So true. Over and over again in the article it says that people can’t afford children and universities. It keeps saying the cost of living is up and then says there is no single cause people won’t have children.
I agree with capitalism being a main cause. Additionally, many people also just don’t want to raise a child. They don’t want the added responsibilities and lack of freedom. Even people for whom capitalism works would rather enjoy their own life.
I just don’t want to go through pregnancy, personally. Love kids but not enough to risk my life and permanent bodily changes. The being poor part is secondary
My mother had to have pelvic floor surgery after having three kids. Prior to that, she had to get her gallbladder removed shortly after my brother’s birth. Pregnancy is extremely unappealing to me, and I don’t think the long term effects of it are talked about enough.
It is after all, the only thing you people know how to call out as a systemic issue in the world, so it might as well be solely responsible for every gripe you have I suppose huh.
I think people define capitalism vastly differently. To some capitalism is simply the ability to trade goods for personal profit, which exists in almost every society. To others its the dictionary definition of an economic and political system.
What? I don’t even have a stake in this debate. I am just pointing out how often I notice that two people seem to be discussing entirely different ideas.
Actually, yeah. Trade embargos starved those countries and the CIA killed the few real communists who managed to garner any influence, eliminating any real movements towards a marxist ideal
Ah yes, it wasn’t the expropriation and execution/imprisonment of competent farmers and the general failures of central planning, it’s all about them trade embargos.
Sure, go one and tell us who were the illuminated people touched by the grace of God that were just too powerful to wander around the Earth in the view of the CIA.
If it wasn’t for those pesky americans, the World would be the perfect kumbaya by now.
Che Geuvara, Salvador Allende, Jacobo Arbenz, Fidel Castro, Martin Luther King Jr (via FBI COINTELPRO, proven in a civil lawsuit) are a few names. Operation Condor, the Vietnam war, the Korean War, the Palmer Raids, and many more examples exist of violent oppression of communists by the US government
As for the people I don’t know Salvador Allende nor Jacobo Arbenz, but Fidel and Che were two bloodthirsty armsmen that just picked up whatever ideology fitted at the time. There is a reason why since then until now people try to escape from Cuba into the US. Also, I believe the US only really took an interest in them when they accepted the Soviet nukes.
As for Martin Luther King Jr, he was definitly persecuted, but was it because he was a communist? I’m not sure of that.
Do you really want to use the Korean war as an example of the US oppressing communists? Really? You literaly just have to compare how both sides ended up.
Che’s death was mourned across the world. That’s not something you can say about most bloodthirsty dictators. He was a revolutionary that cared deeply about the poor, downtrodden, and oppressed. When he was a doctor, he saw the effects of capitalism in his patients, which radicalized him because he felt that the only true way to help people was to overthrow the systems of oppression. The US took interest in them because they were communists, plain and simple. The anti-communist stance of the US government dictated all of the foreign affairs of the cold war. It’s why Arbenz and Allende were overthrown. Kissinger stated this on overthrowing Allende:
“I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”
He’s saying that the dictatorship of capitalists can never be questioned, and it’s unacceptable for anyone to try a system other than capitalism, even if it’s done peacefully and in a fair democratic election.
Do you know why MLK was in Memphis when he was killed? He was there in solidarity with sanitation workers that were on strike. Just like with communism abroad, socialists within the country were explicitly targeted. MLK, Angela Davis, Fred Hampton, Kwume Ture, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, and many more were targeted because of their leftist, socialist, revolutionary attitudes.
Shows what you know about the precursor and initial aftermath to the Korean war. North Korea was prosperous and had enough surplus food to send mutual aid to South Korea after the ceasefire, which was experiencing a famine. Several factors have led to the state being a dictatorship that I will not defend or support, however, in case you want me to accuse me of supporting their many crimes against humanity.
I don’t know where you people get this concept. Humans are the issue, not capitalism. There’s literally no functioning system of trade without capitalism. It’s just human nature. We are greedy and we want more than others so that we feel secure in our own future. It’s not fucking rocket scientist, and it’s not fucking capitalism.
Do you really Envision a world where everyone works equally and gets paid equally and nobody makes extra profit but somehow people are happy? That doesn’t sound like any of the humans I’ve ever known, even the nice ones. You need to be a little bit more realistic and get your childish ass out of the playground.
We couldn’t even get people to wear masks to not kill each other and you’re over here holding your breath for agapelandia lmao
There are no casual factors between wealth disparity and cost of living, and if anything an extreme enough wealth disparity lowers cost of living - serfs had a very low cost of living.
Not sure why you felt the need to insult me, but I assure you I need no further life experience to recall historical facts
There are innumerable functioning systems of trade without capitalism. My point is capitalism is intrinsically violent and wasteful. War is profit. But there ARE mutualist, communalist, and voluntary approaches to labor as well just to name a few. I also have to point out that the gold standard in the case of USD is effectively maintained by a obscenely expansive worldwide military presence which can’t be a good thing long term and how about that ongoing pandemic we don’t talk about? How long can we as species get away with ignoring the real, big, systemic problems? Capitalism is NOT fixing them, and won’t. Regardless you’re real mistaken, I don’t envision some perfect world, dont accuse me of naivety- I’m a tired, jaded anarchist, not a communist. Anyways I am truly sorry you’ve only ever known assholes… I’m not holding my breath for anything just speaking my mind, and maybe I change someone’s, at least I tried
Workers owning their own company would incentivize creating stable growth, since the workers aren’t going to willfully destroy the company they all have a stake in.
