Yes, but there a too-hot outside and a too-cold inside is delicious. Pittsburgh Rare is a fine thing.

It's not so great for cooking chicken.

> A private banking system was previously defeated, but they kept trying.

And they keep trying. Bitcoin, for example. What could go wrong with private money? Dunno, how about the last few times it was tried.

> it's astonishing that the USA is even worse at delivering a stable banking system.

You mean before we actually created a stable banking system?

Herodotus was born around 484 BC. During the Achaemenid dynasty, around that time, the Persian empire had 44% of the world's population.

The Greek poleis were scrappy little states on the outside of the largest empire (relatively to share of global population) the world has ever seen. It's inevitable that a lot of what they did and thought was going to be done in relation to that huge empire just to the East. "Yeah, Persia's basically what civilization is, we should acknowledge that and imitate parts of it" or "Yeah, Persia kind of sucks, look at all this bad stuff they do, we should do our own thing in contrast to them."

You see how this works nowadays, too.

Symbolic actions. Kind of like when women would burn their bras for feminism.

> The general trend today is people moving to large cities from the countryside and smaller cities.

Suburbs. People like the suburbs..

Young people and immigrants move to cities to make their careers, then get the hell out when they're established. Covid didn't help, and the ability to work from home in more jobs certainly didn't help.

Not nearly as much as jousting that chick with syphilis.

> What stops me from putting my wooden stick to his head, killing him and claiming it was an accident

His equally well-armed and armored friends, probably.

These were a bit of a rowdy bunch. Think biker gangs getting riled up and you can imagine how your "oops" is going to get you killed anyhow.

Practice!

Also, if you want to give doctors uninterrupted sleep, you need more doctors. They're more expensive than people want to pay for.

Nobody bothers to count that. How long would it take before we noticed that carrots were as dangerous as cigarettes if they were?

If you wanted an all-natural lifestyle, you'd have to live in a cave and kill your dinner with a club. Even then, the smoke from the cooking fire might get you.

Sure, sure, but JFK didn't do too badly, right?

It's a triumph of the Politiques- people who don't give a damn which side is right or wrong, they just want the squabbling to stop so the basic activities of the country can go on unimpeded.

We could use more of those.

It seems to be pretty much inevitable when you have people who don't need to actually labor to live- they get eccentric, because nothing checks their behavior but their social group, and the whole social group has no checks at all on it.

Perhaps for a modern case, consider retired people with comfortable pensions- they get on Facebook and turn odd. Now picture an entire lifetime spent like that.

> I would say they look to something like ecological balance as a sustainable model.

Except this is not remotely how ecology works. Species grow and use all the resources they can gain, then generally die out when circumstances change or disasters strike (or both).

The entire planet is composed of endless cycles of boom and bust- why not human society?

Why only charge them for the downside?

Let's say that the transport system that runs on oil and coal generates ten times the value (just picking numbers) of the sale price of the oil and coal that powered it. Should the company get a share of that?

> Further on the topic, how would you find people who exhibit group-think immunity?

For that matter, how would you get them to participate in the test properly?

They occasionally call this "Chesterton's Fence", after a passage from an essay by G.K. Chesterton.

Basically, if you don't see the point of a fence being in a location and want to take it down, that's not a good reason in itself. You need to know why the fence was put up in the first place. Someone had a reason to make the effort to put up the fence, and until you know why you don't know the consequences of taking it down.

> And you can either think for yourself and act intelligently, or follow the mob

The one problem with "acting intelligently" is that it requires a lot of background information in the situation being considered. For usual situations, you can pick up the necessary background, but for unusual ones you probably don't have time.

"Crowdsourcing" the decision makes a bit of sense there- maybe someone has information and experience that's good and is acting on it, and people near them are following suit.

It's not perfect, of course, but it's not unreasonable.

You're saying that the suffering of some means the joy of the majority can't be justified, and it would be better if they all didn't exist, yes?

And yet, for those of us who do enjoy life, this is justified.

Now this puts you in something of a state if we take you at your word- you're surrounded by a planet full of psychopaths who will gleefully bring into existence those who suffer just to share what they deem a pleasure with others, generation after generation, era after era.

And yet, you wish to continue living among such sadists. Why is that?

And there are billions who do enjoy life. Are those examples you list a reason why those billions should not live and enjoy life?

Again, "I'm not happy, therefore you shouldn't exist" is the position of the school shooter, not a rational human being.

So let's rephrase your point: "I'm not enjoying life, therefore no humans who are enjoying life should exist."

Sounds a bit extreme, doesn't it?

A second thing to ask is why we'd remotely be obligated to keep all people happy instead of just most, or even some. People who don't want to exist are, in most cases, one jump away from not. If they don't want to do that either, well...not our problem.

Apply it at a species level- if humanity suffers some overall, but considers it worthwhile overall, it is worth humanity continuing, regardless if some people draw the short straw.

Mainly you have to abandon the idea that suffering is of no value. It's not pleasant, by definition, and we generally do not seek it out, but a life entirely without suffering may be worse than one that had some.

It'd probably work as long as people remembered they have to do heroic things to be a hero, rather than just being awarded it as a right.