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Not every time, or at least the solution doesn't always result in everyone surviving. The Mayan civilization, for instance, is thought to have exhausted their local resources and fallen apart as a result.

It's a story as old as humanity. There's many examples of humans exhausting their nearby resources because they thought they were effectively infinite. Whether that's a forest, a food stock, a water source, or something else.

Most progressive folks I know are pretty disillusioned with the Canadian PM for being a Liberal and not at all a Leftist. His treatment of indigenous people in particular is something they've repeatedly pointed out as glaringly terrible.

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue.

There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient.

It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

I think I'm mostly just expressing frustration that this actually works. That anyone looks at that phrasing and says, "Yes, this makes sense."

Ok, so say that. Or connect them to "American Values" concretely somehow.

Because right now they are just saying their opponents are "un-American" which means whatever it needs to mean without actually saying anything of substance.

I know. I just... I keep hoping that by pointing out the obvious silliness of the phrase "American Values" that maybe, someone somewhere will read it and be like, "Huh, you know, maybe what I meant to say was, 'My values'...."

Celebrating nationalisation is a political view, and I think the parent poster wanted to use this as an opportunity to extend an olive branch/empathize with others who hold differing views.

Some social assistance programs are probably worth keeping, rather than converting to dollars. Here in the states, for instance, I received regular updates on what to expect as my child developed, what vaccines they should have, what exercise and nutrition needs they have, and when to see a doctor. That info was really useful, much more so than getting mailed a couple bucks.

Administration costs go way down. We're spending a ton on making sure that only the "right" people get benefits and policing the poor.

One thing I tell all my folks and mentees is to understand why they are pushing for promotion. Engineering promotions are different jobs. You'll be taking on different responsibilities and expectations, and blindly chasing a level bump just because the number of bigger can lead to bad outcomes.

Whether it's pay, prestige, interest in expanded scope, whatever... Make sure you know that motivates your drive for the promo.

Except we are seeing a mass movement in food service today of workers closing up shops for better pay. We're seeing businesses say there's a "labor shortage" (there isn't, they are just unwilling to pay a wage labor wants to work for.)

Something is stewing out there, and I expect to see some road bumps when covid is over.

FAANG companies also underpay their workers. It can simultaneously be the case that they pay their workers best in class wages AND those wages are less than the workers deserve. Apple has immense cash reserves built from the labor of their employees. That is essentially the difference between what value those employees generated for Apple and what they were paid. More of it should go out to the employees, and we should push to make the wages of workers at any company be higher percentage of the value they generate for that company.

It's not unnatural at all, or at least it's not any more unnatural than someone getting to keep a portion of your labor's profit just because they put the most money down when they started the company.

A workers co-op, for instance, splits all the profits between all the employees in an arrangement that is basically "we collectively produced profit X we all get an equal share of that profit."

While "unnatural" is the wrong word, imo, I think it's fair to say that it's "unfamiliar" to most folks and "uncommon" out in the world.

And furthermore, it's how it compares to the profits of the company. If an engineer is returning $500,000k annually in profit to a company from their work, and getting paid $75k of that, they are being exploited. (Or at the very least are undervaluing their labor.)

I've worked in games, I've worked out of games. The workers in games are absolutely being exploited because they think the work environment is unique.

And yes, there's something cool to see people at PAX or elsewhere praising a project you worked on. But saying people are making a tradeoff, or giving up salary to work on games is a defeatist attitude -- big game devs should be paying what big tech companies pay.

You should not have to give up pay to work in games, and it absolutely kills me every time I see an engineer claim that it's somehow noble to do so.

In the indie space, sure, pay is going to be weaker. But there are thousands working for Blizzard, Activision, EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. etc. etc. who are all being grossly underpaid for the value they bring to their company.

> should NOT be treated as an indicator for what "reasonable" pay looks like across the entire industry.

Hard disagree. The comparatively low salaries in other sectors are just that, below what workers should be earning. Things are fuzzier in the indie space, but companies like Blizzard, Activision, EA, Epic, Ubisoft, Rockstar, CDPR, etc. all pay low and absolutely rake in profits.