Whereas now we have unstable growth because the C suites, executives and shareholders milk companies dry and then toss them. They have no concerns about whether the bottom rung guys are sustainable.
Frankly it’s laughable to assert there is a sole cause in the first place when there’s a myriad of different people here with a myriad of their own personal factors at play.
“With the rising cost of living, I don’t think people feel they can afford to, or comfortably say they want to, have children,” said 23-year-old Anna Tanaka.
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
Tuition at private universities jumped fivefold between 1975 and 2021, and by 19 times at public universities, data shows.
These are all symptoms of capitalism. Alienation and seeking “class mobility” leads to people getting married later. The cost of living is a capitalist construct, and it rises primarily due to seeking profit. Colleges are also seeking to profit, and have successfully convinced people that taking debt early in life is good for individuals going into the labor pool. The debt also increases alienation and people who would have children are suddenly priced out of it due to education debt.
It’s hilarious to me that you linked this as somehow a result of capitalism
In 2020, women got married for the first time at an average age of 29.4, or 3.9 years later than in 1985, government data shows.
As people have fewer children, they are able to spend more on each child than families have in the past. That drives up the average cost of raising a child for the broader population
I mean the whole post is silly but this part especially is just chef’s kiss as a response to the poster above.
I explained how they were symptoms of capitalism. If you can’t understand it, then maybe you need a deeper understanding of the topic. How doesn’t it make sense?
“average cost” can vary in meaning on this topic. I read it as “fewer people are buying goods necessary for children, leading to raised prices and a higher average cost of raising children”. Considering studies done on the cost of raising children, this is how I interpreted the quote. But your interpretation is also technically correct, and I won’t fault you for reading something differently than I did.
That’s the incorrect way to read this. Rather, people are spending more on their children, and people without children are seeing average cost of raising children.
Effectively, the standard of living for children is going up and people who feel they cannot hit that standard of living are (in Japan’s case especially) opting not to have them.
I assure you that poor people are still having children that survive.
Funny how it’s always you people pretending like we have our heads in the clouds, when you don’t understand this simple fact of life yet.
It’s okay, maybe when you’ll older you’ll get it.
Let’s be real though. You do understand it but you want things to stay how they are. You’re afraid to come out and say it and I don’t hold you above that behavior.
There’s a term for people like you, useful something. I can’t remember it.
So brave. What an insightful comment. If you people stub your toe you will find a way to blame capitalism. Such a vacuous statement with no real world application.
If people dont have enough time to spend and raise their kids, dont have enough money to raise them without despair, if they dont have where to drop them during work hours, people cant have kids.
You really should think before doing a vacuous remark about anything.
Now what? Walk us to the next step, because 99% of comments here are just declarations with no actionable framework. Give me more and I’ll listen, but if all you’ll do is repeat the same thing ad nauseam without a roadmap then people will get bored and move on.
I can tell you’re mad he’s criticizing the system you’ve been indoctrinated to believe is flawless.
I don’t think you’re above the behavior of saying something is ‘a vacuous statement with no real world application’ just because you don’t like what’s being said.
At the end of the day it’s just circlejerk with no real world discussion. All the same catchphrases diluted into meaningless statements with no intended outcome except for some feeling of moral superiority. DAE Les capitalism amirite guys? “Indoctrinated” “flawless system”. Are you 14?
You always hear about how innovative the US is but the moment there is any talk about requiring industry to find an alternative to something youd think this place was as economically crippled as north korea. An economy so flimsy and industry so devoid of flexibility that it will collapse if required to find an alternative to x y and z but simultaneously supposedly the strongest and most resilient economy in the world.
It’s all a ruse to maximise profits and minimise expenses. They’ll do anything to protect the status quo — they’ve used the tragedy of the commons to manufacture dangerous chemicals on an industrial scale for decades, and banning them now would impact entire industries and product segments; probably to the tune of tens or hundreds of billions.
No multinational corporation is ever going to voluntarily support a change that will kill its profits.
We can exist without forever chemicals and have, we cannot exist and have not ever existed without water.
Lemme pose another extreme then. If water killed people after drinking it for 20 years would you just say we can’t replace it and accept that reality? Or would you at least make a strong effort to replace it?
“Forever chemicals” arent water. We have survived without it. It is currently just really inconvenient to do so again given what these substances are used for. I am a chemist. We have replaced things before and were almost certainly going to do it again. Companies just have to give a shit enough to make use of our inginuity to do so. But unfortunately they dont care unless they have a legal gun to their head so here we are
“Forever chemicals” arent water. We have survived without it
Uh. Yeah. Way to avoid my point completely. But sure - we don’t consume “forever chemicals” out of necessity. Guess that chemistry degree is really paying off.
My degree is directly relevant to the topic at hand. I am qualified to have an informed opinion on the feasibility of replacing forever chemicals. You on the other hand, are not.
