CuriousCat Archive Page 163 of 202

  1. Would you be for the current industrial prison complex if it jailed straight white upper class men instead of the current population of marginalized minorities?

    Believe it or not, I have an internally consistent opinion that prison industrial complexes are bad.

  2. Socratic Method in Internet discussion?

    I have some words about the Socratic Method in the next video, actually.

  4. Hello! Much like most of the internet right now, I'm currently kind of enraptured by Keanu Reeves. In the wake of that, I've noticed a number of brands have started using him very prominently to advertise their wares: Cyberpunk 2077, Disney with Toy Story 4, for instance. Is this just a cycle of capitalism? Is it basically harmless? Should I feel icky when I want to retweet Disney's behind the scenes footage of him recording lines for TS4?

    You have permission to enjoy Keanu Reeves.

  5. I've seen waaaay too many billionaires' apologists on the Internet that I do have to wonder, in your experience, how oftentimes do you see these sort of people grow up and realize how much exploitation it takes for there to even be billionaires in the first place? I feel like getting these people to change their belief is similar to getting people to stop worshiping the queen as their waifu, which is quite difficult, as Philosophy Tube can attest.

    in response to I don’t think that’s entirely true. We generalize all CEO’s as lazy fat cats that sit in fancy board rooms staring at a monitor and doing nothing. Elon Musk clocks in around 90+ hours a week. Not all CEO’s are well-intentioned but they made incredible investments of TIME

    They're just defending what feels normal. Change what's normal and they'll start defending that.

  7. I don’t think that’s entirely true. We generalize all CEO’s as lazy fat cats that sit in fancy board rooms staring at a monitor and doing nothing. Elon Musk clocks in around 90+ hours a week. Not all CEO’s are well-intentioned but they made incredible investments of TIME

    in response to Why would you allow that or even do that?! The fact that the person worked their ass off to earn it and then gets taken away Come on

    Every AAA video game programmer works 90+ hours, why aren't any of them worth $19 billion?

    There are only so many ways I can say NOBODY EARNS WEALTH.

  8. Why are centrists more ok with right wing violence, nastiness and even talk of violent upheaval than those things on the left?

    frankly, no one expects better from the Right

  9. I've never left you a question on here before, but I think I come on every week or so, sometimes twice, and just read though your answers. I don't really have anything to ask about your work, and I'll hope you can forgive this for being a meta question about CuriousCat.

    Do you ever think about deleting this thing? It's so strange, but I kind of love reading some of the responses? The more detailed ones which are about things which I find genuinely interesting — I skim over the jokes and the ones about Marvel movies.

    But I can't help but think — especially when it is something you allude to sometimes — that some of the questions completely infuriate me, and sometimes your answers even feel a bit firey too, because some of them are just... questions asked in bad faith.

    I hope this isn't going anywhere, but to what extent to you ever think — this is a weird parasocial hotbed, or this is a mild irritant, or this is just a waste of time?

    Really your videos, ESPECIALLY Tomatoes, Or How Not to Define “Art”. The ARP is great! I miss the video game coverage. In another world, a better world I hope can exist someday, we won't need the ARP. I'm glad you're making it. Sorry for how long this was; I've just been reading for a while so had Thoughts.

    Thanks! I think about deleting it every day.

  10. Do you support legalizing cannabis?

    ya

  11. With the last of the Holocaust survivors dying off and Fascism tacking hold of gaming. Do you think that a game (Especially one in the AAA market) base on a true story of a Holocaust survivor or a game that shows the progress of Hitler's rise to power to combat White supremacy indoctrination from furthering infecting the gaming community?

    1) I am skeptical of any single piece of media having that kind of impact. 2) Regardless of whether it would work, I don't think such a game would get the AAA funding and marketing treatment. 3) If such a game did get made, I don't think we could count on many of the right people playing it (remember how few copies Spec Ops sold). 4) I think it's an unsound assumption to think we can solve fascism with market solutions.

  12. What is a good, gender neutral way of getting someone's attention? I work in food service, and people are frequently ignoring me if someone else is being helped.

