Factorium

Serbia's mistake was proposing this via law, instead of just forcing the population to track themselves with COVID check-ins and then tapping into the data:

https://theconversation.com/police-access-to-covid-check-in-...

Japan's population peaked in 2009 at 128.5million:

https://www.populationpyramid.net/japan/2009/

And in 2021 its only 2% lower than that.

2009 fertility rate: 1.37

Today: 1.42

So, it is improving.

Fertility is negatively correlated to IQ:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028960...

"There were strong negative correlations found between national IQ and three national indicators of fertility."

This will resolve itself naturally: as populations fall, housing and land becomes much cheaper, and wages rise. These are major factors predicting fertility rates in the West.

However that natural feedback loop will be disconnected if Governments worldwide are permitted to import millions of people to replace the populations.

A new iPhone with USB-C would prompt me to buy that model brand new, instead of the 3 year old used models I normally upgrade to. Could be a good sales boost.

Given the extreme wealth and aging condition of baby boomers, I feel like we are going to see a lot of money dumped into for-profit drugs and health services designed to 'counter' their normal mechanisms of aging.

You could argue that society-wide COVID lockdowns and forced vaccinations, in reaction to a virus which is really only driving excess deaths in that generation, would never have been supported if that cohort was smaller or less influential.

Valve are definitely not user-centred. They are profit centred. Valve provide no subsidised hardware (PC gamers still need to supply their own), and charge indie developers 30% commissions, a regressive 'tax' compared to the 20% they charge AAA.

Per-employee, Valve is the most profitable company in America, and Gabe Newell the 97th richest American. They got there with forced exclusives (Half Life 2 could only be activated on Steam) and simply being first to market. They are no longer even bothering to curate their storefront.

We need to ban polyester. It sheds microplastic fibers, and its coated with hormone-disrupting flame retardants.

When you search 'baby blanket' on Amazon, 6 of the 8 top results are made of polyester.

While we're at it, we should also ban all hormone-disrupting chemical additives (PFAS etc.) from being used in products or packaging that have direct contact with humans, human food or water, or can expect to be deposited into the environment (eg. fire extinguishers, ski wax).

We should probably also mandate international standard sizes of clear and dark-green glass for use in food packaging, to make re-use easier (eg. Pepsi should be able to re-use a 500ml standard glass beverage container for Coke or Beer).

The political and military 'elite' of the USA have been compromised. If there is a hot war with China, it will be one that America has been pre-arranged to lose, as part of a transition in hegemony.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/09/21/dou... Joe Biden and son are corrupt

https://www.dailynews.com/2021/09/19/patriot-or-traitor-mill... The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said openly he would coordinate with the Chinese against America

The concept of nations bribing individuals to sway World Wars occurred in the last one:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/mi6-spain-200m-br...

"MI6 spent the present-day equivalent of more than $200m bribing senior Spanish military officers, ship owners and other agents to keep Spain out of the second world war"

Spain entering WW2 on the Axis side would have meant the Allies would be completely locked out of the Mediterranean, and probably changed the course of history. Bribing foreign government officials yields great ROI!

History has other examples of Autocratic competitors using Liberal nations' Democratic procedures against them:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto

"The liberum veto was a major cause of the deterioration of the Commonwealth political system... when foreign powers bribed Sejm members to paralyze its proceedings, and resulted in the Commonwealth's eventual destruction and the partition of Poland"

The State Premiere of Victoria, home to the city (Melbourne) with the world's longest COVID lockdown, signed secret deals to partner with China for infrastructure development:

https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/paul-murray/frightening-s...

This is a country that America has just agreed to share nuclear technology and submarines with...

At what point does Apple just skip a year?

The goats are 'free' but require expensive fencing and supervision. Otherwise they'll just wander off and eat the tastier food crops or household plants.

Goat meat and milk processing is not as automated as it is for cattle, chicken, pigs.

Free-range goats with a GPS-based pain collar could be a solution.

According to this UK COVID Risk Calculator:

https://qcovid.org/Calculation

An average healthy White British male of 66 years (retirement age) has a hospitalisation risk of 1 in 831; death risk of 1 in 2786.

By contrast the yearly risk of death in that age bracket generally, from any cause, is 1 in 42:

http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html

COVID is accelerating deaths from existing comorbidities or very old age; based on this data it is not felling healthy workers.

Smokers and the Obese save Governments money on healthcare costs, by dying earlier:

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/05/health/05iht-obese.1.9748...

This study only included healthcare costs, and so the savings would thus be even greater when considering pensions.

"On average, healthy people lived 84 years. Smokers lived 77 years and obese people 80 years.

The healthy group cost $417,000, the obese $371,000, and smokers $326,000."

