But they can't sell more widgets if nobody has any money to buy them.

Sure, you could model a pretend economy where only the wealthy ever buy stuff, but that's not how the US economy works, and Consumer Confidence has a massive influence over our GDP - so when our GDP goes up, it's often hand in hand with our population buying more widgets with extra money, even as they complain that they don't have the cash for "necessities" (I.E. burrito taxis, vanity pickup trucks, and owning a house with two spare bedrooms with a <30 minute commute to their workplace).

Note: I'm not saying that low-income Americans don't genuinely struggle, just that there's a mismatch between the Americans that are genuinely low-income and the Americans that perceive themselves as low-income because they need to save a little to make major purchases or need to tell themselves no sometimes.

And yet we see all of these better outcomes on metrics more directly tied to human flourishing in countries that have worse per-capita GDPs.

Or if you just ignore the pop-up through ublock's element picker or something else equivalent and continue to use the webpage.

As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't constitutes consenting to anything whatsoever.

Stack Overflow has dozens of domains and each of them has the dumb cookie popup.. I set up a Ublock rule and modify it for (iirc) all sites, so I don't see the element with the ID on any site (I think it has the term "stack" in the id/class name). Ah, bliss!

It's also worth noting that one function of brownshirts and blackshirts is to provoke violence against themselves, seeking to retroactively justify their existence and to justify a further crackdown.

Say all you want about how any protest, no matter how peaceful will be vilified (it will) or about how the entire foundation is built on lies (it is), but we still have some real elections coming up, and the imagery of ICE brutalizing someone who's clearly not an immigrant, not violent, not obstructing is much more rhetorically effective than that of armed clashes between government and non-governmental forces.

And as you said, many of us are still convinced that this can be solved at least partially rhetorically and electorally.

Hence the tactical frivolity Portland approach. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2025/10/22/trump-ice-port... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_frivolity

It's the social media evolution of non-violent confrontation, with the similar goal of making it impossible for any visual image or recording of a confrontation to seem anything other than ridiculous to the average viewer and laying bare the "violence inherent in the system" (as it were).

> but we still have some real elections coming up,

Unless the president declares a permanent temporary state of emergency for whatever reason that would prevent such elections.

There is no precedent for this. The executive lacks the authority. It would require Congress to enact a law, and this is easier said than done. The states run elections, and while the feds have some input on how elections for federal office are conducted, it is quite limited.

The vast majority of the population is relying on these protections holding.

> There is no precedent for this. The executive lacks the authority. It would require Congress to enact a law,

Does this actually matter in practice? It seems like the administration has done a bunch of things that normally requires Congress to do something, yet they were able to and I don't see anyone getting arrested. The executive have lacked the authority for lots of things, yet it doesn't seem to stop them.

I'm not saying you're wrong, in theory. But in practice it seems like those things aren't actually stopping anyone, at least not yet.

> There is no precedent for this

We are well past the point where precedents matter.

> The executive lacks the authority.

The executive lacks the authority to do more than 99% of the things done in 2025. Just about all of it is blatantly illegal or unconstitutional.

But, turns out, there is no enforcement mechanism against any of this. There is nobody that can put a stop to the illegal behavior. The legislative branch and the judicial branch can write sternly worded letters, but they have no army to enforce obedience.

Ah yes, all of the precedents and lawful authority that this president cares so much about adhering to.

Right, at which point I think many of us would be less concerned with optics.

Now those people absolutely largely exist in the minds of others.

I think there's also a huge gap in costs and in people's willingness to tolerate shared spaces with bathrooms.

I think shared bathrooms are vastly cheaper, but also vastly less desirable.

The cost to add a bathroom to a house isn’t actually that much, assuming you don’t have to go insane with the plumbing.

Look at how many houses now have “en suite” bathrooms for more than just the master bedroom.

Sure, I mean the cost per unit to add a bathroom to each dorm-style units.

Where is their evidence that the internet was cut to prevent evidence from disseminating?

Are you finding and setting up a remote that works on your PC/Laptop, or are you getting up every time you want to change shows or play/pause?

Wireless keyboard with a trackpad.

Well I'm certainly not going to spend thousands of hours listening to his talking to decide how to feel about his thoughts and opinions.

That's fair, but also maybe don't base an opinion on 4 paragraphs from wikipedia on topics obviously nuanced.

I would imagine whoever wrote those 4 paragraphs has researched a lot more than I did about his political views. If someone with better sources went there and corrected any mistakes made previously, with referenced demonstrating it, the article would be much improved.

> I would imagine whoever wrote those 4 paragraphs has researched a lot more than I did about his political views

We all have imagined that. But taking a look at the sources in Wikipedia articles becomes ... interesting.

If you have better sources, then please, improve the article.

What should I base it on? You?

You don't need to have an opinion on everything. Clearly you don't care about this or you would spend the time watching some of his videos or reading his articles that expound on his "controversial" statements. It's ok to just say "I don't know" rather than thinking you're well informed because Wikipedia says so.

How will it save lives? It'll maybe create more lives that persist beyond those on Earth, but I don't think it will meaningfully lower our global population, so a planetary catastrophe would still kill just as many people.

Also "the most important thing?"

You don't think there's any lower hanging fruit on-planet we could attend to first? Maybe addressing hunger, poverty, pollution, resource wars? You think getting the first ten-thousand people to Mars is a bigger priority than eradicating diseases that kill 10 times that many annually and that we have all the tools necessary to control? Really really?

I was gonna say Antioch, but that could do it too.