Thoughts on the World Situation

I think I'm too tired to tackle this with clarity right now, but I'll give it a shot anyway and ramble on about stuff. If only to give you some entertainment.

I'm actually going to have to disagree with you on the notion that there is very little regulation when it comes to the Internet. Alphabet Inc and a couple of other large corporations control over 90% of all Internet traffic that is related to the WWW. These corporations are in relatively snug control over spreading disinformation and have the ability to deprive you of most information they see as undesirable. Obviously the Internet by its nature being a fairly uncontrollable space, tons of stuff slips through the cracks, but the average person is probably going to be kept in a relatively safe bubble. If you want a good example of it in work, the net neutrality policy was heavily astroturfed by these corporations not long ago and to my knowledge they managed to get over 80% of Americans to support it, even though said regulation was only going to harm or not affect in any meaningful way the majority of people (it was a regulation for the benefit of certain large corporations and the government at the expense of some less large corporations and the evidence used to support its necessity was obtained through a false flag operation by Netflix). So like, the majority of people supported it but probably less than 1% of the population had any idea what it was about. That isn't to say the information about it wasn't out there, but by god was it hard to find people who actually knew anything about it.
Lack of regulation? No. Regulation by entities that don't have your interests in mind and are in the propaganda business? Very much yes.

When you think about that for a second, you'll quickly realize that paper ballots mean nothing. Voting machines, paper ballots, it doesn't matter. They will tell you who to vote for, and you will vote for that person because all of the information you're given will tell you that they are the best choice. Or, that's the general idea anyway. If you want my opinion, I think that they kind of dropped the ball by running a corpse against Donald Trump in the previous election, resulting in him getting onto the throne of the American Emperor. As flawed as he might be, I am fairly confident that he's not who these shadowy cabals wanted there. When all the propaganda media is dialed to 11/10 and has been working overtime 24/7 for a good year now, you can't help but wonder if something is going incredibly wrong for some of our corporate overlords.

All of this is superfluous fluff in the end. The circuses part of "bread and circuses", if you will. Underneath the surface lurk the actual problems that very few people talk about. Like the collapsing pyramid scheme of the world economy. Many countries are already showing the effects of irresponsible economic policies, and there's going to be more of them as time goes by. Venezuela, Greece, Spain.. and then there is South Africa, which is heading toward a bloody civil war at this very moment.
It's simple to blame evil people at the top of the pyramid for causing this global mess because then you'll have a clear enemy you can defeat, but I think that all of this is actually democracy made manifest. The enemy isn't just some people or corporations you can defeat, but the enemy is the electorate. Look at what people want to vote for: free college, free healthcare, free education, welfare, free hygiene products, clean water as a human right, healthcare as a human right, etc. It's all free stuff. Nobody ever stops to ask the question "who actually pays for this?". Well, why would you ask the question? It's free after all. Sadly, an understanding that does not correspond to reality.
The scope of these issues is way over my head.

 

I could be wrong about everything, the time I've been in this world is very short indeed and I'm perhaps not the smartest person around. I'm just glad that the information age has enabled a single individual like myself access to such a wealth of information that I am even able to make any kind of an informed estimate on the state of the world and human behaviour. Hundred years ago this conversation we are having would be reserved to the most elite of academics, because nobody else would realistically have access to all the information required to construct any kind of an informed opinion. Back then you had the propaganda machine telling you what to think and contrary information was hidden from sight. Burn the books and change reality.

These days the propaganda machine is still there, but information that runs contrary to it is still readily available whether it's true or not. Obviously some countries, like Canada and UK to name a few in particular, are trying to establish legislation that can get you jailed for as much as looking at information that does not adhere to the accepted standard but I'm not sure how successful they'll be at that. I'm going to estimate "not very". US is trying to regulate Internet too, with varying degrees of success. SOPA failed, Net Neutrality failed, FOSTA succeeded to name a few attempts.