There are replacements but none as cheap and easy to manufacture (yet… which is the whole point of R and D) which is why companies use them. There is very little pressure forcing companies to switch to alternatives and as long as that is the case, they will still use them rather than do the work needed to phase them out. This is not a problem because we cannot phase them out but because there is no economic driving force to use alternatives.
Making things dirt cheap IS NOT an acceptable excuse to fuck up the environment. We have one planet to live on. This is like pissing in the same office water cooler you drink out of because it costs 50 cents to use the bathroom.
“I’m not saying the example I just used in this situation is an example that should ever be used in this situation.”
And if scientists can’t “magic” new chemicals, I wonder how they came up with the ones addressed in this article? Besides, isn’t capitalism supposed to “drive innovation” and all that? Amazing how that suddenly goes right out the window the minute anyone questions the status quo or, god forbid, the profit that comes from destroying the earth and the people on it.
In almost every case I can think of there is an older solution, it was better, but its less profitable. They’re pushing cheap junk out. PFAS chemicals are not the best solution to much. Lightweight waterproofing, maybe?
The problem is that the industry has already made replacements and the replacements were bad too. Gen X was a replacement for PFOS and PFOA, all 3 are PFAS compounds. Either we have to completely abstain, greatly limit usage, find a magic way to treat it, or replace it. Odds are whatever wonder replacement we invent will be found to be the next super bad thing in 20 years.
ignorance and paranoia about radioactivity go hand in hand.
i know so many otherwise smart people who lose it on this issue. because they just think any radioactivity = destroy planet forever . completely ignorant to how it actually works, and just think every power plant must eventually chernobyl and that one barrel of nuclear waste is enough to destroy 1000s of miles or something equally absurd.
I think most reasonable objections to this were that they would be unable to filter out the actual bioaccumulating radioisotopes from the water and it should've been kept in retention. In the end you either trust they will or not. I trust they will.
Nobody's particularly concerned about the actual radiation of the tritium. It's just that it is actively picked up by your body and used like any other water with the same biological half life of water at 7 days. It can cause some problems in that time. It's not really a problem of it getting integrated into anything, since all it'll do is knock itself off of and destroy whatever it gets incorporated into when it decays.
I don’t understand why people think concentrating it and keeping large quantities on-site is preferable to heavily diluting and releasing it. A giant vat of radioactive water sounds like another disaster waiting to happen.
Because they don't believe that they've removed the heavy metals that end up in the food web and sitting in the littoral area seabed until it's picked up by lifeforms again. Tritium dilutes, but fission products do not.
I talked about how water released are usually modeled and risk assessments done in another comment abour the pending release a few weeks ago but I can’t find it.
While I can’t speak for all regulatory bodies, and you could be a shitass and release toxic crap without doing a risk assesmsent, it’s very unlikely that this is the case here, particularly because it’s TREATED water that’s being released. That means they have a treatment system (there’s a fucking rabbit hole and half…) which they are using to treat the water to some acceptable criteria/standard. This mean some sort of modeling and risk calculation has been done otherwise they would have just gone ‘yolo pump the water into the ocean’.
Tritated water is toxic just like heavy water. You'd just have to drink a truly ridiculous amount for it to be toxic, to the point that the radiation is a much bigger problem than the toxicity.
Edit: fully tritated water is actually worse, now that I think about it. The radioactive decay will periodically knock off a hydrogen atom, which makes it very reactive. That's not what this is though.
Water is toxic, if you drink an only mildly ridiculous amount and don’t get some salt too. I say this having been hospitalized for hyponatremia several years back, due to unwisely drinking plain water instead of anything with salts in it when sick.
Oh for sure, I'm a nurse. Heavy water/tritated water is cytotoxic like a chemotherapy drug however, vs just messing up your osmotic balance. Your proteins conformiational structure from hydrogen bonds can't function correctly with it and you can't replicate your DNA/RNA because of the difference in size of the hydrogen and your cells die. Starts with diarrhea, ends with death. You need like a 20% proportion of it to see those effects though, so like I said, truly ridiculous amounts of tritated water. More than the entirety that they're releasing.
Yeah they talk about nuclear waste and how it needs to be stored for so long, without recognizing that fossil fuels spew their waste, including radiation, directly into the atmosphere, where it is causing apocalyptic global warming. Having it in barrels is actually a big plus.
Man thats fucking vague click bait headline. What isotope? How much activity? What was in the water? Nah lets not talk relevant details, lets just spread uninformed fear of the nuclear industry instead.
The clean-up operation is expected to take decades, with the most dangerous part — removing radioactive fuel and rubble from three stricken reactors — yet to begin.
Nothing to see here, people. We have everything under control. Like, we totally know what we’re doing.
The Three Gorges dam displaced an approximate 1.3 million people, is of questionable structural integrity because of rushed construction, has had a huge impact on its immediate environment and in the event of a breach endangers 400 million people. While that monstrosity is an outlier, in most instances the construction of a dam will displace a lot of people and carries a sizable risk of breach if the construction isn’t carried out properly. Should or shouldn’t hydroelectric be considered environmentally friendly?
Wind and solar have relatively short material lifespans that are expensive or impossible to recycle. It’s all a double edged sword. There is no single solution that will work everywhere on this planet.