Western societies should just ban the purchase of cryptocoins by deactivating the fiat onroads - it will provide a necessary boost post-pandemic from reduction in the ransomware attacks, savings in electricity and chip waste from mining, reallocating tech talents to productive areas of the economy, and making money laundering (including sanction evading) more difficult.

Sure, the coins will keep trading in Belarus or El Salvador or somewhere, but at a fraction of the value, and the overall objective will be achieved.

What about building huge solar plants in Western Sahara and Morocco? The Moroccan Government seems pretty friendly and stable.

If we then configure all our electric cars to charge during the day, and discharge from 6pm onwards, we can address a lot of the evening peak.

The core problem is that the interest rate is far below the inflation rate. You have to get your money out of the bank into various risky schemes.

I've ordered from Amazon Germany and have occasionally left justified 1-star reviews in English. Amazon took these reviews down but I can see they leave 5-star English reviews up.

Its not just these brands that are fooling with the review system.

You can make a better living as a tradesperson:

1. Start earning money right away as an apprentice. No massive student debt.

2. Live outside of high-COL cities.

3. Skills valuable everywhere, instead of specific industries (eg. finance jobs only in certain cities).

4. Optimise/minimise your own taxes.

5. Housing is our single biggest expense in life, so build it yourself and save.

6. Easy to hire employees and start a medium-sized business if you want.

Maybe men are just 'smarter' and have realised this?

Wages started to diverge from productivity at about the same time as the USA opened up to non-Western immigrants in 1965:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_and_Nationality_Ac...

"The act greatly increased the total number of immigrants as well as the share of immigrants from Asia and Africa."

Immigrants from poor countries are easier to exploit, and will accept lower wages/standard of living, because their 'new life in the new world' is still superior to their homeland.

Actually, smokers and obese actually save Governments money on healthcare and pension costs, because they die earlier:

https://taxfoundation.org/new-study-shows-smokers-and-obese-...

"According to the research, a person of normal weight costs on average £210,000 over their lifetime, a smoker just £165,000 and an obese person £187,000."

The hardware is great, but the software ecosystem is hamstrung by the 30% commissions for apps.

1) The ratio of people with a tertiary degree is probably too high. In past decades, only about the top 25% had university degrees:

https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/files/images/graph_month-stat_...

2) Fertility is heavily influenced by the availability of housing. Without immigration, house prices will fall and wages will rise, providing a boost to fertility until the population equalises.

https://www.nber.org/digest/feb12/impact-real-estate-market-...

With mass immigration you shortcut that, and simply end up replacing the original population, probably with negative overall effects if the incoming population is not genetically (average IQ, predisposition to violence) or culturally (respect for women etc.) aligned.

If you permanently reduce immigration, including deporting unauthorised migrants, you can achieve both of those things.

Given the cost of land and building, we should consider Western nations 'full' and only allow immigration 'swaps' from other highly developed countries.

We need Government regulation. Specifically, to not display the # of 'likes', friends, followers and other similar metrics publicly on each page.

Remove this metric and you remove the major gamification/psychological element.

If French society is anything like Danish society, migrants from certain regions will use more in Government services than they will contribute in taxes:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00148-017-0636-1

"Immigrants from Western countries have a positive fiscal impact, while immigrants from non-Western countries have a large negative one"

Its not necessarily smart, these people will go on to impose large welfare, pension, healthcare burdens on the host society.

Its easy for the French political elite to sign laws like this, but the social and economic burden of these decisions are borne by the lower classes.

Its much more likely that this is a decision to add an extra 12,000 Macron voters to the rolls.

This is why we need to consider energy demand, as well as supply.

Specifically, if we had a whole continent's worth of electric cars charging during the day to soak up excess solar production (8am - 6pm);

And allowed them to offload the same energy back into the grid from 6pm - 8am.

To deal with the duck curve: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sam-Milshtein/publicati...

The simplest way to solve this is to mandate EV charging points at all workplaces and commuter parking lots, and require all new EVs include the UI and functionality necessary to upload to the grid interactively, and adjust regulations to actually allow and encourage that.

We could also build giant solar farms in Morocco and Western Sahara, a comparatively stable and friendly part of Northern Africa, where peak solar times conveniently align with the evening peak of Central Europe.

The major issue is regulation, which is not designed for things like Small Modular Nuclear Reactors:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

We could be building hundreds of these across Europe, placing them close to small cities and using the waste heat for district heating.

Bangladesh population 1950: 38 million

Bangladesh popuation 2020: 165 million

https://www.populationpyramid.net/bangladesh/2019/

Fortunately Bangladesh has made major improvements in giving women access to education and contraception, but they still probably need a 1-child policy, until the population is back down to sustainable levels.