“Breeding animals for consumption is fine, except this one.”
It is slightly odd how people are like, “cows? Gimme that burger. Sheep? Mmm, mint sauce. Chicken? Batter that baby up”. But then suddenly everyone turns into a vegan when it’s a dog or a horse.
I’ve got no interest in eating dog meat, but where’s the consistency?
I’ve got no counterpoint, but I had the same realization, and it has made me question not being vegan. I’m like 80% without trying, but also replacing eggs and cheese is difficult
Reducing without a strict diet is much easier for people. Small wins. If you can make a “I only eat meat, what are veggies?” person reduce their meat intake at all, that’s a super big win. Changing your entire meal prep is a huge undertaking and most people just won’t do it because it’s too overwhelming. Reducing meat to a side, and being more mindful? Way easier.
A large portion of health issues and causes of death chickens face are egg related. Sometimes the eggs get stuck, sometimes they break before being laid and cause an infection, vent prolapse, cancer, etc. That’s not to say I don’t think we should eat eggs, with a lot of cooking there is just no good substitute, but even the most pampered hen doesn’t have it easy.
I am firmly of the belief that most of the issues in the meat/dairy industry would be resolved if everyone simply consumed less of them as opposed to becoming vegan. That’s how I live my life and I’ve gotten praises from doctors and nutrition specialists about my diet. Exercise is another thing tho…
Right, that’s what I tell people too. I still eat fish on occasion, and if I order food to go and it’s accidentally meat, I will eat it to not waste it.
Have had a few relatives look at me blankly, like they’ve never considered it, when I tell them they don’t NEED to be vegetarian but reducing meat/dairy requires little effort. Sometimes they will send me pictures of the reduced meat meals they make now, which I think is so cute haha. Meat even just as a side dish and not the main course goes a long way :)
Me and my partner do this. We often eat vegan food but if we add a bit of cheese it doesn’t matter. We’ve still consumed way less meat and dairy than we would have a few years ago
People aren't consuming less, though, they're consuming more. Global meat consumption is still rising. Despite supporting myself on a retail-industry income, I'm still able to be 100% vegan, and support zero animal cruelty.
Less is great. None is best. Your only rationale in your comment for why eating less animal products is better than going completely vegan is... that's the way you live so you want that to be the case?
I like to get eggs from my neighbors who have backyard chickens if they have extra. I can see them, know they’re not in pain, or mass produced :)
Cheese I still have no idea. Their isn’t anything easily available, like almond milk for dairy milk. The vegan ones I’ve tried (years ago) are gross and full of emulsifiers. Always striving/looking though.
It’s purely for a cheap optics win. President Yoon is a fascist incel that has been taking L after L, so he worked to ban dog meat despite almost nobody eating it except the absolute poorest of society. Dog meat isn’t a delicacy, it wasn’t something people ate because they saw it as high status, it was largely abandoned by an increasingly westernized South Korea, except for those who couldn’t afford anything else. Barely anyone was eating it.
Instead, it’s virtue signaling by a fascist looking to grab cheap publicity wins rather than actually making good systemic change. Dog meat wasn’t an especially pressing concern, it was an almost gone practice out of necessity, coming from food insecurity, especially during and after the Korean War.
TL;DR still a good thing, but ultimately just a publicity stunt to distract from the fascist President Yoon butchering the economy and targeting women, minorities, and disabled people.
There’s none, it’s based on what society tells you to feel empathy for. Dog eaters and corrida enjoyers are no different from people eating massively produced industrial chicken, they just live in an environment where it is normal to do that.
The base difference is that dogs evolved side by side with our species to develop and return emotional bonding and feedback with humans.
All other animals we managed to domesticate, at best, tolerate us or fear us. Cute little photos of cows and pigs enjoying being hugged and petted are exceptions, not norm.
I’ve been trying to understand, for years, what happened to turn dogs and cats food in asian countries (beside famines, hence desperation) but every single source I was ever able to find always gets muddled in exotheric notions of ”medicinal" use or some other folklore high tale.
For context: in Vietnam, cat meat is often served as being “little tiger”.