Sorry if I was vague, I meant the person you were replying to doesn’t know what nuclear power is, which is why they use a fear mongering term like “nukes” to describe nuclear power.
Nobody knows how long they’re going to take because they still don’t have a fucking clue about how they’re going to do it. I’m not blaming the people working on this stuff, my point is that this technology is still uncontrollable despite what all the apologists keep trying to tell us.
It’s more than apologists. For a number of years now, across most social networks, the nuclear lobby has planted astroturfers. You can’t get humans to agree on shit, yet anyone touting nuclear power as the savior of humanity in the face of climate change is a transparently obvious corpo plant with all of the same talking points as each other. It was just a matter of time before the propaganda took organic roots in real people.
Let’s never explore wind/solar/hydro power. Only nuclear.
How about we explore all of them instead of shutting down nuclear and replacing them with natural gas. Like they did in New York after Cuomo said nuclear was a part of New York State’s green energy plan. Am I a corpo plant now? No corporation is pushing nuclear right now. It’s too expensive and has way too long of a ROI.
While you’re right about the nitty gritty specifics of the case, the nuclear industry needs no help spreading fear of itself. Fukushima happened 13 years ago. Not exactly ancient history. Worst nuclear disaster of all time.
That being said, I don’t think the nuclear industry of today should be hamstrung by Soviet incompetence and corruption from the 1950s. I mean these guys at this location were running open loop cooling circuits into the lake and river. We know better than this nowadays.
And has since been learned from. That reactor design is no longer used, specifically because of that. It would take more than just negligence to get a modern reactor to fail. Spreading fear of nuclear benefits no one and harms everyone.
These are critical chemistries that enable modern day life
Then maybe we need to examine "modern day life" with a more critical eye. Some sacrifices may need to be made, because they are worth being made.
There are also measures that lie between "ban" and "use freely". If we cannot eliminate the use of these chemicals in chipmaking, then we need to reconsider the disposability of these chips, or we can even consider if less effective processes result in less damaging chemical use, and accept a bit of regression as a trade-off.
Yeah, me I do, which is why I want to get rid of these forever chemicals because that’s how we’re going to end up with 40 year lifespans again.
We aren’t getting rid of our nutritious diets and vaccines which are the two biggest factors in history that have extended average lifespans. Not Teflon pans and firefighting materials.
You underestimate the toxicity of PFAS chemicals and their manufacture. I work in a toxicology lab, I know a lot of people researching PFAS right now.
To make PTFE, they used to use a chemical called PFOA, which causes multiple types of cancer and other pathologies. Everyone has been exposed to it, especially since they have been found to just dump it in whatever river is convenient. They had to stop using it after getting sued, but now they just use a different chemical that had been show to have the same effects. And again, they’re just dumping it into rivers knowing the fines for polluting won’t be as bad as actually containing the chemical properly.
That is one PFAS chemical. There are so many others. Do not let corporations poison you for profit and then lick their boots for the privilege.
My comment was about how if elimination of these materials is impossible, then we should figure out how best to reduce their usage in an acceptable manner.
Jumping straight to black-and-white "So you'd send us back to the dark ages?!?!?!" type of response is kinda wild.
One of the main uses for PFAS is electric vehicle batteries. So if “modern day life” means reducing CO2 emissions, then it will inevitably mean increased use of PFAS.
Of course. But if we want to reduce CO2 emissions then buses will still need electrification - and therefore require PFAS.
Furthermore, public transportation will not be able replace all private vehicles. Or at least, it cannot replace them all quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate change. By the time the necessary infrastructure was built, it would be too late. Therefore, electrification of private vehicles will be necessary, which will also require PFAS.
Basically, we are at a late enough stage of CO2 emission that the only realistic hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change requires mass production and adoption of EVs.
Of course. But if we want to reduce CO2 emissions then buses will still need electrification - and therefore require PFAS.
Okay. But again. My comment was that if elimination isn't possible, reduction should be pursued.
So saying "we still require this" is completely irrelevant.
Furthermore, public transportation will not be able replace all private vehicles.
Nowhere has anyone even hinted that replacing all private vehicles is the goal.
Once again. Reduction is the goal.
So saying "we can't replace all" is completely irrelevant.
Or at least, it cannot replace them all quickly enough to avoid catastrophic climate change. By the time the necessary infrastructure was built, it would be too late.
Buses require almost exactly the same infrastructure as private cars.
Basically, we are at a late enough stage of CO2 emission that the only realistic hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change requires mass production and adoption of EVs.
No. What the hell. Why would that be true?
Public transport is a better option for basically every major population centre. And for those centres, we should not be encouraging private vehicle ownership, but rather replacing that as much as possible with public transport. Hell, even if that public transport is on-demand low-occupancy shuttles and ride sharing, that's still better.
Electric private vehicles are better than internal combustion, but they are still awful.
So saying “we can’t replace all” is completely irrelevant.
I think it’s relevant to the person you were replying to as well as the original point of the article.
PFAS are critical to some modern technologies. In some cases, they cannot be replaced. Any time we replace cars with buses, we will need PFAS to electrify the buses. And likely we will need more PFAS in the future than we are using today.
