I think it’s possible. There are many innovative and compassionate people in the world trying to solve a variety of crazy hard problems that touch this topic.
But maybe we land in a middle ground. Maybe we make it to another planet.
And if we don’t, we will adapt.
P.S. Watch George Carlin save the plant for a laugh.
So compassionate people should clean up after selfish people? So why
should a selfish person even care, when they know that a compassionate
people will clean up after them?
This is a road for compassionate people to become slaves of selfish
people.
I think that the only way for "persuading" selfish people to clean up
after themselves is to somehow force them to do it.
Seems an odd way to frame it imo. compassionate vs selfishness. Those are the only two kinds of people? And why is selfishness so bad? People are both.
People have and can innovate solutions for themselves, their own interests, and even for profit. Those solution can and have helped everyone.
I agree with you in a sense. Let’s take a big global human problem. Obesity. How the heck does that get solved? Force everyone to eat what we tell them? Force them to exercise? Good luck.
Ozempic is an innovation with lots of pros and cons. It isn’t a panacea. But I bring it up as an example of an out there solution never before possible that WILL change millions of lives. It maintains people agency to live how they want (selfish or not) while giving them a solution to a problem they aren’t able to tackle on their own or don’t care to other than take a pill.
Is ozempic made by compassionate people or selfish people. Prob a mix of both. I think the solution has a lot of compassion in it.
A selfishly or compassionately made company aiming to solve the problem of trash in the ocean, doesn’t require people to change their behavior. Solutions built around people NOT having to change are promising imo. Both can happen at the same time though. People changing habits, new innovations that don’t require change on their part, and a mix of both working together.
Forcing people to stop eating meat, prob not gonna happen. Creating an alternative of lab grown meat (tastes like shit for now) will change behavior over time without forcing anyone.
Also, if the compassionate people solve the problems and are happy doing so, so what. Problems solved for everyone. The compassionate people I know, would never frame themselves as being slaves to other people.
Do we have enough time, idk. 8 billion years if we manage to survive till then ;)
I mean, selfish vs compassionate is a huge philosophical problem, and we
can use a shortcut and just say that the only real behavior is a selfish
behavior, because even compassion ultimately fuels our own selfishness
(it's about making us feel good when helping others).
I didn't want to go that road. Just wanted to highlight, that sometimes
the act of ensuring that we live in a good environment forces us to make
sacrifices. This is what I meant by "compassionate behavior". And a
selfish person lives in this environment, but doesn't sacrifice anything
-- they live like parasites. So my remark was about being a slave to the
parasite, by having to sacrifice something personal (energy, resources),
so that others could live in the same quality environment, without
sacrificing anything. For me that doesn't seem like a good deal.
By the way,
> I agree with you in a sense. Let’s take a big global human problem. Obesity.
> How the heck does that get solved? Force everyone to eat what we tell them?
> Force them to exercise? Good luck.
Obesity is mostly a calorie intake problem.
Introduce sugar tax. Regulate sugar ads aimed to kids. Introduce health
risk information on sugar products (like it was done on cigarettes).
Increase the cost of healthcare if the obesity problem is not addressed
for an extended period of time. Stop allowing promotion of "heathly at
every size" agenda.
Force it, because obese people apparently aren't able to think straight
in this area.
I'm not saying that it's possible to eliminate obesity down to each
individual, just like it's impossible to eliminate the use of drugs by
even criminalizing them, but there's certainly a lot of things that can
be done.
> Ozempic is an innovation with lots of pros and cons.
I think that Ozempic treats the result, not the cause. So I don't think
it shouldn't be seen as a solution to anything.
It's a different kind of "denialism" when people think the magic solution will come somehow, someday soon (i.e. denying how fucked we are, or lying to ourselves that we have the resource budget to produce millions of EVs when in reality all car production needs to be ended, or denying that interplanetary salvation is just too god damn far away timewise):
The selfishness is now apparent, hey someone just got reelected promising it'll be better for "us" and that we're going to get rid of "them", and the fuck-the-poor-hungry-climate-catastrophe-victims rightwing populism is rising in Europe too.
No magic needed. We invented vaccines, we made it to the moon, on the way to recovery of the ozone, created other energy alternatives, etc. big innovations!
I agree with you, evs are not the solution lol. They have many huge cons. Cobalt mining etc.
The problem maybe insurmountable. Even if they are, there is still work to do to make the best of the shit we find ourselves in.
This humans are a terrible species, selfishness reins supreme, we aren’t capable of anything else, everything is bad, there is no hope, we are doomed mentality is a load of shit.
What is your proposed solution? Don’t try? Don’t innovate?
I've certainly given up on the idea that my fellow man is going to make the collective good choice. And this now influences my own decision making going further. I doubt I'm alone.
