They could certainly be replaced by the LLMs they’ve dumped billions into. A large chunk of middle management too.

Do you also blame black Americans for conflicts in Africa? Or do you only do only blame an entire ethnicity for conflicts on the other side of the world when it’s Jews?

Well it’s similar to what Churchill said about democracy… it’s a bad system but it’s better than all the others.

If you can put ideology aside and think in terms of economics, in many industries capitalism offers an efficient way of determining the an optimal price and quantity to produce considering the costs and value something brings. And it’s something that allows for industries to function without an excessive amount of centralized planning which will often get things wrong.

But it’s like a machine in a many ways. And like any machine it requires maintenance. Things like trust-busting, progessive taxation, regulations, and occasional stimulus are necessary to keep it running smoothly.

But once you bring ideology into it, it all becomes a shitshow. Some will argue capitalism is a perfect machine and any kind of maintenance on the machine will ruin it’s perfection. Others take any kind of maintenance on the machine as a sign the machine will inevitably fail and needs to be replaced entirely. But then we go back to the beginning where other systems have been tried and they’re worse. Charlatans, grifters, ideologues abound pushing people in every direct except for simply taking reasonable measures to keep the machine running smoothly. There’s an almost religious devotion towards arguing the either the machine is perfect or the machine is doomed to failure and not only should be replaced they should accelerate the failure so it can be replaced sooner.

Zealots from all sides demonize the mechanics that are simply keeping things running. A lot of emotional nonsense about this thing. But to an economist, it’s just a machine with both strengths and weaknesses. The functioning of the machine is well understood, and the other machines that have been tried didn’t really work.

It sucks when playing by the rules too.

Last game of monopoly we played strictly by the rules with four players. So I’m coming around the board and can know the the most likely outcome is that I’m going to land on a property with a hotel and go bankrupt. According to the rules I’d have to hand over all of my properties to that person that person just won the game even though there would still be three players. There’s nearly zero probability that someone with a big pile of cash that owns half the properties with hotels on a bunch of them already will ever lose.

So before rolling the dice, I sold all of my houses. Band made a couple of deals with the youngest family member in the game. First deal, I bought the electric company for all the money I had. Second deal, I sold all of my property (including the electric company) for $1 to that same player. Rolled the dice and as expected, landed on a property with a hotel. Handed over the $1 I had and I was out. This is all fine to do within the rules.

It actually made for an interesting game after that because the players left were evenly matched. But not everyone saw it that way so we never played again.

Really the properties should go back to the bank if someone goes bankrupt, otherwise a game with more than two people is effectively over as soon as the the first person goes bankrupt. Still nothing you can do about someone just setting up someone else to win by making a bad deal (whether intentionally or not).

It’s just kinda a shit game no matter what you do.

You’re not offering any alternatives.

Well the cops might be taking pics of a dead body the next day. So then they could say “yeah we probably should’ve responded to that one last night, but we just couldn’t risk that it might’ve been one of the 0.01% of these calls where it turns out it’s an internet swatting thing.”

Buy 'em out, boys!

Dude’s gotta feed the monkey. You could donate some money to him on patreon then he wouldn’t need to have an amazon affiliate link.

What do estimate the percentage of these calls are some internet loser swatting someone rather than it being a legitimate report of domestic violence? You may be underestimating the number of actual domestic violence situations where the police need to intervene be a few orders of magnitude.

Someone calls an emergency number and says “My husband has a knife and he’s threatening to kill me!”

Should the operator say “nothing we can do until you provide provide me with some evidence, ma’am” ?

Seen it before… watched it again anyway. Praise Vectron!

Yeah I used to be like that, just not something I’d think of. Now I just automatically swap it out when I finish a tube of toothpaste.

Some of the ad revenue goes to pay the people that made the content tho.

But I have over 10,000 bookmarks!

Problem I have is I got my lastname@gmail.com as my email address. Many times when people with my same last name they’ll type firstname<space>lastname@gmail.com for their email address. And guess who gets signed up?

At first I unsubscribed, replied back to emails that were meant for someone else, etc. But the number of things to unsubscribe from unmanageable and it gets to be too much of a chore.

What they didn’t say was Jamie and Adam were shitting themselves in the workshop on a regularly basis.

Yeah, Yoda became a parody of his character in ESB.

In ESB he comes across as someone that’s speaking in a second language. Sometimes he mixes up the grammar, especially when emotional and trying to speak quickly, but when he’s more relaxed and speaking slowly (or saying something simple) he usually gets it right.

In other portrayals it feels more like he’s got brain damage.

Sure it seems draconian, but how else are we going to get the kids to stop vaping and start smoking cigarettes like we did when we were in high school?

Won’t someone please think of Phillip Morris’ profit margins?

Voting Green has the exact same effect as not voting. Yeah, it shouldn’t be that way, but it’s the way it is. There’s wanting the ideal system where third party votes matter and there’s pretending it already is an ideal system

You don’t get to an ideal system by voting for people that won’t have any power to change things. You make a difference by writing to and calling the people who do have power and ensure the people you call are at least sympathetic to what you want.

It is indeed not that complicated.

Yeah it’s a weird thing about parasocial relationships. You like someone based on things you’ve seen about them on TV and then you start feeling like you know them. But really, nope you don’t.

I think it’s fine to like famous people, but just understand that you don’t really know them. If you later find out they’re a horrible person well then don’t like them anymore and it’s no big deal. You only like the things you know about the person, but if you avoid going down the road of feeling like you really know them, it’s fine.