lg

Could the fact that a lot of US companies book profits overseas and keep them there for tax reasons foil your assumption about the meaning of a high US market cap:domestic GDP ratio?

just flew last week and yes it did include cameras.

"regular buses" don't exist here outside of large cities.

i'll take the opportunity to plug my wife's hand-fabricated jewelry :) https://www.etsy.com/shop/PhetteplaceStudio

this article is from 2012 and its prediction did not come true: http://www.realclimate.org/images/Vahrenholt_en-600x452.jpg

source is this solid rebuttal: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/11/15/record-heat-despit...

if we lift the tax cap, can we also lift the benefit cap?

Alden in MA makes really great shoes and of course the 'indiana jones boot'.

it's helpful to distinguish intentional community from commune. the amish have private property so there is maybe more incentive to accumulate intergenerational wealth.

they also withhold secondary education from their children and pressure them to marry and reproduce at a young age, so staying in the community quickly becomes their only realistic option if they want to feed their family.

if the contents of that fool's head were soon to be snapshotted and uploaded into the minds of hundreds of millions of drivers, it'd be headline news for months too.

you can't sue. but you can file charges with the EEOC, and if they want to they can sue on your behalf.

right. so i work, pay taxes and those get distributed to my neighbor's UBI. what i have passed on to someone else still has value.

... which also disincentivizes work more than UBI, because why work a low-wage job for that minimum income when you can get it for nothing instead? whereas with UBI it's always in addition.

I don't know about the UK, but in the US, you effectively have a choice between getting welfare and working. So people have the option to take some low-paying job, but they don't do it because then they lose welfare benefits that pay almost as much, sometimes subsidizing childcare etc. so it's an unemployment trap. UBI is much saner because you get it in addition to any income you earn from working, so you can go ahead and take that low-paying job as well.

southwest is profitable. anyway uber does not have to deal with pilots' unions and the faa regulations: http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines

why leave your desk?

> they are within a level that society tolerates

For now, because there are no alternatives so we've all gotten used to ~31,000 annual US motor vehicle deaths. If self-driving tech drastically cuts down on that, society's tolerance will change.

if self-driving cars will be as safe as people say, manual driving should have the same legal status as drunk driving due to the unnecessary danger it creates.

for our cat it was two simple solutions: 1, feed her about 1/3 of her daily food right before I go to bed; the later she eats the later she gets hungry. 2, when she cries for food before feeding time, I chase her around the apartment with a spray bottle spraying the shit out of her. over time it has gotten much better, not perfect but she definitely learned that crying for food = getting unpleasantly wet.

everything from our pets to our lawns to our roads and farms does damage to biodiversity though, which ultimately makes all life less resilient.

i don't see what's irrational about it. as for polite, excuse me, whether we're warming the earth is an issue that has been discussed quietly and politely for 30 years and evidence for disaster piles up and up. when polio was raging we did not need polite discussion of whether the germ theory of disease is true, the evidence is in and let's get on with it. but mysteriously on this issue where there are powerful economic interests invested in denial, people just want to discuss and discuss and (by the way) do nothing until discussion is over.

> Perhaps global warming produces net long term benefits to humankind.

we know the costs of sea level rise: mass displacement of hundreds of millions of people and the destruction of the world's most productive economic centers. there is already a drying trend in the central plains and other large areas of arable land; more warming will lead to mass starvation. The overall consequence is the destruction of most of the world's wealth. but sure, maybe after all that, everything will be better. by the same token maybe a nuclear war will improve things?

i wore contacts up until age 26 or so when they became unbearable due to dryness and worsening astigmatism. optometrist told me the same happens to a lot of people. I can handle certain brands of dailies for about 4 hrs but just way more hassle than glasses.

deflation is tricky... if oil gets 10x cheaper because there's lots of new sources, it's great. if oil gets 10x cheaper because after the nuclear holocaust people are living in caves and don't have the refineries or machinery to make it useful, not so great.

maybe most arrests happen that way, but you need to be prepared for any reasonable eventuality. apprehending people can be very dangerous. I see no reason why an officer would willingly go into that situation unprepared to defend him/herself with lethal force. having armed help a radio call away doesn't seem comforting when you're dealing with someone who's armed and angry now.

agreed. if they are unarmed then they can forget about arresting people and bringing them into jail and in front of a judge. plenty of people are willing to kill to avoid that outcome.

(and cats, they have much better hearing)

it's actually two mechanisms hand in hand:

- require an ID to vote;

- make it difficult to get an ID: https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/alabamas-dmv-shutdown...

google provides all of these benefits.

long but good article on why land/natural resources probably does play a major role in the economic disparity: https://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-...

> As San Francisco becomes more like Manhattan, would people want to stay?

i don't know if the existing residents will want to stay, but i think many more people overall would want to live in a manhattan of the west coast, as evidenced by the manhattan of the east coast which people keep moving to.