Exclude non-profits and open-source software. In fact, tax multinationals out of existence.

Safe to assume it’s like ten times that much.

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True. But this is a rarefied use case that doesn’t apply to 99% of teenage iPad users, at least in my pedagogical experience. Keep in mind the average ACT score for college-bound seniors in Florida is 18. Meaning these kids literally can’t even read. They’re not using iPads for anything resembling creativity.

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To be fair, the GMO thing is funny and dumb.

You think I’d still have perfect SAT scores if instead of reading 500 books in high school I spent my time playing World of Warcraft? Get a grip.

iPads are content consumption devices. Full stop.

Currently, the US spends $5k per child and $29k per septuagenarian annually. Also, the average voting age in primaries is 72. We are living in a gerontocracy, because old people take children for granted, so much so that they’re enthusiastic about their government rounding up immigrant children, toddlers, and trafficking them out of the country.

My point is that if we had fewer children for a few generations, maybe it would adjust people’s selfish and animalistic priorities. Fast fashion, meat eating, celebrity worship. That’s what the most prosperous people in the world are all about. I want fewer of them on this planet because we are using 20 times the resources available and most people are poor anyway — until such a time as we establish a path to sustainability.

Or do you enjoy reading about dolphins boiling alive in rivers during record heatwaves? What even is the point of having more than a billion people on this rock if we can’t be bothered to feed them? Like what is your game plan here?

My original point is that breeding more humans doesn’t improve the world at the moment, at all. We need to find balance with our environment. Not to mention, we aren’t even raising humans to be “good” or smart or kind, all while devouring this planet like locusts.

If you’re struggling to wrap your mind around the claim that most people are assholes, I present to you the last US election, when over 50% of voters chose Donald Trump, a convicted rapist, fascist, and known pedophile. This is an enormous sample size, surprising no one who has studied history, since we’ve had slavery for like 10,000 years and most humans are literally incapable of abstract reasoning. You can’t possibly expect me to lament the decreasing quantity of these creatures.

We are in the middle of an extinction event worse than the one that wiped out the dinosaurs, using 20 Earths worth of resources, playing out a Wall-E / Interstellar style apocalypse, and you’re sitting here crying that we ONLY have 8 billion people on this tiny rock (most of whom, let me remind you, are either fucking horrible or very poor).

Inequality results in higher asset prices. They commodified housing and allowed massive inequality. Now housing is expensive.

This happens because if you have more money than you can spend you start looking for things to buy. Houses and land, for instance. The neoliberal hope is that hoarded wealth will trickle down through investments. But there really isn’t enough money-making enterprise for the billions available, so rich folks start buying up assets, which become super expensive.

To be clear, I’m not saying there’s more money than can be wisely invested. I’m saying the money is concentrated (often into the hands of the least discerning) and not efficiently distributed for utilization. If normal folks had extra cash, they might start a small business, but billionaires aren’t looking to open a trattoria or book store. They don’t have time for such minutiae, so they buy up land or gold or get into crypto schemes or some harebrained bullshit.

This is absolutely amazing news!

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Russia’s favorite propaganda is to claim that democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their own wrongdoing (the way China does): they embrace it with whataboutism.

Saying “all states are authoritarian” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly citizens of Taiwan and China have different relationships with their governments.

To whit, I have no rights in China. They could disappear me for this one comment.

No. I don’t care about any nation state, only about the badness of dictatorships. Tankies defend Russian and Chinese dictatorships in particular.

Interestingly, they don’t defend (and often even condemn) other dictatorships. This is a feature of their tribalistic ideology and a product of propaganda. Concepts like “state enemies” are meaningless to me. I apply moral rules universally to all people and hold their behaviors to the same standard, regardless of their imaginary nation.

One last thing. Russia’s favorite propaganda is that everyone lies and democracy is impossible because state violence is universal. They don’t deny their wrongdoing (the way China does), they embrace it with whataboutism. Saying “all states have violence” is meaningless. Of course all statehood is based in violence. Yet clearly Taiwan and China have very different approaches.

To whit, I have no rights in China. They could literally disappear me for this comment.

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Having strong opinions about reforming vs overthrowing capitalism doesn’t make you a tankie. Apologetics for state violence and Russian and Chinese totalitarianism certainly does; just as defending Israeli wrongdoing makes you a Zionist; and defending Trump makes you a fascist, etc.