Plenty of professions and businesses existed before the advent of capitalism. Not every business is going to be a driver of economic growth. Most are just providing basic goods and services. But these companies do not drive R&D spending. Without the profit motive of capitalism the world would likely go back to the 0.1% annual GDP growth we had before capitalism came along.

There had been numerous inventions in the history of mankind before capitalism took over in the early 1800's. But all those inventions led to a 0.1% annual GDP growth for the two millennia prior to 1800. Worldwide GDP growth has been 2.4% over the past 200 years, as capitalism took over the globe. And the most capitalistic countries have led the way.

Not every invention we enjoy today exist because of capitalism, but I'd argue most of them do. In my opinion modern technology wouldn't even be where it was in 1900 if Europeans hadn't started spreading this economic system across the globe a few hundred years ago.

How much healthcare should be a human right? If everyone in the country had a personal nutritionist, chef, and concierge physician, our collective health would significantly improve. If R&D expenditure into pharmaceuticals increased by an order of magnitude, we would have significantly better drugs than we will have with current spending. But someone has to pay for it.

I agree there should be some level of care that should be considered a human right, as well as some level of food and shelter. But just like not everyone can have a mansion, not everyone can have the level of healthcare that a $25k per year health insurance plan would provide. Almost the entire developed world has done a better job of guaranteeing a minimum level of care for its citizens than the US, but they also piggyback on the high level of R&D investment that high US healthcare costs pay for. For instance the US pays for 36% of all worldwide pharmaceutical research because we pay more for the same drugs than most other countries (and we use more drugs).

The US medical industry is so broken even massive companies like Walmart have trouble jumping in and finding ways to extract high enough profits to make the work worthwhile. Health insurance administration is too costly, pharmaceuticals and providers are too expensive, insurance coverage is complicated and often insufficient, and people generally expect any new procedure or drug should be available to them regardless of the price. While I believe a single payer program must be part of the solution, it will be nowhere close to solving the whole problem.

It is an important distinction to focus on consumption instead of production. If you focus on production then production can simply shift to countries who have less ambitious plastic reduction targets. If populous countries instead focus on limiting consumption, companies cannot play that game.

Reducing consumption doesn't need to focus on individual behavior changes. Governments can reduce consumption through regulation on companies just like they can reduce production. Any laws they pass to force a manufacturer to stop using plastics could instead force a retailer to not buy products that contain or are packaged in plastic. Limiting the use of plastic bags is another example of the government limiting consumption without relying on individual behavior changes.

The only thing the Paris Agreement "forces" countries to do is regularly update their nationally determined contributions (NDC) which contains their commitment to limit emissions. The only consequence of failing to update their NDC is being publicly shamed by other countries. Countries don't even have to meet their own declared goals. So considering there aren't any real obligations, there isn't even anything to argue is legally binding.

I can't find any information about what countries are actually on board here. 51% of plastics production comes out of Asia (32% from China alone), and another 31% comes from the US & EU. So it really comes down to whether you can get all these Asian and Western nations to agree to this, not some countries in Africa and South America. I saw estimates that plastic production will double by 2040 and triple by 2065, so a reduction of 40% from a 2025 baseline would mean a reduction of 70% of the projected plastic production by 2040. That is pretty significant and needs every major producer on board.

You need to put down the red/black pills and lay off the misogynist incel social media. Woman in the US are more likely today to be married to a shorter man than they were 40 years ago, and the difference in height of married couples has reduced by 1 inch since then. Three times as many married women are the primary breadwinner today as compared to 40 years ago. Women's STD rates are not significantly higher than men's STD rates, although reported rates are far higher for women. This is because women aged 18-64 are 50% more likely to visit a doctor each year than men, and the discrepancy is even greater for young adults.

It is true that women have more relative power in society today than they did decades ago, and that has hurt the dating market. Dating standards have always been relative, so if one side is becoming relatively more "attractive" then people on the other side will become less attractive on average. This is a pretty significant societal problem, but it is nowhere near as drastic as red/blue pill advocates claim. Women's standards have been dropping for decades, although arguably not fast enough. Men have also been starting to take on more family responsibilities for decades, although also arguably not fast enough.

