Okay, to be clear, are you arguing that the dichotomy we are choosing between is Notch becoming a billionaire or a corporation reaping the benefits of his labor? I think if those are the options, I prefer the universe where Notch is a billionaire, lol.

I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but I’ll admit I’ve read your comment a few times, and couldn’t really latch on to what you point was.

But to just free associate off of what you said, I think there’s a lot of value to many in the safety of a job vs the life of an entrepreneur. I’m in that situation myself. I know I could easily make 1.5-2x my current salary if I just stood up and LLC and did all my work as a 1099 employee. I’d be able to keep all my current clients and basically nothing would change. I could set my own hours and not have a boss to answer to. But it comes with a lot fewer safety nets, and it means that all the unpleasantness and risk of “running a business” would all fall on me.

Am I running the risk that I could build a billion dollar product and giving all that surplus capital to my company? Sure. But the odds of that are terribly low, and honestly, it’s a gamble I’m more than willing to take to avoid having to deal with the overhead and risk of striking out on my own with no top cover.

The issue is that becoming a billionaire has more to do with being lucky than it does with direct exploitation.

If everyone in the US chipped 5 dollars into a pool, and it was randomly given to one person, that person would be a billionaire.

And yes, they have a huge concentration of other people’s labor represented in that cash. But the person who won the pool isn’t a bad person because of that. They didn’t exploit anyone themselves. Just because someone somewhere at some point under capitalism was exploited, that doesn’t lay the moral condemnation at the feet of the lottery winner.

Sure, but that argument is specious as hell, right? Like, if everyone in the United States decided to give you a $5 bill, does that instantly make you a bad person who exploited labor to get where you are?

“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is simply a rhetorical device to outline the flaws in the system. It completely breaks down when used as justification to villainize someone.

Your position could be equally stated as, “anyone who has more money than me is a worse person than me, and anyone with less money than me is a better person than me.” It’s a misuse of the “no ethical consumption” idea on its face.

A fair point. It’s been a while since then. I didn’t recall that.

That said, he’s just an easy example. There’s a few other people who could be used. There’s a billionaire who was an early Bitcoin adopter for example.

And it certainly would have been possible for Notch to become a billionaire without hiring people. The company only had 25 employees in 2014, and was doing $330million in revenue every year. There’s certainly a path he could have tread to still becoming a billionaire without hiring anyone.

It would have been harder, taken longer, and not been as profitable for sure, but doable.

Sure, but if that’s the argument, then everyone who has ever bought a laptop that shipped with Windows on it is equally guilty.

Perhaps even moreso. Those people are giving money to Microsoft. He took a billion dollars away from them.

But like, this is classic motte and baily. Your initial position was “all billionaires exploit labor for profit,” but when under scrutiny you just retreat to “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so he’s guilty by virtue of simply participating in the system.”

You’re moving the goalposts though, you realize that right?

Your initial position was that you have to have exploited people to be worth a billion dollars (with an implicit “directly exploited,” since if you can’t make any money without indirectly exploiting people, which would make your point even more pedantic than I’m being.)

Other people later exploiting others to profit off your product is irrelevant. Hell, it’d be irrelevant if you made your billion dollars and then started exploiting people yourself. You still would have, in fact, become a billionaire without exploiting people to do so.

He could have known Notch, though that guy doesn’t seem the climbing type, lol.

Notch is a billionaire. He made Minecraft as a solo project, it became what it was, then he sold it to Microsoft.

Not saying that most billionaires didn’t get there via exploitation, but I don’t think it’s a strict prerequisite.

Yeah, I can’t find a news article or anything, lol. Definitely confused.

Why not just compare the model 3 to an 18-wheeler then? Those weigh way more. Would have made his point better.

And it’s a completely meaningful comparison, as long as you throw away the fact that different vehicles are used for different things.

A model 3 to an f150 is absolutely apples and oranges.

Do you do those things because you truly get enjoyment out of them, or are they simply your drug of choice to help you cope through to the next day?

Those are all things that can be enjoyed in a healthy way certainly, but if it’s just “wake up, work, binge internet, sleep,” every day, then I’m afraid you have a problem. Maybe not a full blown addiction, but at least an extremely unhealthy coping mechanism for some deeper underlying issues.

This is something that you can work on though. Ideally with the help of a professional therapist who can help you identify why you feel the need to cope in this way and help you start breaking those destructive patterns in your life.

