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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • He is not explaining current world events, he is making one simple statement. The why has no relevance to the truth of that one statement (as far as I can tell). It seems to me you don’t like the statement, so you try to bring in irrelevant points instead of accepting it. This is the kind of irrational thinking that makes people vote for Trump. I am not saying this to insult you, all humans are prone to this kind of thinking. I say it so you can strive to improve.

    Of course, if I am mistaken, then just ignore this.







  • Approval voting absolutely sucks. Not for any mathematical reason, it may very well give us the best results mathematically, but for psychological reasons. If you give approval to both the safe (popular) candidate and your preferred one, then you won’t feel you have expressed your preference once the popular candidate wins. If you only approve your preferred candidate and an opposing (very undesirable) candidate wins, you again regret not voting tactically. In either case, you justifiably have no confidence in the results.

    Also, as a candidate, how do you get people to not mark other candidates in addition to you? The answer is you don’t run on your own positions but attacking opponents. Not very healthy for democracy.

    I need to think more on STAR.




  • I immediately dislike calling it commerce for 3 reasons:

    1. Most people will not know what I mean so I will have to explain every time
    2. Commerce is an existing word that means something different so it will still be confusing in a different direction
    3. I, on principle, don’t like abandoning words because some dumb group(s) appropriate them and try to change their meaning

    I think I will try saying “regulated capitalism” from now on and see if it works better.




  • CGP gray very specifically refers to democracies as well and explains how things like farm subsidies are used to buy votes. Maybe re-watch the videos.

    And yes, CGP gray also indirectly explains why Marxists kept pumping resources into the government, police and bureaucracy. (Clarification: CGP Gray never mentions Marxists specifically, he just explains why leaders have to funnel resources to areas that help them stay in power.) It is inevitable in a system where you concentrate power in a limited group of people.

    That is why distributing power between large number of independent capitalists and voters is the system that so far worked best, although still very far from perfect.

    As long as humans behave like humans and are in charge, the utopian communism is as realistic as wizards in flying castles.


  • It is the opposite. In capitalism, there is at least a chance a good person has some power because power is distributed, not only held by governments. There are multiple examples in the main post. Even better examples are European countries where the government and businesses hold each other in check instead of govt being bought off legally like in the US.

    In communism, the way power is distributed ensures corrupt people raise to the top. See an amazing video “rule for rulers” by CGP gray for a simplified explanation how that corruption works and why a good person can’t hold power.



  • That’s not how this works. The rule can’t stop you as a private person. You can still post bot reviews.

    It will apply to businesses, which don’t have the right to remain silent or against searches. If they suspect a business is breaking the rules, they can subpoena the employees, computers and bank records to check if they are breaking the rule. And if they think the employees would risk jail time for perjury or destruction of evidence to protect their employer, they can just raid the offices and seize the computers.



  • Almost, yes. It should be close enough as an estimate.

    If you want to be precise, one thing you want to be careful about is that not every fuel releases the same amount of energy per kg of CO2. So you should be comparing to the CO2 released by whatever is being replaced by the biofuel (most likely fossil fuel), not the biofuel itself.

    Another consideration is how much CO2 is released by the production of the biofuel compared to what it is replacing. Since farming equipment, transportation etc. all could produce CO2.


  • A very good question.

    It is a very common misconception that trees and plants just always absorb CO2. The Carbon © in CO2 does not just disappear when plants produce Oxygen (O2). Plants use it as material to grow themselves and their fruits. Once they are fully grown, they don’t really absorb any more. So if you burn a tree in a fireplace and grow a new tree in its place, the new tree will eventually re-capture all the CO2 burning the wood released as it grows. This works even better with fast growing plants used for biofuel. The CO2 released by burning biofuel is re-captured when you grow more plants to make more biofuel.

    So chopping down a forest to create fields is bad in the short term since it releases and does not recapture the CO2 from the trees, but is sustainable in the long term since you “recycle” the same Carbon.