We should call worker exploitation what it is rather than calling fair compensation at FAANG companies "ridiculous".

It is productive. My local bike shop sells me bike parts I need, just not as conveniently or efficiently as Amazon.

The ruthless pursuit of efficiency as it's own goal is a trap. Squeezing out every societal optimization is a very engineering centric mindset. There are many, many times where the most efficient solution to a problem isn't the "best" one, and we need to collectively get better at recognizing when that's the case.

It's not just aesthetic value. Yes, there is aesthetic value but also there is the value of "People can afford to live and work here." A community that contains some shop owners, some office workers, some landscapers, etc. is a better community in my eyes.

> by being better at every aspect of the sale.

> I’d like to keep money in my community, but ...

It sounds to me like Amazon is not better at every aspect, you've identified one aspect right there. They are competing on, "Would you rather live in a cookie cutter franchise strip mall or a mom and pop commercial area?"

I'm willing to accept some inefficiencies and some frustrations if it means I've got a nice neighborhood of mom and pop stores.

Sometimes there's value in getting your hands dirty, in connecting with your local community, in having a sense of satisfaction from personally doing a good thing, in seeing how those less fortunate are struggling.

Not every problem is a pure efficiency maximization problem. There are intangibles to consider as well.

Sometimes you do just need bodies to move dirt or spread mulch or stuff envelopes or whatever. Obviously the phenomena you describe is real, but please don't write off volunteering as a whole.

There's no such thing as 'nudging' it into the sun. If you don't push hard enough, it will enter an orbit that coincides with earth's. And to push it hard enough you basically have to get it going away from earth at the speed earth orbits around the sun, which is quite fast.

Anything less, and it will be in an orbit that floats close to the sun then floats back up towards earth, more or less forever.

Musk's public persona is a nightmare, even if you only look at his public professional persona -- encouraging overwork, getting himself knowledgeable enough about a subject to fool laymen and investors but not deeply understanding it enough to provide reasonable estimates, a total disregard for safety of both his customers and his workers, and developing an unhealthy cult of personality.

I own a Tesla, I love SpaceX, I think Elon Musk is insufferable.

$50/week in food is doable, but it takes some careful planning. I'd be impressed at someone who could purchase fresh vegetables and fruit, balanced whole grain carbs, and a healthy protein of their choice, spices sufficient to produce a reasonable variety of meals, plus some occasional luxury food items for that budget.

Because not everyone has enough money to feed themselves in the US. Start from a position that everyone should have food assistance available if they want or need it.

Those office workers rely on a huge infrastructure of other services -- food preparation, cleaning, maintenance workers, parking lot attendants, etc. etc.

The people who work those jobs should have the same access to their worksites as anyone else. Our willingness to tell people who make less money they should just "live farther away" and have longer commutes is awful. No, we should fix our cities so that we support a range of incomes and workers in one place.

Means testing in social services is such a terrible idea. It creates nothing but perverse incentives like you describe. Programs like food stamps should be available to everyone who wants them. I don't care if a billionaire uses food stamps, they still need to eat. If too many rich people use the program, tweak tax rates until it balances out.

It's a waste of our time to go through and double check that only those that 'deserve' a handout get one. It makes everything less efficient, creates bad incentives, and builds a social stigma around the programs. ("Oh, that program is only for really poor people. I'm not really poor, so I shouldn't use it.")

In English, it can mean doing it. "I wanted to split the check, but he insisted on picking up the bill." For instance, could mean that the person paid the whole bill or that they are putting up a strong resistance.

It's unfortunately ambiguous.

> some people will pause before judging definite rape for described situation where girl accepts invitation to sleep in the same airbnb, without anybody else, with single guy, bringing bottle of wine,

None of those things even remotely imply consent for a sexual advance. Those are all things that should be fine for anyone of any gender to do together without there being fear of a sexual assault.

Anyone who looks at that list and thinks that it's ok to have unwanted sexual intercourse because they happened to have a bottle of wine in an AirBNB I'm not sure I want to associate with.