Browsing social media, it’s apparent that people are quick to point out problems in the world, but what I see less often are suggestions for how to solve them. At best, I see vague ideas that might solve one issue but introduce new ones, which are rarely addressed.
Simply stopping the bad behaviour rarely is a solution in itself. The world is not that simple. Take something like drug addiction. Telling someone to just stop taking drugs is not a solution.
Being as that we have the tools now, any person who wants to run for a public office in a position of leadership, I.e mayor, vice mayor, sheriff, judge, Congress person or president, should have to undergo a psychological evaluation and if they show any of the three dark traits they should be rendered invalid and unable to participate in politics.
We don’t need any narcissistic psychopaths running the government, but narcissistic psychopaths are the ones that are the most likely to get elected because they’re the best at manipulating people into voting for them in popularity contests.
End capitalism before it ends humanity.
There are many congressional solutions to many of the things im vocal about. ending citizens united and making it clear rights are for living being people only (you know sort enshiring the idea the governement is from the people and for the people), medicare for all but improved, creating higher income tax brackets that go up to a billion and recognize all things as income so basically getting rid of capital gains, breaking up monopolies and regulating businesses, there is a lot.
Did you just intend to endorse organ harvesting and grave robbing?
And, if you want tax reform capital gains aren’t your target, but instead “unrealized gains”. A billionare pledging stock to back a loan should pay tax on their whole net worth’s increass in value first.
You want a realistic solution or a “if I had one wish” solution?
If every US Republican were to die of a heart attack right now, that would probably be the single greatest thing that could happen to our planet right now.
Your thinking is too limited.
There’s a lot of reasons why someone might choose to be a republican that has nothing to do with being a soulless monster.
A lot of them are stupid or have intestinal parasites that prevent them from thinking correctly.
And the world is not the United States, so if you have the power to wipe out an entire group of people, you should just destroy all of the assholes on the planet. Anyone who’s like more than 40% asshole just poof they’re gone.
I think I’d be in the clear cuz I believe I’m only in like the 30% range myself, but if I had to take one for the team that’s okay. (Totally not saying that just to put myself below the 40% line)
The meat and dairy industry receives vast amounts of subsidies which would be better allocated to plant based food sources. Meat is an inefficient way to feed the general population. I’m vocal about this because of two reasons: animal suffering and climate/pollution.
I’m not naive enough to say we should just cut subsidies to animal farming cold turkey, because I understand people’s livelyhoods depend on it. But I would want to see a progressive public divestment from meat in favour of plant based whole food proteins (not fake/lab meats, those can survive on private investment alone).
(not fake/lab meats, those can survive on private investment alone)
Singapore has been struggling to subsidize them enough so that people can buy them at normal prices.
At the same time, I’m also vocal about fixing farming. We need to stop destroying nature to grow food. Fortunately the divestment from animal farming will already significantly improve this because it’s more efficient to eat soy directly than to grow soy, feed it to pigs, and then eat the pig. However we need to fix monocultures by moving to regenerative farming and agroforestry.
And vertical farms.
If lab grown meat becomes cheaper than “real” meat while keeping the taste and texture of it or even improve on that, I can totally see that replacing factory farmed meat rather quickly. It’s like with electric cars; people don’t switch if we force / shame them to do so but they will once those vehicles became better than the dirty alternative.
But my point is that we are keeping meat artificially cheap with lots of subsidies. Meat would be a luxury food if people paid the real cost of it, let alone if we paid the long term costs on the environment. I think maybe your analogy would be better with bicycles than electric cars. Bikes are more versatile and convenient than cars in short distances (10km), but most cities have been and continue being developed as car centric. If we used taxes to improve bike infrastructure, people would feel safer to ride bikes more often.