You’re right, you were quoting the article not another person.
Regardless, you asked for a critical look at the necessity of PFAS and whether it is possible to reduce usage. My original answer is the same, namely:
One of the main uses for PFAS is electric vehicle batteries. So if “modern day life” means reducing CO2 emissions, then it will inevitably mean increased use of PFAS.
There are several countries where I've heard of this being a problem, but I've never heard this about Australia. Care to share some resources about what you're referring to?
It’s been a major, major issue reported on by news organizations all over the world, and acknowledged as a huge problem by the Australian government as well…
Just because I'm not aware of it also doesn't make the original post from False any less unexpected, I acknowledge my own ignorance but the point still stands. If it becomes known enough world-wide that Australia does indeed have a rampant SA problem that it become associated with the country as part of it's "culture", then it won't be any weirder to so a "Sigh, Australia..." when an article comes up talking about it.
Literally no one is doing that. There was no excuses or apologies made for sexual assault taking place in other places. There was no "minimizing" the fact that it happens elsewhere. You are perceiving a slight from nothing, or at best a short post of exasperation that it happened again.
As I mentioned somewhere up the thread, I’m not talking about you personally. I’m talking about the lack of societal acknowledgement and awareness regarding the issue. When 63% of women working in the Australian parliament report being sexually harassed as I linked above, and there are years of newspaper articles from all over the world regarding it yet there’s no societal awareness of the problem something has to change.
I’m not talking about you personally of course. I’m sure that you are against rape culture that is prevalent in Australia, Japan, and much of the world over.
This is exactly why everyone thinks you hexbears Lenin apologists are obnoxious. You made a specious argument which seems intended to pull a third nation into a completely unrelated story for no reason and then aggressively argue about it when people call you out. Take the L and try to contribute something other than rage for a bit.
I think the point he was making is it’s never good to assume the whole country is like this when it’s individuals doing it, and I have to say I agree. That’s the kind of reasoning that led to people attacking Russian-American businesses and homes when the Ukraine invasion started
Ahhh, that sucks to hear. It seemed like such a nice place while there, but I guess that's benefits of tourism. All of the cool parts, not around long enough for the bad :(
I mean, the vast majority of people here are not committing sexual assault. There is certainly work to be done with the justice system regarding reporting and prosecuting crimes, but it's not like Japan or Osaka or Tokyo just condone SA.
Societies today are extremely large, which means it doesn’t matter if a majority does something or not, if a per mille does it’s a massive, society-defining problem.
Lack of effort to stop sexual assault in Japan is well documented. Victim blaming is common. This is a systemic problem, and if you didn’t know, then now you do.
Yes, it’s like that in much of the world. Australian laws until recently silenced SA survivors for example as I linked down below. It’s good that you’re learning about it and engaging with it. Rape culture must be stopped world over.
This is specifically for train groping, for one, and literally has a whole section on what they are doing about it. I specifically wanted to know what was being cited here:
Lack of effort to stop sexual assault in Japan is well documented.
I specifically was asking for documentation about "Lack of effort to stop sexual assault in Japan is well documented". The article provided mentions the efforts they are making.
I suppose you could do a basic web search. Meh.
You make the claim, you provide the evidence.
The actual reason I ask is that, if this specific sort of thing exists, it would be good to specifically target and fight it.
They have women only passenger trains on the subway because they need to not because they want to. Those don’t exist in most western countries that I know of.
Lmfao, as if rape and sexual assault don't happen literally everywhere on earth there are men.
But hey, if you single out Japan, that means you can avoid acknowledging the misogyny in your own country/culture right? What a neat and not at all obvious trick that is...
I remember commenting on a post where China condemned Japan for doing this.
I asked ppl there “is this actually bad or is this kind of par for the course of getting rid of the dangers left behind in Fukushima?” And most of them were like “it’s not a common occurrence but it’s not inherently dangerous and it’s not that big of a deal”
To me it looks like the vast majority of objections to this came from strategic propaganda related to domestic relations of China and/or other nations.
All you said that was humans mess up everything we do, as if that were something meaningful to say. That is not an argument against nuclear. That's an argument against absolutely everything humans do. It's meaningless. Look:
I don’t doubt solar power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
I don’t doubt coal power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
I don’t doubt hydro power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
I don’t doubt steam power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
All of those are exactly as meaningless as what you wrote. So don't go on snarkily about my "great wisdom" like you've made any point at all. Nuclear is safer than oil and coal and gas, which is where the majority of the world's energy comes from right now. Fossil fuels are actively destroying our planet right now, and you're spreading nuclear FUD about things that haven't happened. That's not helpful, and it doesn't match the reality we live in.
I don’t doubt steam power works. I just know how humans work. Everything we build we also destroy. Let’s not take the planet with us.
Funny they didn’t bother with solar or wind…
It would be a lot cooler if you showed how many meltdowns occurred from solar and wind.
I’d rather not commit future generations with the obligation of dealing with nuclear power. But I guess you like billionaires like Bill Gates deciding that for you.
Anyway, I’m done with you. You sound like a shill. Might want to clean the boot polish off your face next time.