To the extent of my knowledge, the rest of the world never needed to wrap an animal in an exotheric tale to declare it as potential food.
This is an interesting angle. Makes me wonder, do we have a moral duty to reciprocate love and loyalty, or the potential for it? And if not, what basis can there be for treatment of human beings?
My concern is not morality and neither is that the issue here.
The animals we call farm animals today came from what are considered prey animals and the process of domestication was essentialy a process of reducing fear and wariness towards our species.
Dogs came to be from an apex predator that, we speculate, found advantageous to actively associate with our species for mutual benefit.
I think there is a much easier explanation. People keep rabbits and guinea pigs as pets. They are much more of a “prey animal” than a wild hog, for example.
Humans simply find rabbits, dogs and cats more aesthetically pleasing / cute. That’s the whole secret to it. Some animals are liked by humans and get a bare minimum of compassion and some don’t. And that’s the biggest factor in our decision of which animals deserve to rot away in their own filth until slaughtered and which can enter our homes as “entertainers”.
Those two species got a “promotion” more recently into the realm of company animals but they started as food, due to being prolific and easy to keep. They are more sustainable as well, as a tangent comment.
We can argue on all fronts. This is speculation, for what it is.
How can you tell this happened more to dogs and cats than any other domestic animal? Many people report farm animals to establish emotional bounding too, typically cows wanting to play and cuddle, way more than the average cat. Cows are also considered sacred by a notable percentage of humanity.
I’m pretty sure there are thousands of other examples of traditions providing tales about why some animal is eaten. One Christian example that comes to me is Easter lamb.
I think your point is still the cultural bias I talked about earlier.
Then let’s turn this on another angle: dogs came to be from a predator, and an apex one, capable and willing to prey on our species, unlike all other species we managed to domesticate.
Cats are not even domesticated, for all objective parameters. Cats are still predators, both potential and active. It is not without reason domestic cats are being viewed more and more as destructive for wild species.
I can go out on a leg and speculate these two species became viewed as food wrapped in myths, with tales of obtaining special powers or some other strange purpose besides avoiding death by lack of nourishment.
All other species we managed to tame came froma what are commonly considered prey animals and it was mostly a process of reducing the animals wariness to us.
Cows are considered a representation of one of the many indu gods and have a very unique status as such but are nonetheless still a source of food through the milk they provide.
Your examples are true and valid but I will insist those are exceptions and not norm. I live in a rural area and sheep, goats and cows are part of the landscape. The animals tolerate human presence, often understand it as a source of food and safety, but are wary, suspitious and generally keep their distance. Even pigs, that are considerably more inteligent than all farm animals don’t easily mingle with humans. But any dog, even a feral one, will approach us willingly.
A very welcome bonus to my job is going to places where usually other people won’t go and often find varying degrees of feral dogs. After the initial suspition, I find myself approached by the animals, observed, sniffed and “bothered” for pets and play. I wish I could do this with other animals but other animals avoid me and do their best to keep me as far away as possible.
Your remark on the lambs. The christian/jewish/islamic carried over the tradition from previous people. Sheep were often offerings towards supernatural entities but started as a resource/food source (wool and milk and finally meat).
We domesticated a highly emotionally intelligent animal. Who cares if there’s “consistency”, if they were killed to make it consistent it wouldn’t be better.
Cows were domesticated for the explicit purpose of being livestock, not companions. I do think they are intelligent, but I don’t believe their emotional intelligence is higher than that of a dog. Dogs literally evolved(bred) eyebrows to facially emote. Having been around cows, and known many farmers with cows and dogs, their emotional intelligence isn’t as apparent. I am not trying to say cows don’t deserve compassion and rights, and frankly eating them is definitely immoral to some degree (yet I still do it). If we were feeding our livestock food scraps and not this corn eco-nightmare and humanely slaughtering, I dont think it would be. But dogs aren’t livestock and are clearly very social animals akin to our similarly protected animals like dolphins, whales, cats, etc. We make excuses for some cultures who are actually dependent on whales/seals etc because of actual longstanding tradition, sustainable harvesting practices, and somewhat humane (or at least no different from a predator/prey in nature), but we don’t need to make the same excuse for an industrial society not dependent on dogs and filled with nonsense about dog and cat meat’s healing properties
I guess for me, whatever difference in emotional intelligence a whale, dog, or cat has from a cow just isn’t enough to categorize them differently. For me it’s splitting hairs. I suspect it’s a symptom of working backwards to a solution from a problem. As a society we don’t like killing these animals. Why? Because we live more closely with them / enjoy their personality. Let’s call them emotionally intelligent and ban the consumption of meat from these types of animals.
