magduf

>That's a nice anecdote but what happens when you try to dislodge a ruler with 300 years worth of experience, connections, and wealth? What happens when people have so much time to amass power that at some point you realize you, the younger generation, no longer stand any chance?

Wealth doesn't keep people in power; only power does. And power extends from the barrel of a gun. The only reason people with money stay in power is because there's a bunch of people who want to keep him there, and the populace under them either accept this, or aren't willing to take whatever risks are necessary to change this. History is full of revolutions where some ruler with lots of connections and wealth was deposed, violently if necessary. Just look at what happened to rich people during the French Revolution.

Well of course, values and prejudices are usually passed down through generations. But my point is: age isn't a very good indicator of progressiveness. Just look at the whole 20th century: back in the 1920s, there was huge social change, and a loosening of social mores. Then it all changed, and by the 40s-50s, things were much more conservative than before. The 60s-70s were the age of the hippies, and then that all went away with the 80s and the Reagan years.

People always seem to have some weird idea that progress will come if we can just get rid of the old people through aging and attrition, but this just isn't the case. New generations can bring progress or setbacks, and it's happened historically over and over.

Speaking of Neo-Nazis, how about the actual Nazis? Were they a bunch of old farts? No, at the time, they were all young people, led by people who weren't old at all (possibly middle-aged). They weren't preceded by generations of people who were even worse than themselves, in fact it was the opposite.

Finally, just look at the current US elections: the most progressive candidate, who others in his party think is too "radical" and "extreme", is one of the oldest.

Ok, so if we switch to glass for everything, how much extra fuel do we burn, and how much carbon do we pump into the atmosphere, to move all that extra weight around? Glass is really, really heavy compared to plastic. Does the savings from being able to easily reuse glass more than offset all that extra fuel burned? What about broken glass and recycling? Do we still not bother recycling the glass? Glass requires extremely high temperatures to create and form, far higher than plastic. Making those high temperatures means burning more fuel. If we're too stupid to recycle glass effectively, just like we are with plastic, then that means we need to create all virgin glass, and we also need a lot of sand to do it. From what I've read, the world is running out of usable sand.

>because old people that bitterly cling their views and (most importantly) their power eventually die off, freeing room for the new.

This is just wrong. My 80-year-old mother is far more progressive politically than many 20-35 year old men in this country. Remember the heavily armed Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville protesting the removal of Civil War statues? Those weren't elderly people.

Glass is inert and doesn't break down; anyone can pick up glass bottles that have been on the beach for decades, wash them out, and recycle them along with new glass.

Metal degrades slowly if it's ferrous (iron/steel), but that isn't environmentally harmful. And it can all be readily recycled.

No, it's politically untenable because people don't want to change their lifestyles significantly. At least in the US (since you're talking about SUVs and exurbs and long commutes), it's a democratic society: campaigning on a platform that you're going to drastically raise fuel prices to force everyone to move into the city (which is already extremely expensive, due to many other long-standing factors like bad zoning, NIMBYism, lack of multi-use (combined commercial/residential) spaces, etc.) will mean you simply won't be elected.

Re-use may be "preferred", but it just isn't practical most of the time. How do you reuse a plastic bottle? They're not fit to be sent back to the bottler and reused; they degrade much too quickly. Basically, to get away from plastic bottles, we'd have to go back to glass, and there's a lot of problems associated with those (high weight (more fuel consumption to transport), easy breakage, etc.).

Not everywhere, but Montana has a tiny, tiny fraction of the total population, and no large cities at all. In much of the country, for most of the population (which mostly lives in urban/suburban areas), it is as I described.

Roughly half of voters voted for this. Non-voters do not count in a democratic system. I'm not counting "people", I'm counting voters. Non-voters are quite simply irrelevant. If you don't make your voice heard, then you're implicitly allowing others to speak for you.

No, I don't think so. People can be extremely stubborn, yes, but sooner or later, reality is going to force them to make a change. No amount of stubbornness can change the laws of physics. Note that I am not claiming that things will get better for these stubborn people, in fact I'm claiming that things will get much, much worse for them when reality gives them a wake-up call, and there will be nothing they can do about it at that point because it'll be too late to fix things.

>there is no harm from taking synthetic thyroid hormone

Where are you getting this crazy idea? Have you ever known anyone who took it? I have two relatives (not biological) on synthroid and even small changes in doses have massive effects on their metabolism, tiredness, etc. Taking thyroid hormone when you don't need it is not harmless, just like any drug or hormone.

>>The US government does spend huge sums of money on healthcare. >Medicare and Medicaid are 21% and 16%

Ok, I misspoke there, but the US government does not spend anything on you if you don't qualify for one of these two programs.

Roughly half the country absolutely did vote for this President. Moreover, while the Electoral College system does give an edge to certain places, no one has ever made it a political issue to get this changed, so that means the majority is OK with the system remaining as-is. They've had well over 200 years to change it now...

>I'd argue that US parents are so keen on schools staying open because often their jobs depend on it. I expect it would be similar in Japan as well.

Why would it be similar in Japan? In Japan, children walk themselves to school (using public transit if necessary) as young as 6 years old. It's not like the US where parents can be thrown in jail for "child neglect" if their children don't have 24/7 adult supervision. I imagine that Japanese schoolkids can just stay at home if the schools are closed.

I honestly wonder why any country would want to host the Olympics. It costs an enormous amount of money, and I'm pretty sure that it's been found that the host country never really recoups that "investment"; instead the taxpayers fund the construction of a bunch of big facilities that are never used again. The world would be better off just having 2 permanent locations for the Olympics (summer and winter) and reusing them every time.

