Here is my idea.

During the famine grain was being hoarded my several estates, shipfulls of grain were being exported from Ireland. This exacerbated the famine.

But look at it this way - there was a bad harvest, which by itself would have caused an increase in grain prices. But it precipitated and attack on commodity prices by a coordinated group of investors. They bought grain and withheld it from the market, pumping prices. Then they sold small amounts at inflated prices.

The actions of Westminster, where they decided year after year not to intervene, is said to be because they didn't want to provoke shocks in food prices in England. If you take them at their word, it was a genocide - they worsened (or created) a famine (and consciously killed millions) for local political reasons.

But looked at the new way, they were facilitating an investment scheme by important wealthy businesses. By withholding food from Ireland (food which was mostly produced in Ireland) they were allowing the scheme to run for longer. This is typical in modern England, that the bankers' interest is the highest priority for government. Understanding that is key to understanding why the UK behaves as it does. And the famine lasted several years, only because of Westminster's actions.

Makes sense?

...unless they also condemn the USA for invading Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

Most European territories serve the USA's geopolitical goals. Sanctions against Russia right now are part of that. There's nothing moral about it. It's simply a service to the USA for being in its sphere of influence. There is nothing, not a single shred of integrity in that.

If you find a territory which sanctions Russia for its crime, and also the USA for its crimes, you can recognise it as a real principled act.

The best strategic move for Ukraine is to surrender.

Many Ukrainian lives are lost and cities destroyed, in the service of this ancient USA vs Russia proxy war. The USA is sending them weapons so that Russians and Ukrainians can kill each other, and eventually weaken the Russian army.

It's stupid. If Ukraine surrenders, the USA will be forced to send in its own troops to fight back Russia.

The USA will not allow Russia to gain Ukraine. It's too strategically important. Their aircraft will appear over Ukrainian skies within hours of the surrender, and will decimate Russia.

Don't be used as pawns in someone else's war.

The abortion debate is probably one of the most contentious of all. It affects people on a very personal level, so most people have very strong opinions on it.

I'm not here to debate this, more to share a way of thinking which might help people. If it doesn't help you, then ignore it. The world does not need another circular intractable abortion debate.

In fact most people (in my experience) fall into one of two extremist polarised camps.

1. Abortion should be freely available to all, up to a certain date (usually in the months). If one parent (usually the mother but not always) desires it, nobody else shall interfere.

2. Abortion should be banned except in a medical emergency, feotal non-viability, or to save the mother's life.

These are both extremist views, and they are mutually exclusive. So the abortion debate is about winning and losing. Both of these policies are disastrous for vast numbers of people. Whichever side wins, vast numbers of lives and entire families will be ruined.

But put it another way. These are the things people really care about:

1. Nobody should be forced to bring an unwanted child into the world

2. Living things (especially human) should not be killed except under dire need.

3. People should be able to have sex without consequences.

They are not exclusive.

Everybody wants the same three things. And society can have all of those things, at the same time.

Let's put the issues in the third and final arrangement:

• Three weeks. Three weeks is a long enough time to visit a doctor or pharmacist under any circumstances. There is no reason for anyone to wait longer than that between sex and thinking about (panicking about) pregnancy.

So the issue is access to contraception and to information about contraception. People know about condoms and pills and patches. Everybody knows that 100% effective contraception does not exist. But that is only true is you want it to be - if people are taught ineffective contraception methods. Most people have never heard about ovulation testing or tube ligation. But they both are effective. They need to be as accessible and publicised. Depending on condoms is a method designed to fail.

• Day 21. Before this the fetus has no organs. No heart, no brain. Although it is technically a living, metabolising, growing human, there's not such a big ethical problem killing somebody with no heart or brain.

Access to effective contraception obviates the need for abortion for the vast majority of cases/people. But you can imagine failure cases. So this is the safety net. Abortion up to 21 days.

And abortions must be as rare as possible, because they do destroy families. There is no good answer to a lot of the problems with abortion - who needs to be informed, consulted or give authorisation, how do you measure 21 days...

• 24 hours. In a medical crisis, like sepsis, a patient can be dead in 24 hours. There are many circumstances unorthadox medical treatment is necessary. There are too many to list or legislate for. The law should never allow a doctor to believe that he can allow a patient (or two) to die, just because of a political/legal issue. He doesn't have time to consult a lawyer and he shouldn't ever need to.