Seems like an arbitrary definition arising out of an emotional response.
All this being said, I still eat meat. But I forced myself to come to terms with this, with as little guilt as possible. That helps me reduce and avoid my meat intake and support more alternative forms of protein. Something I think everybody could benefit from.
It’s not the emotional intelligence alone. It’s the result of dogs being bred for cohabitation/work, while the cow was livestock, which includes em int. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s genetics and evolution fueled by deliberate breeding.
You say I’m absurdly reductionist then follow up with an absurd reductionist statement like “all animals are not alike” Your cognitive dissonance is amazing.
I agree. The only counter I can think of is that for thousands of years most dogs have been bred as companions or workers. To me it feels like a violation of some ancient pact to slaughter them. I doubt this has much merit. Just a feeling I get.
Hey what can I say im not sure how else to descibe it. Its just a vibe. I understand that sparing one intelligent animal over another is completely arbitrary. I’m not trying to reconcile some dissonance either. I’ve eaten whale and horse in the past, and if I got really hungry Fido might end up on the menu too.
Such a performance is defined as one in which “a male performer [is] exhibiting as a female, or a female performer exhibiting as a male, who uses clothing, makeup, or other similar physical markers and who sings, lip syncs, dances, or otherwise performs before an audience.”
I checked and Mrs Doubtfire doesn’t have any dates in Texas on their calendar.
Jagged Little Pill will be in Dallas in January though. That show is…a bit, what they would call, “woke”. And there’s a character who was originally non-binary but now I think she was rewritten as lesbian.
Oh, wasn’t Roxie Hart played by a transgender black woman for a bit?
I mean, look at Boebert, clearly the Republicans are a-okay with performing public sex shows for kids. Correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t heard a single one condemn her behavior.
It’s one of those things they’re choosing to ignore since it’s impossible to defend. Better for them, in their minds, to just ignore it and discuss something else, like how when a major story breaks that’s bad for republicans, Fox will be discussing some irrelevant nonsense like Hunter Biden all night.
I never imagined that drag would become such a battleground. Of all the things. Conservatives really drive these culture war issues because they energize their reactionary base, and distract from core issues where they know their platform is against the public majority. If we’re talking about drag queens, we’re not talking about school debt forgiveness or climate change. It puts the left in a hard position because we don’t want to just let trans people be attacked, but the process does distract from more existential crises like climate change and wealth inequality. Both of which hurt the vulnerable most.
The “drag queens are pedophiles” and “trans people are groomers” is one of the most tucked up and evil things they’ve come up with, which is a high bar.
“Drag queens are pedophiles” is the wrong reading of drag queen story hour, but speaking as an LGBT male who has always enjoyed drag and drag shows, I really think that drag queen story hour at the library is something we could have gotten along without. The amount of shit it stirred up is not a good trade for the intrinsic value it has. And of course now we have well-meaning liberals scheduling more drag queen story hours than ever, just as a fuck-off to conservatives. It is so much sound and fury from both sides with an absolutely empty center.
Don’t cook too much, which means reading up on basic cookery and using a timer.
Top with a decent extra virgin olive oil and salt. This doesn’t have to be expensive, you only need a little. The bottle will be pricey but last a long time.
A trick I used to use when I didn’t like veggies but needed to eat them is to cook them more, puree, and mix into mashed potatoes.
Well I guess it’s only if you already like mashed potatoes (also known as pomme puree). Anyway, just an idea. I hope you figure out what works for you.
Agreed, it tastes like cauliflower no matter what you do and it’s hard to get the consistency right. We eat low carb but not keto so I’ll occasionally do mashed cauliflower with 1/3 potatoes if we’re having a roast or whatever with gravy.
