WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @lemmy.world

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Unfortunately you need to keep in mind that transfers and donations can be reversed posthumously. If a gunman walks up to a billionaire, forces him to transfer millions to his bank account, and then shoots him dead, the killer doesn't just get to keep the money after getting caught. Any transfer can be reversed after the fact. And you only have a few minutes of controlling the person before they die, so you can't have them work for years to do good with their money.

If just one billionaire died this way, the transfers would likely stand. It can be written off as one man deciding to gain a conscience before taking his own life. But if hundreds of billionaires start doing this all at once? People are reasonably going to conclude that something or someone is controlling these billionaires. Maybe people actually accept the fantastical notion of a Death Note in play. Or maybe they conclude its something strange but more scientific, like some sort of infectious electronic meme that can instantly brainwash people into carrying out some action. Maybe there's a hereto undiscovered arrangement of pixels on a screen that can hack the human mind and gain control of it temporarily. The sort of thing that, while implausible, is at least within the realm of scientific possibility.

Regardless of the exact cause, the heirs to these billionaires will go to court and argue that their deceased relatives were clearly not of sound mind at the time they transferred all their holdings. There's already plenty of legal precedent for this, primarily for elderly people who lose their faculties and are taken advantage of by manipulative caretakers. Even if you can convince some 90 year old woman with Alzheimer's to sign away her fortune to you, that transfer has a good chance of being reversed in court.

Really, the most effective way to provide extreme encouragement for the heirs to give away money is by having the billionaire write, in their own blood on the wall, "my heirs should give away my money. Any that don't will share my fate."

This way there are no transfers to fight in court. The legitimate heirs of the billionaire do inherit the money. But after they have it, there's nothing preventing them from donating it themselves. And the money will be like a curse. They'll be desperate to get rid of it.

Done on a large scale, this would encourage most billionaires to give up their wealth voluntarily. You could have each of them write, "I am being killed for the crime of being a billionaire. Any other billionaire will share my fate." If a few dozen such killings happened, and the police proved utterly unable to prevent it, then the vast majority of billionaires would give up their wealth voluntarily out of pure fear.

It depends on how small you write, I suppose.

I see I'm gonna need to buy a microfiche printer...

I don't understand why they don't just make the whole street permanently pedestrian-only. This isn't that hard. You move things by cart along the street itself. Need to make a delivery? You drive it to within a couple blocks, then use a cart. Same for taking trash out.

This isn't some radical new kind of logistics. Every shopping mall in America works like this. Shop owners don't complain that they can't drive a delivery truck right up to their store front in the mall. Customers manage to park and walk around just fine. Trash gets cleaned up.

This is the solution to this problem. But the people of the city or state are just too motoronormative to comprehend it.

Or just give a key to the fire department and the municipal waste department.

They should install permanent barriers that can stop the largest of trucks. Then simply close the whole area off to vehicle traffic. Within the district, the only vehicles allowed are bicycles, cargo bikes, and small golf carts. You bring in deliveries by bicycle or other small electric vehicle. People living there can park their vehicles a few block away in lots located outside the pedestrian-only zone. Trash can hauled by cart a few blocks and then transferred to regular trucks.

We have zero problem organizing logistics like these for every shopping mall in the country. Yet somehow it become impossible the moment the shopping mall no longer has a roof on it.

Ok. Here's a crazy idea. We just...stop with the street cleaning and trash collection. First, pass a law that everything must be sold in biodegradable containers. Then, just let things lay wherever they are dropped! Over time, like archaeological sediment, all the trash dumped in the French Quarter will slowly compact, decompose, and turn into soil, thus raising the elevation of the ground. As the French Quarter is already one of the highest elevations in the city, this increased sediment will flow downhill, gradually raising the elevation of the entire city. Eventually, they won't even need the dyke system anymore, as the whole city will be raised well above sea level! The city will be like one of those ancient Mississippian mound building cultures. Except this mound will mostly be composed of piss, vomit, and plastic beads.

So $10 per mile? He could have taken the ridiculous Uber Black service (where you get picked up in a fancy black SUV or town car) as his only mode of transport during that time, and he still would have come out ahead. And we wouldn't have had to drive!

