quantified

In the abstract, yes, things can be created through applying energy to matter (e.g. transforming land, timber, mortar, sand and metal into a house). Wealth via debt is the financial abstraction/technology, the things that pay the debt back involve energy or raw resource (land, water rights, mineral rights) somewhere. Bitcoin is interesting, it doesn't generate wealth. It's more a store of wealth, cash in a currency people have wanted in on. When the price goes down, it subtracts wealth. It's just an abstraction that has caught people's attention.

It's his ship and his responsibility, or if nothing else his choice of captain and crew. Definitely reflects on him.

How do you ever choose your boss at work? Never. Oh, by quitting that job and getting another? That's called "moving" when applied to politics. Which is super unattractive in much of regular life, unless you don't need people.

Why does anyone believe more tech makes less work? It makes different work, but the 50-hour week remains. More AI will never bring less work much less "abundance".

Sorry, which objection are you referring to?

For a mutual insurance company, everyone is betting that it's going to happen somewhere sometime, that's why they pay the premiums. There is also not "winning" and "losing", there is no particular event like a known game, and you only get paid to cover a loss. You could squint and say it's taking 100:1 odds (or whatever your coverage-to-premium ratio is), but you have the incentive to play since if an event happens TO YOU, you really LOSE, and if you don't take a bet you just don't take the bet.

This is one of the huge problems with allowing betting. Of course, people could collude without the formal marketplace, but just as social media provides really painful detrimental cons along with its pros, so do betting platforms.

Cargo e-bikes seem like the ideal platform for fair-weather suburbia.

As someone who enjoys riding their own bike, but uses their car for needs that cannot be met by bikes, I don't think this is just grievance. You can be sour about reality.

SF in particular can be a pain in the butt. There are scearios where public transit works, and many where it doesn't. Biking there from anywhere else is not viable. I need to drive into it in cases when transit doesn't work, and the city is hostile to me trying to spend money. Great for some of its own residents, not for all of them, definitely not for visitors.

Can you expound a bit? Opportunity for what, and who? Are they the same Sams and Elons who talk up "abundance"?

That sounds sideways or wrong. Poor people don't necessarily have debts. They don't have income or assets. Indebted people like inflation because their debt is worth less _if they can find increased income to pay it down_.

Inflation is bad if you _don't_ have assets. Asset prices inflate too. Your car becomes more valuable simply because other cars are more valuable. Etc. Income is what is stuck because it's an agreement between you and another party to pay you, and that needs to be renegotiated.

The "abundance means money is meaningless" is obviously complete BS. If that was true, AI would not be seen as a path to vast individual or institutional wealth.

Growing up in the environment we've made for them, I'm hardly surprised. But, let's see more peer-reviewed work on this.

I've spent my years trying to think productively. You've got one good idea, I'm confident that there are many more.

You can't rule out some accounting fraud.

Your take is a little sour, but I agree with the direction. If your children (or nephews/nieces) matter as your bodily protection and old-age assistance, you want to raise grownups. Children are indeed a burden, they're cute and fun but that's a luxury like exotic pets. Once the larger society will provide care, or you just don't care about extending into the future, why bother? At that point, if you have contraception, even bodily urges in the now don't create children. Which is why polulation-maxxers hate contraceptives.

There's an archive link in the comments now, but the whole thing seems petty and boring.

Alcohol may have been involved.

Exporting luxury goods is fine for socialists. They are clear about who's in the in-group and who isn't, the out-group must fend for themselves. Socialism isn't against private property, it's about production means and tending towards managing wealth for common good. Your car is your car though, consumption is still individual.

Love the idea of earthmoving on an uncleaned Superfund site.

It's a little easier to think about when you ignore people's addictive tendencies in the large.

It also takes a blind spot re the forces that will influence events based on betting. I don't care about point-shaving in college basketball (some great stories there, see the Bad Sports episode [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15402912/]. But other real-world outcomes are too important.

> I stand against... the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual.

Ok. Stars die. This is insane.

There was evidence. Just not pointing to him.

It would take anyone reviewing the evidence noticing the double underscore. Part of what makes this infuriating is that it's the type of error we as individuals are prone to making or not noticing on some days.

As the defendant, I'd have been terrified that all this seems to be me yet isn't.

Real Republicans do not bicycle. Plain and simple.

That chain of events assumes that course correction loops don't occur. Producers won't overproduce for more than a fiscal quarter, maybe two. It'll be messier than that. And investors will pull their money out of anything unprofitable and put it somewhere else. There will be somewhere else.

Think about this social disruption: if money doesn't have meaning, what does the plutocracy do to stay relevant and keep their islands and relative wealth? How will those things be defined?

Beginning of another. Proper cusp here.

That's the argument, but everyone who runs a factory knows not to run it so hard that profits dip. No one will allow their profits to dip. As costs for some tbings decline, prices might decline or might not, depends on the mood. Eventually, the need for profits to eternally grow will make any "abundance" disappear.

Everything is still run for profit. To shift into abundance mode, we need to give up this economic system entirely. Become the Star Trek economy, not Star Wars or Dune. Maybe the path is to have every government, or the most influential, become so f'd up with things like debt that they decide to blow up the current system so they don't have to actually pay anything back? I mean, the ability to deficit spend shows that actually having money is irrelevant anyway.

Which he isn't. I will bet $1000 against him, choosing 10 years as my number for "few". Gains accrue to owners, and relatively few own things. By the same token, UBI is a non-starting concept, a government choked for funds by its own trillions of dollars of debt and everyone seeking to pay no taxes has nothing to offer in terms of support for its citizens.

No one can 3-d print their own food or land. Start there. Clothing for free? Huh? Solar panels and batteries (ie energy) for free? Etc.

Leadership of the country, corresponding to many but perhaps not a majority of citizens to say nothing of inhabitants.

That's all pedantic, of course.

The "we" you are referring to isn't the "we" pretending though.