Part of the motivation here is to bring human medicine up to the standards of vet medicine. Vets do not normally perform abortions. They perform sterilisations. They do this because this is the ethical way. In the past, people used to drown kittens, now they spay kittens. Let's be like the kittens.

Today many artists and inventors and businessmen rely on donations. But a system where the donation is rewarded with shares would be better.

Then, if the business eventually becomes successful, they will get back dividends. It's a much more inviting concept. Having shares in something really makes people loyal, in a way that being a donor does not. It would generate much more money IMO.

Patreon (or the ethical alternative whose name I forget) could add this option without much difficulty. The new relationship would be a powerful improvement. It would lead to more and better-funded independent projects everywhere.

It's been obvious for a while that governments worldwide are not able to design effective strategies to stop covid. So I've been trying to think of initiatives that bypass government.

One example is the decision whether to leave pubs open or closed, despite different pubs having very different infectiousness. One pub might be 100x safer than another, so it's improper to paint them all with the same brush. It leads to the worst of both worlds, with high contagion and high restrictions on peoples lives, at the same time.

It's possible to categorise public spaces by their infectiousness. For example somewhere with bad ventillation, high density of people, who stay there for a long time; is more infectious than for example an outdoor space.

So privately owned public spaces (shops, pubs, cafés schools, stations, etc) can ask for an evaluation by an expert. The expert can do a calculation based on the properties of the space and its usage, using transparent criteria. The space will get a result. Not a safe/unsafe one, or a stay open / stay closed one, but something like this:

• max 5 people at a time. max 15 min stay. masks required.

This result can be posted on the door, as an advertisement that the space is taking covid seriously, and a helpful guide to concerned customers.

This is easy to understand and obey, and helps people control their risks, but it never stops people from doing business somewhere. Nowhere will get a 0 min rating, exuivalent to being temporarily shut down, because that doesn't make epidemiological sense. One pub might get a 30min rating and another a 90min rating. So the first one won't go out of business (like it would under a lockdown) but there is a strong incentive to improve its ventillation to get a longer rating.

This is the ideal situation. It solves all the weaknesses with most governments' policies in one go. It's a shame governments don't have the sense to implement it, but any non-profit could.

The sign on the door is also an advertisement for the scheme, to get more businesses to sign up. People will choose to go to the shop with the bright covid rating sign in the door, over the one with no information on how infectious it is. The abstaining shops will be conspicuous and lose business.

You've heard about 'fragility' WRT covid policy.

If we are all following the same centrally determined rules set by government, then those rules have to be perfectly thought-out. If they make policy mistakes (as they frequently do) then everybody in the territory suffers the consequences. These decrees from government are always (necessarily) rigid. It is well known that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level, so they can be flexible enough.

But I've realised there is a possible counter-argument. It's 'perverse incentives'.

Imagine people are well-informed, because a government has been providing appropriate information. Imagine there is a covid outbreak one day in December. Most people will decide (depending on their personal risk-factors) to stay away from the butchers. But if there is one 'bad actor' who goes in anyway, he will get his pick of the turkeys. The man who does bad is rewarded. For any policy to work, breaking the policy must not be rewarded.

And if one man is breaking the rules and benefiting from it, then everyone must do the same.

To be clear, this is not about people who must interact with society despite the epidemic - they have to do some business or work, or for the young people the work they need to do is socialising. Pro-lockdown people would say stop all of that irrespective of its importance. This is a weak argument, but it's not the pertinent one. This is about people who are compelled to do business against their own best interests, because they know other people will do so.

So (although I've never heard it from anywhere else) there is an argument for centrally dictated covid policy.

Do you think it's a strong argument, despite all the problems with government-set covid policy?

Ex:

Support (play):

1. tuxemon, (foss) if not then

2. temtem (closed source alternative i think)

only then should someone support

3. pokemon

if someone tells you that something should be easy for you

if someone tells you that something should be easy for you, and then when you try something, something is easy, that was good advice in the end, but

if someone tells you that something should be easy for you, and then you try something, and something is difficult for you, it doesn't seem to me that it is easy for someone to judge what is easy for you, let alone give you advice....

as someone told you something should be easy for you, then you try it, then it is hard, and then someone doesn't know what that someone is talking about.

