honestly wealth at any level requires luck… intelligence barely factors into it. it’s less that 1 fuck up and it’s all over, and more that 1 fuck up without someone to cover it up or bail you out and it’s all over… the wealthier you are, the bigger the fuck up before you or someone else can bail you out:

poor? it’s an unexpected car issue

rich? it’s that you fucked over literally an entire country for years on end in a very public way that gained you very little

consent doesn’t just mean “yes”… consent means informed consent… consent means non-coerced consent

my state in australia has recently implemented some fantastic new laws around consent, and have done a really good job of defining some very grey areas

https://www.respectvictoria.vic.gov.au/news/affirmative-consent

specifically the section about when someone can not consent is relevant here. it covers things like coercion, feeling like you can’t withdraw consent, abuse of authority (ie covers workplace sexual harassment), age, asleep/unconscious (regardless of previous consent), AND most importantly:

Despite what a person might like to hear, they haven’t received affirmative consent if:

…

• their partner cannot consent – including because of:
  • … being mistaken about the identity of any other person involved

and in case you think that’s too restrictive, the laws have widely been praised by the BDSM and kink communities - places where non-verbal consent is common… they cover a lot of ways people might consent, and also withdraw consent

the issue with identity is that she would not have consented if she knew all the details - facts which the man kept from her, knowing that if she knew she would likely not consent

and that’s key: to consent, you have to have all the information available at the time

$s never decrease - they just circulate… if nobody you know has any, and the tv is saying nobody like you has any, someone else has them

(kinda)

okay then, let’s stop short and say they’re neo nazi dog whistles then

why endure when you can get friends that enjoy it? hell, find friends that will beg for it!

well at least you know my comment wasn’t written by AI 😞

would there even be an OS left?

if you can do something in your every day life to make someone happy, who cares if it’s weird? live life; we’re all weird; just make people happy and be happy in return

on a technicality, debts like this are not legally dischargable through bankruptcy

making government incentives align with the good of their population is the best way to make sure government does their job

prison should be a loss for all, and therefor everyone should want to reduce people in prison. you can’t do that by simply not having prisons, so you need to address root causes

everyone should be healthy. ensuring that governments pay for the eventual health issues ensures they setup preventative programs that help people to stay healthy for their entire lives (alternatively the dark side of this is, for example, smokers die early and therefor cost less because the government doesn’t have to pay for care for as many elderly people for as long so where’s the incentive to support quit programmes?)

they can make whatever laws they like really - the EU punishes corporate infringement with percentage of global revenue for example

whether they can enforce them or not is questionable in most cases, but unless apple wants to pull out of europe, the EU can kinda do whatever it likes

it kinda doesn’t though… in fact it might be worse. say you take a common carbon credit scam: “protecting” forest that was never going to be cut down anyway

you pay $3 in carbon credit to cover a flight… that money from you as the consumer went to someone wealthy enough to set up that company to run that scam. they’re likely a multi millionaire

as a consumer who chose carbon credits, you’re probably making pretty reasonable choices elsewhere in life: trying to recycle, buy sustainably where you can, etc

the multi millionaire now has that money however. it’s been repeatedly shown that these kinds of people have an absolutely enormous carbon footprint (obligatory fuck that term and its associated “it’s your fault” marketing from big business) compared to us regular folk

worse than that even, if you’re immoral and don’t care about the environment enough to run a carbon credit scam, you’re sure as shit not going to be doing anything sustainable… this is the worst kind of person we’re dealing with: the coal rollers of the world