The best way I’ve found for cauliflower is to air fry it.
Brussels sprouts I can never quite roast or saute like you’ll get at a restaurant, but broccoli is my jam. Best way to eat it is roasted, maintains most of the nutrients. Wegmans sells (as I’m sure do others) a garlic and herb infused olive oil. That, broccoli, salt, in a bowl. Shake the bitch a bunch to really get everything lathered up. Bake at 425 for like 8-10m. Comes out crispy. My kids eat it. Everyone enjoys. And it’s healthy. Sure, it’s got oil and salt, but it’s broccoli, it’s ushering it through.
oh I’ve never seen an infused olive oil here. Which is interesting, I feel like the stores here have giant sections dedicated to various brands of olive oil and extra virgin olive oil - but never an infused one.
I don’t know. I do season vegetables when I cook them. I do use olive oil. But I need more than just salt on something for it to taste good I think. Cause just seasoning on anything is still too plain for me. Like I put garlic powder and salt and pepper on them and they still have that veggie taste that I can’t get past.
It’s not actually an individual food that is fattening, it’s an overall diet. So you can have fatty foods and non fatty foods in your diet, and still maintain a calorie deficit or even an overall low fat diet. Plus fat is not the enemy it’s made out to be: you need it for absorbing vitamins and feeling full, among other things.
(Sorry it took me so long to respond, I’m still figuring this out)
It was fine when it was someone else’s kid, though. You should be able to feel this outrage when it happens to anyone, anywhere. But that’s seldom how it goes.
It's great that he turned around, but holy shit is it still weird. Reminds me off when russians protested the war when they were already a year in and everyone applauded them. All their signs and chants said that they don't want more russian soldiers to die
I NEED an impractical EV that corrodes from coughing on it from a guy who also posts Doge memes so they can use that money to put a car in space and buy a social media platform to crash it into the ground harder than any of their space projects.
I was just reading about a billionaire earlier and the wikipedia article literally takes a paragraph about him being sued by the attorney general for wrongdoing and tries to turn it into a feelgood story.
As a settlement to the lawsuit, he (graciously) agreed to donate millions of dollars to organizations (as long as he got to choose them).
Let us bow down to the greatest altruistic human to ever roam the earth! /s
And histotripsy’s potential benefits go beyond tumor destruction. In the last year, a pair of preclinical studies in rodents suggest that in the clean-up process, the immune system learns how to identify cancer cells as threats. This can enable the body to continue fighting the initial tumor and help activate a natural immune response to the cancer.
Hopefully, but I thought one of the major obstacles of getting a person’s immune system to fight cancer was that it has caused it to then attack healthy cells as well
Is there something unique about this approach that makes this less likely, or is my initial understanding of the problem wrong?
It is a general obstacle. Cancer cells are basically normal cells have mutated in such a way that they a) still survive, b) subdivide rampantly and c) fly under the radar of white blood cells, which normally pick up and deal with said anomalies before they become a problem.
So the trick is about getting white blood cells to detect amd attack anomalies that it previously wouldn't, while not attacking healthy cells.
Maybe I’m extrapolating incorrectly - I think that’s an obstacle because of all the news articles in the past talking about novel ways to targetedly mark cancer cells as the bad ones, and all the discussion of cancer and autoimmune disease being similar
I’m no expert, but I am familiar with the concept of “tuning” the immune system to recognize cancerous cells via pharmaceuticals. Some of these treatments may cause the immune system to attack healthy tissue. I don’t know if this is still the case.
I think the difference here is that the sound treatment causes the initial disruption to the cells, and then the immune system realizes (on its own) that the cells are a threat. Then, the immune system can start attacking the bad cells.