    I've been going with something halfway between "man" and "ma'am", but I feel like there must be a better choice.

    "fucko"

  13. I know you probably get this asked a lot, but when is the next Alt-Right Playbook video coming out?

    I'm working on some non-ARP stuff for this month and will theoretically get back to it in July. But this summer's pretty hectic so I may slip the schedule further.

  14. How do you get rid of cockroaches in your place?

    I live in Boston. We don't have roaches, we have house centipedes.

  15. Can you explain (at least in broad terms) what the phrase "there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" means? Because I've only ever seen it used to mock people that want to support brands that don't do things like exploit their employees or use child labour after that brand has been outed as being terrible.

    So, the way capitalist society usually says we should address our big, complex problems is with our individual choices. We don't need the EPA to pass regulations on pollution, just recycle more! We don't need to stop trading with countries that use sweatshops, just don't buy those shoes and companies will get the message! We don't need large programs to address homelessness, just donate to charity!

    These come with (at least) three baked-in assumptions:
    1) The solution to our problems is individual choices, not collective action.
    2) We should worry more about whether we are personally contributing to problems than about fixing them.
    3) The way to state our position on things is to spend money in certain ways.

    "There is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism" is a way of negating all of these excuses. The problem is not that an unethical capitalist entity is succeeding, which can be rectified by giving more business to an ethical one; it's that capitalism breeds unethical behavior. Working in isolation is not a solution. Keeping your own conscience clean is not a solution. Spending money differently is not a solution. You can't solve capitalism with more capitalism.

    The point is to stop individuals from chasing after the elusive "ethical consumption" and start thinking about capitalism as a system that creates problems, and, unless we change the system, the problems will keep getting worse no matter what we do.

    But your experience of people tossing it out in unhelpful ways is REALLY common and annoys the piss out of me. Personally, I actually find "no ethical consumption" reassuring. My reflex is to treat ethics as a binary: Amazon owns Whole Foods so buying from Whole Foods is bad, therefore getting my groceries from a different store is good. Once you scrap the idea that *any* grocery store is "good," you can start thinking in terms of harm reduction and *degrees* of ethical behavior. Since the line is not between ethical and unethical, you get to draw the line yourself, based on your own ideas of how bad is too bad to participate in. Just accept that this is subjective, and is not, in itself, a solution.

    My point being: you can stop chasing the idea that, if you just make the right choices within capitalism, things will get better. Let yourself off the hook from that standard. Put the energy you would spend trying to find an ethical company into collective action against systemic unethical behavior.

    But, also, *own* the lines you draw. If you say "I don't buy from Amazon" and someone goes "psh, there's no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism," you're allowed to so "no shit, but I still don't buy from Amazon." Harm reduction isn't the solution, but it's still necessary to reduce harm!

  16. I think the advertiser one might be the most feasible, since it has been done before and probably the least risky. Hypothetically, if any of the above happen, do you think big names “apolitical” youtubers would support it? Even though Youtube is not exactly loved by anyone and losing money from ads isn’t really that big of a deal for them, I am skeptical as to whether anyone at the top (as much “LGBT+ friendly” as they branded themselves to be) are willing to take a stance against anything, let alone bigotry.

    in response to Different phrasing: what are the chances of you organizing/joining a Youtube strike/boycott? Hypothetically, if a large number of influencers just hide their content for a day, could that push youtube into doing anything?

    It's hard to imagine someone like Pewds signing on. But the big YouTubers are scared of losing ad revenue as well. If an effort gains momentum and it starts to hurt their brand *not* to be part of it, they may sign on. That's a big "if," but it's possible.

  17. Different phrasing: what are the chances of you organizing/joining a Youtube strike/boycott? Hypothetically, if a large number of influencers just hide their content for a day, could that push youtube into doing anything?

    in response to What are the chances of an Youtube strike/boycott happening?

    One-day boycotts don't accomplish anything. It's a PR demonstration of the power you theoretically hold but aren't actually exercising. If you want YouTube to change, you have to hit them where it hurts: you have to start costing them money.