I'm sorry if this sounds really callous, but this virus (like most flu-like diseases) is going to mostly kill elderly people and others in very poor health. The "side" that voted for Trump is probably going to be hit harder by this virus.

Probably, but eventually something is going to break because reality doesn't care about peoples' political views or worldviews.

I don't really see the problem here. If the government has cut all the staff needed to respond effectively to a pandemic threat, causing the pandemic to be far, far worse than it would have been otherwise, this is just a case of the voting public getting exactly what they voted for. As a wise Frenchman once wrote, "every nation gets the government it deserves". This should be a lesson to voters in every democratic country about the dangers of electing incompetents to run your nation's government.

I had a problem a couple years ago where my test showed that I had hypothyroidism. My doctor wanted to immediately put me on sythetic thyroid hormone to adjust this. The problem is that I'm thin, athletic, and have no other indicators for risk of hypothyroidism.

I said no to the doctor, and had them do another test, which said I was just fine.

The US medical system is a complete disaster. Basically, the government doesn't pay for anything; only private insurers do. And they try to avoid paying for as much as they can get away with. On top of that, the actual cost of care is far, far higher than in other developed nations for the same procedures, due to many systemic problems.

>they would vote against their interest because 1) socialism is evil, and 2) "my team should win, no matter the policy".

If people are honestly this stupid, then why even bother polling them to see what policies they want? This is a serious question: if people don't bother voting based on policies they want, then why is that even important? If this theory of yours is true, then it really seems to call the voting population's basic intelligence into question, not to mention the fundamental idea of democracy itself. If the people are too utterly stupid to vote for their own best interests at least most of the time, then why wouldn't authoritarianism be a better system?

Honestly, I find it easier to believe that the polls are bad. I've seen way too many polls in my lifetime where the questions were manipulative, or just plain poorly worded or chosen. On top of that, the other problem with polls is that they only capture results from people who actually bother to respond to the polls, or are in a place where the pollsters are. Usually, when the latter is brought up, we're supposed to somehow believe that the pollsters have some great methodology that lets them determine what a larger population wants just by sampling a much smaller number of people in that population, but this is completely subject to bias and error. And finally, I point again to the 2016 election: predicting a winner is not as hard as asking if they want <thing x>. In this case, the poll is asking exactly the same thing as the election itself will: who do you plan to vote for? Asking about <thing x> is not as easy, because you can get wildly different results by asking the question differently. Do I want "Medicare for All"? Well, the answer might depend on many things, like how exactly it would be implemented. Is private insurance still allowed to exist as a supplement or alternative? Are non-citizens/"illegal aliens"/"migrants" (pick your term) covered? etc. You would probably get very different answers depending on those points in a large poll in America, so if you just ask a simple "do you want it? yes/no" question, that might not align at all with what actual candidates are proposing. Asking "who do you plan to vote for?" avoids that. And in the 2016 election, the polls were nowhere even close to the election results. That tells me the polls were either garbage, or rigged to try to influence the election.

>And if eating out is 2x eating in, it doesn't matter to most people if they can afford both.

Huh? Maybe in your country it's like that, but here in America it's more like 5x, unless you're eating fast-food garbage (and even that's probably 3x). It's expensive to eat out in this country, once you count the 20% for the stupid tip.

Ok, so where exactly do you find these super-trustworthy cleaning people who work for near-minimum wage but can be trusted not to steal your stuff? That's much easier said than done. And what do you do when these people you thought you had a "good relationship with" steal your stuff? It ends up being he-said-she-said because you just notice stuff missing one day, long after it's gone. I went through this when I was married and my wife insisted on hiring cleaning people; never again.

>When I first started dating my now wife I slept better than I've ever slept before. ... Since then with buying a house, moving, job changes, owning cats, and a litany of other stressors, my sleep quality has substantially diminished.

How could owning cats hurt your sleep quality? I have 3 of them and they're fine; they never bother me at night.

Buying a house, however, is really horrible for your stress level. Now that I'm no longer married and no longer own a house, I do find that I have far, far less stress in my life than back then. Being single, too, has been great for reducing stress. (The takeaway here is: don't marry the wrong person.)

Fly everyone to a nice vacation spot for a week, all expenses paid (and not counting against PTO).

It's probably much cheaper than the yearly cost of having a corporate office.

>There's two other benefits - get out of tipping culture

This is only a real problem in America.

This likely only works because Singapore is so dense that the food vendors are a very short walk from your home, on average. So you can just go walk around the corner and grab something, or grab something on your walk home from work. This isn't the case in many other places, and certainly not in America where everyone drives everyplace. (It is, however, frequently the case in Manhattan, which does have that density in places.)

What exactly is the point of using these expensive appliances and utensils to make a really nice meal, if it's going to be stone cold when you finally get it home to serve it? Or are you going to eat at the rental kitchen?

The rental kitchen for fancy meals is still pretty useless unless either 1) you live in a high-rise condo and it's in your building, a short elevator ride away from your home, or 2) you're going to eat at the rental kitchen.

Otherwise, you're going to make some really fancy meal, then pack it up, bring it home, and by the time you get home and unpack it and plate it, it'll be stone cold. What's the point of making fancy food if it's going to be cold when you eat it, or you have to microwave it?

This article is making claims about several polls that Americans supposedly want a bunch of things that very progressive Democrats (not just regular Democrats) want. It sounds to me like their polling methodology is severely flawed, because their poll results are completely different from our election results.

This reminds me of the 2016 election. All the poll results said that Hillary would easily win the election. So much for those polls.