Please flag. The only reason this attack vector isn't more common is the ignorance of would-be terrorists. The stochastic harm caused by sharing such articles is significant, IMO, and the public interest is low (nobody is going to stop flying because of a failed attack).
Is there anything more disingenuous that advocating for the involuntary destruction of all equity wealth by decrying occasional losses by consenting adults?
Is there anything more disingenuous than advocating for Enron and Madoff style accounting and reporting gimmickry as being acceptable equity activity between "consenting adults"?
It's hard to imagine a political solution to this problem. Both parties are playing chicken, each daring the other to fall on their sword for the good of the country, with neither willing to commit political suicide. Republicans don't have the stomach for the (unpopular) spending cuts that would be required to reduce the deficit, and of course they don't want to raise taxes. They reasonably fear that, even if they gutted the core programs to balance the budget, the next Democrat administration (whose election would be essentially guaranteed by massive cuts) would turn around and use the savings to fund new and exciting ways to buy votes. On the flip side, Democrats shriek in horror at the slightest spending cuts and even advocate for massive increases in spending ("Medicare for all" alone would cost another $1.5 Trillion per year) yet they are afraid to acknowledge, let alone levy, the (unpopular) broad-based taxes required to cover the current deficit, let alone pay for new programs.
The notion that poor circumstances somehow justify poor choices is extremely counterproductive, as the context of this thread should make abundantly clear.
Just saying rich people betting and losing is much more funny than poor people making bad financial decision in the hope of maybe living a better life.
> We could provide food for the poor and disabled who lack or are not using family support with a tiny fraction of our industrial output.
I absolutely agree. We spend $30K/year per person (not per household, per person!) under the poverty line, and that's only on HUD, Medicaid, and Food Stamps. These resources should be lavished on those who actually need them. The tricky part is dealing with the perverse incentives which come with doing right by the disabled. The obscene abuse of military disability benefits is a case in point.
There's no such thing as "jobs natives don't want", only "wages natives don't want".
> Maybe, or maybe they just employ less people and less things get built.
The foreign born population residing in the US fell from ~15% to ~5% from 1920-1970. It was one of the most prosperous and productive periods in human history.
US was prosperous post war because the industrial capacity of the rest of the world was destroyed. Comparing that time period to any other doesnt make sense.
We can only employ natives if we want, we just have to accept that prices of things that are currently run on immigrant labor will go up, and a lot less of it will be produced. Personally I am unwilling to make that tradeoff but obviously you dont have to agree. US labor market suffers seriously from baumol's cost disease, only solution to that is immigration with the understanding that immigrants will take unwanted jobs in exchange for a better life for their kids.
Do yourself a favor and DCA in from here. SpaceX was "only" valued at 210 Billion back in June 2024, around 11% of its current valuation. A return to that valuation would take it down to ~$16/share!
SpaceX is a phenomenal company. I've wanted to buy in since 2009. But the stock is the exact inverse of my ideal single-stock investment thesis--huge downside with severely limited short-to-mid-term upside, given the huge premium already being paid.
If these figure represent actual deaths (big if), those people will have died because literally nobody on earth was willing to pay to keep them alive--yourself included.
If a pillar is removed from a building with no warning, no one would claim that its collapse was from the unwillingness of anyone else to put a new one in place.
If DOGE had announced a 2-year phaseout of humanitarian aid, governments and NGOs might have had time to fill the gap. Doing so arbitrarily and abruptly was simply cruel.
We both know you haven't lifted a finger to help these people. You're not interested in actually saving lives, just that sweet righteous indignation (after all, it's free!)
I've been pursuing the public good my entire career, including making major career moves to improve the developing world. You've crafted a delusion to justify your clearly antisocial behavior. You have no right dictating to people that they need to do x, y, and z to have genuine ethics when you are stumping to increase child mortality in Africa. Good day to you sir!
But wait, I do pay taxes? By you logic, no policy choice can ever cause harm because the responsibility is always redistributable to several billion bystanders. Pretty convenient!
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