Since the sound treatment is approved by the FDA, I assume it’s safe, and it’s awesome news
I can’t tell if the article is misunderstanding the science when they say it might help the immune system target the cancer cells in the future, though
Most of the time I see news about it being promising in lab rats, it doesn’t work in humans - which isn’t a failing of science, it’s a failing of the media IMO
I think the problem here is that the guy who can now afford a non zero number of things is counterbalance by the person who is just outside of the threshold for receiving the $1000 stipend. The person who previously could afford very few things that is now able to afford even less. It averages everyone out which is good for those who have nothing it is a horrible slap in the face to people who are only slightly better off
The idea behind a UBI is that it’s given to everyone (Universal), not just the poorest. So this wouldn’t be a problem with a true UBI
EDIT: I notice in the article that it was only given to certain people. In that case it’s not really a UBI, but maybe I’m just getting pedantic about the Universal bit
“Universal” means for everyone, no threshold. If there is a threshold, that’s a subsidy, not a UBI.
To keep content the likes of “I earn my money, so fuck those who don’t”, some subsidies complete people’s income “up to” some amount, like up to $1000/month. Guess it’s a slap to the face of those working to earn $1050… and maybe they deserve it, for not negotiating a better pay.
I believe they’re referring to an undefined threshold of buying power. E.g. if I earn $3000 but my take home is $200 after taxes, rent, food, utilities, and student loan repayments, abusive price hikes on basic needs could reduce my take home below the point of sustainability, even factoring in an extra $1000 on top of that. Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
Might be an extreme example, but I think it’s certainly a consideration that needs to be made when putting together the legislation. There needs to be some form of price control, otherwise those UBI checks could basically just become a free gift from the government to exploitative corporations and landlords.
The abusive price hikes scenario, is what happens when subsidies are tied to a specific purpose and income threshold: the providers of that particular service can increase their prices by the subsidy amount for everyone, while only those qualifying get the actual subsidy, and everyone else gets swindled. (This has also been tried, and proven)
There needs to be some form of price control
The price control with an UBI, is the lack of a single provider who can blindly increase prices without getting undercut out of the market, meaning the increase would get spread over all services, particularly those someone earning $0/month would spend their money on, like rent, food, and utilities.
Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
They wouldn’t go up “by 50%” (or more precisely, the % is irrelevant), they’d go up, taken together, by less than the UBI amount, which you’d also be receiving. Otherwise, those earning $0/month wouldn’t be able to afford them, and since it means a direct increase to provider margins, anyone trying to rise them more, would get undercut out of business by someone else who’d be fine with a slightly lower margin increase.
That means, the basic services you worry about, would increase by at most the same UBI amount which you’d also be getting, leading to a net zero or barely positive effect.
Your $200 take home wouldn’t change, and only if you wanted more rent, food, utilities, or whatever an UBI-only person would buy, you’d find those $200 would get you less of those… but only of those, not of services an UBI-only person wouldn’t purchase.
A jet ski would still cost almost the same, only increased by the extra amount business owners could pay due to increased profit margins.
Overall, it would mean a huge influx of cash to the top 1% through “trickle up”, which they could spend on more expensive toys, but it would still mean a night-and-day difference to those below the UBI level, little difference to non-business owners earning barely a few times above it, and a slight margin increase to business owners.
I do want to believe all of that, but I am also not going to underestimate the tendency for de facto oligopolies like ISPs to continue colluding on prices, or landlords disproportionately raising rents to “keep out the (probably non-white) poors” who have been gifted greater economic mobility.
I’m just not keen on any policy which assumes that the market can be trusted to course correct itself in a way that is healthy and fair for consumers, because that is so often not the case. I would honestly prefer a system with no UBI, where people simply do not need to buy basic necessities at all. Shelter, food, and utilities should be fundamental rights that people shouldn’t need to pay for in the first place, and income would just allow people to improve the quality of those things should they desire.
Funny how capitalism seems to always stand in the way of doing anything objectively good. I guess the homeless will just have to hold on until we figure out how to do welfare in a capitalist economy.
Yeah, I’m definitely glad we don’t have UBI that’s proven to help a lot of people people because if we did, landlords and corporations would theoretically raise rent. Instead, landlords and corporations are constantly raising rent in excess of inflation and we also don’t have UBI.
Every time I see this it’s a small group within a larger capitalist society. So of course the results are beneficial to the recipients; it’s not really proving anything in that respect.
The problem as I see it is how to make it work as its own self-sustaining economic system.
