Per below vid,
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I disagree. I'd argue the amount of money you "lose" due to redistribution is actually MUCH less than the additional value you are able to output due to social stability. You cannot be entirely decoupled from your environment - and that environment is rapidly globalizing. That's not to say that balance can't become skewed in the future, or that other communities haven't had bad balances elsewhere otherwise. But, its not a one or the other, its more of a balancing act. Some redistribution is likely good - too much is definitely bad.
Specifically, sister comments are arguing redistribution is likely net-positive for everyone at least up to the point of providing basic needs (food, water, shelter) exactly because without those things people become disruptive. To argue that "I/we can fight anyone becoming disruptive" ignores the fact that that fighting takes away from other productive ventures (and not to mention is a wee arrogant).
EG: I can make 100$ of value a day if I don't have to constantly fight for me and mine. Forfeiting 30$ of it makes sure that everyone around me is happy enough not to threaten me. If they were starving and began threatening me (or my tools), my output drops to 10$ because i spend most of my efforts in looking out for myself/mine rather than collaborating. I'm now MUCH worse off than if i participated in some well-moderated redistribution.
If you disagree with the $100-$10 output reduction, i recommend you go try to do the same job you do now in a war-torn or economically repressed country (odds are you won't be able to find it, or it'll pay much, much less). I believe every developed nation has social safety nets precisely because of the economic sweet spot it enables.
"...turn the bodies into about two wheelbarrows of soil within a month. Loved ones and families can keep the new material to spread or even use it to plant vegetables or a tree."
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/washington-state-composting-bod...
Per what subjective measure? There has been torture, famine, genocide, and worse catastrophes for millions of years. I'm not even exclusively talking about human, social constructs. Animals have been weeding each other out for forever. There have been asteroids that nearly strip earth of all life. Would you say those times were not worth living in either?
If so, i think you may want to ask yourself what makes life worth living. Life may be filled with struggle and adversity (and the specifics of how it is so will likely continue to differ), but the beauty of it is that we get to try our damndest to make better and more out of it.
Do not go gentle into that good night~
Sure, not what gp said, but agreed.
"but if you want to elevate those that don't come from privileged backgrounds"
Just some unsolicited feedback, the original race/gender quote from the article and this statement leads me to interpret that you either value equality of outcome (EG: all of these startups should have proportional distributions of gender and race in all positions) over technological advancements, or that you suspect the organization is biased to some detrimental degree.
This feedback isn't meant to insinuate that you actually believe either, just that it was my interpretation from the seemingly out of context nod to race/genders of the startup founders.
For example, if you'd have included a quote along the lines of "The startups announced by BEV so far are all above 6' tall". The statement would seem to insinuate that there's either something wrong with being 6' tall (analogous to something wrong with being white/male), or that the organization seems to unfairly favor tall people.
By and large you can't control what opportunities sprout up around you, but you can control how prepared you are to take advantage of them when they do. EG: you can spend more of your free time learning new technologies, so that you might at least be passable at them should the need arise.
I think the reason interviewers don't like talking about luck is because they'd rather hear what you're doing to help yourself at getting lucky. How do you best prepare yourself for the unknown opportunities coming in the future? Sure, its only half the equation, but its the half you get to control.
To redirect back to the parent post: if you don't want to call them rights, do you think internet access should be an essential privilege that governments must secure for their people? If so, how do you propose that privilege be fulfilled in rural communities that currently don't have internet access? It would seem to be a fundamental violation of the governmental charter not to provide it, and who would be held accountable for that violation?
I'm arguing that line of reasoning is not constructive, and the collective's agreed upon opinions should not act as a barrier for scientific discourse. (which is what the memo was asking for)
This memo did not say women were bad engineers.
To me, your concern seems more related to the meaning of life rather than the presence of free will though?
Unfortunately, I fear that’s may be too broad a subject to fruitfully assess on a medium such as this forum..
At the least, I’d argue ‘you’ existing is the only thing you can really be sure of. “I think, therefore I am”. It’s harder to tell if others exist, and there are several branches of philosophy that outright conject that nobody else other than yourself does exist. EG: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
At the risk of derailing this conversation into semi-unrelated philosophical conversations: Why is it you would prefer 2 to 3?
At the risk of using stale analogies: In the eyes of many, crossing the Atlantic was premature at best. In the eyes of many, summiting Everest is a waste of tens of thousands of dollars. In the eyes of many, free climbing is border-line delusional.
And that’s the point. This diversity of prioritization is what makes our species so great. Let the dreamers dream. I can see how you might want to make an argument that we shouldn’t publicly fund every naïve dreamer, but it seems difficult to argue that both NASA and Musk are idiots with how much they’ve already accomplished.
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?”
I think it’s a good thing that not all humans optimize for the most practical routes in life. It makes us more diverse and greater as a species, and pushes us to accomplish amazing feats that seem impractical on the surface. If everyone was optimizing for the lowest hanging fruits, who would invest in constructing the really tall ladders that future generations could build off of?
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
Embrace your inner childhood sense of adventure and wonder!
That’s like saying we should lock people up who drive >15 mph over some speed limit that they didn't notice (which is also breaking the law). “This time he only hit a power line. Next time he’ll collide with a bus full of children.”
To belittle those individuals who did not have access or exposure to this information seems cynical or high-horsed. Exposing verifiable data is the first step, encouraging people to challenge their belief systems through curiosity and with the assurance that changing their mind (based on that data) is not stupid or reprehensible is the second.
The trend this thread is related to (Lyft downloads surge because of #deleteUber) is a blatant hypocrisy. Neither company complied with the taxi boycott, and Uber only removed surge pricing after the strike was scheduled to end.
This leads more pragmatic bystanders to believe that the people involved in this trend aren’t earnestly invested in finding a rational solution. They just want to hop aboard the first petty public trend that superficially signals that they’re backing some side of a divisive debate; even when that bandwagon trend may ultimately turn out to be counterproductive to their professed ideals and objectives!
This is not a problem for one side of the aisle or the other, but both. That tribal group-think is the EXACT same problem that led to a Trump presidency to begin with.
So the only way to move forward in any meaningful sense is to stop this childish nonsense. That means calling a spade a spade (or virtue signaling) when it comes along, and not wasting time/effort with those who are only interested in self-aggrandizing (you, per your comments).