Broken_Hippo

You seem to think that voting is a simple choice of "do it or don't" and it really isn't that simple.

You need little restrictions. For example, not every country takes away voting rights from prisoners or folks previously convicted as a felon. Some places are pretty lenient to pregnant folks, sick people, etc. When my mother was pregnant with my sister, due around voting day, they nearly didn't let her vote absentee. She argued and got to vote but how many people were just denied in this situation? It would be a non-issue in some places. It wasn't that she didn't have an opinion - she was just nearing the time for freaking birth.

When I moved to Norway from the US, I no longer had to deal with voter registration. Once I lived here 3 years, I could vote in local elections. They just send me a voting card. Voting is easy, can be done in multiple locations over a period of a few weeks. So long as I had the card, no ID needed. (most folks keep their address updated for multiple reasons, so getting it isn't a big issue for me, anyway).

Any barriers you have to voting - like the registration system in the US, inflexible voting times, or very strict voter id laws - means that some folks won't be able to vote even if they want to. Barriers that make it difficult for groups of folks to vote is just a way for the state to control the election instead of the people voting with their conscience.

21 countries have compulsory voting laws, on the other hand.

And you can't say that a voter's opinion is a strong one, just that they vote. So many folks vote by just voting with the party they chose. That's not a strong opinion. That's just voting, and no one is checking motivations to see.

If you only have 45% of your population votes, regardless of reason, you aren't actually getting the public opinion.

I guess the change (and recalls) are a result of lawsuits from that same dresser.

Drinking and driving exists and is illegal, but going to the grocery store isn't. Should we do an all or nothing sort of ban, either allowing drunk driving or banning cars altogether? No one would do this - some uses are illegal, most aren't.

A law that allows legal uses of your car but disallows illegal activity isn't all that unheard of.

Further south - England and Poland and all those coastal areas - are tempered by the ocean. Summers just aren't as hot.

Even further south - Italy and Greece - air conditioning is common. You know, because it is hot there. Further south = hotter summers = air conditioning. Further north = moderate summers = little cool air needed.

https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/tonsillectomies-stil...

I bought a good grinder about 6 months ago - a Fellow. I changed nothing other than the grinder and my coffee improved. And it is so much more enjoyable to use: Less mess and static, less noise, and everything feels nice to use.

Visits are great and all, but they require money and planning with more than one person. And I'm lucky - I can travel. Some folks can't go home - war sucks, poverty sucks, sickness sucks, busy work times suck, etc. If I were still in the US, I might not even get a chunk of time off work.

Travel is probably getting a little less likely considering the current situation with jet fuel as well.

And I'll let you know that my shortest days are 4.5 hours long (with weak sunlight!). Oslo has slighly longer days still.

Intelligent folks look at a system and figure out ways they can adapt it to their own situation. You can take systems they use for rural areas and figure out ways to do it on your own. The US is enormous, but most folks live in cities. States are tiny portions of the US, and some of those states would likely mirror Switzerland in diversity, density, and size.

It wouldn't matter if the country had a population density similar to the US and was similar in many ways. It'd still need adaptation because of the differences in culture, laws, and so on.

In the mountains around Trondheim, Norway, you run into free range chicken farms (and sheep roaming the mountain top). Signs warn you that chickens are about and I think them getting hit is a real concern if you are maximizing chicken freedom.

That said, these aren't busy roads. The more traffic, the more barriers to keep the animals from getting hit.

It is more akin to watching television from a different culture. I am American, live in Norway, with my Norwegian spouse. We wind up watching British television from time to time. We find the jokes funny, but we both realize that we are missing references to people and places - but understand the gist of the jokes.

The difference between shakespear and modern times is even larger - you don't always know they are jokes because you don't realize they are referencing anything. Still enjoyable, but a different story without as much comedy.

Very common for a private sale to put the price cheap, but not free - $200 charged sales tax on $200 and a free car was charged on the estimated value.

Indiana charges sales tax like a lot of states, but only on things sold in the state or from a company located in the state. If you ordered something from California or overseas, no sales tax was charged. The law required you to track these purchases and report it on your tax return so you can pay the required sales tax.

That said, enforcement wasn't good and I don't know a single person that actually did so. A common tax fraud for the average person, I guess.

And honestly, I think any emergency federal law would be similar: It wouldn't be for refunds for the masses, but for surveillance and extortion.

Some places sell their cardboard scrap. I'm guessing that places with the right sorts of metal scrap get paid for their waste.