That’s a worthwhile point. However the whole trick with capitalism is to have some counterbalances in it so it doesn’t become an absolute jungle. The SNAP program is a minor program within the scope of capitalism but it’s aimed at preventing the absolute worst of the worst outcomes.
So small anti-capitalist programs are actually an essential part of capitalism. Unless you want to have absolutely no floor and watch 5-10% of people literally starve.
But programs such as the one in the OP are supposed to be prototypes for a universal basic income. I’ve seen a number of these experiments crop up in the news, and it’s always just proving that the recipients thrived more. Which, ok, is good in and of itself.
But wasn’t it obvious? Was it ever even really the question for UBI? Or is the real question about whether and how it can scale up and become self-sustaining?
Well the outcome might seem obvious to you but there are definitely those that say “they’ll just waste it on drugs and booze” or “if they knew how to manage their money they wouldn’t be homeless.” I’m not saying these are good arguments but they’re common. And I think there’s a reasonable amount of doubt that even compassionate people might have.
And aside from that, even if you believe totally in people’s good intentions and desire to thrive, there are many questions about how much is enough, who thrives more or less, how long it takes to show results… Many things we should rightly study to inform any future efforts.
So you seem to be objecting to running such a trial because “duh of course” but I disagree that it’s that simple.
And yes beyond that there are of course issues with how to scale it up. Personally I don’t consider UBI to mean that 100% of the population gets income. As with the COVID stimulus checks, we should exempt the affluent.
That’s because they often focus on those that just needed a few grand to get off the street which isn’t the cause of most homelessness. We should be doing this for those that need it but a program like this won’t help the chronically unhoused who tend to be mentally ill and/or have addiction issues.
I think part of it is that these might not have an effect on perception of homeless people quantity.
The people who are helped by the $1k were likely able to show up for it and otherwise be stable enough. If see them on the street walking around you might not realize they are homeless.
When people complain about homeless, they usually are talking about ‘mentally ill homeless people’. These people probably can’t finish this program
Complete what program the money was provided with no strings attached. I also saw no selection criteria so I don’t know why you think this group was hand selected for maximum results. Any decent study would randomize the participants so I’m sure a statistically proportional number of mentally ill homeless also got the payments.
And as for the part about it not effecting the perception of homelessness, directly from the article:
The guaranteed income also dramatically reduced visible homelessness
Simply put, a lot of people hate socialism aka “I’m paying so you can get something for free”. I’m all for it.
My 73 year old father supports Trump (not one of the crazy people, just misguided) and hates Biden. He said one of the biggest things that Biden did that pissed him off was student loan forgiveness because my dad said he had to work 3 jobs in the early 70s to put himself through college (which he dropped out of and went into the electrical trade), so everyone else should have to struggle like he did, regardless of the fact that college cost him like $2,000 a semester and it costs like $12-15 grand now, assuming you’re not living on campus.
I hate that THAT is the argument against loan forgiveness. No one is making the actual argument - that this doesn’t fix the systemic issues that caused the debt in the first place and will actually make it worse for future generations.
Student loan reform is what we need. Loan forgiveness without reform will cause tuition prices to increase for future generations.
It’s millenials doing a “fuck you, gen z, I got mine” and we should be better than that.
It most certainly did not cost him $2000 per semester in the early 70s. It cost about $2000 for a full year at a private university. Around $500 if he went to a public school.
And that’s in 2007 money! $500 in 2007 converted to the early 70s is $90 to $100. Minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, so he would have to work 2 weeks at minimum wage to afford public school. 7 weeks for private school.
What a burden! He might have to give up part of his summer!
That’s such a sad argument. I heard a great counter to that line. Imagine we discovered a cure for cancer. This line of reasoning would say “well my mom suffered and died of cancer so why should others get a cure?”
What causes you to go to school? Generally a hope to fulfill your basic survival functions these days, like eating, safety, and temperature regulation. Are those needs choices?
And what causes having those needs? Being born. Was that one's own choice either?
I think this argument won't work well on those who came of age when a highschool degree would cut it, but it is logically rather sound based on present realities.
That is quite a selfish viewpoint. Perhaps reconsider what you mean. Are you really stating that all people should have the same fate as you regardless of their starting conditions?
