There’s no economic reason the nominal GDP of any country or the world in general has to continuously increase. The important metric is per capita production. As long as people get continuously more productive through innovation, standards of living will continue to increase.

At the national level, vying for long term economic power in the world, a higher and younger population is going to be a huge advantage very soon and countries should be trying to get as many immigrants in their borders as they can. But instead they are…going a different direction.

How often do you wear a suit? Dry clean as necessary, hang it up between uses. I’ve never ironed a suit.

The one example I’m familiar with is a name brand ice cream company that produces the store brand ice cream too…in that case the recipe is different, cheaper ingredients to cut costs to the bare minimum. But using the machines for a higher volume saves money.

I’m sure ‘same exact item’ does happen too but just ‘same manufacturer’ doesn’t mean exactly the same item.

Can’t believe Harriet Tubman got all that infrastructure up.

If you’re saying “you should not restrict ALL culture to rich people” then, we’re not. There is plenty of culture available for free on YouTube, or on broadcast TV channels, or FreeVee. And paying for one paid subscription doesn’t make you rich, $10/mo or whatever is an accessible price for a subset of digital media to a non-rich person. And those libraries are sufficiently large that you would not run out of material to watch even if you only had one service.

If you’re saying “everyone should be provided literally all digital content for free at all times” that is a pretty extreme position which does sort of break the economics of any content being produced. Digital content would have to be plastered in way more ads or be government subsidized or something to have the money to make more of it. That’s not a political position I’d be on board with.

If you just want the current system but with you being allowed to download the stuff you want to see on services you don’t pay for…again, there’s an argument for that, but let’s not pretend it’s some high minded one. It’s selfish. You probably have the money to pay for HBO Max for one month to watch the new Game of Thrones and the Barbie movie but you don’t want to pay money and it’s really easy not to.

That doesn’t track at all. I can’t afford a Lamborghini so the need arises for access to stolen Lamborghinis for cheap? It’s absolutely not a need, you can just go without or only access the free media that is available to you. In the car example, I can just buy an old Civic.

If it’s stealing bread to feed your family that is one thing, because it’s an actual need. If it’s getting stuff because you want the more expensive version instead of the version you can afford, there’s no need there.

The ethical argument is that there’s no one harmed because you can’t afford it anyway. It’s not that you need it like a starving man’s bread.

If there was no DEMAND it wouldn’t exist. It exists illegally specifically because it can’t be done legally at the price point. That doesn’t mean anyone needs it, all the content is presumably available elsewhere. It just costs money and people don’t want to pay money.

I don’t want to pay money either, I’m just not high minded about it.

I disagree with the implication that the Bible or even Jesus’ teachings as told by the New Testament, are left wing or right wing. It doesn’t map to modern politics at all because it’s ancient, their politics were just different, and also it’s not univocal, it’s hundreds of authors who all had different politics and different willingness to import their politics into their religious text.

Because of that, you can easily read it to confirm your biases, no matter what they are. Apostles went out as married pairs to spread the Gospel in early Christianity, that’s in the Bible, so women are equals and should be allowed to be priests? But also women should cover their heads and be silent in church, that’s in the Bible too. So who should we listen to? There’s no “right” answer except whichever confirms your biases.

Even if you are trying to read it historically, I’d argue the historical Jesus (from the Q source sayings and implications from what different authors added or subtracted from Mark) was remarkably egalitarian for the time but he was doing it from the perspective of an apocalyptic preacher, eg he said his followers should give up all their money to the poor, but it was because the world was going to end during the current generation… which was 2000 years ago. So does that even apply as a life lesson in the modern day if the world isn’t ending?

So the religious right may well have read the Bible, and come to a different conclusion than you, and they’re not necessarily wrong, and neither are you.

An 87 year old man using a slur, I feel like you get a slight pass sometimes for being old and not knowing a formerly-commonly-used word has become derogatory.

But he used it, got called out, issued an apology, and then used it again. Yikes.

Fortunately and unfortunately, there have been so many changes and breakthroughs on solar power over the last 50 years that this doesn’t really tell us much about current technology.

Metric has been legally “preferred” in the US since 1975. We just don’t use it.

Also while I was looking up that year I came across this wild factoid:

In 1793, Thomas Jefferson requested artifacts from France that could be used to adopt the metric system in the United States, and Joseph Dombey was sent from France with a standard kilogram. Before reaching the United States, Dombey’s ship was blown off course by a storm and captured by pirates, and he died in captivity on Montserrat.

Literally the only answer to this question, though. He can’t say he will pardon him, politically it would be terrible and it might impact the trial itself. And he can wait until after the election and pardon him then, even though it will mean he was lying now.

I don’t think this comment is particularly newsworthy.

In general, my take is that people should be entitled to a warning, but if they still want to do something to themselves that is a really bad idea and the impact is pretty much on them, well…

This literally is the status quo.

The problem is that the impact is not only on them. There are people who are immunocompromised, particularly the elderly and cancer patients undergoing chemo, and children too young to get various vaccines, and they rely on herd immunity to avoid getting these diseases that might kill them or get them seriously ill or complicate their medical situation. So it’s specifically societies most vulnerable populations that are harmed, which is bad, not to mention the possibility that with enough spread the viruses could mutate and get around vaccines which would threaten everyone else.

And then you have to weigh those real harms against…what, exactly? People just…don’t want to? Because of their incorrect belief that the vaccines are more harmful than helpful?

The government exists to handle externalities like contagion and pollution and caring for vulnerable groups. Arguably, we should be a lot harsher on requiring vaccinations, like how we were on polio. But we aren’t.

I’d like to rent your home for a weekend, I’ve always wanted to try living under a rock.

They passed a constitutional amendment in Florida to let felons vote, a couple years ago. The legislature tried to backpeddle it as much as they could in order to prevent black people from voting, but the main mechanism is forcing the felons to pay a bunch of money, which isn’t a problem for Trump.

This would be a life goal of mine if they could guarantee I wasn’t going to get a damn DVD.

But they’re black so HOAs hate them.

I need examples or I don’t understand.

Admitting a negative documentary impacted your decision making just invites more to be made. Obviously it was the reason. Obviously they’ll never say that.

I do like the idea of making Idaho more symmetrical.

Doesn’t seem like this would have much of an impact federally, it’s not like trying to form a new state where you’d get new Senators who agree with you. These people probably agree with Idaho Senators and not Oregon but their move wouldn’t change the composition.