And folks have to pay for much of the rest. Some of the issue with dumping waste in a business's trash is that the business pays directly for waste removal in many places, unlike a lot of private folks, which pay through taxes.

This is the current state of things. What has changed is the sort of service that they need to pay for. Instead of destruction, they'd be paying for recycling or resale. Like now, they have the option of donation or reduced prices.

What do you do when folks in expensive places can't eat while folks in low-cost areas are able to live better?

$100 had different spending power in different places. I can buy more beer in Prague than in Indianapolis. I'll buy even less in Oslo. You often get variance within a country too: A gallon of milk (and a lot of other food) is generally cheaper in Indiana than Hawaii.

I'm with you in spirit - we should tax wealthy people - but not in a way that can tax folks that already are struggling. We just don't have global cooperation like that nor are things starting on equal ground to do that sort of simple taxation. But another comment has already touched on that.

It isn't that the other games are bad, though. It isn't like we are talking "handheld camcorder student-written movie" vs "polished hollywood blockbuster" but more.... Beautiful painting by a mostly unknown artist vs beautiful large, publically displayed and privatly funded artist. Big budgets get you more assistance and more/better tools and more space and more human help and more connections.

It is probably important to remember that a large portion of a blockbuster's budget is advertising. Advertising is often 50-100% of the production budget and I'm guessing AAA games have similar advertising budgets. I'm not sure how a large advertising budget gives you better products, though it might get you more folks if your game is online.

Of course, I'm guessing if you limit your search to FPS games, your experience might be a different.

I live in Norway, have residence and stuff. I can travel freely through most of europe without much hassle - but I can only travel 90 days out of 180 days - then you gotta go out of the area (or back to your home country if it is inside), stay out or home for 90 days, and then start anew. The closest border to me - one to Sweden - has no real security. A customs office because there is border shopping in the area and I know they very occasionally stop folks. A crossing an slightly inconvenient distance north just has signs.

Anything outside of this requires paperwork.

You see this with healthcare in different places: Details change and sometimes it is lacking, but lots of places offer healthcare to its citizens that is low-cost to free when you need it. There is a lot of variation in what countries can do. Some places are poor but still manage to a point. Some places just refuse, like the US - heck, the US has oil and could have funded things for its citizens and keeps bragging about being rich, but they aren't gonna use it for the immediate welfare of its citizens.

Mismanagement of resources is bad no matter what system is used. Just because some under one sort of ideology and corrupt leaders failed doesn't mean that folks can't take the bits that were good, adapt and improve them, and see good results.

So, lets jail the professionals that are addicted too. After all, it is the best option for treatment, right? They are also hurting themselves as much as they could otherwise and probably hurting bystanders and their family. But that's ridiculous - few support that. If it were the best option, it would be recommended treatment for all.

The best option for treatment is actual medical based treatment in a facility that isn't punishing you and with staff trained in caring for you in your state. The best option for not leaving people on the streets is to house them. Housing and feeding folks makes treatment much more likely to work.

Its still a lot of money at $16.50. 12 days a year you labor just for the opportunity to labor. Your point only makes it slightly better and doesn't really take away from my point - it's a lot of money for a good number of folks. You know, the folks that could really benefit.

A 50% discount is probably pretty hard to get - and you are still asking the poorest folks to pay 4 hours of labour for busses.

That is 16 hours of work if you make $8 an hour. You obviously make more than that if you can say "only $132"

Nope, you'll take homeless folks right to jail, promptly, where they can be zombies out of sight. It isn't like folks in small towns are gonna help the person with treatment. As long as they stay out of view most times, they'll just be gossip. If they are lucky, someone will invite them to church. Small towns will absolutely let folks suffer if they just stay somewhere out of sight.

Children have school. School gives you a shared experience to talk about and time to talk to others, both through actual coursework and play. Children are handed the tools to possibly make friends and they aren't even old enough to have decades of baggage and anxiety yet.

As an adult, you have to create those conditions. For many, work serves this role. Hobbies and regular activities (bowling, for example) help. Depending on the person, it can be online (Met my spouse this way - a silly online game back in the later text-based, formulaic MMORPG era). And you are a lot busier as an adult with more responsibilities filling your time. Of course it is harder as an adult.

Hybrids sometimes produce no seeds or seeds that won't grow the same thing. Sometimes this is desirable - seedless watermelons, for example. Or having a plant that grows better in your region at the cost of having to buy seeds (which you were likely to do in modern times regardless).

I get your point, but this isn't really a problem that's special to GMOs in particular. It is a problem now, and it isn't always that horrible of one. We can support farmers better now and prevent some of it now.