No. But lots of people are bad financially and get themselves into too much debt without a way out and I don’t think I should be responsible for bailing them out.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college with, at the time they agree to it, no way of paying it off. It’s a gamble any which way you slice it. And they have no frame of reference to understand the decision they’re making.
The school isn’t on the hook to ensure they get gainful employment that would pay them enough to manage that debt. The loan servicer isn’t either. Only the kid is going to be held to anything, yet the shitty take is always, “They knew what they were signing up for, so fuck em. I want them to suffer for their bad decision.”
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college
No they’re not! No is forced to go to college, and no is forced to go into debt to do it! Those are both choices they made! The premise of your whole argument is not true!
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
Unlikely, I plan ahead and don’t make stupid financial decisions.
This shit is bad for society, and by extension you. Loan services and schools suck up vast wealth that… goes into rich pockets and widens the income gap. Money that could go to purchasing goods and services, or supporting businesses of any size, or buying houses, or having kids, or paying taxes that could be used on useful things like decent roads (how taxes are used specifically is outside the scope of this discussion, just an example).
Your whole world could be better through loan forgiveness, just not specific to you. Just everything around you better. Just requires a little less “got mine”.
I love this argument. Absolutely no empathy for anyone who had different options and experiences, just straight up “I did it so anyone else can too.” You’re making the world a better place. /s
What’s your opinion on bailing out Mega Corporations who didn’t responsibly save their money? Or is it ok to bail out Mega Corps but not ok to bail out your mechanic?
it’s not my responsibility to bail them out of their problems.
Counter argument: Yes it is. As much as any responsibility exists at all, you have a responsibility to your fellow people.
“Well it’s not my responsibility” leads to a shittier world. And since you apparently have a degree and no debt, you can spare the energy to be better.
I’ll just assume your family is penniless, sent you to poorly funded K-12 schools, and kicked you out on your ass onto the street the day you turned 18 with no warning or support of any kind, and you still somehow got a degree without debt.
Otherwise, you’d be a raging hippocrite born on third base crowing like you hit a triple! Clearly though that can’t be the case.
I’m sorry your family did you like that though, that’s rough.
Then don’t call the police when your house gets robbed because you chose not to build the walls and doors out of nearly unbreakable titanium, build the windows out of nearly unbreakable 6 inch plexiglass, and install the best available security system in the world. I don’t want to be paying for your choices, and this is your problem now.
Don’t call the fire department when it burns down, either. Especially if you didn’t install a halon fire suppression system in every room and closet. Sorry for the loss of your house, neighbor, but your choices, your problem.
Quit driving on public roads. Getting around without using them is your problem and I don’t want to pay for it.
You’d better send your kids to private schools. It’s expensive, but hey, that’s your problem.
Fortify the hell out of your home. If we ever get invaded, I don’t want the military defending it. It would suck if it got attacked and destroyed, but that’s your problem; I’m not bailing you out.
In fact, you know what? You should just drop out of society, go buy your own island, and declare yourself sovereign. There, you will only ever have to deal with your own choices and problems. You’ll never have responsibility for anyone else’s, and no one will have responsibility for yours.
The rest of us will be over here enjoying something called civilization, where people join together for their mutual benefit and aid.
A choice typically made by 17 year old kids after having spent their entire life having it drummed into them that college is the correct step to take after school
Also 17 year old kids, the vast majority of which have never taken on significant debt and have no frame of reference for the scale of obligation they’re taking on.
It blows my mind that we look at an 17 year old and, as a government, we say, “Alcohol? Too young and immature. Handguns? Too young and immature. Tobacco products? Too young and immature. Voting? Too young and immature. Enlisting in the military or want to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt that will drive your major life decisions for the next few decades? Sign here.”
I guess you’re against COVID treatments too because coming in contact with other human beings is also a choice. Lung Cancer cure? No thanks, they chose to smoke those cigarettes so I would like them to suffer.
Does he have any grandchildren? Sometimes people feel this way only about “others” and have considerably different feelings about how “we” should be treated.