    You can approach that a few ways.

    A proper strike: A number of YouTubers refuse to host or monetize their videos until YouTube deals with its harassment problem. A strike is nice because you get to make very explicit demands. But I doubt we could get enough people onboard to make a blip in YouTube's income, and the people striking are hurt way more by the loss of income. Without an existing union, we don't have a strike fund, and being off YouTube for an extended period of time also hurts our ability to make money on the platform once we're back.

    An advertiser boycott: A bunch of YouTubers demonetize their videos on YouTube and start pressuring advertisers to pull ads. Advertisers can be hurt easier, as their profit margins on ads aren't *that* great to begin with, and, if they get the idea that being hosted on YouTube is damaging their brand, they'll put more pressure on YT than we can. This has happened a few times already. Problem is, the advertisers want what's good for *them*, not what's good for *us*, so they'll reach an arrangement with YouTube that suits their own needs and ignore any of our demands that don't interest them.

    Threatening legal action: This is slow, and expensive, and kind of a crapshoot as to how it will turn out. A *lot* of YouTube's business model is already in dodgy legal territory, and they largely depend on not getting taken to court. They are scared *as fuck* of the law getting involved. But, again, the changes they'd make would only be whatever covers their ass legally, and, if they did actually go to court, there's no telling how the law would rule, or what precedents that ruling would set for future videos. Decent risk YouTubers get screwed alongside YouTube itself.

    So, to answer your question, I would happily be involved with an effort to hold YouTube accountable if I thought it had legs, but all the things I can think of have major drawbacks, and I'd need someone to present me with a compelling way to address them.

  18. What are the chances of an Youtube strike/boycott happening?

    I don't predict the future.

  19. With all the stuff with Steven Crowder and Carlos. I'm wondering when you will ever do a video about the conservative persecution complex and there conspiracy theories about the Left controlling everything?

    What i call "Making the Empire look like the rebels and Vice verse"

    It'll get touched on.

  20. Who is your cerebro crush? Both Sir Patrick Stewart and James MacEvoy are pretty good IMO. Or are you more of a comics/cartoons guy?

    I don't have to choose between Stewart and McAvoy, I'm polyamorous.

  21. Who is your Serenity crush?

    Matthew McConaughey Serenity or Nathan Fillion Serenity?

  22. Who is your celery crush?

    in response to who is your celerity crush?

    a little lady named bloody mary

  23. who is your celerity crush?

    me

  24. Has soccer fans became more racist over time?

    especially in Europe and the soccer association over there not rectifying anything efficient or ruthless to curb this

    I know nothing about soccer.

  25. Been following Carlos’s situation on Twitter and I’m worried for him now that he’s become the Anita to Crowder’s rabid fan base. Do you reckon there’s any way for randos like me to help out, especially now that, compared to goobergate era, leftist communities on the Internet have grown stronger?

    The only thing he has asked people to do is flag Crowder's videos. If you have some clever idea for putting pressure on YouTube to enforce their TOS, do that, but try not to bring anymore hell onto Carlos directly.

  26. What's so problematic about Dan Savage?

    He has been shitty to trans people, Muslim people, and Black people in the past. In Trump's America he's small potatoes, but it's been enough of a problem that I won't mention him without asterisks.

  27. Is collectivizing industries better ?

    in response to Is nationalizing industries good?

    let's try it and see

  28. Sometimes it feels difficult to apply socialist models of class/class struggle to any situation more complex than, like, a factory--do you know of any more complex/modern models to determine social class? & how worthwhile is it to know one's own social class on an individual level?

    in response to Would you consider yourself middle class?

    Um, it's actually fairly easy to determine one's social class? Granted, "middle class" is becoming an increasingly meaningless term, but, inasmuch as it retains meaning, you can google what the economic cutoffs are for what is consider upper, middle, and working classes. If we're talking socially, it has mostly to do with how you were raised. So, for instance, I was raised middle class, I have a middle class education, I have a middle class social network, and I approach things like job interviews and bank applications knowing how to speak in middle class signifiers. None of that disappeared when I was broke.