I have no facts to give you other then humans are too dumb and fickle to be trusted with something as temperamental nuclear power when solar and wind exist.
Anyway, I’m done with you. You sound like a shill.
Lol.
The famous last words of someone who has no point to make but can't even admit it to themselves.
I wrote an honest reply to you and I even bothered to Google some sources for you to refer to. You didn't even reply to what I said and just came back spouting more non sequitur garbage.
It's shameful. You should do better than this. Be better than this.
There’s nothing more capitalist than pushing coal and oil.
And any rational green energy advocate knows it’ll take us decades to build enough solar/wind to fill the fossil fuels gap, but would only take us a couple years to fill that demand with nuclear and also produce fewer emissions. That’s simple numbers.
So are you just irrational or a coal-snorting capitalist yourself?
Best case scenario estimates are a complete replacement by 2050 if energy consumption doesn’t change. This requires aggressive investment in renewable production.
However, that’s unlikely to happen, as energy consumption is increasing, especially as vehicles across the globe abandon oil-based fuel for electricity from the grid.
The largest hurdle to nuclear power is simply regulatory. We could have nuclear plants built by 2030 with a ~30+ year life that would guarantee us the ability to fully phase out fossil fuels in favor of renewables by 2050 even as demand increases.
The USSR and Russia were huge players in nuclear technology and contributed a lot to the field. I actually can’t think of an energy source that has a closer connection to communism.
Y’kown we nuclear power plants cant explode like an atomic bomb right. Chernobyl was about the worst case scenario, and most of the blame is on dogshit soviet designs.
Also if you bring up the Russian troops who got fucked up, that was caused by not using PPE and then promptly inhaling graphite dust and some randome mildly radioactive materials. It was fine while in the ground but breathing that shi in will do a number, probably still better than going to those old mining towns where the air is now made of asbestos.
And anti-nuclear propagandists who are almost entirely paid by fossil fuel companies?
They’re dastardly clever. They’ve created a narrative that it’s fossil fuels companies who are actually pushing nuclear technology. I suspect they’re also behind the unusual opposition to hydrogen – if hydrogen is ubiquitous, it’s going to be green hydrogen more likely than not. By trying to stop that, fossil fuel companies are able to continue selling and using hydrogen from refinery operations.
I feel like there was enough issues on damn near every level that the term “compounding issues” comes to mind. Seriously its one of those situations where if it wasnt one thing that wrnt wrong it wouldve been something else.
Asbestos. You know how long they knew that was killing people? Lead, they knew that was toxic, kept using it. Business, under capitalism, is designed to find the cheapest path to pull in more money. Regardless of the consequences. Changing might not even mean all that much more, in cost. They would still act like they can’t at all, because any back slide looks bad on their charts. They have no financial obligation to the environment and or people. Change that and they’d become innovators overnight.
My favorite was white phosphorus, which caused Phossy Jaw in the employees making the matches. Switching to red phosphorus would mean a 1% increase in cost or reduction in profits (wasn’t sure which based on the article). Doing so would mean your employees’ bones wouldn’t dissolve. It took regulation to force them to switch.
Criticizing capitalism doesn’t imply communism or socialism. You can just criticize capitalism without suggesting an alternative.
Your jump to communism It’s like saying “I guess I have to kill myself, because some parts of life are hard.” There are other directions one could take.
Reread my comment. Nowhere did I mention communism but rather countries claiming to be so. I would argue they aren’t communist at all, only state capitalist but that’s a tiring discussion to have.
It was not in defence of capitalism but rather to ammend the criticism to include countries pretending to be not capitalist.
I can see how my one-sentence-wording fails to get this point across though and looks like your average “bUt cOmmUniSM bAd” comment whenever capitalism is mentioned.
Ok, but why bring up either communism or countries claiming to be communist? Going up on this thread, I don’t see any references to it. Did I miss something?
The comment made me look up which nations banned asbestos and also which didn’t.
Obviously the US hasn’t - what a surprise - unlike the majority of developed nations who have outlawed it.
Then I was curious about whether former “communist” countries banned asbestos. After all, capitalist businesses - mentioned in the comment - didn’t quite exist in those, everything was state-owned. The entire profit motive was gone.
And with the exception of individual products containing asbestos, such as sprayed asbestos being banned in the GDR a century before its capitalist counterpart, none of them implemented a general ban. From quick research, the first general bans started appearing in the early 90s.
Since these nations regularly tout(ed) themselves as being far more “progressive” than capitalistic one’s I felt it necessary to highlight this discrepancy.
So that’s roughly the reason I made the original comment. Although looking back it seems tangentially related to the original at best.
So you do associate anti-capitalism with communism. That means my original criticism of your post was valid.
I don’t hold it against you. Usually, the next thing out of someones mouth after they criticize capitalism is communism or socialism. It’s pretty easy to make that leap.
Yes, I do associate communism with anti-capitalism.
I consider it to be only a subset of anti-capitalism though, making up a portion but not all of it.
I guess what I intended to say was: The criticism of OP can be applied to every country on the globe, regardless of whether they consider themselves capitalist or not.
Asbestos is genuinely a wonderful material. It’s heat-proof, it’s a wonderful insulator, it’s one of the best filters for gas masks, it’s wonderful for use in brake pads and clutches, etc.