Divorce law is also mostly not pro-woman, it is pro-equity. In practice this means divorce law's goal is to reduce the power disparity between spouses with unequal power. In practical terms power usually equates to income level, so if you have more income than your spouse you will have a significant amount of your power stripped away by the courts. Considering 55% of marriages have a male breadwinners and 16% have a female breadwinner (29% are egalitarian), in practice divorce laws favor women far more regularly than they favor men. One area where divorce courts unfairly favor women is in custody disputes, so men have a more valid level of frustration there.

Programs like social security are not Ponzi-schemes. First off, social security is not an investment vehicle, which is part of the definition of a Ponzi-scheme. There is also no money being stolen from these programs, since there is careful and accurate accounting of all funds including those in asset reserves.

Programs like social security and Medicare are only problems because of the kinds of demographic shifts you apparently aren't worried about. This is true no matter how a government manages social security-like programs. There will always be years in someone's youth and old age where they are not productive enough to earn enough money to meet their basic needs, and most modern societies expand on that by not expecting people of certain young or old ages to work at all. A country needs working age people to support these individuals in one way or another. In some cases it is through income taxes, in some cases it is through sovereign wealth funds. But all of those methods require working age people to labor so governments can collect taxes and companies owned by wealth funds have employees. Any imbalance in the number of working age and non-working age people will have significant impacts on the quality of life of both groups.

You are correct that feminism plays a big part, but that's because women don't want to deal with abusive men, not the other way around. And not just physical abuse. Women don't appear to want to do 30% more household chores than men even when both are working full time. Women don't appreciate their 67% increase in income from 25-55 when married compared to married men's 159% increase. Marriage has been a raw deal for women since forever, although I guess the lack of women's rights throughout history did technically make marriage the better option.

I believe it's also because economic hardship has hit young men harder than young women, making less young men into ideal mates, but that's another discussion.

This is simply not true. You would be correct in saying the drop in birth rate from 1958 to 1978 had nothing to do with economic hardship. It was a result of the abnormally high birth rate after WW2 coupled with more women entering the workforce and other effects that economic prosperity has on lowering birth rates. But that drop had stabilized and even reversed a bit for 30 years until 2008, when fertility started to drop again.

The drop in US fertility since 2008 is not because of women entering the workforce, because women workforce participation rate has remained steady since the late 90s. Median age of first marriage for females has also only increased 1 year since the late 90's (it increased 5 years from the 60s to the 90s), so that isn't a big part of the change in fertility either.

The change since 2008 is economic. The number of new homes under 1400 square feet built annually has dropped from 400,000 in the 70s to about 50,000 in the 2010s. Student loans per graduating student has increased 33% since 2008. Increased debt and increased housing costs are the biggest issues dragging down birth rates today in the US. The other factors you mentioned had already run their course by the 80s.

I also would like to know how many sell 50,000+ copies, not 500,000+. An author who can consistently sell at least 50,000 copies of each book can earn a decent living, as long as they dont take years in between each release. Knowing only 50 authors are making $1+ million per year isn't as interesting as knowing how many people can realistically be full time authors.

Instead of banning non-compete, just make sure it can't be abused. Something as simple as requiring companies to continue paying the employee their full compensation for the entire non-compete duration (with a 5% increase each year) would prevent abuse. Companies could still use them when it's important enough to protect the company, but no employees get screwed.

It all depends on whether or not the demand for the thing you are throwing money at is finite, or at least constrained in some way. If you throw a lot of money at subsidizing oil or steel or some other raw material necessary to build military hardware, the cost of military hardware will go down. But it doesn't help if you decide to simply buy 10x as much military hardware. If you throw money at subsidizing the education of doctors and nurses, the cost of medical procedures would go down. But it doesn't help if you start to pay for 10x as many medical procedures.

The cost of solar panels is constrained by competition from other energy sources, so there isn't a risk of costs ballooning out of control. The only result of the spending would be more solar power generation built in the US.