I went digging out of curiosity, and it seems you are correct. According to this article [1], around 80 of the top 100 airports have rapid transit connections.
Melbourne’s airport is very annoying when compared to Sydney. To get to the CBD you have to go and stand outside to wait for a bus that comes every ~15 minutes and takes half an hour to get there (or pay an exorbitant price for a taxi or Uber), whereas in Sydney you’ve got a direct train that gets to the city in 15 minutes.
It's been a while since I caught the train to or from Sydney airport but, in true Sydney fashion, it's privatised and costs an absolute fortune. From memory it costs more than Melbourne's SkyBus.
I am flying (in Europe) very often, almost once a month, and I very rarely use a taxi. Most of the time public transport gets me to the center faster, more convenient, and cheaper (even though price is not the priority - I often travel for work and can expense it).
For anyone doing travel planning based on reading here: often your best option is actually a bus (coach). This is because although they're slow, they go straight to many major hotels in the city. This removes the need to negotiate the subway with luggage or deal with Tokyo's idiosyncratic taxis while jetlagged.
For anyone looking for actual pro-move here: pack what you need for the next day or two in the carry-on, and ship your heavy luggage to the hotel, and then take the fastest train you can afford to get where you’re going.
Some of the Japans biggest shipping companies (I’ve personally only used Kuroneko Yamato; but I’m pretty sure others do this too) will pick up your luggage from the airport, and deliver it to your room for ~15 USD per bag.
This also works in reverse, and even between cities — don’t take your heavy bags on Shinkansen, have a concierge or front desk ship them to your next hotel.
The Google keyword for this are ta-q-bin/takkyubin.
Trains are great in general. They also tend to be a poor fit for anything much more than carry-on. I've done it and managed but it's better not to if you can.
I generally agree with you - I spent years flying across the world with a carry-on only and I still miss that lifestyle.
But Japan is the kind of place that people want to bring a whole lot of stuff back - I know a lot of people who basically fly out with empty suitcases and just fill them to the brim with random tchotchkes over here — and hey, whatever makes them happy.
Having traveled to Japan quite a bit, I can definitely see that. Though I'm also at the stage of my life where I do not want anything else to enter my house. :-) (And I have quite a bit of stuff from Japan my dad brought back from when he was traveling there a lot.)
It’s still a long time to get into Tokyo and even then you might be far from where you want to go. As far as I remember the rapid line from Marita only stops at shinjuku and Tokyo station.
And from Hnd either the monorail or the airport limousine are very cheap ways into the city. I use the airport limousine to get to Disney and it’s really convenient. WAY cheaper than a taxi
My wife and I landed in NRT a couple months ago and had a taxi leave us high and dry. We had to book a taxi there and then and it cost $450 to Tokyo in a standard taxi. The pre booked taxi that left us H&M was $200.
Agree with others just take the train to Tokyo Station or Shinigawa station.
If it’s your first time just remember to exit on the gate that is staffed because gate adjustments can get tricky.
The ticket I selected at NRT was apparently not enough money, as expected they were super helpful and nice about it though.
There are also fare adjustment machines, you put your ticket in and it tells you what difference to pay to "upgrade" your ticket.
Many travelers will just grab a ticket that sounds vaguely correct and then fare adjust at the end. Grabbing an IC card or one of the apps is the easiest course for virtually everyone though.
It is high time for the traditional - working class - left to distance itself from identity politics in all of its forms if it wants to remain a viable political ideology. While I do not consider myself to be on the "left" or "right" I see the value in having both "left-wing" as well as "right-wing" thought sparring it out in the public discourse in a search for something we can more or less agree on. If done right this ends up with something resembling the Dutch or Swedish system in the 80's en 90's, both of which I'm familiar with. Not that these systems were in any way perfect but they have shown resilience through many decades of change while offering a high standard of living for the vast majority of inhabitants. The Dutch "right" - representing employers, farmers and some of the more conservative regions in the country could interact with the "left" - representing labour unions, non-unionised workers and a ragtag assembly of activist organisations - and come to compromises which were workable. While the debates were often intense and allegations of this and that were thrown by "both" sides they managed to come to agreements which were acceptable by most of the involved.
This is not possible with the identitarian left. There is no compromising with those who declaim that anything but their own shining path is some form of -ism or -phobia leading to harm and genocide. They do not want to compromise, instead they insist on dictating the terms, placing themselves above all other interests because they consider themselves to be morally superior.
So, lefties, please... clean up in your own ranks for the good of all. Excise those who put themselves over others with claims of moral superiority, show them a mirror and tell them they to clean up their act - shape up or ship out. If you don't they will destroy your chances of ever achieving any of your goals, subjecting you to a continuous struggle for dominance over imagined oppressors both inside as well as outside of your own movements.
