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13
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708
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2 yr. ago

  • Completely agree.

    Currently working with a smart TV that never touches the internet (just plug other devices into it). I am low key paranoid they have some sub - protocol of HDMI that can connect from the TV to a game system and forward info out....but 90% sure that's just paranoia.....I hope.

  • I suppose by places I meant like websites and/or resources (my word choice had room for improvement upon reflection).

    And specifically looking for things regarding "what was serfdom really like".

  • Like I said, I'd agree that most live a subsistence lifestyle. Its hard to break out of a cycle of poverty, and life isn't easy for most.

    But our lives hardly come with the same restrictions that serfs did. I think we think of our times as worse because they come after a period that (we're told) was great and prosperous for all, while for serfs, they (probably) had no such cultural mythology. I could hear an argument that there lives were better due to community and simplicity of life or something like that (I don't know if I'd agree, but I'd probably think there was something to it).

    But I also think we're both looking at a wall and you're saying its fuchsia while I think its magenta. When its all said and done, the wall is some shade of purple; it seems like we agree that things are bad, that they could be a lot better, and that they should be better.

  • I agree that most today are on a subsistence lifestyle.

    But gonna have to disagree with "we're at modern serfdom" in the sense that medieval serfdom existed. There are LOTS of economic barriers to picking your life up and moving somewhere else, to changing what you do for a living, etc; but there aren't legal barriers. That is, if you decide to move or change jobs, you could land yourself in lean times, but no one is going to chop body parts off you or lock you in a dungeon for doing it (as could happen to serfs in the long ago.

    Additionally, if you're one of the lucky ones who does manage to buy a place, it becomes a financial asset. If you have kids, it can be passed to them, at which point they an sell it to go move themselves somewhere else. Contrast this with the typical depiction (which I assume is at least moderately factually correct) where your kids are now tied to the land you lived on.

    Unless you mean to speak of serfdom to the government who can control your ability to travel (generally I mean internationally, but some nations do restrict intranational travel), who take a portion of your wealth on a regular basis in the form of taxes (thinking property taxes, but I guess could be applied to income and other taxes), and who can lock you up in a "dungeon" (prison - and for relatively arbitrary/subjective reasons).

  • How many owned their own land through history?

    I know very little about how things were handled pre-medival, but its my understanding that serfdom (where you were attached to a piece of land and obligated to work it) was the norm for the vast majority of common people.

  • Not doubting if this was bad, but wanted to see if they commented as to the scale of the problem sin e they just state "of some Americans" in headline (and they do!):

    Kashtan and colleagues estimate that the average total residential long-term NO2 exposure across the U.S. is 24 percent lower for people with electric stoves, which do not emit NO2.
    The average American’s exposure to NO2 exceeds the World Health Organization’s recommended levels. However, approximately 22 million Americans would fall below the WHO-recommended limit if they stopped cooking with gas or cut back their use of it, Kashtan said.

  • I like the general analogy, but the author's case seems to be that there are evil crooks at all income/wealth levels, but there are also good people at all income/wealth levels and so we shouldn't demonize (and tax?) people based on income/wealth alone.

    I guess that's a logical argument that could stand in its own merits, but it seems to be missing out on some important facts about the real world.

    Like, I'm really not sure what he's getting at nor who he thinking is deeming (moderate) profits to be bad / undesirable at a society level? This feels like something I would have written right after reading Ayn Rand's works in college: lots of pronouncements about the righteousness of hard and smart work without having seen how the systems of the world work in reality.

  • Ugh, yeah that is a frustrating part of any discussion I have with a lot of people I know IRL: they seem to think of it in an "exclusive or" (one or the other but not both) mindset.

    In my most humble of opinions, we need to be doing classic nuclear, renewables, and SMRs (and as pipe-dream-ish as it might be, research into nuclear fusion) all at once. Oh, and let's not forget the mass-scale grid storage.

    Would that be a hella expensive investments? Yes, but worth it in the long run.

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