Ah yes, having a hollow military has worked so well throughout history

There is nothing wrong with expecting rich, 1st world, countries to pay for their own defense. The US has been subsidizing them, and their generous social benefits in turn, for too long.

Decades of throwing money at the problem has shown that nothing changes. The money just goes down the drain.

In the meantime drug abuse ruins neighborhoods and they have a right to be protected.

They are just not arresting as many people and de facto legalizing more crimes. The NL is a hub for organized crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking.

https://nltimes.nl/2024/03/01/people-feel-unsafe-netherlands

I think it boils down to you need a lot of kids to run a farm due to the manual labor demands. You don’t need a lot of kids to work in a factory or office.

I think his point in this case is you own the physical item but not the information on it. If not then I could buy some musician’s cd then I could say “Now I own their music” and start selling copies of their cd, publishing it, stealing their rights to it, etc. I think we can all agree that would be bad.

Piracy by definition is stealing.

0-255 was good enough for me an my grandpappy.

So “You support X so you must be in the pocket of big business! But I support Y and I’m innocent and pure.”? I find the same talking points with solar and wind too.

I’m guessing they expect to sell power

While I’m pronuclear we really need to invest in better nuke power tech. Spending billions, mainly due to the risks with current water cooled reactors, is handicapping it. Systems that minimize waste, use passive failsafe systems, etc are needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor

Caffeine? No, the science says otherwise

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4363846/

Al Qaeda and Daesh/ISIS anyone?

“I must destroy anything that preceded by religious obsession”. So ISIS aren’t the only barbarians.

So instead of reducing a clearly destructive habit now we should wait for a major social change that likely won’t happen. I don’t see how that is more altruistic for the “poor and disaffected”.

Vaping is a joke, they stuck the addictive chemical (nicotine) in it and now they are hooked on vaping. Let them sell vaping goods but they shouldn’t be allowed to add nicotine to them.

Hmmm, where have I heard this proposal before?

Rishi is just jealous that they aren’t one of the cool kids

https://www.theonion.com/secondhand-smoke-linked-to-secondhand-coolness-1819564071

Loads? These aren’t exactly major nations here and the bigger ones are oil producers.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-top-budget-surplus.html