Nobody suggested taking Nike and Reebok to court when I was getting bullied for having cheap sneakers. This situation is a perfect analogy to what I got picked on for, yet nobody ever began to consider blaming the shoe companies for it. Nobody sued the NBA or the players for making some sneakers more popular than others. Why? Because it wasn't their fault. Kids were doing something kids always do.

So, what the hell is the DOJ thinking? Do they really think Apple is to blame for normal, albeit unpleasant, childhood behavior? Do they think the whimsical preferences of children are a dire threat to markets? Or do they not care? Is this just an attorney angling for a promotion?

Or do nothing, because they aren't responsible for whatever fad-based BS kids happen to be giving each other a hard time over today.

The kids with expensive things will look down on the kids with cheaper things. That appears to be unavoidable, and not cause for legal action against a company.

Seems to me that kids harass each other on the basis of various stupid and meaningless fads regardless of what any company does or any adult wants. I don't see how punishing Apple changes that, nor do I see any reason they should be held accountable for whichever stupid things kids decided to be jerks about for now.

Where are the parents getting all that money? And why are they buying iPhones for their kids and Androids for themselves?

Unless what is being observed is that rich kids are being smug and teenagers are being shitty to each other. I don't think that's something Apple can be blamed for, and I know punishing Apple won't stop teens from being dicks.

You're missing something very important. It is not "trading chunks of your life to an employer", it's working to support yourself and your family. Could be farming your own land, could be working for someone else, could be working your own business. The point is that you are doing something productive, and this is meaningful.

It is not some artificial paradigm, it is how reality has shaped humanity.

Until a serpent finds its way into their garden and offers an apple.

Small studios could absolutely use AI/text-to-speech for their games without a meaningful loss of quality relative to whatever voice acting (if any) they could otherwise afford. The big studios, on the other hand, should stick with real voice actors, as AI speech is nowhere near what customers will expect from a $60-70 game.

For example, Egosoft's X series has awful voice acting that has sounded like modern text-to-speech since the beginning. They could go to AI actors with no loss of quality. The "Marvel's Guardian's of the Galaxy" game has amazing voice-work that could not be replicated by any AI system I've heard so far, and it would be ruined by replacing the actors with AI.

That is a failure of imagination. UBI would be an irreversible mistake that would constrain human growth and development for decades if not longer.

Consider your own metaphor - was UBI needed to save the workers no longer making horse whips? No, new industries arose and similar labor was demanded. In the end, the demand for labor was even greater!

If we didn't need UBI then, why would you think we need it now? What would have happened if instead of learning new things and creating new opportunities, all the former whip-makers were paid to sit at home vegetating?

Is it really fair to portray Capitalists as pro-exploitation? That is not a facet of Capitalism, it is a human flaw present regardless of political economies. It's like blaming Capitalism for murder because there are murderers in Capitalist Democracies, as if murder did not exist beforehand or in other societies.

Greed and cruelty exist. They always exist. Capitalism restrains them better than other systems, as demonstrated by the conditions and failures of its alternatives, where the cruel and greedy rule with iron fists.

So, you look forward to the future presented in WALL-E? Ever fatter humans doing nothing while robots care for them?

If the Guardian published an article stating that I was on fire, I'd grab a towel and start drying off.

If a large enough portion of the population does it, then the costs are not socialized. They are social.

Pfft, worthless half-measure. Stop adding heat to the atmosphere; ban all cooking now!

Or just completes to mxtoolbox, I guess on the assumption that I didn't actually want to go there, I just wanted to see ads about email.

Except that when someone predicts that an unsuspended heavier-than-air object will fall, it does. I've been presented with environmental predictions for almost 50 years now, and do you how many of them were correct? I'll give you a hint - most of them said the world would have ended by now.

I think we should and will move away from fossil fuels, but I also know that the dire alarmism is counterproductive and insulting. "Wolf!" has been cried too many times. If your best argument isn't an argument at all but instead an attempt to terrorize people into compliance, then something is wrong.