If ten million people chip in the $5 price of a coffee, you've got $50,000,000 you can spend on capital projects, social programs, etc. Alternatively, you can gut $50,000,000 worth of social programs and buy ten million people a coffee. The real issue with UBI isn't that people don't see the benefit, it's actually finding the money to implement it. Using some quick and dirty math, just take any dollar value you think is a reasonable UBI, multiply it by the number of eligible adults living in a country, and compare it to the GDP of said country to determine the approximate tax rate required to sustain such a program. Unless you're considering seizing the assets of the wealthy, in which case: O7

In case you're dumb like me, Anthropic is an AI company that FTX owns, it is not a class of shares you've never heard of.

Don't worry, America just needs to go and "invest" in a new developing market where labour is unregulated, paid in peanuts, and can be put to work making cheap TVs, ibuprofen, and hypocritical pride shirts.

BTC, like any security, is worth exactly what someone will pay for it at any given time, no more and no less. The underlying fundamentals of a security, like how much it costs to mine, or the P/E Ratio in the example of stocks, CAN influence what people are willing to pay for a security, but just as often doesn't. This isn't necessarily "market manipulation" as you put it, it's just unsophisticated market actors buying and selling based on what they think makes sense, which may or may not be remotely connected to the underlying fundamentals. "Mr. Market" comes off as totally manic depressive as a result.

We could. But in a world where Alabama is already declaring a frozen embryo a person such that dropping a petri dish is murder, well... there could be "complications".

Best of luck, just be careful. The market is not a rational actor, and the actual underlying value of a security won't stop people from buying it up like so many empty calories.

Just look at how much more absorbent we are compared to the leading competitor!

Honestly, this sounds ideal for random civilians in GTA VII.

Okay, but what if your options are:

1. "The criminal is punished harshly, but one more person will become a victim of crime in the future as a result."

or

2. "The criminal is treated softly and rehabilitated, but one less person becomes the victim of crime in the future as a result."

Don't get me wrong, revenge is way more satisfying, but big picture, I think it's better to prioritize whatever will lead to less crime in the future. A quick google search / 1st year crim class will show you whether punishment or rehabilitation yields a more positive impact on crime rates.

I whole heartedly agree with you. However, good governance is boring, and the true job of an elected official is to get elected, and subsequently re-elected. Being boring in a hinderance to that. Dramatic shake ups every 4 - 8 years are what the voters demand. If you want to blame someone, blame the voters for encouraging elections to be less like a job interview and more like a dog and pony show.

The meaning of lots of words is relative to the time and context in which they are used, fast definitely being one of them. What was fast (internet) 20 years ago isn't fast now, and what's fast now likely won't be fast in another 20 years. Fast for a sprinter, isn't fast for a car, which isn't fast for a plane, and certainly isn't fast for the internet (which basically isn't comparable). Nevertheless, I agree with your response to the OP about the difference between a definition and an application requirement.

$100.00 USD to put a game on Steam in particular.

I'm not sure it's really a choice, not least of all because the moniker of "evil" is one that others apply to you rather than one you adopt for yourself. That is to say, I don't think anyone sits down for breakfast one morning and suddenly thinks to themselves "Fuck it, I'm going to be evil from now on." Frankly, I don't think most people who have been called evil particularly thought of themselves as evil. I think they thought they were right.

I mean, I think it's pretty clear that they're working on the answer to that as we speak.

We even reached out to the department of extraterrestrial coverups and they assured us that there are no extraterrestrial coverups. Case closed.