Short notice that kyivindependent.com is certainly not neutral on this.

you cannot choose whether you are oppressed. you can only choose by whom. and if you don’t make that choice, then somebody else makes it for you

As another commenter has already said, this article provides a great insight into this.

Human land use has gone up from 4% during the medieval ages to 44% today, so it has increased by a factor of 10x, while, as i wrote above, population count has gone up by 30x. That means that land produces 3x the food today than it did a thousand years ago.

Notice, however, that the land that’s being used for agriculture though is the most fertile land, i.e. farmers try to maximize their profit by farming the most fertile lands. So, “44% of land usage” might be misleading, as it would suggest that we’re just using every second acre, while in fact, the land that we don’t use either has lower livability for both humans and insects, or is mountaineous area which is difficult to access for vehicles and heavy machines.

I kinda assume that insect-dying is mostly perpretated by taking all of their land away and drying up the wetlands.

I.e., hundreds of years ago, the world had 300 Million people on it. Now we have close to 10 billion, up by a factor of 30x.

That means we consume more food. Even with better soil fertility, we need more land.

That automatically and necessarily leads to a displacement of other species. Turns out that not only humans need land to live, but so does every other species. If you take that land away from them, they die. Simple as that.

I assume that it will be very difficult or close to impossible to do anything against large-scale insect dyings as long as humans take up so much space to produce food. Of course, insular areas can be reserved for wildlife to make sure that some native species survive, but it’s only a small patch to conserve the species, not a large-scale spread of insects across the land. At least that’s my view of it. It’s not so much the chemicals that are poisoning our insects (that too, but it’s not the biggest contributor), but simply the fact that we till so much soil every autumn/winter, that it disrupts insects breeding in that soil.

Trumpistan doesn’t intend to face another election. He’s here for the last chance; it’s grab power now or fail forever. And he knows it, that’s why he acts like that. The medicaid cuts are widely unpopular, but he doesn’t care what voters think anymore.

Police should stop and hinder ICE conductions; after all they have the duty to protect people from illegal harm. And ICE is clearly doing illegal things.

The Trumpistan party doesn’t intend to be elected ever again. That’s their last attempt. They try to take the country by a coup now. They don’t intend to face any votings, ever again. That’s why they’re acting like this.

I’m not contradicting you, just writing down some further notes:

• There’s 3 important types of taxes: wealth tax, income tax, product tax. Wealth tax is paid annually as a share of total net worth, while income tax is paid as a share of profit/revenue/wages. Product tax is a tax on consumable products such as food or luxury items.

I think the best thing would be to increase wealth tax, and decrease income and product tax.

The reason for this is: Wealth tax taxes wealth-hoarding, i.e. wealth that is stalling and not contributing to economic flow, i.e. production or re-distribution. Income and product tax inhibit the economy and slow it down, but don’t actually prevent wealth hoarding: Even if a billionaire is faced with 50% income tax, it’d simply take them twice as long to accumulate the insane amount of wealth. Wealth tax counteracts that, by reducing the size of the pile of gold these billionaires sit on effectively.

That being said, there’s 3 main types of wealth:

• real estate (land, agricultural fields, houses, …)
• infrastructure & business (streets, vehicles, factories, shops)
• abstract values, such as money, expensive paintings, gold, which have no direct inherent value and only possess value because of our communal perception of things.

Some of these things can be moved easily, such as money, while other things can basically not be moved at all, such as real estate & infrastructure. It makes sense to tax the things most that are hardest to move, i guess.

An international wealth tax CAN be done, the only obstacle is mere political will.

There is real issues that need to be tackled, such as Ireland’s tax desert. There’s a couple of them around the world (around 20 countries do this iirc). I guess forcing them to close their tax deserts is difficult, because you’d either have to pressure them militarily or economically. Pressuring them militarily is a no-go in today’s time, and pressuring them economically might be challenging as these tax deserts could make a huge profit by offering lower taxes, and then taxing all the world’s rich, as they all move there.

I think the best course of action would be to exclude billionaires who do not pay a minimum amount of taxes in any country entrance to the domestic market, as they do not see themselves as a part of society, as they deny paying their fair share towards society, it’s fair to not let them participate in other parts of the society as well, such as doing business in your country. Business opportunity is a huge deal and very attractive for billionaires, who want to make even more money, so using that as leverage is very effective, i guess.

In other words, markets must be obstructed for investors who don’t pay their fair share in taxes.

That’s very good news.

As described in an announcement by the Spanish government, the initiative aims to create coordination between governments on the taxation of high-net-worth individuals to ensure they are not shuffling money abroad to avoid proper taxation.

I would like to point out that billionaires have to have an incentive to stay in one country, if their wealth is going to be taxed in that country. I.e., billionaires can only do business in a country that they pay their fair share of taxes in.

And even if it was more than three, they’d just propose the same bill again, until it passes

One could call it the “biggest” suicide note in history.

(i got this phrase from castlevania, iirc, where a heartbroken lord starts to wage lots of wars to force others to kill him, because he no longer wants to live, but for some reason is unable to just die without somebody else’s actions.)

It’s interesting that the US has civil war both at its beginning and at its end.

I suspect it illustrates some “ring of fire” that surrounds the US.

Where will this bring america in 20 years? Republicans don’t ask that question because to them, “in 20 years” is a meaningless category. that simply does not exist. the future does not exist, according to them.

They will be labeled “socialists”

a vote for bart is a vote for anarchy

These articles are supposed to create sympathy for Israel or sth?

oh they enjoy suffering! suffering builds character or something

america is truly an exceptional place, just not the kind of exception that i’d like to ever encounter

i can literally imagine an american sitting at the kitchen table and thinking “hmm, what do we need in our lives? more spice”

well, here’s the bill.

Just for comparison: NASA got $25 billion per year for the last 10 years or so. source