I mean, I could absolutely imagine someone doing this. They're probably a well meaning person, but probably not of great intelligence. They're driving through the desert one day, absolutely thirsty. They're desperate for a drink, about to pass out. Then they remember in their delerium - "Wait! There's some water in the car's battery! I could drink some of that and be fine! I'll just drain it while the car is running (so I don't have to restart it), keep the engine running, and be able to make it to the next town. My God, I'm a genius. I'm saved!" They then proceed, in the manner of unique creativity only the ignorant possess, to find a way to drain the fluid from the battery of a running car engine. And they have a big old swig of that battery water.

What would be required for this? All that it would take is for someone to just have very poor chemistry knowledge. Someone sees a fluid that looks like water, and they assume it's water. Maybe they figure a car battery works like a potato battery and there's just water in the cell. Even if the "water" is clearly foul, maybe someone would assume it's just dirty water, but still water. (As in, not an acid.)

Or, maybe they even know it's not something you should regularly drink. They know there's some fluid called "battery acid" in the battery. But they also know that soda is acidic, and that is safe to drink. So maybe battery acid is OK in small amounts? Just how strong does an acid have to be before you can't safely drink it? Maybe they could just try a small quantity, maybe about a spoonful? Surely that would be fine....

Those on the bottom 10% of the IQ distribution don't deserve to die. Those who failed high school chem don't deserve to drink battery acid.

When planning public health or public safety interventions, you have to balance between cost and effectiveness. For example, imagine some new car widget that will increase automobile safety. You're a regulator trying to decide whether to mandate them on all new vehicles. You run the numbers; you want to balance the increased vehicle price against the projected lives saved. You run the numbers and find that this will cost $1 billion per life saved. Probably not worth mandating them. It's not that those lives aren't worth saving, but there are more cost effective ways to save lives. We could tax everyone the same money they would spend buying these devices, and then use this money to expand Medicare eligibility. Or we could mandate some other vehicle safety device. The number of lives saved is always balanced against the cost of an intervention. The value of a life is infinite; the number of dollars available to save lives is finite.

But printing on a battery? The manufacturers already print a labels on them. It costs tiny fractions of a penny per battery to add the safety warnings. Even if it only prevents a handful of deaths or serious injuries over a decade, the cost is so low we might as well do it. There's something like 14 million new vehicles sold in the US each year. Imagine over ten years that's 140 million vehicles. Let's say it costs a penny to include a warning label on each battery. That's a cost of $1.4 million over an entire decade.

I would say in that case, if even a single life is spared over that decade, if only a single living person is saved from the reaper...Then it is worth it. Hell, that's probably even a fair amount to prevent a life-altering injury. If even one person per decade is stupid enough to drink battery acid, and this warning will prevent it, then it is worth doing!

Yup. Raise the income cap. That's all you have to do.

The last time Social Security was majorly reformed was back in the 1980s. They did it specifically to handle the pressures the Baby Boomers would be putting on the system. They set it on a path then, that while not as progressive as anyone on the left would like, was financially sustainable. But when planning something like that, it's a big demographic puzzle. When trying to plan a system for decades into the future, you have to assume a certain population pyramid and income distribution. They set the income cap then at a level where 90% of the income earned in the country would be subject to Social Security tax. We've had similar economic growth to what they estimated; we're not poorer, in terms of raw GDP, than we should be. What's changed is the income distribution. More of the nation's income is earned by those at the top. So now only 80% of the income or so earned is subject to the tax. In reality, we should just eliminate it entirely. Let all income be subject to it. If that ends up with billionaires paying a fortune in to Social Security and receiving a relative pittance of benefit in return, so be it.

People have different circadian rhythms on average as they age. We simply associate the pattern of those middle aged and older with virtue. Middle age and old people raise children, and they teach children that the sleep patterns of the elders are wise and just, while the sleep patterns of the youth are slovenly and sinful. Our entire concept of "early" is defined by what middle age and older people simply adapt to naturally without force or effort. Older folks tend to wake up at a certain hour, so we just declare that the hour everyone is expected to wake at.

The most insidious form of this temporal bigotry is how we typically force high school students to start school at the earliest time of day of any school students, even though high school students have the latest natural waking time of any age group. We value "teaching lessons" to our youth more than we do actually teaching them. So we drag them out of bed at an unnaturally early hour so that they can make class at 7 AM. We then berate and shame them for being sleepy and inattentive in the unnaturally early classes we require them by law to attend.