If that someone knew what that someone was talking about, then the specific thing someone told you should be easy for you, when you try it, then it has to be easy for you, or someone misjudged...

...regarding you, when you judge something is easy for you, something is easy for you...

...when you judge something is difficult for you, something is difficult for you...

...and when something other than the above two happens to you, you have misjudged what is easy and difficult for you for the specific occasion.

People who excel at difficult things

In order for people to have a good life, they need to have fun in a way that is fun for their own selves , or else they are not having fun, and the universe can't do anything to change that for them if they don't change their way, that they notice, is not fun for them.

Regarding people who excel at difficult things, either...

The things those people excel at, are not difficult for them up to the point they excel...or...

The things those people excel at, are difficult for them up to the point they excel, ...and then ....

People who excel at things, that are difficult for them up to the point they excel, make it more difficult for anyone else to excel, as they already know that there are some for who it is easy to excel up to the point they excel, if they don't add some extra hurdles on the way for other to excel...so that...they can excel instead...

Do these people make sense in general?

No, they don't in general.

And in specific, they make things difficult for others...

Shamed for doing something difficult

Some people find things which the majority find easy to do, difficult to do, and they are shamed for this.

Some people find things which the majority find easy to do, difficult to do, and they are not shamed for this.

Whether they are shamed for doing something or not, depends on the consequences something has in reality, on whether the rest like something in reality, and in the end on whether the rest people think it is sensible for them to try to be kind to others for the specific occasion, and...

sometimes it is sensible to be kind to another, and sometimes you are not being sensible with yourself, spending time and effort with another, and regardless of how kind you want to be to another, in the end justice is blind, since the beginning of humans, and you are not being sensible with yourself, when you ignore that.

things that are easy are easy for those who understand how to do them,

and things that are hard are no different than the things that are easy for those who don't understand how to do them...

Humans who have a different definition of easy than other humans, should remember:

Something is easy for me, if it is not hard for me to do in reality.

Something is easy for some people, if it is not hard for some people to do in reality.

Something is easy for most people , if it is not hard for most people to do in reality.

And what I mean by this is

If something is easy for most people or some people, but it is not easy for one, then whether something is easy doesn't become hard for everyone because of one, does it?

Clarifications

if people in groups or societies, don't have a common way to judge which things are easy or difficult, it seems to me things get more difficult for that group or society as time passes , or do you think this is not the case?

And what is that way,

which is common in a group of people to judge which things are easy or difficult,

you may wonder?..

In short it is what I initially wrote down. If you want me to write more...

You have a group of people, or society, people do things, and for the things they do, those things can be easy or difficult for them, on average, and that is because of the following...

When people in the group or society, want to judge other people in the same group or society doing things, they do that using their own personal view, but... regardless of their personal view, the common view people in the group or society have, is the view that most people have... commonly, that is the view that makes common sense for that group of people or society.

Because within a group of people, the common view people in the group or society have, is the view that most people have, the common view people in the group or society have, better for that group or society be a sensible one,

or else things get more difficult for the group or society, as time passes...

as the human senses work to support humans to have fun in their lives and stay alive up until they die, when humans follow their senses... and they warn them when they are not really having fun...

So how people in a group or society built a common view, happens in a funny way...

people exchange views, some are really thinking while doing that, some are really just choosing the views expressed in the group or society, that they would want the universe to impose to the rest of the group, as if the humans sense don't have common elements among humans...

But regardless of peoples' personal views,

the way that that human senses work is in a funny way for the conscious being inside the human body, because otherwise,

it wouldn't be funny for the conscious being inside the human body,

and this is because this is the best the universe could do for the conscious being inside the human body, both for the easy and the difficult times, as reality in the end is something else than anything you can imagine, because it really seems to be happening on its own without you really having to imagine reality, for reality to happen.

But to cut a long story short, so that I can hope that you at least have some reason to read my reply, in the end

within a group of people or society, people build a common view on which things are difficult or easy, however...unfortunately up to now, there can be cases where the entire group or society doesn't make sense, but this isn't what people who make up the group or society want to do, this is simply what they did, is what we find in the past, so that we can learn to avoid similar mistakes in the future.

