That is true. We have mostly elected politicians that promise to bring as much federal tax dollars home as possible. When you have promised the moon, telling your constituents that the rocket needs to be dismantled and sold off is political suicide.
>Then OP is essentially saying that we appear not to choose politicians that are prescribing bitter medicine.
Sort of. I think it's more accurate to say that there are just enough fiscally irresponsible politicians in office to prevent a government that pays as it goes via taxes. The vast majority of those politicians are Republican, taught by Ronald Reagan that they could have massive spending AND tax cuts without political penalty (indeed, Reagan was rewarded with adulation for nearly tripling the national debt). Democrats have been fairly consistent in reducing the deficit, and if they'd had their political druthers, would've reduced it even further with additional taxes. The reality is that maintaining a modern superpower of over 300 million people requires much more in annual taxes than voters realize, at least in part because they've been misled by Republican leadership to believe that taxes (particularly progressive taxes) are unnecessary.
It's similar to when folks say "big corporations" or "oil companies" are responsible for climate change. No Karen, you are the reason those companies can and do sell their products. It's a method of diverting personal responsibility, IMHO.
No, things should be regulated so that individuals have no choice but to do the right thing. It's governments responsibility to steer Karen towards more sustainable consumption choices. Either tax unsustainable business to make it unprofitable, or tax purchase of their services so that it's not rational for Karen to buy their product / services. The ecological choice should be made the cheapest.
Universally in this world people live most ecologically in parts of the world where they are too poor to act otherwise, not where they are most climate or environment conscious. Voluntary personal responsibility gets you nowhere when it comes to solving large-scale problems.
> Either tax unsustainable business to make it unprofitable, or tax purchase of their services so that it's not rational for Karen to buy their product / services. The ecological choice should be made the cheapest.
That sounds great and all until your granny can’t afford heat in the winter or there’s no food in the stores, etc. Then people will vote out the politicians making the policies or revolt.
That’s what I’m talking about personal responsibility. Not regarding individual actions per se, but accepting that most of us in the developed world are as complicit as the big oil companies.
That said, technology is improving to where the cheapest option is the ecological one for power. A fair bit of that has been due to individual actions of many folks wanting and paying for solar power and electric vehicles, etc.
Ironically to me, the individual preferences of the Green Party members also put lots of political pressure to shutdown nuclear power in Germany. That caused Germany to fallback to coal and natural gas.
Hey don’t get me wrong, we kinda suck in first world countries, but oil companies are run by people with full awareness of what they’re doing and the agency to stop who choose not to stop singly because they’re too interested in raking in money they will never even find a use for.
I don't buy that, making it a personal responsibility problem was an implemented strategy by those responsible to avoid having to pay the price of doing anything about it.
We literally have no choice but to make small insignificant changes that does not harm the bottom line of those responsible too much.
Ultimately the end consumer has little to no control, or knowledge, to enact this.
Yes everyone should be ethical in their consumption. If I gave you an arbitrary product and asked you to tell me if its ethically sourced, there's a high chance you can't. Even if I give you the internet and a week to research.
So, that's one problem. Another problem is that even if you could tell what is/isn't ethical you can't necessarily switch away.
Sometimes the more ethical choices aren't available, or are too expensive, or are outlandish. I'm sure everyone in the US would love to eat grass fed pasture raised beef. Meredith, who works two shifts at the town Dairy Queen, who's trying to give her son some protein, so his tiny muscles don't atrophy, doesn't have the funds for that.
Cars and oil are perhaps the most clear-cut example of this. People don't drive because they want to, they do it because they have to. It's literally life or death. A car in the US isn't just a box on wheels, it's a lifeline.
No, it is the oil companies and that oil is permitted to be used.
When something is permitted, it becomes mandatory to somebody, and oil is used widely. Personally choosing to avoid products that used oil in their manufacturing would basically relegate you to having to farm your own food by hand. That is not feasible in a society with competition.
Obviously the transition away from oil should be gradual, and the sectors which are hardest to transition could be given more time to do so. But there's no fundamental need for large scale use of oil, it's just the current infrastructure and limited tech that's the problem.
Hundreds of millions will die due to climate change if we don't act.
Is it Karen’s fault when she is told by her media for thirty years that climate change is bs? Is it her fault that she tries to recycle, but most of the plastic she puts in the bin is misleadingly labeled and has to be sorted out? Is it Karen’s fault she drives a gas car to work because public transit is underdeveloped and electric cars are too expensive? Framing climate change as a matter of personal responsibility is extremely counterproductive IMHO.