It’s just a damn shame it causes cancer in living things.
Japan’s problems are compounded by its ethnocentric concept of nationhood, where it is almost impossible for people who aren’t of ethnic Japanese descent to become citizens. There are third-generation descendants of Korean immigrants in Japan who have never lived in Korea, speak only Japanese and have only ever known Japanese culture, but who can never be legally Japanese.
I never understood why official goverment body’s do that anyway. Maintaining your own infra means you have full control. This should be mandatory for any government body. Not beeing dependant on big tech who make up silly rules as they please.
Agreed - any competent municipal IT dept. can set up an instance without breaking a sweat - set up a VM, install your OS of choice, install Lemmy & its stack, set up the DB, register the domain, find some interns to moderate & do scut work. Not completely trivial, but within modest means.
i read an article a few weeks ago that said that our (the Netherlands) government is working on its own Mastodon instance, i hope they actually pull through with that :)
Yeah mastodon has come a long way. I hope your govt manages to pull it off just to prove it can be done.
Then I think many others will follow.
It really does make a lot of sense for govts. They have their instance and can then host accounts for all their departments. People from all over the Fediverse can then sub to them for updates.
They have one now at social.overheid.nl which they seem to test at the moment. They have a few accounts such as Belastingdienst, KNMI, Rijkswaterstaat, MinBZK so I hope they’ll continue after the experiment phase is over.
It’s easier to bring the information to the people than it is to bring the people to the information. Social Media is (has previously been…) perfect for that.
Thing is, it made sense until Twitter got sold to a capricious billionaire. Twitter was very stable and their rules didn’t change much before then. The APIs made them an easy way to send out a lot of info in a popular, easily to access way. It worked well as a system for both government agencies and citizens, until Elon decided to stick his dick in it.
But thats exactly the problem :) some ego steps in and boom! As a foreign government you simply cant trust that a privatly owned company has your best interest at heart, and they shouldn’t.
Yep. The BBC & NPR found that out. Notice that the BBC stood up their own Mastodon instance - they know the value of owning one’s house instead of renting.
Japanese local governments, let alone the central one, still have almost zero knowledge about the value of maintaining infrastructure which they should have full control. Virtually even discourses about it do not exist yet. Huge difference between the European governments.
Oh, very much so. There was a big news story about two years ago where a police officer lost a floppy disk that had a bunch of people’s personal information on it.
Honestly, if everyone woman only had 2 children that would still reduce the population without causing demographic collapse which is what Japan is undergoing. A rapid decline in population creates misery for everyone. You really what a birth rate that hovers around 2 for gentle population decline.
I’ve heard the claim rapid decline is terrible before. I imagine there may be some adjustments people dislike which is easier to adjust on a slower rate of decline… but “misery”, how?
Economic collapse, to a greater or lesser extant depending on how fast adjustments are made. Though in some cases adjustments cannot be made. Worst case societal collapse (think violent revolution).
Pretty much the entire world economy is based on growth. Individual countries economies for the most part are also based on growth. In either case part of the growth is in population so there are more consumers. Additional most societal institutions and jobs require having a certain number of people to function for everyone. Different countries have different critical jobs and institutions. Care for older population is a big one in most places, doctors, nurses, in home care, and people to do things for the old they can’t do anymore. Too few young people means likely too few of those people to take care of older population. That in turn either means the state has to pay more to get more people in those jobs, or care falls upon family which can force them to work less (or quit completely). More money spent by government means less spent somewhere else, some of that will be critical or at least inconvenient for someone. Family working less, or quitting altogether, means they are no longer adding to the economy and become a drag. Further a ballooning older population can lead to a drastic drop in tax revenue and compound the drag on the economy they are already having. GDP can drop which can devalue a currency, then leading to increased costs for imports and borrowing. This can further discourage people who would otherwise have children to not have any. Once this gets into a positive feedback loop it can continue to get worse faster than a society can adjust.
Everything is interconnected in our economy inside any one country, but also across the entire world. A positive feedback loop (like the mortgage crisis the US) can lead to a recession, or worse a depression. Then people are out of work and might not be able to afford the means to continue living, they then can become desperate. This can lead to a crisis and even revolutions (has happened before).
Too big a drop in population guarantied to cause societal collapse? Of course not. It doesn’t even guarantee economic collapse, might just be a recession where most people survive fine in the long term. It might all be fine. What the outcome is really depends on how well positive feed back loops caused by a drop in population are handled, and if they happen slow enough they can be handled. Lots of the Western world is in trouble, but a population drop might help climate change, it also might not if a positive feedback loop (permafrost methane) starts accelerating climate change.
I’m not an economist so I will take your words on this, though I still struggle to believe it’s an issue and have some remarks.
I am not worried about needing enought people for jobs. Given advances in inteligence automation then we can’t forever have enough jobs for all humans. If a country can impliment a universal basic income then the citizens can at least have a basic living.
Why are most countries based on growth? That appears reckless. Unless we expand into space then at least population growth caps out at some point. Doesn’t every other growth have a limit?
Your remarks are spot on. They are why I’ve read up on some of these problems over the years, even though I’m not an economist.