Public services - Very high risk
The public services sector carries high corruption risks for businesses. Companies are likely to encounter red tape, petty corruption, bribery and facilitation payments when dealing with India's public administration (GCR 2016-2017, ES 2014). India's economy continues to face constraints in the form of conflicting rules and a complex bureaucratic system with broad discretionary powers (ICS 2016). Businesses find the government's bureaucracy to be inefficient and rather burdensome, and report that bribes are often exchanged when applying for public utilities (GCR 2016-2017). Facilitation payments to expedite public services, such as police protection, water supply, and government assistance are also common (HRR 2016). Likewise, more than a quarter of companies expect to offer gifts or make irregular payments to government officials when applying for an operating license, while more than half of companies expect the same when obtaining a water or electrical connection (ES 2014). On a more positive note, the computerization of some public offices has reduced facilitation payments common in physical encounters with public officials.
Hopefully these funds end up used for the betterment of the people, as intended. Projects like this are so important, especially with local population trends in mind. Done right this could be transformative....
The fact that Purdue is saying “this is the best plan and everyone says so” tells me all I need to know. I just hope that when the case is heard, the outcome will better AND the Sack-of-shit-ler family is held accountable. You can’t claim ignorance on the opioid epidemic and run a business the way they did to directly profit from it.
I knew there had to be a dystopian take on this for Texas, of all states, to step in and prevent descrimination in HoAs.
And you blew it out of the water, thats probably exactly why. Cant have the poors live to far away cause they’d never be able to come into work and be exploited.
UC Riverside has now been issued a US patent on this RNAi vaccine technology
Naturally, you’ll want to patent it so you can profit off it instead of just releasing it to benefit all of humanity. Fucking greedy ass people sometimes…
I do t know UC Riverside’s history for how they manage their patents, but I’m on the side of giving them the benefit of the doubt until proven otherwise. It’s okay to have a patent. It’s ok to profit off an invention you spent a lot of money producing. But what’s not ok would be upping the price so high that people have to choose dying over getting the product because they simply can’t afford it. Let’s hope UC does the former and not the latter.
Generally these “patented” products from universities are funded via tax payer money. I am not cool with them profiting off something that is intended to save lives and was also funded by the very people who’s lives will be affected.
Putting things behind a patent wall only hinders progress.
Public universities receive funding from a multitude of sources. Research is typically funded by grants, which may come from state or federal sources, but they can also come from alumni, fundraising, or charitable trusts.
Regardless, patents are a necessary part of invention. As others have pointed out, without a patent, what’s to stop some other entity from coming along and (for example) using your hard work to make themselves rich? I’d wager if it were your invention/discovery, you’d want protections too.
There are some entities out there that would easily abuse patents. But I find it hard to believe a public university would be one of them.
A patent also ensures no one else can patent it. If they make it affordable and available they are protected from someone else patenting it and then “profitmaxxing” because they have legal recourse to prevent that.
That’s in fact why some universities patent their research stuff in the first place, to ensure nobody else can. They’ll then make it a policy to take 0€ in licensing fees, but this precludes anybody else from starting to lock the tech behind money.
Source: My uni back in the days had a few dozen patents for exactly this reason, too.
IANAL but patents rely on originality, meaning a preprint of the original paper is basically enough to make the technology impossible to patent. Well probably more than just the paper I guess.
I learned it too that it has to be “new”. Most likely it is a hell of a lot easier to directly patent it and have a strong legal foundation than just wait around and scramble for proof if it needs to be. Probably also helps being picked up by the industry.
It’s a fucking nonprofit. Without the royalty stream, shit like this can only be discovered, developed, and brought to market by big pharma. Then what happens?
That’s not how patents work. They have to guard it or else someone else will. You don’t know the university’s goals yet, but you would know the goal of a for profit pharma company.
Just because it’s patented doesn’t mean it can’t still be released for the benefit of humanity. It does mean it will be harder for some for-profit entity to claim the process for themselves. This may be naive, but I feel like a public (state-owned) nonprofit research university will be a better steward for the patent than a private entity that’s seeking to maximize shareholder value. I would expect that they would either license the patent freely for humanitarian benefit or at a reasonable cost to support the university’s ongoing research efforts.
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