I grew up rich and inherited my wealth and I’m still a leftist, so I know there are exceptions to the rule I just gave. I didn’t mean to imply that all rich people are conservative and it’s a function of wealth. I just meant that while many leftists on Lemmy demand the rich empathize with the poor, I don’t think enough of them empathize with the rich—particularly the self-made rich.

You wanna know what the best thing about my inherited wealth is? I don’t have to plan for retirement. This leaves me free to work a job that doesn’t pay well, but affords me the opportunity to help people less fortunate than me (community therapist). I don’t think enough leftists on Lemmy realize how many of us are out there. It’s the problem of a handful of bad actors spoiling things for the bunch. It doesn’t matter how many Warren Buffets are out there; a single Jeff Bezos sets the bad example.

But it’s the system. We need laws that prevent 90% of the wealth falling into 10% of the hands. We need laws that stop the richest from paying the least taxes. But we also need oversight committees that stop government bodies meant to help the poor from pocketing the money—something leftists rarely want to acknowledge happens. I work in public health and I know how corrupt the system is. We can’t expect the we’ll-meaning wealthy to give up their capital to a system that is designed to line the pockets of other rich people.

I think a lot of far leftists are relatively poor and would change their tune as soon as they earned a lot of money. When you experience success it becomes a lot harder to excuse or sympathize with the people asking for handouts. Success is difficult. Yes, a lot of luck is involved and successful people do tend to give themselves too much credit, but it still doesn’t happen without a lot of effort from one ambitious individual. When you know you’ve built an empire, it’s a tall order being asked to give it up.

You’re citing a problem with our justice system though. Yes, that should be fixed, but it’s not the same as justifying vigilante justice. This should not be condoned. The system’s inability to prosecute and convict should be.

As much as I take some degree of delight in this CEO’s death, yes, his killer should face justice. Vigilante revenge should not be allowed in a civilized society. If we condone that, we open the floodgates for all forms of reprisal. As justified as I and others may feel this murder is, the CEO still should have had his day in court.

Energy-to-(organic)matter conversion + futuristic power generators makes feeding your population a triviality. That simplifies just about any economic system, which takes a lot of the complicated stuff out of government and class hierarchies.

But Star Trek is a fictional utopia, much like Communism.

In reality, corruption would still mess up government in a “real world” Star Trek. I’m a casual Trekkie, but I don’t recall much detail about the Federation’s or Earth’s government structure. Do people still vote? Is it a benevolent military dictatorship? Who knows? And who cares? It’s not really relevant to the themes of the shows.

Star Trek is founded on liberal ideas popular in the mid-20th century that humanity could achieve unity and peace if it just cast aside superficial differences like race and gender, allowing us to focus on exploring the universe once we’d gotten over fighting each other. That’s the very core of the entire franchise and I’m fine leaving it that way, unscrutinized, since it clearly doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It’s like how the force is best left a mystical property of the universe in Star Wars, rather than science-ized with medichlorians.

Just a reminder to people: if you remove anyone who has (or will have) children, from a certain moral perspective you’re responsible for them never existing, which could be considered akin to murder. Just take that into account in your considerations. Might make this a much thornier question, ethically, for some.

Spock on a cock for anyone else struggling with “vulcan on a rooster.”

No, not having any money to buy food and pay rent is a real problem, no matter what your mental state is or how you choose to think about it, much less anybody else.

One major difference: bankruptcy is real.

You can’t rely on someone who is suffering to make a rational decision about weighing a very permanent choice with the chances of maybe someday getting better.

That’s just not true. People dealing with chronic pain can absolutely make informed decisions about their own healthcare, including voluntary euthanasia. Psychiatric and neurological illnesses could potentially impair a person’s judgment enough to bar them from making the choice themselves, but this notion that anyone who is “suffering” can’t be relied upon to make a rational decision because they’re somehow too biased by their own pain is pure idiocy.

No one should be proud of a demographic quality like race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. You should be proud of accomplishments .

That would depend on the person I’m talking to. Not everyone is well-suited for it. Generally, I recommend people find jobs that they enjoy doing most of the time.

No. Most of Reddit’s population has proven they don’t care about changes that much more directly affect their user experience. I can’t see a significant portion of them caring about who owns the platform if they don’t care about that.

Therapist here. This is correct. While almost any activity can be addicting, OP isn’t describing an addiction, which would involve distress in the absence of a particular activity, even when other activities were engaged in. What OP is describing is much more like the apathy/lethargy we see in depressed people, which often results in persistent engagement with easy distractions.

I think it’s a bit ironic that Wikipedia hasn’t succumbed to the modern era of misinformation the way other information sources have, particularly given the warnings about it that have been given in the past. Not saying those warnings aren’t warranted, just that the way things have played out is counter to said expectations.

I really hope not. Looking at how humanity has managed this world, I think it’s for the best if the laws of physics and biology are such that we’re never able to escape our solar system.

Around 19, I’d say. 42 now.

Try to find a job you enjoy from 9-5. That means focusing on activities you enjoy that are the main activity of said job. I worked in a pet store because it afforded me 30% of my time playing with puppies, even though the remaining 70% was cleaning puppy shit and stocking goods. I now work as a therapist because I spend 70% of my time talking to people about their problems (which I enjoy), and 30% doing paperwork and correspondence. Make your job something you enjoy most of them time and it gets much easier. Then, you retire and collect Social Security. As long as you’ve worked for most of your life, that’ll be a decent retirement. You’ll have to live frugally, but it’ll be livable.

Also, if you can manage it, invest $10,000 as early as you can in a stock market index fund and pay for a fund manager. By the time you retire, that will provide you with a substantial cushion to rest on.

Quest for Glory series. Got me into RPGs.

It was so traumatizing he had to go see Richard Dreyfus for therapy.