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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 4th, 2023

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  • Pulling out all your money or selling your home and possessions would give you away. And a pauper with a boat would be a red flag for any investigator. You’d have to be willing to give it all up. Your family would have to believe you died.

    A better option would be to slowly siphon off money and be seen frequenting a casino, or become known as a drug addict. Once you’ve liquidated everything and racked up tons of debt, fake a suicide. Become aberrant or hyper-religious/political. Tell everyone that you’re going on a hike to “find yourself” or that you’re volunteering to fight in Ukraine. Never come back.










  • Look up how to debate. Success is not measured by how bad you make the opponent look. That may work on one person, but you have to repeat it for every person who advances the same argument. Instead, take apart their argument, reveal underlying motives, expose untruths with irrefutable documentation, uncover false logic and bad assumptions, and respond without attacking the messenger.

    For instance, “The economy is terrible! Everything is so expensive.” Well, stuff -is- expensive. But is the economy really the reason behind it? The US stock indexes are at record highs. Most companies have been beating the expected earnings per share. Isn’t it more likely that things are expensive because companies are taking more profit to give to their shareholders? Which candidate do you believe is more inclined to change that?

    The object is not to defeat the opponent. It’s to prevent others from being convinced by their arguments.



  • The same things were said when industrial robots replaced assembly line workers, when farm equipment replaced agricultural labor, and now with AI systems. People still need jobs. But looking at the big picture, those improvements made sense. Most displaced workers found other employment.

    Our medical system costs much more than it needs to, creates anxiety about long term medical needs in “at will” employment, has forced millions to declare bankruptcy over medical debt, destroyed the financial security of millions more, and in some cases, has lead to patients who opted to forgo medical treatment because it wasn’t covered. And when payment for care is tied to a job, that leads to age discrimination - older employees cost more to insure.

    Taxes were meant to pay for things everyone needs. I can’t think of a better example of that than medical care.

    (Edit for clarity)


  • This. Absolute game changer. If my job gave me the money they spend on my behalf for the crappy health insurance they provide, it would likely result in an actual increase in my net pay after the increased taxes to pay for the program. Cut out hundreds of thousands of parasitic middlemen, like insurers and pharmacy benefit managers. Throw out the crazy quilt of non-doctors who decide what medications and procedures are are covered. Reduce billing staff because of the major paperwork reduction (don’t need to deal with hundreds of different insurance plans). And do away with coding - the letters and numbers on a bill that can drastically change a procedure’s cost to the patient.






  • Nothing other than common decency stops a president from executing all rivals of their party, pardoning all those involved, then resigning from the office, turning it over to the VP, before Congress could impeach. Now if the only remaining members of Congress belong to the President’s party, the odds of impeachment diminish significantly. In any case, only one person - the President - could ever be held responsible.

    But anyone dumb enough to try this would start Civil War 2.0.