This exactly. I would say one of the main reasons a lot of people don’t currently drink plant milk is that per unit volume, it tends to be more expensive. This is seemingly starting to even out as the plant milk industry expands, but the most dirt-cheap dairy milk and the most dirty-cheap plant milk are still nowhere near each other on price. I’m willing to bet that if all subsidies were taken away altogether, plant milk would be cheaper, and moreover, if it were flipped in such a way that existing dairy subsidies went to plant milk, it would be game over for dairy milk. Plant milk prices would be through the floor, and dairy milk would be seen as a luxury product. There are a ton of good reasons for this:
- Dairy milk is far worse for the environment than every kind of plant milk by every conceivable metric.
- The dairy industry is one of the most absurdly cruel institutions in the world. (NSFL)
- Plant milk is generally better for you than dairy milk. The downsides to plant milk health-wise are lack of protein (this is only 8g per serving, though, out of the 0.8g/kg/day that you need, and some plant milks are beginning to add protein) and the fortification with D2 instead of fortification with D3. It makes up for this however by generally having more calcium and Vitamin D, the potential to not have any sugar (compare ~8g of the sugar lactose), mono- and polyunsaturated fats without saturated fat and LDL cholesterol, and substantially fewer calories.
- Plant milk takes months to go bad, whereas dairy milk that’s not ultrapasteurized (and therefore dramatically more expensive) takes maybe a couple weeks at most from the date of purchase.
- Plant milk has an enormous amount of variety compared to dairy milk – there are so many types that enumerating them becomes exhausting, and for the most part (not you, rice milk) they’re all good. You can get essentially whatever you want, compared to dairy milk, where you’re basically stuck with that (subjective) weird, slightly sour aftertaste.
Big corporations begging taxpayer bailouts and then using them on bonuses and dividends. It’s a humongous waste of money that does nothing but enrich the wealthy. Most of the time it doesn’t even save jobs.
If, as a large corporate, you want a bailout from the taxpayer, then the government/state will take a portion of your shares in escrow, equivalent in value to the amount of money you’re asking for or getting. Those shares (in case of publicly traded companies) are withdrawn from the stock market, become non-voting shares and are frozen at their price at that time. Within a to-be-determined time period (five years maybe) the corporation, if it gets profitable again, can buy back all or part of the shares from the government at that price per share - thus returning money to the taxpayer. Anything that’s left after five years, the government can do with as it sees fit - sell them at market price (thus recovering the spent money), or keep them use them to vote/control the company.
There probably is a lot wrong with this proposal. But something needs to be done to discourage big business from hoovering up taxpayer money like it’s going out of fashion. Most of the time the taxpayer is getting absolutely no value from that spend.
No bailouts without an equivalent equity transfer to the public. If you want a bailout you need to grant the same amount of stock to the government in exchange.
Isn’t that pretty much the short version of what I said?
The only solution to car traffic is building viable alternatives to driving. Alternatives also bring many environmental and societal benefits.
That’s rather vague “solution”
What are the alternatives?
Fast & frequent public transport, safe cycling infrastructure, footpaths, just putting things closer together to reduce the need for transport
Is the issue here traffic or cars?
Because for traffic I can see how working public transit would atleast ease of the issue, but for the anti-car sentiment I often see here I don’t view public transit as a solution. Not to every car owner atleast.
Cars are not inherently bad, they are being utilized poorly. In dense urban areas, private cars are the worst option in terms of efficiency. However, currently in many cities it’s also the best due to city planning. This ought to change by investing into better infrastructure. In rural areas I see cars as the best option as it’s cheap and efficient there.
What’s the difference?
Anti car doesn’t mean completely banning cars. Nobody is saying to replace ambulances with bus trips. There’s obviously a need and cars would be much more effective for those things if the roads weren’t clogged with people who don’t have a need.
That solution will still require the fat lazy selfish car drivers to choose to sacrifice a little of their personal comfort for the sake of the common good.
Yes, the alternatives need to exist, but there also has to be cultural change. Driving a private car in a city is antisocial. It’s exactly analagous to smoking in a restaurant or office and we need to begin to see it that way.
