BraveSirZaphod @ BraveSirZaphod @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

A cursory search suggests that global population is expected to peak sometime around 2090, so an actual reduction in population really can't be a primary component of our mitigation strategy relative to a general shift towards green energy. By the time we reach that point, we've either solved it or solidly doomed ourselves, population be damned.

When you're looking at recurring expenses like welfare, you need the incoming money to be there as well for the math to work. The wealthy and the corporations aren't an unlimited pot, particularly at the scale of national welfare. Social security spent 1.5 trillion dollars in the 2023 fiscal year. You could entirely liquidate Apple, pretend that doing so wouldn't collapse its value, and that would pay for less than two years of Social Security, to say nothing of other welfare programs, and this is just America.

You also have to consider that lower population growth can also result in lower corporate profits, causing there to be less money available for you to tax in the first place. At the scale of an entire country's population, taxing the wealthy doesn't go as far as people think.

There's a very meaningful difference. Wealth is a function of the value of your stuff, which is determined by other people at large, not you, while $20 is $20, always.

A family who bought a rundown brownstone building in Brooklyn back in the 70s is now extremely wealthy, completely independent of income. Wealth can be obtained by other people simply deciding that your stuff is now more valuable than it was before, whether that be property, art, company shares, resources, or anything else. Money obtained by selling stuff generally is treated very differently than income, usually under capital gains taxes.

Which amendment is that? Because the sixteenth amendment very specifically mentions taxes on income, not wealth.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

My apologies, I was referring to the Gaza Strip as a whole, not specifically the city.

If you see Jewish settlers being sent to Gaza after this mess, I'll eagerly join you in being outraged, just as I find the West Bank settlements a disgrace. But I don't think it's useful to get angry over things that haven't happened yet, especially when there are plenty of events that have already happened that are more worthy of anger.

It not being a literal active war zone is probably a good first step, I'd say. That, and "back into Gaza" implies they've been forced out of Gaza, which isn't true.

If Israel were truly attempting to eliminate the Palestinians as a people, it would take a few hours. It's not like they lack the firepower. I'll readily concede that they've been much less careful about preventing civilian casualties, and they absolutely should be criticized for that, but that's a significant and meaningfully different thing from deliberately targeting and killing civilians.

Or do you think they’re going to let the innocent people they didn’t murder come back now that they’re occupying it?

Given than this hasn't happened yet, it feels a little premature to go tossing around words like genocide.

If you're going to begin holding people accountable for the actions of family that they didn't choose and don't even necessarily like, you're going to have a very hard time attracting many people to your political movement.

Control of global politics goes hand-in-hand with being a trustworthy ally that keeps its word. Other countries aren't likely to align with you if you can't show that you can be trusted.

I don’t really care if the make poor decisions and end up with an unviable business model. I’ll do other things with my time.

Alternatively, they'll take steps towards a more viable business model, and you'll also find other things to do with your time.

I’m willing to put in time and effort to make sure I see as few as possible.

You can zap all ads forever with a few minutes and a credit card, if you're willing.

Ultimately, they have no obligation to provide you something of value for free, and given that you do apparently use YouTube, they are objectively providing you something of value. They're completely within their rights to not do that.

And they may decide in kind that they don't want to offer a service to you for free.

I think if and when adblockers are no longer an option, many who fall in this category would be pushed into the paying category, while others would be pushed into grumpily watching ads.

Given the success of Netflix's ban on password sharing, I think you're right here. Most people really don't care about this nearly as much as the average tech enthusiast.

Well, actually, they have to create a service that caters to people who bring them revenue. If that isn't you, they don't have to, and actively shouldn't, cater to you at all.

You're just saying "I don't have an actual answer" in a roundabout way.

"Just don't worry about revenue at all" is the best kind of secret genius business strategy that I come to Lemmy for.

I think you underestimate how much pirates and the opposition truly hate google and their practices and the lengths they will go to in order to get the content they want.

I think you're dramatically overestimating how many people actually care about this, or any tech issue, enough to "truly hate Google". The vast majority of Android users have never sideloaded an app and don't even know what that means, while obviously that's not doable on iPhones at all.

Well, if YouTube were truly so terrible that you think it offers no real value, you wouldn't use it at all. If you yourself don't use it, that's all well and good, but if you do still use it anyway but block ads, then you're admitting that it offers some amount of actual value while refusing to pay for it. In that case, it's hardly unreasonable for YouTube to decide to not take on the cost of offering the service to those that aren't going to pay for it. You'd probably be more than a little annoyed if your boss told you that you'll be working extra hours for free.

Asking genuinely, if you were in charge of YouTube, and you don't think anyone should pay for YouTube, and you don't think you should run ads, how exactly would you go about paying for the massive amount of engineers and infrastructure needed to keep the lights on?

You can however, almost certainly correctly, predict that most people are not going to care enough to bother pirating YouTube videos, especially given how many people watch YouTube on phones or smart TVs now.

I think they're referring more to artificial restrictions like single-family zoning, setback requirements, parking minimums, etc.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html

To take Manhattan as an example, 40% of the buildings could not be legally built today because they would violate zoning laws. A huge amount of San Francisco is under single-family zoning, and so low density - and given fixed land, low supply - is artificially enforced, which probably has something to do with it being one of the most expensive housing markets in the country.