CASES,

That people view similarly over some time become…

FASHIONABLE,

But ways that people view similarly

OVER AND OVER IN TIME, become…

…common sense.

https://youtu.be/hNFYMORvM_o

We have a right to clean air.

Just as 19th century disease was (to oversimplify a tad) erradicated by providing people clean water. And 20th century disease by clean surfaces. The 21st century will be all about clean air.

In offices, public spaces, and especially in public transport, the air is infectious. It doesn't matter if you wear a mask, or disinfect your hands and doorhandles. Modern diseases are adapted to spreading through the air and air-conditioning.

As long as the poor are forced to travel daily in overcrowded buses and trains, the epidemics will continue.

We've seen that lockdowns, hand sanitisers, vaccination, etc, are all only slightly effective against airborn disease.

But some territories have started to take the first steps toward eliminating covid. Small incremental improvements to ventilation. And it will help a bit. But it's worth remembering that it won't be enough - this is a disease of overcrowding, and the only effective cure is to improve living conditions.

There are several possible solutions I've thought of, though others could maybe find better ones:

• Zoning so that houses and workplaces must move closer together.
• High taxes on workplaces near the most overcrowded parts of the transport network.
• More buses and bus lanes of course. If people need to stand, it should be considered overcrowded. The bus/train company should have to pay the standers, as an incentive.
• Limit the rate of entering the metro, to physically prevent overcrowding. People have to queue, or traven at a different time.
• Free travel outside rush hour. Because extra passengers do not cost the provider anyway.
• Reducing the vacancy in inner-city housing, through a UBI-style tax and benefit system.

We need a way to measure the level of democracy of each territory. And especially when it changes, we need a may to measure whether the new law or regime takes us closer or further away.

First, the simplest objections:

• This already exists. There are organisations that measure democracy globally, but what they mostly measure is people's opinions of democracy is their country, which is not at all the same thing. We need an objective, not a subjective measure
• It's hard to define the criteria that define a democracy. There are a few points which are debatable alright. In the end this measure will become the first rigorous definition of democracy. Once that first step is done, anbody can fork this and change some of the criteria to make an improved version
• It's debatable whether all of the things specified here are desirable. Certainly there are many people who don't believe in them, but those people don't believe in a pure democracy. Whether pure democracy is a desirable thing is an important debate. To have that debate, we first want an accurate measure of what is is.

A pure, or 'direct' democracy, does not exist anywhere today. It is a theoretical ideal, like a competitive economy, or a meritocracy, or equality-of-opportunity. But democracy at least is easy to specify: "It is a government which is totally subservient to the population. It acts according to the will of the majority. The actions of the democractic government are the same as would be taken by a well-designed multiple-round referendum."

That was my own definition. There are other definitions, mostly because there are multiple meanings of the word democracy. For some people it is "territories with the word 'democratic' in them, or "places where the government is made of elected representatives", or "places which are free and economically open", or "states which are political allies of my state". Those are vague definitions so they are not much use in objective discussions.

To show what it would look like, I'll build an example section.

1. Are all political offices elected?
2. Are some people above the law, and will remain so for life?
3. Are electoral districts drawn by a body independent from politics?
4. Can residents lose the right to vote, for example by being imprisoned?
5. Can any resident initiate a referendum?
6. Is the constitution mutable only by referendum?
7. Is there a written constitution at all?
8. Is there a mechanism by which all of the people holding power be removed from power before their term ends (except for judges)?
9. Is there a secret ballot?

The number of 'yes' answers is important. But some questions are more important than others. The above questions are a sample of the more important ones near the top. The questions near the bottom will be more like 10. "is there a government" 11. are there elections? 12. is succession chosen by people outside the family of the office holder?

Nearly every territory will get yes answers to q9-11. They more measure whether it is the opposite of democracy. The places that fail will be monarchies or dictatorships etc.

Very few will answer yes to q1-8. Only Switzerland (AFAIK) will pass q5. So with only one state that can pass it, q5 is therefore the most important question.

So it becomes a ranking on two levels. The questions are ranked by importance, according to how many territories can answer yes to them. Then the territories are ranked in order, according to the lowest question it answers no to.