Automation very well might mitigate and/or cause other issues. It is to be seen if a capitalistic system will succeed in being reasonable, especially some of the more virulently capitalistic ones like the US. People being more productive has avoided many problems in capitalism for a long time, AI is a new way for this to happen.
Universal income is an excellent idea. There have been some really convincing studies where it has been implemented on small scales (one town or village). So far it hasn’t gone much farther as there are strong contingents of people unreasonably against the idea.
Basing economy on growth is problematic. Growth being key to capitalism has been a criticism for awhile. It is reckless, doesn’t reflect actual reality of resource limits of growth, and sets up problems some countries are facing (declining birthrate, job displacement due to automation, etc).
The fundamental issue with declining populations - fundamental as in regardless of the economic system of the country - is decreasing standard of living.
The very simple metric is productivity-adjusted hours worked per person. This invariably falls in cases where overall population is declining, because populations age as they decline, and older people work less (retirement) than younger ones.
As this metric falls, the country's economy basically just produces less stuff per-person than it did in the past. This makes everyone effectively poorer.
In extreme cases, there can also be issues with availability of services. E.g. healthcare: Each doctor/nurse/caregiver can only effectively attend to so many patients and this number is difficult to increase with technology.
Standard of living is supported by those who can produce versus those who cannot. As population declines the demographics skew to mostly be older non-working people. There is a certain point where the percentage of people working versus not working is too small, then the economy can no longer produce enough for everyone’s current standard of living. It can range from relatively minor case of not being able to get all the variety of food, or it can be major where people starve because not enough food can be produced. Or medicine, or care, or electricity, or oil, or plastic, or TV shows, etc.
Given enough time a new equilibrium and standard of living comparable to the old one will likely result, but getting to that new standard of living can mean people died.
Would it have to be extreme where people are straving? A nation already wealthy has a lot of infrastructure which just needs to be maintained or adapted?
Unfortunately, I think that capitalism is here to stay, so things will just get shittier and shittier for everyone. As others responding to the top level comment have mentioned, declining birth rates means more stress on the entire system, where we’ll see more young people without any future to hope for since all their energy and money will be coopted for caring for old people, old people having shittier end-of-life experiences because there isn’t enough money to support them, and countries will not able to support anyone because there’s no investment due to lack of growth.
Basically every government planned for what has been the norm over the entirety of human history. Which seemed logical up until recently. That means for decades policy and economic decisions were based on the idea that every generation would be equal to or greater in size than the previous one.
The knock on effects of these assumptions are the reason government pension programs like social security are a concern world wide. People are living longer and less people are paying into the systems. This is an issue with nearly all government programs. There are less people paying taxes, paying into social programs. Costs are not going down anytime soon. It’s a recipe for instability.
Let’s just be simple about this: pensions and oth3r old age support. Who pays for those? Young people. If young people have to support a lot of old people, you’re gonna have a bad time. Everyone. The young people have have larger amounts taken out of their pay and old people who get less support because there are just literally not enough resources. And because old people outnumber young people young are pressured more and more under democracy to give more to older people.
That is only one terrible thing from demographic collapse.
SoOo rather than pressuring people to have kids they don’t want, maybe we can shift our attention to the absurdity of the system? At the very least tax billionaires out of existence worldwide
nonsense, let’s just ban abortions and wait for the magic to happen. surely people won’t resort to dangerous practices like coat hangers and poison because there’s no precedent of that in history, like ever. we’ll just head over for a pint and wait for all of this to blow over. the dragons demand their hoard, and by dog they shall have it!
Supporting old people is already a sector of business. A wealthy country should already be on top of this? Can we not improve using automation to meet the higher demand?
Declining birthrates like japan has can cause huge problems that immigrants alone can’t fix and that is not mentioning that the required amount of immigration to fix it would cause a whole set of other problems
That is not a sustainable solution. What’ll happen when countries with currently high birth rates develop, reduce their birthrates and you don’t have as much immigration as before?
I don’t understand why anyone who doesn’t absolutely need to be in China would go there - and I don’t consider a job requirement to be an absolute need. Yes, the country is beautiful, but the CCP is most definitely not, and they own you while you’re in their territory.
and I don’t consider a job requirement to be an absolute need
Well, I suppose people who don’t need to work for a living might struggle to understand the lives and motivations of other people, who, you know, have to take risks and make sacrifices in their lives.
Take it easy. I’m referring to consulate jobs, international business, and such. Usually, if you’re qualified for that, you have other options that don’t require moving to a police state.
Why would someone with a consulate job avoid China, of all places?
Employees of foreign governments, especially in embassies and related posts, have very specific rights under international law. They have a huge amount of leeway compared to tourists, who often can get more than nationals.
Honestly, China is Disneyland compared to a lot of the rest of the planet. I knew personnel who were stationed in the USSR and Eastern Europe during the Cold War, including one woman who got the crap beaten out of her for meeting with the Solidarity people in Poland despite having a diplomatic passport. I’ve also been to even more colorful places myself at the government’s request. International business is the same. Millions of people travel to China every year for business.
No one is going to mistake China for Norway, but it’s also hardly the DPRK. I’d even go to the DPRK just for the hell of it if I could.
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