When I give out my email, I always get spam, regardless of how many boxes I uncheck.

When I give out my phone number, sometimes I don’t

Of course that no longer makes sense since I have one phone number I can’t easily change, but give out uniquely generated emails that I can individually turn off

That’s just reality. We don’t believe in that anymore. Apparently

And yet this is a place where centrism is the goal.

• We know that trying to tightly control economies does not work. At all. We shouldnt even try.
• We also know that corporate-anarchy serves only robber barons. That’s not acceptable.

So yes, the best answer is to give the market freedom but not complete freedom. To let it do its ups and downs … within limits. To combine the strengths of capitalism with the guardrails of a guided market. Where the capitalist driven market does not serve society, it’s a failure to guide the market so capitalism fulfills desirable goals

Great choice!

This won’t cause more deaths in America, but mostly in developing countries. It just proves america is best.

Just like he has one executive order for energy production and another to pause offshore wind farm leases

None of them have come close to the severity of the Great Depression. We’ll never control all instabilities, the important part is limiting their severity

Yes, I’ve been affected by several of these. I’ve gotten laid off during downturns. I’ve been affected by high interest rates. I’ve been affected by unattainable housing. But at least it wasn’t worse

We haven’t had a real depression in 100 years, so something is working. Sure, we have recessions periodically and some are worse than others, but as long as it’s relatively limited.

I think that a lot of regulations were put in place for a reason. Whether they work for that reason or not, it would be better to understand the reason before blindly removing regulations

Maybe, but hopefully the existing controls will prevent that from happening again …. Unless overzealous attempts at “reducing regulations” break those. There were quite a few factors around the Great Depression but consider controls like:

• “circuit breakers”, automatically halt trading when a stock or the overall market drops too quickly
• “qualified investors” are criteria you must meet for the riskiest investments, basically that you can handle the loss
• bank requirements for capital, risk, so less likely to collapse
• bank rescues - Lemmy likes to complain about rescuing banks instead of people, but bank collapses during a crisis are what can push the crash off the deep end

Also the overall size and complexity of the modern investment industry should make it much less likely for any one type of investment to drive a general crash.

There are no guarantees but it’s a great first step to be aware of things you want to avoid. Good luck either way

This is a great description of me too! Having someone else to focus on, a longer future to focus on, really turned around how I live, what I do. I enjoy life a lot more, and more optimistic, more progressive.

Why should they be stopped by the government? That assumes the stock market should be logical and predictable but why should that be true? It’s all speculation, just a step above gambling, and people should be allowed to.

Tesla is a great example. Its stock has never been at an expected level for their revenue or profit. It’s all speculation about their potential to disrupt the car market (which they have), and predictions like 50% growth per year. Even now, self-driving and artificial intelligence seem a bit far fetched to most of us, but if they happen will be very disruptive.

But yes , politicians should have required ethics standards, including banning insider training. The rest of us have to: how does it make sense for our leaders to have lower ethical standards than everyone else?

Ts not quite that simple - some things like nursing homes are allowed a five year look back to prevent exactly “this one simple trick they don’t want you to know”.

And I’m sure they can call it fraud if it’s too obvious, and do … something

See my reply above …. Some of us do take the question differently. Some of us have unfinished business we’ll do anything to finish, even if we never see it. Done of us _only_care about the cnsequences

It does solve the problem at least as far as then you’d have legal standing to ban til too, and equally anything else that doesn’t follow the law

That’s at least as much a lifestyle question. As more people develop higher living standards, they tend to copy those before them. Ecologically we can’t afford for all the developing countries to live like the US, even with a much smaller population

But yeah, I’m more concerned about economies. Unstable economies tend to lead to wars and oppression. The only thing worse than our current environmental exploitation is human suffering, and we need to develop a more sustainable lifestyle that avoids that.

If you look at history of environmental protection, you’ll see that generally wealthier countries can afford more of it. If we want people to be able to afford taking care of our environment, they need to have a stable economy and be relatively well off.

Granted there’s a wide range, depending on too many variables. The UN official prediction is as you said but many recent studies with updated birth rates have made much earlier predictions.

Reading some of these studies, the earlier predictions seems much more plausible, and they’re connected with a steeper dropoff. While “UN Medium” is too high, I’m more afraid of “UN Low”, and how that will disrupt the world my kids and grandkids live in

I might plan and save even more. I Have kids in college and my priority for almost 20 years has been to do my best to give them a good start in life. If I won’t live to see it, won’t have the income to make it so, I’ll live like a pauper to set aside enough for them to at least finish school

Not to argue your decisions, but you might want to take another look at your over-population if that’s a concern.

Yes, we seem to be passing a sustainable level of population and too many people are still held in poverty partly by over-population. However the long term trend is the opposite. By all studies, population will plateau in the next few decades, then start to decrease. While that also sounds good, it looks like it is likely to drop fast. We are more likely to have instability and disruption caused by population falling too rapidly.

If replacement value for a stable population is about 2.1 children per women, most developed countries are already well below that and their populations will drop significantly as older larger generations pass. Was it Korea that hit 1.1? That means cutting their population in half over the space of one generation While I have no idea how to fix the chronic war state between the Koreas, a sudden (in one generation) loss of both population and economy is all too likely to be seen as an opportunity for the war state to turn hot.

Even in the US, we’re a bit protected but our birth rate is well below replacement value. We’re still growing in both population and economy on the strength of immigration. Most countries don’t benefit from that and current politics may impact this and cause us to start shrinking as well. While some is a good thing, a lot of shrinking too quickly can be equally bad as overpopulation. We need to figure out how to stabilize at a reasonable birth rate more like 2.0, to steadily reduce population without disruption

Got two. Love it. Definitely a sad time in my life as they go off to college.

While I always wanted kids, I wasn’t convinced we were ready. But my ex pushed and she was right: we were as ready as we’d ever be and couldn’t afford to keep waiting.

Having kids, focussing on their future, helped me become more optimistic over time, more progressive, more accepting. It doesn’t matter whether I’ve got mine, or whether I’m uncomfortable with X, the only important thing is leaving a better world for them

I wanted more than two, and I think we were ready for it, but a combination of a late start and a medical crisis meant we ran out of time. We made the correct decision to not try pushing for more but I wish we didn’t have to.

Definitely going to be a challenge rebuilding my life now that I don’t have them to focus on.