…one of the best business models for creators

If that’s true I’d hate to see the worst models. It’s a great system until Youtube completely changes their recommendation/discovery algorithm and kills your channel, or demonetizes half of it because there’s a content rule change, or you get a couple content or copyright strikes filed by a troll and your whole channel and years of your life is suddenly shut down because you can’t get a human to verify anything without a lawyer. If you’re Mr. Beast or Pewdiepie, Youtube is good for you. If you’re a normal creator, it’s an absolute nightmare of constant fear about what dystopian changes will be forced on you overnight.

I already have plenty of pictures of Shrek.

I was raised Catholic, but as time went on and I left it, I think one of the misconceptions people who are still deeply religious have is that atheists or non-religious people are continually thinking about NOT having religion as much as religious people think about their religion, but the fact of the matter is, sometimes MONTHS go by where I don’t have a single thought about religion, the afterlife, God… When you grow up in an organized religion you tend to feel the lack of religion is some kind of continual rejection of it, and it’s hard to imagine people for whom it just isn’t a presence in ANY sense. When you realize the presence of religion is neither necessary or sufficient for any part of life, you can start to see how life satisfaction or lack thereof has nothing to do with belief. There are horribly depressed devout worshipers and annoyingly peppy and positive atheists. It’s an entirely different axis.

So this is the laser-like focus on the future of Tesla that 56 billion dollars bought, huh?

I hope for everyone’s sake you’re right, but if that does come to pass it will come as a surprise to me.

I agree with your conclusion, but I don’t agree that it’s feasible. Any tax solutions will involve legislation by a government owned by those same interests. And even if you managed it in major economies, you’d just force the climate issues into places with fewer qualms about their fuel usage. I’d love to see this problem solved, but my faith in our ability to resolve it is far less than yours.

Okay, I can see how you got that from my post. I was a bit hyperbolic in my original post, and I apologize.

I’m not REALLY making a moral equivalence argument or saying anything about comparing the horrors of slavery to work… I’m saying getting rid of slavery was easier to enact because there was an alternative system that happened to be ultimately profitable for the rich at the same time. Yes, wars have been fought to stop abolition, but at the end of the day, after slavery was abolished, the rich found a way to stay rich almost everywhere - abolition came at very little real change to the wealth structure of society. They had a supply of labor to exploit for profit during slavery, and they had one after. The fact is that the moral and financial interests both aligned on making abolition happen - it wasn’t caused by pure strength of willpower. And yes, the system we have now is MUCH MUCH better than true slavery, but it’s still a stretch to use the current system as a beacon of hope.

On climate change the moral and financial interests are NOT aligned in a clear way. There are always still going to be financial incentives to screw the climate for extra money. By comparison, if slavery were somehow legal again TODAY, it’s not clear it would be profitable for anybody to actually do it. That difference will make climate goals harder to enact.

Not to be defeatist, but…

We didn’t abolish slavery… we just replaced it with wage slavery. Sure, the workers are free to leave - and try to survive with no other job opportunities and no money. In fact, for the employers, this is actually preferable to real slavery, because there are lower upfront costs for your slaves, they don’t try to run away or rebel, you don’t have to pay for their healthcare or long term care, and in many places government tax dollars will subsidize their living expenses. Employers have it WAY better with wage slaves than real slaves.

Child labour is still alive and well in many countries, and even there the ball is rolling on rolling THAT back in the US at least.

I admire your positivity, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

But hey, at least they’re compatible with Windows 11, right?

/s

Maybe the Saudi investors who own him have finally called in the favor and told him it’s time to put an end to the EV transition…