    If you want to learn more about the cultural differences between classes, I will *probably* make a video about it as some point, but, meantime, read A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne.

  29. how about in relationships?

    in response to Random food for thought Why do you think people cheat? In what circumstances have you or would you cheat?

    Dan Savage is a bit problematic these days, but I've always agreed with his perspective on cheating, that it is only acceptable if you meet two criteria:

    1) your existing partner *cannot* or *will not* meet your needs and refuses to open up the relationship, and
    2) leaving your partner has an enormous cost, e.g. you are financially dependent on them or they would get custody of your kids

    Under those circumstances, cheating is justified. It's not reasonable for a partner to make you go without sex/intimacy. But, if you don't meet both criteria, you're just a cheating piece of shit.

  30. Falcon has won a super major

    Is anything possible now

    You know, it would have been nice to discover this on my own without 5 different people spoiling it before the VODs even went online.

  31. I would prefer if you were more direct with your answer whether or not you prefer an obnoxiously loud crowd watching Avengers Endgame, especially towards the end

    I've just been thinking a lot about how what is "appropriate" vs. "obnoxious" behavior is socially constructed, and varies by community and subculture, and get very antsy whenever people start making claims as to which standards should be enforced across the board. When the first Avengers came out, my partner and I went to an all-day event, where the theater screen the entirety of Phase 1, with The Avengers premiering at midnight, and tons of people showed up in cosplay and the whole theater LOST ITS MIND at the mid-credits Thanos reveal. And it was kind of the ideal way of experiencing the movie. And when you go to an all-day marathon of Marvel movies with a world premiere at the end, I kiiiiiiinda feel you know what you're signing up for.

    This has been a long-standing expectation for a lot of genre films, especially outside of the white, middle-class idiom. Mike D'angelo has a great column (with a sadly broken video link) on why a particular scene in Scream 2 is one of his favorite scenes of all-time precisely because of how loud his audience got: https://film.avclub.com/scream-2-1798226435

    There is a long history of LOUD audiences for horror and B-movies and other genre films, and I feel uncomfortable with the ways, as genre films get more mainstream, that one set of sensibilities is overwriting the existing one. I know not everyone enjoys it, and I know it can be overloading for people with sensory processing issues, but you can generally assume this kind of response only happens at evening showings on opening week, so it's fairly easy to avoid if you know it might happen. And I don't see why "some people prefer quiet audiences" is being treated as more valid than "some people prefer loud audiences" other than it's what middle class culture expects. Just buy your tickets for the showing most likely to suit your preferences and don't write off other people's enjoyment?

    (Also, nothing but love here, but "I would prefer it if you were more direct with your answer" reads as a weird and passive-aggressive thing to say instead of just asking me a question.)

  32. Is nationalizing industries good?

    yeah probly

  33. do you like olive bread

    Do I!

  35. So I watching your presentation from a year or two ago...

    Would you say it's Zizek making Peterson legitimate or Peterson legitimizing Zizek?

    I don't really see what Zizek gains by being next to Peterson.

  36. Would you consider yourself middle class?

    As far as the socio- part of socioeconomic, yes, but not the economic part.

  37. Could you specify a good example of punching up?

    "President Trump is a butt."

  38. Random food for thought

    Why do you think people cheat? In what circumstances have you or would you cheat?

    do you mean in relationships or in life generally?

  39. I was watching hbomberguy's video and about 4 minutes in Ben Shapiro says, "So let's say, for the sake of argument", and I was like DAAAAAANSKIIIIIIIIIN

    there is no question here

    shapiro owes me money

  41. Do people with reactionary politics have trouble understanding metaphors, or are people who fail to understand metaphors more likely to become reactionaries? Or is there some confounding variable that makes both traits more likely to coincide?

    I would say people with reactionary politics have a vested interest in misunderstanding metaphors because they need to believe more people agree with them than actually do.

  42. Just trying to get to the heart of the matter, so in your world view, THE RICH rather than those on welfare are the useless leeches on society that must be dealt with?