And I say all this as someone in their late 30s who naturally wakes up pretty early. From an evolutionary perspective, it makes a great deal of sense why we have people with different natural sleep and wake times, and for those preferences to shift with age. We spent several hundred thousand years living as small groups huddled around campfires. Part of warding off predators is having people on watch through the night. Having people who don't have to fight to stay awake late into the night makes that guard duty so much easier. In prehistory, I imagine the young adults staying up late into the night after the adults are asleep, enjoying some time to themselves, tending the fire, and watching for predators. The last of the youth to go to sleep would trade off with the earliest rising of the elders. We are a social species. We are evolved to live in groups. And a group is more effective with a diversity across many characteristics, including sleep/wake times.

But we've forgotten this fact and turned a simple consequence of evolution into a moral issue. And for that, we as a society abuse our youth and force them to wake at unnaturally early hours for the sake of puffing up the sense of moral superiority of the middle aged and older. Collectively, our relation to early waking times, and especially how we use it to collectively abuse our children, is one of our greatest sins as a culture.

Ah yes, fighting for people's civil rights is "virtue signalling." And they wouldn't be able to automatically pass something the next session, as the filibuster still exists. Nothing is getting passed without some cooperation from the Democrats. They have the ability to hold the line, they're just choosing not to.

Just how many people are you willing to let die in order to get some paychecks through? They literally voted to let several hundred children die. Just how many people are you willing to sacrifice in the name of political expediency?

For historical comparison, do you realize how Jewish people there were in pre-Nazi Germany? They were about 1% of the population, right around the figure for the percentage of the population in the US that are trans. Centrists then made the exact same calculus you're using. "Oh, there aren't that many of them. We can compromise on their rights, they don't really matter anyway."

Is there really a difference? If Democrats are willing to vote for anti-trans bills, then on that issue, they're no different than Republicans. At that point, they're just saying, "well, we support extermination, but we have pronouns in our bios, so it's OK!"

You refuse to vote for the bill that targets a minority group. Even if that means shutting down the government or delaying a crucial defense funding bill. Ultimately it would be the Republicans' fault for attaching extraneous shit to the must pass defense bill.

If Democrats will vote with Republicans and not fight against them, then there is no difference between the two.

I see PG&E mentioned a lot, but as an outsider, I have to ask, are they just being used as a scapegoat? If you have a tinder-dry forest, yes, the most likely spark is going to be from a faulty electrical line. But sooner or later, that forest is going to burn. If not by an electric wire, then by a lightning strike, random static discharge, sparks from a bit of metal dragging on a car, or some random idiot with a cigarette butt.

I'm honestly curious if there has been any kind of study on this. Do acres near PG&E lines statistically burn at higher rates than those not nearby these lines?

Sure. You're correct, but irrelevant. That's why I said "in an ideal world." In an ideal world, what kind of actions could the US have taken immediately after the Cold War to make the world better for everyone? Obviously the Cold War was more about advancing capitalism than advancing democracy. Hence us forming alliances with dictators, as I mentioned. But in an ideal world, with capitalism triumphant around the globe, the US would have at least used its hyperpower status to push hard for democracy globally.

I voted for the Dems in 2024. And honestly, I wish I hadn't. I was disgusted by their stance on Palestine, but I figured at least they would support trans people against conservative extermination efforts.

For my vote and vocal support, how did Dems reward me? Democrats rewarded me by voting for the first anti-LGBT federal law in 30 years, willingly sentencing several hundred trans children to death for cheap political points. All Republicans had to do was attach their persecution bill to a "must pass" defense spending bill, and Democrats folded like a house of cards. And they also refused to stand to defend the first trans person elected to the House. I have no doubt that this pattern will continue. To laws that must pass to fund the government, Republicans will just attach one rider after another that strips my civil rights away one at a time. And Democrats will tit tit and say, "well, I really wish we could prevent Republicans from murdering innocent people, but this bill simply has to pass, so our hands are tied."

Even AOC, who was one of the few people to say anything in defense of the new trans representative, didn't have the courage to actually stand up for trans people directly. She said bathrooms bans were bad because cis women might get caught up in them. And they demonstrated this complete surrender to fascism before Trump even came into office.

In the end, I did not get the satisfaction of a clean conscience. I held my nose and voted for a pro-genocide party, because I hoped they would at least stand up for my rights. But I didn't get even that. Instead I got a party that is perfectly willing to throw people like me to the wolves, as long as Republicans give them a fig leaf excuse to use. Honestly, I wish I hadn't voted for Kamala. Democrats aren't going to stand up for my rights, and I still have the guilt of voting pro-genocide on my conscience.