For example the UK is often called a democracy, because it ranks highly in surveys of people's perception of democracy. It has extraordinarily effective propoganda. But objectively it is much less democratic than its neighbours. It fails questions 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 9. And 7 and 9 are very weak tests, that indicate a very weak democracy.

So this is a concrete measure, not of people's perception of democracy in their regions, but of real democracy. The word will no longer just be a political throwaway, but have real meaning. This tool will inform our debates and influence policy.

Politicians are (by and large) people who spend a lot of time talking to other politicians, who are sensitive to other people's expectations, who go with the flow and follow conventional wisdom. They don't break ranks and do anything radical or innovative alone.

The politician who does otherwise is an unsuccessful politician.

When a government makes a plan to solve some problem, it tends to be the same as his neighbour's solution.

China was the first territory to react to Covid, and it reacted brutally, with what we now call lock-downs. Total suppression of human movement and interaction and activity, covering an entire city.

This was not the only option nor the most effective one, though the people who copied this solution now claim that it was.

And that's just it, most of the world copied this approach, because politicians instinctively copy each other.

But if covid had started somewhere else, if the first government to react had been portuguese or venezualan or dutch, the template solution would certainly have been very different. It would have been a less brutal and more effective one. The world might be a very different place today.

I've previously said here that mass vaccination is a crucial tool in disease control, but that enforced vaccination has some problems. The first five I'm just listing, because I think everyone should be aware of them. I know some are controversial, but I'm not planning to discuss them here. The last one is IMO the most interesting.

Misc issues, not the subject of this post

• civil rights - forcing medical treatment on people is normally a serious crime, but for whatever reason people seem to make an exception for vaccination.

• utility - politicians usually don't think so, but people generally make better decisions for themselves than politicians will make for them

• fragility - when everybody is forced to do the same thing at the same time, and problems with it are immediately big problems. Like when the CDC mandated one covid test kit, but the kit was defective, and hospitals were prohibited from using different non-approved kits. It's better for people to have access to several options, in case the mandated one has some flaw.

• incentivisation (1) - a government which cannot enforce a rule has to convince people to follow the rule. So it has an incentive to make high quality rules. You can then measure whether the rule really works for people by measuring the compliance by demographic.

• incentivitation (2) - many people will resist or ignore a command from an authority. They are much more likely to obey good convincing advice from an authority.

The real subject of this post

• trolley problem

You can guess that a novel vaccine will have unexpected side effects and will kill some number of people. You should, because every medical intervention has a non-zero mortality rate, with very rare exceptions like acupuncture.

So the vaccine will save X deaths and cause Y deaths. Nobody can know what X and Y are, except that X is much bigger than Y. This sounds like the trolley problem.

I used to think that providing access to vaccines is good. People can make their own decisions to take the risk, based on their personal risk profiles and doctor's advice. But if the president or minister forces people to do something that kills Y people, the president/minister is responsible for those deaths. The only question would be what level of culpability he would have.

So my question.

Does instead framing it as a trolley problem hold water? If so, does that debunk the criminal argument? Or is there maybe a hybrid perspective or a different one, that's even more solid?

For email, IMAP has existed for ages. It allows you to see multiple email inboxes in one place (among other things). This is great.

But there is an even stronger need for this functionality with calendars. I want to be able to see my work calendar, personal calendar, and those of certain friends/family, all in one view. Basically the ability to synchronise multiple online accounts/databases with one application. Just like IMAP.

Why doesn't it exist?

I've heard of caldav. But either it doesn't work, it is not meant to do that, nobody supports it properly, or else I just couldn't figure it out.

A working version of this is a big thing the world needs.

Firstly, do yous agree that this is true?

I find it a very general rule, in Europe anyway, the poorer the area the better the food.

And if so, why?

My theory is that it relates to industrialisation. Developed countries, they are developed because their cultures are focused on efficiency. They are endlessly searching for ways to do things more cheaply.

So you find farms, distributers, shops and restaurants, all trying to minimise their costs quite aggressively. They are not interested in quality. They have no pride in their work.

Poor countries are poor because the focus too much on quality and not enough on finding the cheapest possible way to do things.

Does this explanation extend to other cultural elements apart from food?

This video prompted me to write down these proposals.

In my experience, there are three reasons housing in cities is becoming unaffordable.