    That's one way of putting it.

  45. I really don't understand how you use word "earn". Why you should decide who "earned" their money and who didn't? Any person who pays taxes should be allowed to have as much money as they can. You live in a dream world.

    in response to What about artists(actors,directors,musicians, painters, game developers)? A lot of wealthy people earn a lot of money by being talented/smart/hard-working. Just because you've earned only 40k a year doesn't mean that person who have earned more doesn't deserve it. It's not other people's fault that you are not a millionaire.

    cool, cuz the rich don't pay their taxes

  46. What about artists(actors,directors,musicians, painters, game developers)? A lot of wealthy people earn a lot of money by being talented/smart/hard-working. Just because you've earned only 40k a year doesn't mean that person who have earned more doesn't deserve it. It's not other people's fault that you are not a millionaire.

    in response to Why would you allow that or even do that?! The fact that the person worked their ass off to earn it and then gets taken away Come on

    You're thinking in the Edmund Burke mode where whatever a person is paid is what their labor is worth. If an artist has a lot of money, that must be what their work was worth to people. But by what metric do you determine the worth of an artist? Do you believe that no artist has ever been underappreciated? Over-valued? I'll give you an example: Bono's net worth is $700 million. Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age is worth $10 million. Do you believe U2 is objectively 70 times better than Queens of the Stone Age? Or do you just say "if he's got it, he earned it"? Placing objective value on art is incredibly difficult, but, I promise you, there's no amount of value any artist has brought into this world that is worth $700 million, especially not when other artists are making tiny fractions of that.

    Nobody. Earns. A. Million. Dollars.

  48. What is the harm in advocating for violence against the Right?

    I have a big platform and that would be massively irresponsible.

  49. Is this real? Like, does he actually make this amount? I always assumed that most of their net worth was tied up in stuff they can't actually spend, like in this instance Amazon's total worth (split up by the stock he owns).

    Not both-sides'ing. Man is disgustingly wealthy in either case, and did not 'earn' it. He lucked into it. Just wondering because I don't really know how it works tbh.

    in response to Why would you allow that or even do that?! The fact that the person worked their ass off to earn it and then gets taken away Come on

    He didn't "luck" into it, he got that wealth by horribly underpaying his workers.

    If you want to check my numbers, look it up.

  50. Did Shaun (and by extension breadtube) just force Youtube to bend the knee (lame GoT reference, but eh) and actually do something to stop hate speech? Is Twitter posting... actually good now?

    Shaun did a very clever and good thing, and it's amazing that it worked. It probably won't work again.

  51. Why would you allow that or even do that?!

    The fact that the person worked their ass off to earn it and then gets taken away

    Come on

    in response to would you rather a rich person gave much of their wealth but stayed rich, or would you rather a rich person gave up being rich?

    What does that even mean, "worked their ass off to earn it"? I've worked my ass off all my life and what I've earned is about $40k a year.

    Jeff Bezos makes $11.5 million an hour.

    That means he makes 575,000 times as much money as I do.

    Are you really gonna sit there and tell me he "worked his ass" 575,000 times harder than me?

    You're going to tell me any human on Earth has ever worked 575,000 times harder than another worker?

    Nobody earns wealth.

  52. would you rather a rich person gave much of their wealth but stayed rich, or would you rather a rich person gave up being rich?

    I would rather we take a rich person's wealth away from them.

  54. My question that you didn't answer was about centrists causing the inequality that allows fascism to flourish, which includes Joe Video, Clinton. I do get that they make things better incrementally, or at the very least don't put children in internment camps where they die (make things significantly worse).

    Do you think the impulse against both is just that — an impulse for fast change that is ultimately impossible? It's honestly a similar line of thought to ContraPoints' Tabby character, I guess. It's pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. But the centrists will keep winning.

    What is the play long-game if we just keep fighting their fight? Is it okay to just be at the will of the masses a la Brexit or France or Trump? How do we combat ALL of the things leading to them, if we know many of them are just bad faith opportunists?