You say you don’t like anything or give up on everything, but what does that look like? I assume that you don’t spend 8+ hours every day staring at a blank wall. You must do something to fill your time.

But if you are truly finding it difficult/impossible to be interested in the world around you, then your issue isn’t that you don’t have a girlfriend my dude. It sounds like you’re suffering from pretty severe depression.

And I hate to break it to you, but untreated mental illness is definitely a mood killer, and not just with the ladies. You’re gonna need to get yourself into a better place, or you’re gonna drive more than just romantic partners away.

But I’ll tell you, you’re awfully fatalistic for 35. Women tend to pretty holistically prefer guys in the 33-40 bracket. You’re not past your prime in the slightest. A little self confidence and a little investment in the world around you, and I think you’ll find that you will attract people no problem.

And hey, maybe I’m wildly off base. I know I’m making a lot of assumptions based off a very small paragraph. And maybe I’m reading you super wrong. If so, I apologize.

One thing to keep in mind though. The idea of a relationship and sex you have in your head? That’s a fantasy. Both are great things certainly, but when I was younger I feel like I built them up to be something deifying in my head. That once I had them, all my greatest desires would be met, and that life would be finally “complete” for me.

Understand that relationships are work. Fulfilling work, but work nonetheless. They require just as much “sticking to it” as any hobby that you haven’t stuck with, if not substantially more. And let me tell you, you’re absolutely not going to want to do it all the time. It requires a lot of dedication and perseverance.

And don’t build up sex to something more than it is. Its great, certainly, but I promise you’re putting it on a higher pedestal in your head than it deserves.

But all that to say, right now, you’re in love with the idea of a relationship, not the reality of one. I’m confident that you’d find the reality to not be what you’ve dreamed of it. And the problems and struggles you have in your life are rarely made easier by adding more work and responsibilities.

Take care of yourself and get to a point where you love yourself and the world around you as it is, and I think you’ll find that the rest of this will kind of take care of itself.

My first pass reading the headline has me thinking the dead daughter was running for Congress, and I was very confused.

I would think the bigger issue would be the permanent ceasefire.

I would think Israel doesn’t trust Hamas not to break it, and it complicates the question of, “how do we respond if Hamas kills a bunch of people.”

It seems to me what you (and Biden) are saying is that things have progressed to the point where Hamas (and by extension the Palestinian people) are unwilling to reach a peaceful solution.

If that’s the case, what should Israel actually do? What terms should they offer? And what if Hamas rejects those terms? Is there a solution to this problem that actually solves anything?

Did you mean to reply to me? I don’t see how that is relevant.

Like, sure, oil and gas companies are corrupt and doing immoral things to prop up their industry.

But if a coal plant can sell me electricity for 5¢/kwh and the windmill company can sell it to me for 2¢/kwh, I don’t care what immoral stuff they try, the consumer is gonna buy the cheaper option.

Historically fossil fuels have been the cheaper option, and most of the immoral stuff was to avoid bad press. That strategy doesn’t work if you’re the more expensive option. The market will in fact work for the best in that scenario.

Which isn’t to say the free market always makes the “correct” decision. Fossil fuels are a great example, as they have continued to be the primary form of energy for the past 100+yrs, since it was cheap. But it looks like natural market forces are bringing us around to green slowly but surely, and Chase Oliver might be right that this is a problem that will, at this point, largely solve itself.

I mean, I think that’s what the majority of people are advocating for in green circles too, no? “No New Coal” and all that?

I don’t hear much advocacy for tearing down working power plants.

Power plants don’t exactly have an infinite shelf life. They get run down and need to be replaced. Eventually only building green leads to only having green.

Combine that with the ever increasing cost of actually running a coal fire plant. Shipping in hundreds of tons of coal is eventually gonna get way more expensive than operating a solar or wind farm. At that point the business owners will likely tear the plant down of their own volition to replace it with the cheaper option. (Though that will be admittedly a little slower, as you have to amortize in the construction and downtime costs.)

Yeah, I’m in a bluer state than California my guy. Think, like, Maryland or Massachusetts.

I feel pretty safe voting for Chase Oliver, lol.

Not that I’d feel bad voting for him in an Alabama or Mississippi either.
Hoping to flip it someday doesn’t change the fact that when polling suggests that it’s going 90% one way, hoping that maybe you’ll flip it this cycle is delusional.

I mean, I live in a super blue state, but like, if you want me to vote for Trump to try and flip it for him, I guess I can do that?