 

I'm not quite sure a school will really teach you anything with the way education is going these days. It seems to me that educational institutions are being turned into little more than indoctrination and propaganda camps than a place for obtaining knowledge. Or if I'm being generous, being turned into daycare for overgrown children. I see way too often that people in higher education in particular say "this offends me, it must not be presented on campus" in response to diverging opinions. It's a total perversion of the whole concept of education. You're supposed to be exposed to ideas you find offensive.
And then there is the study plans from high school and the like, my God is that stuff boring. I feel so sorry for children who are exposed to the kind of drivel that the primary education system is, where you're essentially memorizing garbage and regurgitating it later. Suffice to say I have a very dim view of the situation education is in. Particularly US education, but it's not amazing anywhere else either. I will admit that my view is perhaps more dim than reality, but the problems are real.

While I don't know if things will work out, I do think that you can be happy as long as you don't construct yourself a false reality bubble where everything is fine. The dissonance between reality and your perception of reality is what gets you.

 

I can be a bit depressing sometimes, but I can't take all the blame this time around - you did want to talk about the most depressing subject after all.

Also I don't think "not breeding" qualifies as the highest good. Or good at all for that matter. How can something that results the extinction of a species be a moral good? It's not that simple. The whole world overrun by humans phenomenon is not natural, it's artificially created for reasons I am not going to pretend to understand. So what's going on is that first world governments and certain rich individuals are transferring resources in the form of "foreign aid" to impoverished nations in Africa, at the same time the governments are also transferring resources from those who are productive to those who are not in the form of welfare - what this results in is high degree of reproduction by people who are poor (and sometimes also dumb) and diminished reproduction among people who are intelligent and well off but not extremely rich (middle class basically, because they can't keep their desired standard of living while also having many children due to high taxation). And outright explosive population growth in Africa, probably unsustainable growth.
On the surface it looks like the whole thing is caused by people trying to be kind to others, but I'm kinda skeptical. I like to attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Anyway, I don't think you need to ponder over what animals deserve or don't. Fact of the matter is, most of them would gladly bite your face off if they could without a second thought. Put them in our place, and they are just as stupid as we are. It's not like humans are doing anything out of the ordinary for animals.

Speaking of bad lives, I used to have a really bad life was a teenager. Not bad as in I was literally starving, but bad by first world standards. I was homeless for a while, got constantly bullied in school, was diagnosed with incurable illness and such. It wasn't great - but I was able to improve my life a lot when I was an adult and made decisions for myself. So even if your life is shit, there is no benefit in wallowing in it. When you are in charge of your life and make all the decisions, you can improve it. It's just something you have to want. People who don't improve their own lives and die miserable, well, that's on them. I, for one, am glad that I'm still alive.

 

The exact thing you have in mind is probably UBI, Universal Basic Income. It was experimented with in Finland (failed). https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/02/opinion/universal-basic-income-finland.html
Of course the talking heads are attributing the failure to the failure of the administration as you can see from the article I linked, but I'm not convinced.
The more I think about it, the less I personally see how it could work without a oppressive socialist system similar to that of Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s backing it up. Any system where you get something for nothing ends up being abused without proper oversight, and proper oversight is impossible if you are given freedom. A prison works, but remove the guards and the gates and it will stop working. Personally I am in favour of freedom, I want to maximize freedom so anything that requires an oppressive state doesn't work for me.

Let me tell ya one thing that is for sure: you can't feel bad for not knowing anything about economics because the economic system is infinitely complex and based on lies and mythology. Anything from fairly simple statistics like unemployment to more complex ones like GDP actually mean nothing because you can freely manipulate them to show whatever you want.

I like you too by the way, which is why I show up after all these years despite not having a whole lot to say.

 

Hi Ditte, it's good to see you're not 6 feet under.
Not to imply I thought you were, but once you lose any way to contact someone on the Internet there's little distinction, really.

I have to say, I find it rather distasteful how many people are seemingly obsessed with Trump failing. Pointing out things that he does wrong is one thing, but what I see more often is people actively seeking out ways to make it seem like whatever he does is a failure. It's like they want him to fail, which makes very little sense. You'd think that everyone wants him to do good, so that maybe at least some people can have their life improved as a result, but perhaps that's just me.
He ain't even doing much anyway - to me it appears his hands are tied in everything but diplomacy . So the conversation would be like "What's Trump doing?" "Talking to people" "What's the rest of the government doing?" "passing laws to fuck you and particularly your kids". At least they can blame it on Trump I guess, so good on them.

I think I probably have a lot to say about having children and overpopulation, but I ain't got the time to write it all down right now. Pretty sure Uma professed that opinion before, but I never went in depth on it.