skh

25 ms·

181.
by skh 8y ago
International tourists make up a bigger piece of the pie at Disney World, where they typically comprise between 18 percent and 22 percent of total attendance. Foreign visitors spent an estimated $87.1 billion on U.S. travel and tourism-rel
182.
by skh 8y ago
I have not considered letting things that don't yet exist decide if they want to exist.
183.
by skh 8y ago
What you write makes sense but I don't feel right about having children. The world sucks and it will suck much more in the coming decades. I have no desire to put my progeny through that mess.
184.
by skh 8y ago
I haven't stylized myself as anything other than a person who advocates not having children. I over consume. I've come to grips with this fact. I deal with it by not having children as a means of assuaging my guilt. I've
185.
by skh 8y ago
...multiple changes of ruling party... I think you don't understand the American political system. At present there are only two parties in terms of realistically getting elected. There is no such thing as a ruling party in the sen
186.
by skh 8y ago
The person I originally responded to asked for suggestions to deal with the reality of living on a planet increasingly becoming a shitty place to live. He/she appeared to be having a problem coming to terms with this reality. I sugge
187.
by skh 8y ago
It does actually prevent me for adjusting my behavior. I'm a victim of free rider thinking. I'm not going to fall on my sword so to speak and sacrifice whilst almost no one else does.
188.
by skh 8y ago
Hence the call for people to stop coming to the U.S. for tourism. I'm not claiming Disney is hurting now. I'm suggesting that the best way to change the U.S. government's treatment of visitors is for companies like Disney t
189.
by skh 8y ago
I think the only way for the U.S. to go back to a sane system for international travelers is for people to stop visiting the U.S. for vacations. We won't change until large businesses like Disney take an economic hit.
190.
by skh 8y ago
What you write is true but I don't think will be duplicable on a large scale without regulations and pricing negative externalities into products. The free rider problem is a negative aspect of human psychology.
191.
by skh 8y ago
That's basically it. Assuming you live in a rich country the facts are that we way over consume. The people who say they are vegan and recycle and whatnot are still way over consuming for the most part. All of those cars, clothes,
192.
by skh 8y ago
Yes, this is true. For me the way that I deal with the reality of a planet becoming a shitty place to live is to not have children. It is the best way for me to cope with the situation. People can choose to do otherwise.
193.
by skh 8y ago
It's not genocide to not have children. At an individual level the best thing we can do is to not have children if you are in a rich country. Those of us who live in rich countries massively over consume (including myself in this).
194.
by skh 8y ago
It seems to me the only thing we can really do is not have children. There are too many people on the planet.
195.
by skh 8y ago
That is certainly true. But given the choice between Amazon or Apple when it comes to digital content I choose Amazon for the reasons given. Maybe they'll lock things down but I doubt it.
196.
by skh 8y ago
When the ability to make books for iBooks came out I was excited. I would like to write a math textbook with embedded videos in it. I was about to explore doing this in iBooks but then I realized that I would be limiting my audience to th
197.
by skh 8y ago
I quoted and if/then type statement you made. That statement’s conclusion does not follow from that statement’s premise. I clearly did not agree with that statement and gave reasons for why it is obviously false.
198.
by skh 8y ago
Given that there are 300+ million people in the U.S. and it isn’t feasible for all of them to live off the land it’s good that we organize ourselves into a society. The structure for this organizing is government and society’s wishes are
199.
by skh 8y ago
Yes we’d save a lot of money but do you have studies to show that fixing obesity would mean that we’d spend much less per capita on healthcare than we currently do? And by much less I mean get to Norway levels of per capita spending on hea
200.
by skh 8y ago
That’s a fair point. I guess underlying my view on return on taxation is a belief that government ought to be there to support people. If Americans en masse could be convinced that this is what government ought to be about then the shift
201.
by skh 8y ago
Isn’t the CIA, NSA, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Coast Guard (which is not part of the Pentagon), etc. all part of national defense? You can look up the public portion of their budgets online. The VA should be counted too sin
202.
by skh 8y ago
I didn’t mention military spending or any other spending. I mentioned returns on taxation. What we get in return for our taxes in the U.S. is an overly expensive healthcare system, overly expensive education system, etc. and the only thin
203.
by skh 8y ago
Do you have any studies that you can point to that support this view? It’s OK if you can’t or don’t. I’ve heard this point of view often but it doesn’t jive with my anecdotal experience.
204.
by skh 8y ago
There was no false dichotomy in what I wrote. Our return on taxation is a horrible healthcare system and an extremely effective military. I mentioned nothing about level of spending. I mentioned the returns on said spending. Of corse we
205.
by skh 8y ago
This would be the return on investment aspect of my comment. We spend massively more per capita on healthcare and yet not everyone is covered and it isn’t free at point of contact. It’s easy to design an inefficient system when the goal i
206.
by skh 8y ago
Ultimately this indicates that people aren’t satisfied with the returns on taxation. I’m all for supporting a government that supports the people. From my perspective we don’t have this and haven’t had it for some time. Other developed n
207.
by skh 8y ago
Do you have numbers on contractor deaths? I’ve not seen them. I’m not disputing that Vietnam involved many times more deaths for Americans. Just stating that one should include contractor deaths since the U.S. military decided to contrac
208.
by skh 8y ago
I'm saying that if the author really thought donating that extra $X to the government (when other people do) was such a good idea, they would be donating it right now even if other people don't. This is an aspect of human behavi
209.
by skh 8y ago
I know you are talking about marginal effects but you should be talking about aggregate effects. You make the claim that a $1,000 donation might be more useful than many millions of $1,000 donations. This is clearly false. It’s true tha
210.
by skh 8y ago
I agree with the overall point of your post but one should count contractor deaths. My understanding is that the U.S. military is much more reliant on contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than in Vietnam.

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