Clarification for the benefit of downvoters (easier to downvote than make a counter-argument, right?): The solution that I propose is clear: get private cars off the streets of cities by whatever means necessary. The detail is almost unimportant. Private cars, especially ones with combustion engines, are a scourge across the world. They are what make our cities unlivable. In any big city (at least outside North America) most people get around by public transport. Cars are almost never a necessity, people buy them for reasons of status and convenience. In cities they’re effectively a tool used by rich people to immiserate poor people.
We’re too many humans for what the planet is able to sustain, we need to reduce our use of resources but we also need to be fewer than 8 billions
Overpopulation is something that’ll take care of itself over the next 50 years or so. The more immediate issue is to figure out who will pay the pensions of the aging population.
No, it’s not. Social security is not a failing program.
Yes it is when there’s more people receiving those payments than working. The money has to come from somewhere.
That’s a simplistic reduction. They’ve been saying it’s going to run out for 30 years.
It’s not exactly speculation. The birth rate in much of developed countries is well below the replacement rate. Population decline is already happening in some countries. Looking at current demographic charts shows that the number of elderly people is growing fast, while younger generations are shrinking. With fewer children being born, there will soon be much less workers to support a lot more retirees. Pension systems, mostly designed for growing populations, will be in real trouble as fewer people pay into them and more people are taking money out.
Stopping the wealth accumulation at the top through taxes on property above a threshold.
And, supplementary:
Stopping tax evasion by implementing a global tax cooperative so nations can stop competing in a downward race on tax rates
Stopping tax evasion by implementing a global tax cooperative so nations can stop competing in a downward race on tax rates
You may or may not be aware that the OECD has already begun implementing something like that:
Yeah I remember reading about it. This is probably a step in the right direction without having looked at all the details
Guillotine now. Adequate tax rates moving forward.
Fix the electoral college by either abolishing it entirely (personal choice) or fixing the house to properly represent the population such that the senate doesn’t cause an oversized share of electoral reps. The Wyoming Rule is one option.
We could also just go back to something like one rep per 100,000 population in a state, which would in turn make the house have 3,000 members. This sounds wild until you realize Parliament in the U.K. has 650 members… representing a population roughly 1/5 ours.
This is probably a fool’s errand, because it’s all or nothing, making it inherently unstable. If we ever get within striking distance of having enough states to cross the threshold, the law will be fought tooth and nail to prevent passage, and this battle would continue in perpetuity in every remotely purple state that has the NPVIC law in place, trying to get enough overturned to stop it.
Maybe it accomplishes something useful simply by bringing the conversation about reform to the forefront? But as an actual solution I’m completely skeptical, as much as I like the idea.
Perhaps more realistic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cube_root_law
Making it legal(or even, encouraged) to spray 1500psi water jet to anyone smoking when non-smoking people are around.
Voting for people that are closest to want I think is good.
Volunteering in non-profits.
Pushing for progressive ideas at work.
Trying be an example of what I defend and explain to people around me it if they ask me, without pushing them to change, hoping that I can slowly change the culture around me without triggering mental blockers. For example when a colleague asks if I’m vegetarian, I explain that I am rather flexitarian, which means I don’t have forbidden food but I favor food with smaller ecological impact. If they seem not receptive, I’ll listen politely and not try to change their minds. If they seem receptive, I’ll show them the Poore & Nemeck studies. Sometimes just a bit of neutral information is enough to trigger a change.In short, I don’t want to be someone who just blames the governments or companies, and make no efforts otherwise. I think we need a cultural change at every stage of society.
You can’t actually solve them. Depends on which problems of course, but most of them have to do with our societies not being fair whatsoever.
There are bigger problems that I agree need to be solved but I’m not personally that verbal about them. But the one I complain about the most has got to be potholes.
In the UK farmers are responsible for maintaining the hedgerows between the road and their fields so I feel like they should also be responsible for filling in the potholes caused by their heavy machinery and the cow shit left behind when they’re moving cattle.
If i sit or stand somewhere, i spray smokers a gust of water on their cancer-sticks, extinguishing the bad thing i am allergic to and eliminating this disgusting smell.
