or are being intentionally obtuse about the last part of that statement. I pointed out that this is an example of a precedent for similar laws at the state level.

    How kind of you to respect the will of the people denying the humanity of their fellow citizens… Are you saying you personally don’t have an opinion on the matter? Does homelessness not affect you?

    How elitist of you to ignore the will of the people. You seem to want to impose your morality at the cost of other people’s communities.

    Yes homelessness affects me. My kids went to a school with the largest percentage of homeless children in attendance in the country. I’ve had to pull my kid out of a class because of a homeless child with mental issues who would violently attack teacher’s, students and even my own kid. In one class there wasn’t a day for two weeks straight when the class had to stand outside while the teachers and admins tried to deal with the kid.

    I can sympathize with the homeless kid and hope they get help. But I will not put their welfare over the safety and education of my own.

    There is a social cost to what you are proposing. Those communities and the people affected within them have found that cost to be too high.


  • I apologize I thought you were being facetious. Generally speaking in the US most stores, gas stations and restaurants allow public access to restroom facilities. In some places (usually in downtown districts) you may be required to buy something or use their services but no one really enforces that rule unless their facilities are being abused.

    There is no real restroom map, it’s just assumed you can use the restroom at a given store. There are “public” restrooms in parks, city halls, etc. but not nearly to the same scale as private facilities.


  • “Other people’s money” of the rich is most commonly the surplus value, i.e. our money that were taken away.

    But without going into semantics, most people live in financial conditions that don’t allow them to be so generous, or else they risk losing everything themselves. Those holding billions will not suffer much spending large money supporting the poor. It’s just not correct to draw parralels.

    If I’ll give enough money for someone to live through a week, I’ll be left broke and won’t be able to pay my rent and food. If Elon Musk would do the same, he wouldn’t even notice.

    You seem to think that there are Elon Musks in every city that can be taxed and won’t be affected.

    Homeless don’t just congregate in neighborhoods with the ultra wealthy who have lots of money to throw around. The reality is they live everywhere including blue collar and middle class cities and suburbs. Most of whom live paycheck to paycheck. When you talk about funding homeless shelters this is whom you are taking money from. Money that could go to their kids schools, the roads they drive on, the parks they visit.

    Please feel free to throw yourself on the pyre of your own platitudes. But don’t expect others to follow.


  • Do you… actually think this solves anything? Like, at all? It’s short-sighted, pointless, and genuinely selfish. “I don’t like looking at the unhoused, so they need to go… elsewhere.”

    No it’s a sanitation, public health and safety issue. Citizens who live there and experience the problem first hand feel the same way or they would not be passing vagrancy laws.

    Housing is becoming unaffordable for the middle class, what are these people supposed to do!? We as a society have abandoned them, and it’s now costing more money to harass and bully them, and to get them some semblance of health care and remove their bodies when they die out in the streets than it would to house them. Look it up! We have enough housing for everyone, but investments in homes and AirBNB and time shares and tourist rentals and property management companies have to continue making rich assholes more money every year…

    Yep, all of which are issues caused by low interest rates and the elevation of capital over labor. Raise rates, reshore jobs, make unions more powerful and housing will change.

    The moment living on the streets is a choice for all the unhoused in this country is when I will join with you to regulate where they choose to slum it and not a second before.

    If they were living in your back yard you may think differently.