The problem with voting for candidates who solve problems with unpopular approaches is that they lose elections to people who campaign on making the problem worse.
Which is true. Who votes for someone promising to raise taxes and give you less for it? People only vote for that to happen to other people, not to themselves.
> We, the population, vote for the persons with specific political wills. We choose what to enact.
Except that this is far from the reality.
We elect people with specific views but they seem to vote regardless of their constituent interests, let alone their supporters’. Instances of this fact are very easily searchable online.
The idea that these representatives can just vote without accountability is absurd, and clearly a weakness money has uncovered in the US political system. (I refuse the claim status quotitians make that “elections are accountability“)
My suggestion is elected representatives act as litigators to their side of the argument and they need to make their claim to a jury overseen by a judge. That jury determines if a bill passes.
Who you elect as your representatives still matters, but now their ability to litigate persuasively is the number one quality of consideration when choosing those representatives.
This should remove the power that money has in bills being passed, as well as completely remove the “rider compromises” where officials compromise by including unrelated clauses to encourage the passing of a bill.
I want a representative government and I think expanding the powers of justice by jury will help in further enshrining that goal in our political systems.
> There is plenty of political will of every kind.
There's no direct election, and despite "every kind" of politician existing, the representatives of two parties with very similar polices overall, differing only in pointless stuff, keep taking turns in the presidency since forever. The choices are quite constrained.
One side is willing to raise taxes on billionares and continue to have democracy. The other not so much.
your argument stopped having any semblance of merit at least decade ago. Now it is laughably unbelievable.
Now, ought there be more direct representation? Of course!
Should we have more than two major parties? Of course!
Guess what, a lot of people on this forum I am sure make plenty of money to be able to afford going to a few fundraising events for local politicians that they favor.
It's not too expensive to start paying for fundraising dinners for your local representatives, mayors, congress persons, etc.
You can help get people elected into local positions that align with your interests. AND some of those people will continue to build their career in politics and may become Senator or Governor someday.
That's influence. That's buying into the system to make it how you think things will be better.
From the outside, it feels like some "tacit trade" where poor Eastern European nations provide the labor, the rich western countries send "funds" back to them, and it all works until there is an imbalance between the rich and the poor.
I find that most of the time when I do it, I speed because I am either unaware of the speed limit or my speed drifts slowly above it.
The techniques described in the article, such as audio, visual, or haptic feedback when reaching the speed limit or maintaining speed at the limit sound useful and a solution to the above.
Most critics interpret the article as the car taking over the decision-making - but that does not seem to be the case at all.
The channel contains 10-hour-long videos of natural sounds.
Maybe the post is less about what is right or wrong in medicine and more about the author having gone into the wrong field, which is opposite to what they enjoy in life.
Perhaps all along, the author misunderstood what modern medicine is about and how life really works. There is no miracle cure that would restore the neural system.
There is a miracle prevention however, be active, exercise, eat well, sleep well, enjoy life, contribute to society. That will help your back more than surgery once things go bad.
Yeah "positive thinking and going with the flow will fix disease". Tell me: why didn't everyone 1000 years ago live to be a hundred everywhere? Oh that's right: because it's not that simple.
As someone who has been involved in and seen how cancer research is done, it is no surprise that progress is slow.
The "skilled", "famous" and "influential" scientists in cancer research spend almost all their time fighting for grants, undermining each other, jockeying for influence, exaggerating their own importance, publishing phony papers etc.
Underpaid novices, trainees, grad students, and postdocs with little prior experience do the actual work in the lab.
It is much, much worse than a reasonable person would imagine!
let's look at the scale of the problem ... ~300 trees in a region that has no shortage of trees
Why is it impossible to find another resolution that satisfies both the homeowner and ecologists?
PS. I know of a similar problem - where some giant oak trees along a house are so dense that the owners have to use artificial lighting in their rooms during the summer at just about all times,
The trees are owned by the township but reach well over the property and are clearly too big, half as big trees would suffice, the township does not allow trimming the trees without a legal fight
Why should someone be deprived of natural light in their own home? Just cut back on the tree; it is not the end of the world or Mother Nature.
In a typical web based app, schema is the one and only thing that you should be paranoid about. Writing it by hand is important for the same reason typing your password to confirm a big transaction is important. The time and thought going into it is worth its weight in gold. I would rather write it with one finger twice over, than giving it to ChatGPT.
either way it sounds like they're stuck with poor testing around their code. that shows the devs probably don't understand the code which means fixing or changing things in the future will take longer.
We, the population, vote for the persons with specific political wills. We choose what to enact.