Houses are bought up by a few large investment banks, and left empty. This creates a housing shortage, which inflates prices.

Yes this is not one statement, there are three things here:

• vacancy

• multiple ownership

• ownership by non-people

The first one is the most important.

Vacancy

This can be solved by adding a large property tax on all housing, a flat rate on each housing unit. Then (option 1) every adult recieves a UBI of the same amount as the property tax, (option 2) Every adult can apply for an exemption from the tax, (option 3) some variation.

Landlords are allowed to pass the charge on to their tenants. If you want to encourage home-ownership, you only allow them to pass a portion on, and many landlords will sell to home-owners.

What about businesses who have a legitimate need to own property and leave it vacant? They have to pay the charge or sell, or gift the property to the state.

Option 1 has the side effect that the homeless, people flat-sharing, adults living with parents; they suddenly have a lot of extra income.

Option 2 has several side effects too.

So option 3 is a tweaked version that suits whatever the government's policies are today. The point of this policy is that it's simple and robust. The data comes from registries which already have good quality data. It would be very hard to avoid the payment, or financially ruin anybody. Please don't overcomplicate it too much with excemptions and caveats.

It's possible to design a menu. Should couples be entitled to two houses? Should large families benefit more? Should people who don't live in the same country be discouraged from owning property there? You decide your policy, and you can make a version of this that increases housing occupancy, but also fits the rest of your politics.

Multiple ownership

People who own many properties, whose main income is from rent-collection. They are parasitic and shouldn't really exist. So you add to the above, a limitation that you can only pass on the tax on a certain number of properties. For the others you must pay the charge. In option 1 your tenants keep their UBI, so they could pay you illegally. In option 2, not.

Another thing that would help is a tax as a percentage of rental income. The tax won't just be passed on as rental increase because rental prices as set be the demand side. At some point the rental income less tax is less than maintenance costs, so there is an incentive to sell to a home owner.

Ownership by non-people

These entities could be vulture funds, or universities or hospitals or housing co-ops. So it's important that the measure is proportionate.

It is another tax. A small one, and not a flat rate but linked to the market. Something like 1% of the property value. So for a property worth 500,000, that's 400 per month. So if the rent is 2000 per month, the business makes 20% less than a human landlord would. If the aim is to make money from rent, this should be enough to make it uncompetitive. There will be an incentive to sell.

For a business which has a legitimate need to own housing, this should not be a huge strain or their budgets. 1% tax on an investment is not a lot. You could also lower business tax slightly to compensate.

Part 2 - House prices and rental prices

The way to control house and rental prices is already slightly well known. But I'll summarise it here because it's related and important. The above is about disincentivising predatory practices, which is important, but it's not enough to control house prices. Regulation needed to do that.

In a market with (nearly) fixed supply, prices are set by the demand side, not the supply side. Building more houses is a good thing, but it only slightly lowers house prices. The main thing determining housing prices is how much people can afford to pay, so this is what you manipulate.

You evenly reduce the amount everybody can afford to pay for houses. Then sellers must reduce prices by the same amount, or else they just won't get sold. The trick is to preserve the relative wealth of buyers - if man A can afford to pay more than man B, man A will be able to buy the bigger house in the available stock. Trick is to reduce the amount everybody is willing ot pay evenly, without changing that.

1. Make mortgages a limited length, eg 15 years. This limits how much people can borrow.

2. Forbid mortgage monthly payments (and rents) above a maximum ratio of the buyer's (or renter's) salary. (This is commonly done, but without also implementing point 1, it just creates longer mortgages and doesn't reduce prices.)

part 3 - location

In city centres, housing is too expensive. This is because there is a concentration of workplaces and a shortage of housing. The solution is to redress the balance.

• Prohibit building more workplaces in areas with housing shortage ... unless the developer builds 2x the number of housing units as workplaces.

• Prohibit building housing in areas without enough local workplaces. They also need local parks, shops, pubs, schools etc, or else the developer will be forced to provide these amenities.

• Rules to prevent declaring one use to the planners, then changing the use after the building is finished.

Developers will thus be forces to build new towns with mixed use, instead of housing estates far from workplaces.

This gradually solves the high-rents-in-cities problem, the dead city centres, overcrowded public transport, long commutes, removes many drivers that make life miserable for everybody.