I suppose it should have been pretty obvious. Dems were willing to throw one minority group to the wolves for political expediency, why wouldn't they do it to another?

Yes, there were a whole series of things that could have been done. But looking back, it seems obvious now that helping China to get rich was a poor decision. A wealthy and more industrialized country is simply a far more serious geopolitical threat than a poorer one. I'm glad that the Chinese population have been able to pull themselves up out of poverty. But in terms of our own national security and the security of democratic countries everywhere, enriching such a brutal dictatorship was a terrible mistake. Without its economic explosion, China wouldn't today be on the brink of potentially invading Taiwan, and they wouldn't be serving as the main economic backer for Russia's war in Ukraine. In our world, wealth is power, and power is wealth. And by trading with the CCP, we magnified their power many fold.

Dual vector foil.

As an American, I can think of a few things we shouldn't have done. The whole debacle in Iraq comes to mind. A few trillion dollars pissed away. Thousands of American lives lost. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead. All for Iraq just to end up a puppet state of Iran. We've also destabilized the international system, particularly the trade system, that we built up in the first place. We've repeatedly violated our own trade agreements so many times it's not even funny anymore. How could we have used this unique historical opportunity for the betterment of the world? Here's one idea.

In an ideal world, the US would have used its hyperpower status to truly advance democracy around the world. We would have taken this opportunity to once and for all finally drive the last nail in the coffin of global authoritarianism and dictatorship. In our timeline, we looked past the CCP's human rights abuses and let China into the global trade system. We did this because our corporations got greedy and wanted to make bank in the Chinese market. We gave in to their greed at the expense of global human rights and our own long term national security. Now we've turned the government of China (which has morphed into some horrible amalgamation of communism and fascism) into the most capable manufacturing power on the planet. It didn't have to be this way. We could have told China, and everyone else. "Democracy first, then trade. We're only interested in trading with and enriching fellow free nations."

After the Cold War ended, the US was ascendant. The economic power of us and our allies was unmatched. The US, Europe, and allies dominated the world economically and militarily. Imagine in a different timeline if we had used that power to peacefully advance democracy worldwide. Imagine if after the Cold War, the US international policy became:

"We allied with dictatorships when necessary during the Cold War to contain the USSR. That is no longer needed. From now on, we're happy to open up markets and trade with anyone, as long as they are a liberal democracy. You want to join the global economy and get rich? Give your people freedom. Petty dictatorships can remain poor and undeveloped, thus limiting the amount of damage they can cause outside their borders. We'll give food and medical supplies to nations in crisis, even those ruled by dictators. But full economic integration will only be done with fellow democracies. We will not trade with tyrants."

That is the kind of visionary approach that a hyperpower like the US could have taken to really make the world better. You don't need to invade countries to have an influence on them. And this really does represent a lost opportunity. The time immediately after the fall of the USSR was the moment when the free and democratic countries were at the absolute peak of their economic power. But since we allowed China into the WTO and opened up trade with them, we have created an industrial juggernaut that is ruled by an absolute dictatorship.

At the end of the Cold War, the democracies could have banded together and used their utter dominance of the global economy to push for further democratization around the world. There just wasn't anyone else to trade with for many advanced consumer and industrial goods. But now? That kind of strategy wouldn't work. If all the democracies tomorrow insisted on trading only with other democracies, the various dictatorships around the world can now just keep trading with China.

TL:DR: After the fall of the USSR, democracy as a global force was at the absolute historic peak of its power, both economically and militarily. If the US and allies had really brought their full economic and cultural power to bear, they could have attempted a last final push to ensure democracy reigned everywhere. Even without invading anyone, we could have used that immense economic power to at least attempt to throw down the last of the dictators and to bring democracy to every man, woman, and child on the planet. Instead, we tried to line our own pockets and ended up creating a monster by turning communist China into the workshop of the world.

I like a fence. But if you're going to do it, don't make it look like a damn prison. Whatever happened to a nice brick wall with some pointy ironwork on top of it? It serves the same function as a fence topped in razor wire. But it provides that function without making the place look like a prison. I know it's way more expensive than a chain link fence. But damn. What is the value of the damage done to the souls of all the students that have to go to school behind razor wire. All schools should be surrounded by big brick walls with pointy bits of cast iron on them. Now it's classy and doesn't feel like the fucking state penitentiary.