    Much like centrists, it feels like.

    in response to Maybe this is too transparent: But what are the top 3 reasons you don't respond to questions? :(

    I don't know. I'm working on it.

  55. So as long as I don't consent then no manager should tell me what to do right?

    in response to but to treat the manager as another member of the team, so it means we can just simply not abide to most of their instructions or inform them of anything very crucial and important stuff like always in a day-to-day basis?

    Depends on what the terms of this hypothetical arrangement are. If, for instance, the company is worker-owned, and everyone votes a certain person to be the manager, but you voted for someone else, then we could ask: can you say no to them? Maybe, at this company, they've agreed people do what the manager says even when there's minority dissent. Or maybe challenging the manager means they ask someone else to do the task. Or maybe challenging the manager means the whole company holds a vote on what should be done. Or maybe challenging the manager means the company votes on whether they should stay manager. Or maybe challenging the manager means you and the manager arbitrate, discuss why you think it's the wrong call, and come to some sort of compromise.

    A lot of time is lost in business today to people doing tasks poorly because they don't want to do them, think they shouldn't be done, or aren't properly qualified, but have to do what the manager commands. A lot of time is lost to people quitting over disagreements with management and having to train replacements. So if you're thinking the systems above I've described are inefficient, do keep in mind the inefficiencies of our current system we'd be addressing.

    There are a lot of ways to run systems collectively. I don't know which is best, but I know there's a lot of shit we could try. Let's keep our minds open, yeah?

  56. Maybe this is too transparent:

    But what are the top 3 reasons you don't respond to questions? :(

    1. Contains a link/embedded video. A lot of time people want me to read/watch something and weigh in on it, and I often just don't have the time. Or I have the time but don't wanna. Also, a lot of times it's stuff I don't actually want to give attention to? Like, if someone asks me to weigh in on some Far Right video, I don't really wanna show that to my audience.

    2. General hostility. I get waves of people showing up here just to insult me or talk shit on the Left. I know I respond to a few when I have a solid rebuttal that might be useful to share, or, on occasion, a sweet burn, but for everyone one I answer you can assume there's at least five I delete.

    3. Uninteresting questions. The most common is, "Have you seen/read/played X?" In the education world, we'd call this a closed-ended question: all I can say is "yes" or "no." Doesn't lead to a conversation. The more open-ended variant, "Thoughts on X?" is still too vague to be interesting. I'd respond better to more specific questions.

    Runners up include questions that ask me to weigh in on complex social or political topics that I've never implied having knowledge of, weasel-worded questions that try to get me saying something incriminating (lotta folks want me to advocate violence against the Right), and highly personal questions where people either ask me about my private life or overshare their own.

  57. but to treat the manager as another member of the team, so it means we can just simply not abide to most of their instructions or inform them of anything very crucial and important stuff like always in a day-to-day basis?

    in response to Do we need Managers and CEOs or do all we need is just the workers and that's it?

    Look, I've worked in a number of ad-hoc groups where someone is assigned the role of facilitator. They keep people on track, make sure people are doing what needs to be done, occasionally veto things, but it's just a job like the rest of us. They take that role because the group consents to give them that authority, because managing is a useful set of skills not everyone has cultivated, but it doesn't make them special. Managerial skill doesn't *need* to be hierarchical.

  58. Tell me something about your family history

    No.

  60. Do we need Managers and CEOs or do all we need is just the workers and that's it?

    Managers and CEOs are still workers. Managing is a useful task, I dunno about CEOs. But they don't need to have extra authority or power; you can just treat the manager as another member of the team.

  61. Yeah but you're only taking into account the US, the wealthiest country in the world that has a huge carbon footprint and its corporations exploit other countries. I think the real question is what quality of life the world can stand on?

    in response to not the same anon but I want to live like the current rich, is there enough resources and wealth for everyone to live like that? I wouldn't care if everyone lives like that (i.e. I don't care about being exclusively wealthy) as long as I'm one of them that gets to as well.

    If you take any country with wealth inequality and democratize the money, the average person's quality of life is going to increase. Not to the degree it would in the richest nation on Earth, it's true, but certainly better than they've got with millionaires hanging around.

