refurb

The system would be gamed by the politicians.

Insert language you know will never get enough votes

Don’t strike out but add language to make it useless

Plus the bill sponsor often makes changes others ask for, so the true author isn’t noted

It would be a mess and ignored by the public after a while

People keep thinking “healthy” politics is a lack of dissent. I hear this all the time from people.

When I lived in Singapore I heard how lucky they were to live in a country where there wasn’t much disagreement (the truth is it had been squeezed out of the population)

Canadians can’t help it. They’ve been spoon fed their whole lives whenever they complain that “yeah but we’re not the US!” (even if the US does better on that particular issue)

As a former drug discovery scientist I agree with the “small help” conclusion.

Find “potential leads” is something we did plenty of with computational chemistry. We’d get leads that we a “slam dunk” and they’d fail horribly in clinical trials.

Finding leads is easy, finding leads that reliably pan out in the lab is not

You’re basically agreeing with me.

You put your family’s needs on the same footing as your own. And you put those two needs far above people outside your family.

That’s exactly my point.

People sometimes act in the good of everyone, usually when the cost isn’t high. But otherwise they act in benefit of themselves or their group, often at the expense of the out group.

You don’t need capitalism for that to happen.

Your reply had nothing to do with my comment. Your example is not even a food, but rather an addictive drug.

Reading comprehension is important!

> those foods are altered in ways to make them literally irresistible. This happens when companies use a combination of salt, sugar and fat to create foods that overstimulate the taste buds — and yet are designed to never quite leave you feeling satisfied

This seems entirely made up. Are you telling me food companies test their food for "never feeling satisfied"?

It's almost like cities are good for single young people, and suburbs are good for families!

The best examples of enshitification are in airlines and electronics. Those are highly competitive markets where manufacturers are free to charge high prices for high quality, but they realize customers won't buy it.

The evidence is all around you. You just have to open your eyes.

Sure humans are cooperative, but but it's not an either/or scenario. Humans are often incredibly selfish at times, and even if not selfish are often focused on benefit for themselves.

And my point is that it's not unique to capitalism. Even prior to capitalism and under communism, humans are highly focused on benefit for themselves, even at the expense of others.

> Capitalism is good at driving down prices for consumer goods, also great at extracting rents from essentials (housing, medicine, education, etc). You gain on trinkets and lose on the things that make life worth living.

I find it funny when capitalism is blamed for rent extraction.

First off, extracting profit is not unique to capitalism. It happen in the Soviet Union as well, just on the black market. Even in the legal market workers would "sell" things they had control over for personal benefit. It's not like this disappears with other economic systems - it's a core human behavior to do things that benefit yourself.

Second, almost all of the things you listed - housing, medicine, education - are rent extractions not because of capitalism, but because of government regulations that allowed rent extraction. If people could build as many houses as they want, treat patients without jumping through the AMA quota hoops or charge a tuition that students can actually afford (and not backstopped by the government), none of this rent extraction would happen. We have plenty of examples of those economic sectors where prices are much more reasonable.

Enshitification is just price conscious consumers willingly trading quality for price.

If it actually hurt companies they would stop doing it

When I lived in the suburbs I knew all my neighbors. You’d just naturally run into people around the neighborhood.

Once I moved to the city I didn’t know my neighbors. People kept to themselves or the turnover was high.

The adoption of CNC machine clearly shows that it isn’t true that metalworking shops don’t plan for the future.

Californians were seeing their property taxes increase by thousands of dollars each year.

No narrative spread needed. Voters could figure it out on their own

Was it your intention to reply to a point I didn't make or was it your lack of understanding that got us here?

> You really find it hard to believe that profit making companies that engineer food would engineer food for profit?

That's not what I said is it?

I said "I said I find it hard to believe food scientists are devising addictive food".

Clearly they are trying to make their food taste food (LOL, do you want them to make it taste bad?).

There doesn't have to be any conspiratorial evil food scientists to get where we are.

Most of the “chemicals” in so-called ultra-processed food aren’t added so customers overeat, they’re added to improve things like shelf-life or product quality (modified starch thickeners).

I’d find it hard to believe there are evil food scientists in big food companies who are nefariously designing food for overeating.

What is more likely is they are creating food that taste good, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Now if the claim is they work towards this goal without much concern about things like sugar content or glycemic index, I could believe that.

But at the same time nobody thinks eating a whole bag of five servings of Doritos is a healthy food choice. If you’re designing good tasting food and assuming people will eat one serving as a part of a healthy diet, then no nefarious goals are required.

It wasn't that at all. Californians were protesting the high taxes in CA. Prop 13 (which included commercial building tax relief) was voted in by 2/3s.

It had nothing to do with Reagan or Jerry Brown. They were just responding to what voters wanted.

The executive has been kept in check. How many of Trump EOs have been overturned?

If the Constitution is violated, then sue in court (as has been done). If the court agrees with the EO, then they don’t think the Constitution is violated.

It’s not unconstitutional because you don’t like the outcome

I have educated myself and having agencies who make their own independent decision about implementation would be less democratic than one under the control of those elected by the people.

1. The President has ultimate authority over the executive and how money is spent. And the President is not forced to spend money on “fraud, waste and abuse”. That’s in the Constitution and legal code.

2. The President has authority over placing judges, as per the Constitution. Every President puts judges they want in, that’s how it’s supposed to work.

3. See point #1

You seem to think the system failed because you don’t understand the powers the Executive has

You’re using “whataboutism” wrong. Take a look at the definition as a refresh.

And the hyperbole doesn’t help. Federal law enforcement is not “kidnapping” anyone, they are detaining them as is their power under immigration laws.

And if they didn’t get doxxed they wouldn’t need masks.

It’s fine if you want open borders, but your hyperbole makes it hard to take your arguments seriously.

The system has not failed just because someone you dislike get elected.

That’s the part about having a mature attitude towards democracy.

So unelected people determine how the government is run? How is that democratic?

Seems like European would benefit more from an inherited wealth tax than an entrepreneurial wealth tax.

Europe could benefit a lot from breaking the stranglehold of old money.

I agree, no scam here.

When I look at an ingredients labels I assume it’s listed by order of quantity, but it tells you nothing about the total amount.

You could have two ingredients listed but you don’t know if it’s 99% first ingredient, 1% second or 50.1% first and 49.9% second.

That’s why you look at the nutritional label

What do you mean “shell companies”? Most Delaware corporations don’t hide their identities.

And yes, the legal process is advantageous in DE because the courts have a massive body of prior law. Decisions are made quickly. It doesn’t mean the courts routinely rule for corporations.

You’re falling for the fallacy of “if I can’t see it must not be happening”.

Not to mention if it were made public, how could it be done without exposing the technology?

“US govt sees massive methane emissions”

“How?”

“Uhh, satellites.”

“Which ones?”

The people running the government are the same ones running it 4 years ago. It’s only a handful at the very top that change.