  62. Aren't investors typically a bunch of rich people? Like Angel Investors? Creative projects have a lot of projects funded by direct investment

    in response to there are wealthy people that do a lot more than just sit on their wealth and emblazon their name in gold on towers. A lot of them invest and start businesses. i'm most familiar with film so i know that a lot of indie directors are actually super rich people that fund 100k productions out of pocket without any second thought. $70,000 isn't enough for me to start my own movie studio and fund Transformers or start my own HBO and create my own The Wire, for examples. How would I create the type of expensive endeavors that rich people just start on a whim with just $70,000? I don't need golden toilets. But doing stuff like making video games or making film will require some insanely serious dough. I'm sure there's other examples of products that require it too that's more practical such as tech start ups but i'm just focusing on one example that i think a lot of wealth will make me happier.

    Direct investment exists, but, if we're still talking about movies, the vast majority of funding comes from production companies. If angel investors disappeared, we'd still have movies. If all the production companies disappeared, the whole industry would collapse. And there's no reason those companies can't be worker-owned.

  63. I just want to point out something about the 70k that I don't think this Anon and others are realizing. With Landlords and predatory housing Loans and other elements of Capitalism removed, even if we don't actually institute Public Housing projects, the cost of houses would drop incredibly.

    Under a Post-Capitalist society, public transportation becomes more common among the entire neighborhood. Cost of commuting to work in only a fraction of itself.

    Health care as well. With the abolishment of Predatory Student loans under Capitalism, Doctors have no loans that need to be paid off in order to make money, and the cost of Hospitals can be made Public, and which incentivizes hospitals to charge competitive prices. This two-fold punch drops the cost of health care drastically, again, even if we don't actually institute a true Universal Health care system.

    In combination with the reduced cost in health care, Post-Capitalist working conditions are more humane, allowing for people who get sick or injured to take ALL the necessary amount of time needed to recover, not just how much their boss is willing to give them. Meaning fewer accidents and so fewer reasons to actually use these health resources.

    The 70k that is being proposed here, would be in combination with the drastically reduced cost of living under a Post-Capitalist society. So it may be more realistic to treat it as possibly even 100k per year instead. Even if we only get 70k. comparing the actual cost of living to now, it would be as if we actually had 100k in this current economy.

    in response to there are wealthy people that do a lot more than just sit on their wealth and emblazon their name in gold on towers. A lot of them invest and start businesses. i'm most familiar with film so i know that a lot of indie directors are actually super rich people that fund 100k productions out of pocket without any second thought. $70,000 isn't enough for me to start my own movie studio and fund Transformers or start my own HBO and create my own The Wire, for examples. How would I create the type of expensive endeavors that rich people just start on a whim with just $70,000? I don't need golden toilets. But doing stuff like making video games or making film will require some insanely serious dough. I'm sure there's other examples of products that require it too that's more practical such as tech start ups but i'm just focusing on one example that i think a lot of wealth will make me happier.

  64. Do you think there's any hope that a rich person could be convinced to be generous with their money?

    Many are, but philanthropy isn't a solution.

  65. what do you think of the idea of not saying many swears or bleeping out your swears to make your videos classroom friendly?

    If a teacher says they want to run my videos in a classroom, I'll make a bleeped version. But I'm not interested in tailoring my videos for a hypothetical audience that might not like the way I write.

  66. there are wealthy people that do a lot more than just sit on their wealth and emblazon their name in gold on towers.

    A lot of them invest and start businesses. i'm most familiar with film so i know that a lot of indie directors are actually super rich people that fund 100k productions out of pocket without any second thought. $70,000 isn't enough for me to start my own movie studio and fund Transformers or start my own HBO and create my own The Wire, for examples. How would I create the type of expensive endeavors that rich people just start on a whim with just $70,000?

    I don't need golden toilets. But doing stuff like making video games or making film will require some insanely serious dough.

    I'm sure there's other examples of products that require it too that's more practical such as tech start ups but i'm just focusing on one example that i think a lot of wealth will make me happier.

    in response to not the same anon but I want to live like the current rich, is there enough resources and wealth for everyone to live like that? I wouldn't care if everyone lives like that (i.e. I don't care about being exclusively wealthy) as long as I'm one of them that gets to as well.

    Movies and video games are typically funded by companies, not out of the director's pocket.

  67. not the same anon but I want to live like the current rich, is there enough resources and wealth for everyone to live like that? I wouldn't care if everyone lives like that (i.e. I don't care about being exclusively wealthy) as long as I'm one of them that gets to as well.

    in response to What if I want more money than someone else?

    This requires getting into some serious hypotheticals, but: if we radically changed our economic system such that income was democratized and poverty abolished, there's enough money in this country that everyone could make in the ballpark of $70,000 a year.

    (This is assuming that such a radical change in the economy wouldn't alter the GDP, which is probably untrue, but I don't have data on how, so, for the purposes of this thought experiment, we're ignoring it.)

    $70,000 a year is not wealth. Though, conveniently, it is roughly the income at which money creates the most happiness, i.e. your stress levels are reduced by higher income up to about $70k, after which money no longer makes you happier. But it doesn't let you live like a millionaire.

    Presuming the way this economic distribution happens is with massive income caps and huge social programs, we can maybe assume that general quality of life would go up for everyone, i.e. housing markets would get less expensive, goods and services would get more affordable, so it's possible $70k would go a lot further in this scenario than it does now. So maybe everyone could have an upper-middle class lifestyle.

    But, no, probably not everyone can live in a mansion and have a BMW collection and emblazon their name in gold on a tower. That kind of wealth only exists so long as large numbers of people are in poverty. That lifestyle wouldn't happen if we abolish wealth and poverty.

    For what it's worth, though, research says it wouldn't actually have made you happy, and would have broken your ability to feel empathy.

  68. Are the three most recent elections proof that the left is pretty much dead in the water and we vastly overestimated the range of their support?

    You know the Left actually made significant gains in the UK, right? That it was the liberals who suffered losses?

  69. We landed on the moon because we wanted to own the Soviets. That's literally the only reason. No more soviets to compete against.

    Fukuyama was right. This is the end of history, just not in the way he intended to say it. The rich are pretty much gods in the same way Pharaoh was god. We live in a completely deterministic age of foregone conclusions.

    You can't tell me raising taxes is impossible when - and I can't stress this enough - WE LANDED ON THE FUCKING MOON.

    You need some competition? Cool. I declare that we are in competition with Russia for who can raise taxes the fastest. BAM.

  70. Does your dad know these terms?

    in response to Do you consider concepts like “patriarchy”, “toxic masculinity” or “privilege” to be “mainstream”, aka “understood by most people”? I feel like a lot of The DiscourseTM is still stuck around these (to me easy to understand) concepts that Idk if it’s largely beause of right-wingers astroturfing or if people are just that ignorant

    My dad was a hippy, of course he does.

  71. What if I want more money than someone else?

    in response to so you want everyone to be poor? great

    "More" is not a problem. "Rich" is a problem.

  72. At this point the "tax the rich" solution is just fantasy. The rich are just too powerful and have too much influence on politics. You might as well try to walk up a 90 degree slope.

    we landed on the moon

  73. Are you a fan of Kanye's music. Regardless of his bizarre public persona?

    I'll never forgive him for sampling one of Aphex Twin's best tracks so that now everyone associates it with a mediocre song about being a shitty boyfriend.

  74. but seriously, how come you've never played Halo before? At least Halo 1 is available on Mac

    in response to How come you never played Halo before? The first one was also playable in Mac too But I do get it if you're not interested. Though it's sci-fi, it's very pro-military and it fetish military hardware (especially the alien side called the Covenant) which makes Michael Bay look like a saint in comparison Also, Halo 1 has really good plot twists in the end (which ends up being derivative as the series progressed)

    I am serious.

    I haven't played it because I have no compelling reason to play it.

Anon commented:
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